Humans need not apply - the case for the universal basic income

[The Grand Nudger]

I take your point, but the technology of which we're speaking has the potential to do a strange thing: put the means of production in the hands of ordinary individuals.

It already is, in this field (and always has been), and more than that, it allows one ordinary individual to feed hundreds, but with every extra person that one ordinary invidual can feed his ability to feed himself is decreased. Twilight zone shit, if you think about it.

By the time we have nothing to offer that anyone is willing to give us the means to get basic necessities for, we may have widgets that can make them for us.

We already do......and invoking widgets doesn't help because the same effect is in play as the above. Your widgets will be worth more doing other things just like they are now, just like your labor is now.

And as I've pointed out before, I'm a little optimistic. I have hope that there will be sufficient people who wouldn't let millions starve in the streets if it cost them next to nothing to prevent it...to prevent it.

and yet...............

Ultimately, Im an optimist too, but widgets aren't going to impact our food in such an immense way (though they'll likely be badass elsewhere). It's already dirt cheap - there just aren't that many pennies to pinch, widgets are already doing it, and that's -part- of the problem. If we wanted food to be any cheaper we'd have to give it away - and that's where I think we're headed. State run central distribution. It's the next step for our current model of ag, really no other way for it to go unless we take a sharp turn to the left all of a sudden.

[Animated Earth]

The economy adjusts to changes in the price of goods and services.
For example, food and water are relatively cheap now compared to 1000 years ago. But now, land ownership and houses are very expensive. So is the price of a theatre ticket. Whole industries did not exist 1000 years ago.

I don't think the end game is a world where everything is free and no one has any demands for anything. It is that we will change how we spend our time and effort.

However, the introduction of much better and cheaper labour will cause a relative problem if that labour demands more stuff. I don't think machines are a threat unless they start to demand resources from us humans and we give it to them. Hence, they should not have a vote (social power).

Things that save us time and effort are not normally feared. I do not fear my dishwasher. I do fear that I watch too much TV but that is a different matter and within my control.

[Heywood]

You could deposit the income into peoples accounts daily(

What accounts?

Many poor people do not have bank accounts and let's not pretend that banks are out there trying to get them in the door.

Food stamp money is deposited into accounts. You don't see people using food stamps anymore, instead they swipe a card.

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Counterintuitively, when some things become "dirt cheap" they become so cheap that no one is willing to produce them, then they either get expensive from lack of supply or no one has them. Constant fluxuations between ludicrous expense and "so cheap I'd pay you to take this" is, generally, poor form (and makes for poor policy). Food, sadly, is one of those things.

(and remember, that shit is already automated to the n'th)

Prices are set by what people are willing to pay in the market, not what something cost to make. A few years ago GM was selling cars for less than they cost to make. Why? Because the market wouldn't support prices that covered their costs. GM would sell cars for one billion times the cost of production if the market would support it.

Dirt cheap to make just means it is dirt cheap to make. It doesn't mean it is dirt cheap to buy. Aspirin is dirt cheap to make and you don't see wild gyrations in the supply or price of aspirin.

[The Grand Nudger]

Prices are set by what people are willing to pay in the market, not what something cost to make.

That's the line that a certain ideology takes, and it works in niche cases with food (more appropriately, "luxury food" - the kind of stuff that small producers like myself are forced into) but it's not even remotely a factor in the production of staple crops.

A few years ago GM was selling cars for less than they cost to make. Why? Because the market wouldn't support prices that covered their costs. GM would sell cars for one billion times the cost of production if the market would support it.

Happens all the time with food - that's the point of subsidies. The subsidies are, in many cases, what makes production even cross the line into profit for some producers.

Dirt cheap to make just means it is dirt cheap to make. It doesn't mean it is dirt cheap to buy.

That's exactly what it means with food, and in large part because that's how we want it to be. There is -no- scenario in which a $40 dollar potato fits in with the type of production required to feed a nation, even if people would hit each other over the head with a shovel to be the next in line to buy it (and precisely because of the same).

Aspirin is dirt cheap to make and you don't see wild gyrations in the supply or price of aspirin.

That might have something to do with aspirin, don't you think? Aspirin is very stable. Makes it easy to withstand a slump. Cars, also very stable. Tell you what, when you find me a head of lettuce that can last as long as a bottle of aspirin or a new GM - you just give me a call. Until you understand the product your opinions are going to end up as my jokes. We did and still do see wild fluctuations in the price of staple crops, we don't feel them - because of subsidies. Combine the risk factors of the products reigning model (drought, disease, disruptive weather) and it;s a double whammy. Meat costs alot more this year than it did last year, all because of some bad weather. But you just go ahead and pretend we don;t see wild fluctuations in food because a bottle of aspirin still costs the same as it did last year, and GM decided to take a hit to keep the doors open.

It's a shitty situation to be in (but only if you view it in an exceedingly myopic way - those subsidies, after all, are benefiting business and feeding people simultaneously, so thats nice), but that's where we are. Production depends now on scale, and a major factor for profitability of any given production model is whether or not it qualifies for subsidy, and to what extent. That's why Mom and Pops is out, and FoodCorp Inc. is in. This flows all the way down the chain, of course. Walmart lists changes to subsidies and welfare programs as a major factor in -their- profitability. They triple dip. The subsidies to producers allow them to source their products in an exceedingly one-sided manner (try to negotiate with these fuckers sometime, just for kicks) ...and then, they subsidize their labor with the welfare their workers inevitably receive. Icing on top, the workers spend their welfare checks Walmart. Tell me that's not good for business, go ahead. It's almost as if you thought the subsidies did nothing, or :gasp: you didn't even care to look into it before you opened your mouth.