> Making up jobs to keep people employed isn't a viable solution to me. Supporting them in some way (re-training, UBI, service work, ...) seems like the only way forward.
If this is what you think needs to happen and you live in the US, then you should be freaking out right now, not calmly posting takes like this. UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is speeding in the opposite direction.
You should not expect people to be reasonable about this. I don’t know what the answer here is, but if you want it to be UBI, you need to fight for it. The alternatives (artificial price controls, the dumb make-work policies you correctly disdained, first-amendment-breaking/privacy-violating AI bans) are out there, and if you don’t fight for the thing you want, you’re gonna get one of those.
> That will change real quick if everyone loses their job to AI.
No, this is exactly my point: they will be angry, unreasonable, and thirsty for revenge. They’ll hand over freedoms like Halloween candy. How about a law where the government gets to survey your hard drive to make sure you’re not harboring an AI model? Sounds crazy, sounds insane, but in the current political climate I’d rate it more likely than UBI.
Blood. If things don’t reverse course this trajectory historically leads to bloodshed.
In many respects it already has. How many people have died just this year already because businesses didn’t do what they were suppose to? Because cutting costs with no consequences is seen as the norm?
Of course nobody wants to account for those externalities and when that blood comes back on them they become scared and use government force instead. You’re seeing the trial run with ICE as we write our comments on this forum
From corporate profits, which should be rising from labor cost cutting? Ultimately if the pie is growing and accruing to a few organizations, then either we create new wealth transfer mechanisms (progressive tax codes being one such previous example) or become a feudal society, which will probably stagnate.
UBI would be pure deficit spending which would basically double it. Our interest is already the #2 federal outlay at $1 trillion (defense is #5 last I heard) and we're already in fiscal dominance. So the end result is UBI would trigger much higher inflation which would make those UBI checks worthless.
If this is what you think needs to happen and you live in the US, then you should be freaking out right now, not calmly posting takes like this. UBI is not a thing almost any current American politician is considering, and the overton window is speeding in the opposite direction.
You should not expect people to be reasonable about this. I don’t know what the answer here is, but if you want it to be UBI, you need to fight for it. The alternatives (artificial price controls, the dumb make-work policies you correctly disdained, first-amendment-breaking/privacy-violating AI bans) are out there, and if you don’t fight for the thing you want, you’re gonna get one of those.