Basic income versus the robots. Two weeks ago, I wrote about the idea of a citizen's income: the state replacing the vast majority of the benefit system with one cash payment made to everyone, regardless of employment or income. The advantages of such a change are legion. At a stroke, the thorny issues of incentives are done away with, since work always pays; the deadweight loss associated with means testing disappears (albeit replaced with the deadweight loss of giving money to people who don't need it); those most likely to fall through the cracks of a regimented welfare state find the barrier to re-entry done away with; and it allows for a recognition of the value of certain types of non-market labour, like caring or raising children.
The New York Times' Paul Krugman and the Financial Times' Izabella Kaminska now wade into the fray, proposing another advantage of the policy: its redistributive effect. Now, redistribution is already, prima facie, one of the absolute best things a government can do. Krugman writes: Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like? Vernor Vinge on Technological Unemployment | THE DECLINE OF SCARCITY.
Vernor Vinge is consistently one of the most interesting and conceptually dense futurists I’ve had an opportunity to listen to. While watching this excellent talk of his at Singularity University, my ears perked up at the mention of technological unemployment, the primary focus of this blog. About halfway into the talk he broached the general issue of technological disruption: “In the present era we all seem to be involved in the Red Queen’s race. Myself as a writer, I’m up against eBooks, and I’m up against all the piracy.
I’m racing as fast I can, and if I hadn’t actually had some success in the past, it would be of course much, much worse for me to be in this steam turbine that’s called modern progress. When I talk about it happening to some other job category, I don’t feel quite so tragedy-struck about their plight. But we’re kind of all up against a situation of terribly disruptive new technologies.” Soon afterward he addressed the topic of technological unemployment more directly: Robots in the Workplace: Rodney Brooks at TEDxPiscataquaRiver. Think Your Job Is Robot-Proof | Robots Are Taking Over the Office. Fast food workers of New York City united yesterday (April 4) to protest the current minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. "It's impossible to support a family on $7.25 an hour," Gregory Reynoso, a Domino's employee, told the New York Times.
"We're just surviving. " Technology, however, may ultimately decide how much workers make, including college-educated, white-collar employees. The fast food workers are demanding that wages increase to $15 an hour. A 'fight with technology' But by demanding wages of $15 an hour, fast food workers may be sealing their own fates, Michael Saltsman, research director at the Employment Policies Institute, told NBC News. "The workers aren't in a fight with management, they’re in a fight with technology," Saltsman said.
Indeed, the fast-food industry — like agriculture, manufacturing, media and countless other industries — is looking into the future, and a robot is staring back. Robots never miss a deadline Take journalism (please). The silver lining behind automation. Will a Robot Take Your Job? Slowly, but surely, robots (and virtual ’bots that exist only as software) are taking over our jobs; according to one back-of-the-envelope projection, in ninety years “70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation.” Should we be worried? Kevin Kelly, “senior maverick” at Wired magazine, and source for the above guestimate, says we shouldn’t. Instead, argues Kelly, in a Utopian piece titled “Better than Human,” we should welcome our new robot overlords. “They will do jobs we have been doing, and do them much better than we can. They will do jobs we can’t do at all. They will do jobs we never imagined even needed to be done. If history repeats itself, robots will replace our current jobs, but, says Kelly, we’ll have new jobs, that we can scarcely imagine: Well, maybe.
One possibility is that it won’t matter. Everyone has personal workbots…at their beck and call. Nobody knows for sure what will come next. Work need not be the be-all and end-all. Self-Driving Car Test: Steve Mahan.