Hacker News Reader

Comment by ElFitz | Hacker News Reader

To me, a major obstacle on the path to UBI is that it seems to conflict with the interests of those who benefit from the current status quo.

If everyone receives a sufficient basic income, who will fix their toilets or clean their yachts?

If the answer is ’no one’, then I’m afraid we’ll need significant advances in automation and robotics—or pitchforks—before we see UBI implemented.

But my point of view may be simplistic, and wrong.

View on HN

> If everyone receives a sufficient basic income, who will fix their toilets or clean their yachts?

Obviously in this scenario we have robots that fix toilets and clean yachts. That's not even farfetched.

> If the answer is ’no one’, then I’m afraid we’ll need significant advances in automation and robotics […]

I would also add that many activities would seem much simpler to automate, even today. Such as cobalt mining. And yet, we can’t seem to be bothered.

To clarify, the "human labor no longer exists in a meaningful way" thing depends (as far as I can tell) on "robots are able to perform all human labor", so their yacht would be cleaned by robots. Though I imagine they might hire humans anyway, as some kind of status symbol! (Artisanal, like hand-crafted items today.)

Yes. But I’d be afraid we might reach mass unemployment before we get to robots performing well on infinite variations of what would otherwise be simple tasks, but in wide arrays of utterly unpredictable environments and situations.

Technology is quickly helping to eliminate the "pitchfork" option. By the time we are in a world where human labor is unnecessary or worth nearly nothing, the elite will have all the automated surveillance and robo-policing technology they need to prevent rioting and pitchforks, and more secure ways to remain safely isolated from the rabble. When it comes to "what Sci-Fi future we're headed towards" I would bet on something like Elysium.

It might indeed be easier to develop automated surveillance, reinforce police states, and isolate themselves, than create working robot-plumbers, automated 3 star worthy kitchens, and self-cleaning boat decks.

And it might be cheaper for them than UBI.

Existing welfare schemes do a lot to approximate a UBI scheme, just with a lot more overhead, paperwork, moral grandstanding, various other inefficiencies that lower the useful amounts, and stress for all involved. Still, if a UBI scheme were implemented today instead, I don't think much would change from the current status quo. It would probably provide for living comfortably enough, but not enough to buy whatever desired luxury or experience at any given moment. That's sufficient for a market to form. Whether labor activities like fixing toilets or cleaning yachts survive depends on the market price for such labor. Some activities will go away (like a well-swept shop) because the price floor is too high and automation hasn't caught up or been made cheap enough, some will just become more expensive, more and more will get automated over time.

> It would probably provide for living comfortably

Not if we increase the amount of money compared to what's currently spent on welfare by several times. Or if we don't and just replace current targeted welfare schemes with UBI the people who can't actually work will just be reduced to extreme poverty.

e.g. US Federal revenue is ~$13k and spending $18k per capita and that includes everything. Even if it were somehow possible to double tax revenue with no negative outcomes it would hardly be sufficient.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com