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RE: Universal Basic Income

in Hive SBI2 years ago

When discussing the topic of UBI, whether this is a system that we shall deploy, or not, we shall first understand where the 4th industrial revolution will take us. This 4th industrial revolution is defined not 100% uniformly, hence I give you my kinda definition. Like all the previous industrial revolutions, the 4th is about automation. Unlike all the previous industrial revolutions, this one will make humans obsolete. Whilst the previous industrial revolutions the automation resulted in jobs being removed, and new types of jobs being created (eg a machine automates the production not requiring a human anymore to put things together, whilst the repair of the machine was a new job required and carried out by a human), this 4th industrial revolution will automate anything and everything (as time progresses we go from a lot to most, to all) without the need for humans anymore. Automation will not just be the production of something, but also the automation of maintaining all systems that are required for the production process. Additionally, this 4th industrial revolution will not only automate the whole production process but will also automate the creation of new things, like the design of a new object with new features. This industrial revolution will even bring is the automation of inventing something totally new. All this is driven by quantum computing, robotics, AI and singularity that is not too far out into the future. We'll see more and more job types not required anymore, whilst we see the number of new types of jobs required decreasing over time. How long it'll take before we don't need any human anymore to invent, create, design, produce something, that is the question. This can be anything between a few decades to the end of this century (or longer). I'm inclined to believe we get to such a situation rather sooner than later. Maybe we still need 3 to 4 decades. Seems still like a long time, but 30 to 40 years is just one or two generations. People that are starting their first job today, will have to deal with such a situation before they reached the pension age.

Now when we assume we don't need any humans to work anymore, everything is done by AI and robotics, we need to come up with a new system that will allow all of us on planet earth to at least be able to enjoy the basics we need in life. How this new system shall look like, that is the big question. UBI is one system we could go for. If it is the best system, that is to be seen. In my view, when nobody has to work anymore, I believe we shall have a new system in which we make sure that all the earth resources are shared and distributed in an honest way. UBI is not addressing that part though.

Regarding SBI, I personally don't believe in such a setup of UBI. Why? Because it requires money to invest before some incentives are given out. People without the proper funds will not be able to set such a form of UBI up. I also don't believe in things like Web3 and all of that to provide the 'system' for all peeps on our planet to earn money, since this will exclude all those who are not able to participate in one or the other way.

I realise it's not gonna be easy to come up with a whole new system, but we have to. When we don't, we will see our current system fall apart at some stage whilst not having anything new... which essentially drives us more towards a 1984 situation, since when we for instance see our current financial system crumbling down towards a totally disbelieve in eg the USD and Euro, ie these currencies will trend to zero value, we end up in chaos. Out of that chaos, something new will rise. My fear is that this something new is worse than what we currently experience in our world. My fear is that this will be more centralised control by peeps that have no real concept of running a community, or society, other than the strong wish to control for own personal gains. We already see this more and more. Corporates becoming stronger and stronger, and better at controlling our governments, for their own personal gains.

I believe we shall further experiment with UBI. At the same time, I believe we shall have open discussions on local and global levels to try and come up with other systems to UBI that we at the same time also need to experiment with.