We'll need a universal basic income (UBI) in an AI-driven world
8 mockingloris 11 8/11/2025, 4:54:47 PM
I read on windowscentral "...We'll need a universal basic income (UBI) in an AI-driven world".
Eventually, at some point. Most of industry would have been disrupted/automated.
There should be a working group of the major players/stake holders in the space working out a model of how that would work.
I work in tech and I don't see that happening for another decade and half or so.
Care to ruminate?
└── Dey well
In general though, advanced automation like AI will disrupt jobs, and unlike previous times, you cannot educate yourself out of a superior intelligence taking your job.
This is not about moving your manual work to another segment where different manual work is not viable to automate economically: its about your mental abilities being insufficient to produce value in the economy, full stop.
If that doesn't scare you, I'm not sure what will. However, its not clear to me yet if all this coding LLM hype will end up destroying coding jobs, or creating debugging jobs.
In Nigeria, I’ve seen industries like taxi services get upended by apps like Uber and Bolt, leaving union leaders/cabals scrambling for the scraps.
AI could amplify this, automating jobs faster than new ones emerge.
One idea is taxing automated systems—say, a levy on AI-driven platforms or robots replacing workers.
This could redistribute wealth without assuming zero employment. For example, Nigeria’s government already taxes digital platforms; scaling that to fund UBI isn’t unthinkable.
What do you think about targeting automation profits specifically?
└── Yarn me
Even if AI automates a ton, people will still want incentives for less glamorous jobs. Maybe UBI isn’t about scrapping money but ensuring a baseline so folks aren’t stuck scrubbing metaphorical torpedo tubes.
What’s your take—could a partial UBI make “low-level” work more voluntary?
└── Yarn me
Not everybody is in Star Fleet, so I assume people want the ability to travel the stars and they'd be happy enough scrubbing torpedo tubes.
TBC IMO human caused climate change and other forms of environmental damage are very real and worthy of our best solutions, but the idea that collectivism solves environment, that collectivist govts would never decide to damage the environment in pursuit of short term aims is laughable.