@freemo every technology we've had for horses (wheel, carriages, suspension, leaf springs) made horses MORE in demand, up UNTILL we made cars, now horses are no longer an important contributor to the economy, so too for humans, AI is to people what cars are to horses.
@freemo @vnarek conditional welfare has perverse incentives, there are people who would get a job anyway but the short term goals set by conditional welfare give sub-par results, a UBI gets rid of the welfare trap, conditional welfare suffers from Goodharts law, the employment officer and the receipient are both just doing it for the numbers instead of what would be best over the long term, I don't understand why you say UBI has negative effect on employment despite showing positive effect on the link I sent you for the Finland study you were referencing in the first place
@freemo 6. *And this is the most important point, the market has attack record of _never_ catering to people without productive potential* .
Thus UBI, or at the very least we better start experimenting with alternative economic models till we find something that is resilient to large portions of the population being _unemployable_
@freemo 3. Computers start to automate cognitive tasks too, so people start to move from low degree of freedom tasks to higher degrees of freedom. (DOF has nothing to do with what people find difficult ex: multiplying two million digit numbers has a lower degree of freedom than recognizing a cat in an image)
4. Humans have a limited number of DOF to offer, there is nothing to say that AI will stop before that limit, more likely it will proceed way beyond that.
5. Unemployment will become a problem waaay before the scenario in (4.) We have to remember that during previous automation waves there were mass riots and a lot of suicides.
[..2/3]
@freemo The automation claim is simple:
1. Humans have only 2 things to offer in terms of productive potential: physical and cognitive labour.
2. _ALL_ physical labour has been automated, so people moved to cognitive tasks like gardening and scientific research.
(Notice gardening is under cognitive labour, the component of gardening that is yet to be automated is the cognitive component, the physical component of that job can be done for less than a cent an hour.
[...1/3]
@freemo the automation argument is completely valid,The automation claim is simple:
1. Humans have only 2 things to offer in terms of productive potential: physical and cognitive labour.
2. _ALL_ physical labour has been automated, so people moved to cognitive tasks like gardening and scientific research.
(Notice gardening is under cognitive labour, the component of gardening that is yet to be automated is the cognitive component, the physical component of that job can be done for less than a cent an hour.
3. Computers start to automate cognitive tasks too, so people start to move from low degree of freedom tasks to higher degrees of freedom. (DOF has nothing to do with what people find difficult ex: multiplying two million digit numbers has a lower degree of freedom than recognizing a cat in an image)
4. Humans have a limited number of DOF to offer, there is nothing to say that AI will stop before that limit, more likely it will proceed way beyond that.
5. Unemployment will become a problem waaay before the scenario in (4.) We have to remember that during previous automation waves there were mass riots and a lot of suicides.
6. *And this is the most important point, the market has attack record of _never_ catering to people without productive potential* .
Thus UBI, or at the very least we better start experimenting with alternative economic models till we find something that is resilient to large portions of the population being _unemployable_
all technological improvement we had for horses ( wheel, carriages, leaf springs, suspension) INCREASED need for horses up _untill_ we made cars.
The same with humans, automation of certain tasks/new technology opens up the market for _new_ tasks, ( computers opened up coding) while making other tasks obsolete.
@freemo @vnarek [..contd] if you were to adress employability then you have to compare it to OTHER government programs not to an _ideal_ .. most programs intended at addressing employment have either:
1.made no changes to industry, but gave retrained employees for other jobs.
(Very low effectiveness)
2.made huge changes in industry by, either bringing the economy up or increasing foreign investmen to up the need for the lost jobs
Or
They made requirements on the industry by force
The latter strategy works better and is not a good comparison for UBI,
You either address it individual level or at the industry
@freemo @vnarek woah! UBI is not an employment program, it's a replacement for welfare! It's to alleviate distress. Finland is not the only place it's been tested, Finland only tested it for 2 years, Alaska has had the most longest standing UBI, and its one of their most favoured policy despite being a red state. The Finland study showed improvements in mental health and generally thought better of their prospects, with mild improvements in employment
https://mobile.twitter.com/kelantutkimus?lang=en
I want to decentralise welfare and REDUCE micromanagement by the government
As I was said, I think employability is on it's way DOWN indefinitely, if I were to be pessimistic, the only employment benefits I see are either
1. They pick low paying jobs they wouldn't otherwise have considered given their newfound security
2. Went back to schooling
If I were to address employment specifically, then we have to look at[..]
@freemo wait hold on you're looking at the Gini-coefficient by family/household; do you see the same in individual Gini-coefficient?
@freemo "can't say I agree[..]market designed to reward those who self-invest[..] sure the rich make money but some programmers (workers) earn 300k.."
Could you name me any significant period of time where the "earnings from capital/earnings from labour" actually went DOWN? Would you ever invest in automation that actually made you rely on MORE expensive and numerous workers for the same productivity?
I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying but I'm making a more precise and specific claim, the sample does not address the statistical trend. The 300k programmer is part of the equation, he plugs more holes than he creates in the capital concentration bucket, which is why he is paid 300k.
The ability to make money using capital and with less labour is actually not a bad thing, but its benefits are way too concentrated, the amount of influence is starting to significantly change policy and government, regardless of whether it is the democrats or the republicans in power the ruling class always wins.
@freemo @vnarek yes the conditional help theiry is what is most intuitive, but the thing is that that sort of conditional help REQUIRES us to spend money on vigilance and a larger bureaucratic force. The opportunity cost of that spend money itself is part of a wastage that at the end UBI will have too, I'm saying if you take into _account_ that too, UBI is more effective; there's also a psychological effect in dependency and scarcity mentality, there was this experiment on indian sugarcane farmers where their IQ and long term planning capacity was markedly reduced when scarcity was introduced
@design_RG I have to admit that is one adorable bastard right there XD
@freemo the market is designed to, as much as possible, turn the revenue from labour into revenue from capital, that's why the Gini-coefficient ALWAYS goes up unless something catastrophic happens like a collapse;
Of course the value of low skill labour is going down, but that's a huge problem! Having most of your needs met by the market instead of voting is a GOOD thing! but if the trend continues then your voting power becomes more influential than your monetary power, UBI is a way to keep you away from NEEDING to vote to maintain yourself and instead rely on the market _even when it's distributive component is insufficient_ it's a way to REDUCE reliance on government.
@vnarek the Finland result is yet to come, but we already have an example of UBI in Alaska, and they love it. It allows for a sort of independence becaise there's always this safety-net you can rely on. that reduces the desperation of absolute poverty, ask yourself, do the desperate really make the best of decisions?
@freemo I don't see how it's a step back, we've never "thrown money at the problem" only lots of expensive beaurocrats. It would also remove the perverse incentives for maintaining the "welfare trap" because nobody gets paid to keep them poor anymore. Any public servant whose job-well-done entails their own redundancy NEVER does a good job.
@freemo @vnarek but most federal retraining programs have very poor track records, success rate of 15% AT MOST, usually near 0%, wouldn't leaving it up to individuals to decide what financial actions that could best releive their distress be better than having multiple layers of beaurocrats decide instead? A UBI would take the anxiety off of many workers living paycheck to paycheck, it would definitely make for better mental health overall
Joined May 2020
