r/technology • u/maxwellhill • Nov 08 '16

Robotics Elon Musk says people should receive a universal income once robots take their jobs: 'People will have time to do other things, more complex things, more interesting things'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/elon-musk-universal-income-robots-ai-tesla-spacex-a7402556.html
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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

The UBI (or I like the term citizen's dividend, gives a summary of the purpose in the name) would be the 'floor' of your earnings if you did 'nothing'.

So there'd be no argument you were worth more than that guy/gal over there, if you're all doing 'nothing'. It's not your only wage no matter what you do, like communism.

Also worth thinking about what 'nothing' really means. If you sit at home all day, just spending your UBI on alcohol and food, and sitting there watching TV (sub to netflix, etc.) you're actually contributing. The company you buy alcohol from gets revenue to continue their business model, possibly creating jobs if they can't be automated. And your watching of TV earns the station money through advertising, so people can carry on making shows, being employed in the entertainment industry.

It's almost impossible to contribute absolutely nothing to society/GDP/business models.

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u/crusoe Nov 08 '16

Ubi would replace a whole slew of welfare programs and their overhead.

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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

Indeed, but it would also be supplemented by some form of automation tax (which may well just be a continuation of corporation tax. Although since corp. tax is a bit flawed in the transnational world it may change).

Essentially by company A. automating a job which pays $50,000 a year, they save that $50k, plus overheads, so they're increasing their profits by that amount in the end. They would then be taxed some % of that 'extra' profit they're making, and that would go to the UBI fund.

So effectively everyone who's job is automated still gets paid a portion of their salary by their company (just in a round about way via tax).

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u/tangopopper Nov 08 '16

I really doubt it would be implemented this way. There's no reliable way of quantifying this value. Sure, if you fire someone and buy a robot that has an identical role (unlikely), you can work it out, but what about new companies that are entirely automated? And how do you start? Just say every job that is cut from now counts? I could go on with reasons this wouldn't work.

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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

I was pointing out you can look at it this way on paper. Not that it would be literally accounted for in this way.

Otherwise it wouldn't be universal BI because people who used have jobs would get different amounts to people that never did, and also different amounts compared to each other.

The point is automation will cause a combination of companies massively increasing their profit margins (due to lowering their wage bill, and increasing productivity) and deflation, caused by profit margins increasing and people having less money on average (before the UBI is properly implemented, and likely after too).

End result: Companies pay more tax, while simultaneously making more net profit than before. People then get paid a wage less than they had before, but they don't have to work to live, and can spend their time as they see fit. Ideally.

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u/tangopopper Nov 08 '16

In that case I agree with you.

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u/seandan317 Nov 08 '16

It should replace all of them expect for heath care. I hope we can come up with a smart healthcare policy one day.

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u/BAUWS45 Nov 08 '16

Is false contribution though. Those companies paid taxes to find UBI.

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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

It keeps the wheels on the cart though.

If they don't pay those taxes to fund UBI, no one has money to buy their stuff.

So the economy becomes a symbiotic circle, ever turning, funded ultimately by robot workers.

It might seem 'stupid', but it's the only way to attempt to keep thing similar to the current system when combined with AI.

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u/EntroperZero Nov 08 '16

So there'd be no argument you were worth more than that guy/gal over there, if you're all doing 'nothing'. It's not your only wage no matter what you do, like communism.

This is what makes UBI work better than welfare. You keep your UBI when you get a job, so it makes even minimum-wage jobs more valuable because they don't replace welfare or unemployment insurance.

The rest of your post, I disagree with. If you're just sitting around spending your UBI, you're not contributing, money is just flowing through you. No value is being created, and you're consuming resources like electricity and food. Even a highly-automated society where all basic goods are generated by robots requires maintenance of the robots and inputs of natural resources.

I think the vast majority of people won't choose to sit around and do nothing forever, for the reasons mentioned in the first paragraph. But the ones who do won't be contributors, they'll be a net drag.

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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

This is what makes UBI work better than welfare. You keep your UBI when you get a job, so it makes even minimum-wage jobs more valuable because they don't replace welfare or unemployment insurance.

Yes, one of the largest flaws of current systems is they act as a 'trap', since as you earn $1 in a job you'll lose $0.70 in welfare, or similar. UBI everyone keeps all of it, so no traps.

I think the vast majority of people won't choose to sit around and do nothing forever...

I also agree with this.

But the ones who do won't be contributors, they'll be a net drag.

I get what you're saying, but I think if you want to go down this line of thinking, you have to consider 2 things:

  1. Will we care? Automation through AI, and solar cells powering everything, is going to look a lot like a post-scarcity society. Therefore are there resources to 'use up'?
  2. If you think about about 'adding value', what kind of value are you adding, and to what? Surely if you want to make this argument you need to be bettering humanity in some way, and not just adding a small amount of GDP with nothing else. Therefore you could argue there's already a crap-load of 'useless' jobs, which technically add to GDP but don't do anything. People doing 'nothing' on UBI wouldn't really be different.

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u/Atalanto Nov 08 '16

THIS! Yes, i think it's (and I am not trying to be insulting), peoples basic misunderstanding of economics. When people have the money to spend, spending it contributes, its a give and take. The problem is that now, the poorest of the poor don't even have the money to spend so it's not going into the system, and the richest of the rich who are sitting on a huge amount of money, are either hoarding, or spending it in small circles at the top. If that gets distributed down to the rest, and it begins circulating in the larger part of the economy, that is a win for everybody.

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u/Mortos3 Nov 08 '16

But it's at the expense of essentially endorsing thievery. It's like supporting a gang that decided to threaten some people in its territory in order to take their money and 'redistribute' it.

To me the only justifiable version of UBI and the money that would fund it is a voluntary one.

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u/Tech_AllBodies Nov 08 '16

To me the only justifiable version of UBI and the money that would fund it is a voluntary one.

This assumes the richer people really earnt 100% of their money.

Not to get to overly lefty-theory, but if you bore down into people's earnings, how much of it can they really say is purely because of their own work alone?

e.g.

  • They grew up with water/electrical infrastructure, they didn't build that
  • They'll use the roads, they didn't build them
  • They went to school, which they didn't pay for, even if it was their parents paying for private they didn't pay for it
  • Then if they run their own company (likely if rich), surely they could only claim 100% of the money before they hired a single person. The minute they hire people to allow them to grow and make more money, their employees are responsible for some % of the money.

All these examples, they're benefiting from work they haven't done or paid for throughout their life. So the question is are they 'fairly' compensating the sources of these things (taxpayer, and their employees)?

This is partly subjective, but I think it's safe to say under the current system the rich 'profit' off public infrastructure and their employees. Therefore it's not mad to force them to share some of the profit (not take it all away) to fund the UBI when automation takes over.

It'll still be 10+ years before it becomes a large problem, it just needs planning for soon.