For much of the 2010s, U.B.I. received a lot of attention and energy as a heterodox, futuristic policy occupying a Venn-diagram overlap between wealthy tech-industry libertarians and wonky left-liberals. (Not coincidentally, groups that made up two pillars of the Obama-era Democratic Party.) In 2016, well before hyperscaling turned large language models into the “A.I.” of present-day hype, Sam Altman, then the president of Y Combinator, announced a long-range study of U.B.I. anticipating a “world where technology replaces existing jobs and basic income becomes necessary”; that same year, Elon Musk said he thought a U.B.I. was inevitable given automation to come: “I am not sure what else one would do.” In 2020, Andrew Yang made a U.B.I. proposal called “the Freedom Dividend” the focal point short-lived, tech-coded Democratic primary campaign–probably the high-water mark of the policy’s salience and buzziness.
Strangely, however, amid the rise of L.L.M.s and jobs allegedly lost to A.I. automation–precisely the kind of dynamic that led people like Musk and Altman to call for U.B.I. in the first place–the personalities and pundits who drove interest in the policy through the 2010s seem much less enthusiastic. Altman now prefers to talk about vague, self-derived concepts like “universal basic compute” and “universal extreme wealth,” while Musk has started talking about an ill-defined idea called “universal high wealth.”
It mildly annoys me that the article takes whatever idiots like Musk and Altman spouted seriously. As if they really meant it back then. As if they hadn’t already been the greedy opportunists they are now. Meh.
I live in a country that had a universal income experiment running for a year or so (for a few selected citizens, myself not included). And it was fairly succesful. But back then even our country was much more social and less liberal/rightwing than it is now. I mean I’d love it, but I don’t see us going there any time soon. Need to claw back some social policy first.
FWIW, I learned ages ago that it’s actually good for the economy to give unemployed people money. Or, to make sure that everybody has money to spend.
The greatest fear that government and our wealthy overlords have about UBI is the fact that it would create an entire population of thinking, creative people who would have time to think about how unequal the world is … and then move on to act on those thoughts because they would have the time and the energy to do something about it all.
It’s far better to control the population if you perpetually keep them on the edge of losing everything.
also people will just ditch low wage jobs and focus on getting experience in thier field too. They also need a constant supply of cannon fodder for the military thats why.
I feel like we are on the edge of a Post-Human war machine.
now that it’s clear a universal basic income would empower workers (and therefore make it less necessary for people to work to live), it’s very funny to look back on the time period where its biggest boosters were technolibertarian, technocratic Silicon Valley types
Musk has started talking about an ill-defined idea called “universal high wealth.”
iirc Musk’s whole idea was that every person on earth would buy a robot or two of his (or ideally rent them), send them off to work jobs while they stay at home, then split the combined income with Tesla.
Of course, it’s never explained why the companies wouldn’t just buy/rent those robots directly.
“Universal High Wealth is when all the not-wealthy people starve and die, and it’s just us rich people left with our robot servants!”
It was a choice between creating huge costly server farms which use too much water versus a progressive forward moving world society. It was not a democratic choice, just a bunch of rich white guys pretending to know what intelligence is. They are not very smart because they cannot see the future, only bigger stacks of money to fill their excessively large money holes.
I used to think UBI would be possible. But with all the corruption in world governments, I have now considered that UBI would be used to coerce people into doing things they don’t want to, in order to survive.
No idea if this is just doomer thinking or if I’m not far off the money. But it’s a shame. I think everyone should not have to worry about their needs being met. The more safety nets we have, the less employers can hold us hostage or be shitty because people will have more options
even if it’s not immediately used in a coercive manner, who’s to say it will remain that way? It’s the kinda thing that fascists would immediately abuse the second they got power. Leftists gaining a majority and implementing UBI doesn’t mean they’d be able to hold a majority.
At this point I think democracy as a concept is just broken, and I’m not sure how to solve it. Too many people are easily duped into voting against their own interests.
I agree. Unfortunately, it feels really difficult to come up with other solutions. For some reason, there’s something that either corrupts people or that causes negative power dynamics. I would love if there were a way to just give regular people a comfortable life while the rich could still just be rich and not make our lives worse in the process lol.
One of farm to tabers YT videos they were talking and casually threw out universal snap. I sorta like the idea as an initial universal income and sorta takes care of the idea that it would just cause rents to go up. It could cause high end food to go up but is unlikely to effect staples much. The us needs universal healthcare so bad though.
