I don't think it will eliminate poverty but it will eliminate extreme poverty. It will give people a hand out of the dirt to potentially give them a bridge for opportunity. But business can be formed around that money that can give the poor food and a place to sleep without heavy regulation.
The Earned Income Tax Credit as it stands right now is just a giveaway to Corporations so they don't have to pay their employees. It is yet form of subsidy to the rich Corporations.
Paying for UBI is brain-numbingly easy. The key is to institute golden square mile economics. Who has the most to lose to and gain by increasing labour loss, by whatever means but quite specifically for the most part, by the exponential use of technology in industry, that would be corporations and banks which weaken nations both financially and economically? When competing against growing and strengthening international economies, western economic institutions will ultimately have little choice but to fund UBI. This is not altruism, although banks and corporations may desire to market it as such, to save political face abroad.
The beginning of any intelligent discourse on any topic must be to define our terms, so when we use the term "lazy" what do we mean? And equally important, in what context. An intelligent case, for example, can be made that everyone who works, is equally as, if not more so, lazy than those who do not work. A question never really addressed is what motivates a person to work. Some of the incentives are generally regarded as obvious, such as monetary incentive and social prestige. perhaps seeking greater financial freedom or to provide one's offspring with an educational advantage over one's compatriots. Laziness is commonly associated with things which one is not enthusiastic about doing. If a person will not do a thing without a reward or an award, what does that say about their actions? Would they, for example, do the same job without monetary rewards? Of course not. This is largely implicit in such a debate. Are there other reasons why people elect to work rather than "sit around doing nothing". Yes, doing nothing has a critical effect on psychological, intellectual and emotional functioning. Not working inevitably leaves one isolated with one's own thoughts which often lead to insight into the inevitability of one's own mortality and death and questions of equal import. Set against this backdrop and in this context, working is easy, and by extension "lazy".
It would help everyone with student loans. That's been the worst decision of my life and has impeded on my ability to move forward with a better future.
Imagine those bullshits - the men born in wealth discuss if you give money to the poor they'll use them to smoke, drink, take drugs and do nothing... The lack of money has had countless bad consequences in my life alone. If I was receiving that basic income, I wouldn't have to drop out of the university, just so to work to buy food and survive, a job that I hate already more than 12 years. With that basic income I could of finished my studies long time ago and could have achieved my child's dreams of becoming a theoretical physicist and could have been of immensely higher value to the society and contributed vastly more to the human race, than working 12 years as a waiter and stepping in one place, being unable to do nothing more than paying for my survival.
The final battle for global support and respect won't be military, commercial or political but moral and ethical. It is important for governing bodies to understand this because each will be measured and evaluated by the extent their values comport to the moral convictions from which their law and government were designed to reflect. In the case of the UK and the US it would be the values layed out in the Gospels. The monetary and economic systems are inextricablly linked with law. In the Gospels it states, without ambiguity that the law was made for man and not man for the law, a passage not quoted nearly enough. If you fail as a nation you will do so, not economically but morally and ethically.
Instability and poverty don't strengthen virtues. Public health is a great social invention. During automatisation time - let's go further and think about economics systhematicly. We shouldn't supress thinking and solving problems of common nature, common weather threads, international cataclisms (biological or physical or human made).
It would be more effective, not to broaden the definition of work but to narrow it to denote "function" or "functional" which makes infinitely more sense both socially and economically. Is a person socially, intellectually or psychologically functional is the most logical question to ask rather than does an individual have a "job" a term which effectively defines nothing apart from the emotional response it elicits. The word "job" is less of a word than it is a grunt. A monosyllabic one at that, largely for the great (intellectually) unwashed. And if we are talking about "unfairness" then look no further than Alan Turing, a man who made so many things possible which otherwise would not have been possible over the past sixty years. How he was treated, having opened up so many possibilities for mankind which we can enjoy today, including increased health and longevity, was nothing short of obscene. But then again for an ill and corrupt society the treatment of heroes in this maner is to be expected.
Oh he knows what he is pushing! When this destroys the middle class he will be up top with the elites and we will have to conform in every way they say or go hungry
ye cause people living on minimum wage definitely don't notice the effects of inflation. Sorry man, but it'll happen no matter what, inflation has always been in the economy. If they're smart, they'll match UBI to inflation and keep everything uniform
Sleepy Bacon this phenomenon is nothing like inflation, they are completely different things, the "inflation-like" process i was talking about is more like speculation, where knowing that every one get a basic income will invite business owners to bring prices up, simply because people can afford it, and believe me speculation is running everywhere even without basic income around.
Feel free to distribute your own money, if you want, of which you have plenty. Leave mine alone. I've earned it by working, and it's mine. To even suggest that it's "moral" to tax earned money and distribute it to those who haven't earned it, shows how misguided, disrespectful and greedy your moral code is.
You seem to think that the money will come from individual earned income. That is a misconception. The money would come from profits provided by the increase in productivity via the technological advances. Machines & AI don't need the money that they will "produce/earn". The idea is to share the profits generated by technology to those that have nothing. People who get dividends from stocks are not taking money from earners, they are getting those payouts based on profits. UBI works the same way.
Thank you. Allow me to demonstrate why this is not true, using some basic economic analysis. The robot, no matter how advanced, remains a tool. It doesn't have moral agency, it doesn't determine its own goals, it doesn't have property rights etc. We create it to do something for us, i.e., it's an instrument in our hands. Like all tools, it will have an owner, i.e., some guy (or girl) who will build it or buy it, and therefore will have the exclusive right to control what work this robot will be performing and to what end. Like all tools, this robot will be advancing the ends of its owner, i.e. his profit, through the provision of a certain robotic service to the clients of the robot owner. So, the extra wealth which will be generated by the increased productivity will not be like manna falling from the sky for all to have. It will be owned by those who will own the robots that produce it. The robot owners will be earning the corresponding income from the sale of this extra product to their clients. If you think that the wealth which will be generated by the use of robots should be distributed to all, even those who haven't served any client, who haven't bought or built any robot to do anything good for anyone, then why not apply the same line of thinking to other tools? A shovel, for example. A shovel is a tool that increases the productivity of a digger compared to someone who digs with his bare hands. Would you suggest that the digger should be paid only for the digging that he would have done with his bare hands, and the extra value of his digging that came from the employment of a shovel should be distributed to those who didn't dig at all? I hope that's not what you think. So, keep in mind that AI is just another technology, like the shovel was 4000 years ago, and it's not going to modify the laws of economics. It will increase productivity (like the shovel did), through which everyone will enjoy cheaper products, so, it's going to be generally beneficial, but not by means of a UBI. Indeed, if you introduce a UBI, you will have to secure it by taxing the extra product of the robot owners, which will reduce the incentive (i.e. profit) an industrialist would have to employ robots to increase productivity.
You have a reasonable argument, however, AI & Robotics is a different kind of animal we're talking about here. We are not just talking about simple tools from the past. We are talking about a tool that will eventually become so much more advanced than anything we can keep up with. This advancement will eventually lead to a zero marginal cost society. Businesses that own these types of systems will eventually be able to produce way more products & services which will eventually lead to a winner take all scenario. No human will be able to compete with a well designed AI system that is fully capable of creativity and reasoning. The company that achieves this first will put everyone else out of business as they will now have an overwhelming edge (AMAZON is already starting this process).. The better these systems get the less need you will have for actual humans to be involved in MOST jobs. This will lead to massive unemployment, and an even wider wealth gap. What do you suppose is done with those that have not produced these Robots, or technology for themselves? I suspect not giving them some way to benefit from these advances will result in a world you nor I would want to be in.
Similar arguments were made again and again, since the Luddites (1811), and they were wrong every time. First, we are nowhere near AI replacing humans at reasoning and creativity, let's keep it real. But even if that was the case, sometime in the future, AI still wouldn't have moral agency, it wouldn't decide its own ends, we would be deciding those during design and training. (If a machine exhibited moral agency then we would be talking about something totally different, the machine would have individual rights, property and all that. Again, let's keep it real, we are *nowhere* near that point.) Let's address your concern that one company would put the rest out of business. Firstly, this wouldn't happen, just like it didn't happen when the shovel, or the personal computer were discovered. Simply, everyone started using them, and competition continued on a universally higher level. Today, a company that doesn't use computers cannot compete, but so what? Should we tax the extra production of those who use computers and give it to those who refuse to use computers? The same will be said about AI in 10 years. Again, AI is not the first disruptive technology, nor will it be the last. Of all disruptive technologies, AI is not even the most disruptive one. The computer, if you ask me, was much more disruptive than AI. Consider how many secretaries and designers and typists and publishers and record producers and human calculators (people doing calculus by hand for a living) and on and on and on (the list is endless) the computer put out of business. And before the computers, agricultural machinery put millions of farmers out of business, and before that electricity decimated the profession of candle makers. These people didn't just die. (Actually, the standards of living improved dramatically after every such disruption.) Their labor power was freed up and directed to other occupations that were actually more in demand than making candles for lighting in the year 2018. But let's imagine that a company will adopt AI first and put all others out of business. (Totally fictitious scenario, this is not how technologies work; those who build robots want to keep selling them, they won't stop after Amazon bought the first batch.) So, how will that happen? By that company out-competing the rest. I.e., by flooding the market with tons of cheap stuff, cheaper than anyone else can offer. OK, how is that bad? Envision tons of cheap stuff for people to buy. (If you wonder "where will they find the money?", I'll address that next.) That's the happy end of competition. If someone does something so amazingly well that the rest cannot compete at it, then he *should* be the one doing that, and the rest should be doing other things that they are good at. Look up "The Law of Comparative Advantage", to see that actually having one guy do something better than everyone else, or even doing *everything* better than everyone else, doesn't make everyone else obsolete, it actually makes everyone better off, through trade. I understand why you think this way, this is a very common misconception, but economists have proven this to not be a problem since the time of David Ricardo. Now the fear "What if there is no job left for a human?" OK, now we are theorizing really wildly, OK? We are in off-the-wall-futuristic territory. But I don't mind futurism, let's talk about a society where human labor would have zero value, because everything would be done by machines, so, nobody would care to hire any human. Now, we mean that machines will be designing, producing and repairing machines, machines will offer sex, raise our children, gestate our fetuses, cracking jokes to entertain us, producing movies and all other arts, writing philosophy, doing science, giving lectures, keeping us company, all of that. That's what we are talking about here. This is obviously crazy, but let's (freaking) say we live in that world where humans can be totally replaced, so, the time and labor of a human is worthless. Again, why would that be bad? Imagine that world for a minute. You would have EVERYTHING you ever wanted, at the push of a button. How is that worse than what we have now? OK, let's make it harder. What if only one guy has this amazing technology, and nobody else! The ultimate wealth gap!! OMG, what will become of us???!!! (freaking out now.) Actually, nothing would become of us. We would be totally fine. That totally self-sufficient guy would live in his mansion, enjoying his autarky, he wouldn't employ us, but so what? We wouldn't have all his stuff, so, we would still be employing each other, because we would still be needing each other. So, envy and other irrational feelings put aside, we wouldn't even notice that there is a guy who doesn't need anyone's services. Wanna make it even harder? Like INSANELY hard? Let's assume that this guy is also unfathomably evil. Instead of giving away some of his endless goods voluntarily to us because he has so much and he cares about our feelings of him (which is a very common thing that very wealthy people do), let's say he will use his robots to produce an army of robots, which will occupy all natural resources and enslave us, not to work (he doesn't need our labor after all), but to torture us for his perverse satisfaction. Well, then we are talking about an aggressor, and we would have the moral right to use force to defend ourselves. Why? Because it's our moral right to keep the stuff that is justly ours, no matter how powerful that other guy may be. I hope we agree on that. Now, what if that insane guy wasn't interested in torturing us for his own pleasure, but he instead wanted to take our belongings to distribute them to his minions. To his friends and subjects. He would say "Look, I'm expropriating you for a good cause, to make these people happy. I'm not evil, am I?" Well... yes he is. One doesn't have the right to steal from A to give it to B, even if he has the physical power to do it. One may want to make B happy, or may want to just be an evil motherfucker, it makes no difference to A. A has his property rights, and doesn't care what you would do after expropriating him. What you think is a good cause, is an evil cause for A, because it tramples upon his rights. A doesn't exist for the sake of the powerful guy, or for the sake of B. Each human exists for his own sake, he/she is an end in himself. That's what individual rights mean.
Dr. Castor what worries me about your ideas is that any robot tax will harm society. The question is whether that harm will be outweighed by the net benefit. The single greatest fear I have for society is that the cost of living will not drop as fast as the average income as automation replaces jobs. A robot tax or any other form of socialist wealth redistribution directly harms the consumer as it isn't the 1% that pays for these programs. It ends up being tied to every single good and service the masses consume. If this gets initiated, the gap between the rich and the poor will grow even wider as it will be that much harder for people to become successful as they are burdened with trying to support the unemployed.
If you want to donate money to the poor then go ahead. Don't force me to participate in your egalitarian efforts. I feel no moral obligation to help ANYONE. Every set of circumstances are different. You propose a "one size fits all" solution. Why should my tax dollars go to support people on welfare who keep cranking out child after child after child that themselves become welfare recipients rinse and repeat. Or what about the money paid to the children of illegals JUST FOR BEING BORN NORTH OF THE BORDER? What America needs is a eugenics program. Call it UEP. Universal Eugenics Payments. Basically we pay low IQ and unproductive people (wellfare recipients) not to have children. We then pay high IQ people to have more children. In a couple of generations we should see significant improvements in our economy.
I don't think it will eliminate poverty but it will eliminate extreme poverty. It will give people a hand out of the dirt to potentially give them a bridge for opportunity. But business can be formed around that money that can give the poor food and a place to sleep without heavy regulation.
Excellent talk, UBI could be most effective method to reduce poverty with least bureaucracy
so full of information and inquiry, it's great to watch. thanks for that!
The Earned Income Tax Credit as it stands right now is just a giveaway to Corporations so they don't have to pay their employees. It is yet form of subsidy to the rich Corporations.
Paying for UBI is brain-numbingly easy. The key is to institute golden square mile economics. Who has the most to lose to and gain by increasing labour loss, by whatever means but quite specifically for the most part, by the exponential use of technology in industry, that would be corporations and banks which weaken nations both financially and economically? When competing against growing and strengthening international economies, western economic institutions will ultimately have little choice but to fund UBI. This is not altruism, although banks and corporations may desire to market it as such, to save political face abroad.
You are quickly becoming a favorite channel of mine. thank you
The beginning of any intelligent discourse on any topic must be to define our terms, so when we use the term "lazy" what do we mean? And equally important, in what context. An intelligent case, for example, can be made that everyone who works, is equally as, if not more so, lazy than those who do not work.
A question never really addressed is what motivates a person to work. Some of the incentives are generally regarded as obvious, such as monetary incentive and social prestige. perhaps seeking greater financial freedom or to provide one's offspring with an educational advantage over one's compatriots. Laziness is commonly associated with things which one is not enthusiastic about doing. If a person will not do a thing without a reward or an award, what does that say about their actions? Would they, for example, do the same job without monetary rewards? Of course not. This is largely implicit in such a debate.
Are there other reasons why people elect to work rather than "sit around doing nothing". Yes, doing nothing has a critical effect on psychological, intellectual and emotional functioning. Not working inevitably leaves one isolated with one's own thoughts which often lead to insight into the inevitability of one's own mortality and death and questions of equal import. Set against this backdrop and in this context, working is easy, and by extension "lazy".
Someone gets it. :-)
It would help everyone with student loans. That's been the worst decision of my life and has impeded on my ability to move forward with a better future.
it leaves the structural problems - the debt-based currency AND fractional-reserve banking and institutionalized greed unaddressed.
Beautiful thought by Chris Hughes.
Imagine those bullshits - the men born in wealth discuss if you give money to the poor they'll use them to smoke, drink, take drugs and do nothing... The lack of money has had countless bad consequences in my life alone. If I was receiving that basic income, I wouldn't have to drop out of the university, just so to work to buy food and survive, a job that I hate already more than 12 years. With that basic income I could of finished my studies long time ago and could have achieved my child's dreams of becoming a theoretical physicist and could have been of immensely higher value to the society and contributed vastly more to the human race, than working 12 years as a waiter and stepping in one place, being unable to do nothing more than paying for my survival.
The final battle for global support and respect won't be military, commercial or political but moral and ethical. It is important for governing bodies to understand this because each will be measured and evaluated by the extent their values comport to the moral convictions from which their law and government were designed to reflect. In the case of the UK and the US it would be the values layed out in the Gospels. The monetary and economic systems are inextricablly linked with law. In the Gospels it states, without ambiguity that the law was made for man and not man for the law, a passage not quoted nearly enough. If you fail as a nation you will do so, not economically but morally and ethically.
Sensible thinking. I believe it will happen eventually -but many old powerful men need to retire first.
Allan Bruno Petersen. Looking at you photo, I presume that you are a soy boy..Fool
Wow really?
Instability and poverty don't strengthen virtues.
Public health is a great social invention. During automatisation time - let's go further and think about economics systhematicly. We shouldn't supress thinking and solving problems of common nature, common weather threads, international cataclisms (biological or physical or human made).
It would be more effective, not to broaden the definition of work but to narrow it to denote "function" or "functional" which makes infinitely more sense both socially and economically. Is a person socially, intellectually or psychologically functional is the most logical question to ask rather than does an individual have a "job" a term which effectively defines nothing apart from the emotional response it elicits. The word "job" is less of a word than it is a grunt. A monosyllabic one at that, largely for the great (intellectually) unwashed.
And if we are talking about "unfairness" then look no further than Alan Turing, a man who made so many things possible which otherwise would not have been possible over the past sixty years. How he was treated, having opened up so many possibilities for mankind which we can enjoy today, including increased health and longevity, was nothing short of obscene. But then again for an ill and corrupt society the treatment of heroes in this maner is to be expected.
love the topic but video gave me a headache ~
Impressive
It's time to ditch those scrub AI's and play against one of my AI's.
The only free cheese is on a mouse trap..
Elect Chris Hughs !!
This guy is disconnected from reality.
Oh he knows what he is pushing! When this destroys the middle class he will be up top with the elites and we will have to conform in every way they say or go hungry
basic income will just bring prices up, nothing will change, though some will enjoy the cash flow during the first couple years ...
ye cause people living on minimum wage definitely don't notice the effects of inflation. Sorry man, but it'll happen no matter what, inflation has always been in the economy. If they're smart, they'll match UBI to inflation and keep everything uniform
With UBI new money isn't created, it is redistributed
5ymetrick5ound you're correct. But what is the alternative? Revolution? Cause, it's just a trigger away. 😠
Eduardoo Crespo from where is it redistributed?
Sleepy Bacon this phenomenon is nothing like inflation, they are completely different things, the "inflation-like" process i was talking about is more like speculation, where knowing that every one get a basic income will invite business owners to bring prices up, simply because people can afford it, and believe me speculation is running everywhere even without basic income around.
Feel free to distribute your own money, if you want, of which you have plenty. Leave mine alone. I've earned it by working, and it's mine. To even suggest that it's "moral" to tax earned money and distribute it to those who haven't earned it, shows how misguided, disrespectful and greedy your moral code is.
You seem to think that the money will come from individual earned income. That is a misconception. The money would come from profits provided by the increase in productivity via the technological advances. Machines & AI don't need the money that they will "produce/earn". The idea is to share the profits generated by technology to those that have nothing. People who get dividends from stocks are not taking money from earners, they are getting those payouts based on profits. UBI works the same way.
Thank you. Allow me to demonstrate why this is not true, using some basic economic analysis. The robot, no matter how advanced, remains a tool. It doesn't have moral agency, it doesn't determine its own goals, it doesn't have property rights etc. We create it to do something for us, i.e., it's an instrument in our hands. Like all tools, it will have an owner, i.e., some guy (or girl) who will build it or buy it, and therefore will have the exclusive right to control what work this robot will be performing and to what end. Like all tools, this robot will be advancing the ends of its owner, i.e. his profit, through the provision of a certain robotic service to the clients of the robot owner. So, the extra wealth which will be generated by the increased productivity will not be like manna falling from the sky for all to have. It will be owned by those who will own the robots that produce it. The robot owners will be earning the corresponding income from the sale of this extra product to their clients.
If you think that the wealth which will be generated by the use of robots should be distributed to all, even those who haven't served any client, who haven't bought or built any robot to do anything good for anyone, then why not apply the same line of thinking to other tools?
A shovel, for example. A shovel is a tool that increases the productivity of a digger compared to someone who digs with his bare hands. Would you suggest that the digger should be paid only for the digging that he would have done with his bare hands, and the extra value of his digging that came from the employment of a shovel should be distributed to those who didn't dig at all? I hope that's not what you think.
So, keep in mind that AI is just another technology, like the shovel was 4000 years ago, and it's not going to modify the laws of economics. It will increase productivity (like the shovel did), through which everyone will enjoy cheaper products, so, it's going to be generally beneficial, but not by means of a UBI. Indeed, if you introduce a UBI, you will have to secure it by taxing the extra product of the robot owners, which will reduce the incentive (i.e. profit) an industrialist would have to employ robots to increase productivity.
You have a reasonable argument, however, AI & Robotics is a different kind of animal we're talking about here. We are not just talking about simple tools from the past. We are talking about a tool that will eventually become so much more advanced than anything we can keep up with. This advancement will eventually lead to a zero marginal cost society. Businesses that own these types of systems will eventually be able to produce way more products & services which will eventually lead to a winner take all scenario. No human will be able to compete with a well designed AI system that is fully capable of creativity and reasoning. The company that achieves this first will put everyone else out of business as they will now have an overwhelming edge (AMAZON is already starting this process).. The better these systems get the less need you will have for actual humans to be involved in MOST jobs. This will lead to massive unemployment, and an even wider wealth gap. What do you suppose is done with those that have not produced these Robots, or technology for themselves? I suspect not giving them some way to benefit from these advances will result in a world you nor I would want to be in.
Similar arguments were made again and again, since the Luddites (1811), and they were wrong every time. First, we are nowhere near AI replacing humans at reasoning and creativity, let's keep it real. But even if that was the case, sometime in the future, AI still wouldn't have moral agency, it wouldn't decide its own ends, we would be deciding those during design and training. (If a machine exhibited moral agency then we would be talking about something totally different, the machine would have individual rights, property and all that. Again, let's keep it real, we are *nowhere* near that point.)
Let's address your concern that one company would put the rest out of business. Firstly, this wouldn't happen, just like it didn't happen when the shovel, or the personal computer were discovered. Simply, everyone started using them, and competition continued on a universally higher level. Today, a company that doesn't use computers cannot compete, but so what? Should we tax the extra production of those who use computers and give it to those who refuse to use computers? The same will be said about AI in 10 years. Again, AI is not the first disruptive technology, nor will it be the last. Of all disruptive technologies, AI is not even the most disruptive one. The computer, if you ask me, was much more disruptive than AI. Consider how many secretaries and designers and typists and publishers and record producers and human calculators (people doing calculus by hand for a living) and on and on and on (the list is endless) the computer put out of business. And before the computers, agricultural machinery put millions of farmers out of business, and before that electricity decimated the profession of candle makers. These people didn't just die. (Actually, the standards of living improved dramatically after every such disruption.) Their labor power was freed up and directed to other occupations that were actually more in demand than making candles for lighting in the year 2018.
But let's imagine that a company will adopt AI first and put all others out of business. (Totally fictitious scenario, this is not how technologies work; those who build robots want to keep selling them, they won't stop after Amazon bought the first batch.) So, how will that happen? By that company out-competing the rest. I.e., by flooding the market with tons of cheap stuff, cheaper than anyone else can offer. OK, how is that bad? Envision tons of cheap stuff for people to buy. (If you wonder "where will they find the money?", I'll address that next.) That's the happy end of competition. If someone does something so amazingly well that the rest cannot compete at it, then he *should* be the one doing that, and the rest should be doing other things that they are good at. Look up "The Law of Comparative Advantage", to see that actually having one guy do something better than everyone else, or even doing *everything* better than everyone else, doesn't make everyone else obsolete, it actually makes everyone better off, through trade. I understand why you think this way, this is a very common misconception, but economists have proven this to not be a problem since the time of David Ricardo.
Now the fear "What if there is no job left for a human?" OK, now we are theorizing really wildly, OK? We are in off-the-wall-futuristic territory. But I don't mind futurism, let's talk about a society where human labor would have zero value, because everything would be done by machines, so, nobody would care to hire any human. Now, we mean that machines will be designing, producing and repairing machines, machines will offer sex, raise our children, gestate our fetuses, cracking jokes to entertain us, producing movies and all other arts, writing philosophy, doing science, giving lectures, keeping us company, all of that. That's what we are talking about here. This is obviously crazy, but let's (freaking) say we live in that world where humans can be totally replaced, so, the time and labor of a human is worthless. Again, why would that be bad? Imagine that world for a minute. You would have EVERYTHING you ever wanted, at the push of a button. How is that worse than what we have now?
OK, let's make it harder. What if only one guy has this amazing technology, and nobody else! The ultimate wealth gap!! OMG, what will become of us???!!! (freaking out now.) Actually, nothing would become of us. We would be totally fine. That totally self-sufficient guy would live in his mansion, enjoying his autarky, he wouldn't employ us, but so what? We wouldn't have all his stuff, so, we would still be employing each other, because we would still be needing each other. So, envy and other irrational feelings put aside, we wouldn't even notice that there is a guy who doesn't need anyone's services.
Wanna make it even harder? Like INSANELY hard? Let's assume that this guy is also unfathomably evil. Instead of giving away some of his endless goods voluntarily to us because he has so much and he cares about our feelings of him (which is a very common thing that very wealthy people do), let's say he will use his robots to produce an army of robots, which will occupy all natural resources and enslave us, not to work (he doesn't need our labor after all), but to torture us for his perverse satisfaction. Well, then we are talking about an aggressor, and we would have the moral right to use force to defend ourselves. Why? Because it's our moral right to keep the stuff that is justly ours, no matter how powerful that other guy may be. I hope we agree on that.
Now, what if that insane guy wasn't interested in torturing us for his own pleasure, but he instead wanted to take our belongings to distribute them to his minions. To his friends and subjects. He would say "Look, I'm expropriating you for a good cause, to make these people happy. I'm not evil, am I?" Well... yes he is. One doesn't have the right to steal from A to give it to B, even if he has the physical power to do it. One may want to make B happy, or may want to just be an evil motherfucker, it makes no difference to A. A has his property rights, and doesn't care what you would do after expropriating him. What you think is a good cause, is an evil cause for A, because it tramples upon his rights. A doesn't exist for the sake of the powerful guy, or for the sake of B. Each human exists for his own sake, he/she is an end in himself. That's what individual rights mean.
Dr. Castor what worries me about your ideas is that any robot tax will harm society. The question is whether that harm will be outweighed by the net benefit. The single greatest fear I have for society is that the cost of living will not drop as fast as the average income as automation replaces jobs. A robot tax or any other form of socialist wealth redistribution directly harms the consumer as it isn't the 1% that pays for these programs. It ends up being tied to every single good and service the masses consume. If this gets initiated, the gap between the rich and the poor will grow even wider as it will be that much harder for people to become successful as they are burdened with trying to support the unemployed.
B.S.
If you want to donate money to the poor then go ahead.
Don't force me to participate in your egalitarian efforts.
I feel no moral obligation to help ANYONE.
Every set of circumstances are different. You propose a "one size fits all" solution.
Why should my tax dollars go to support people on welfare who keep cranking out child after child after child that themselves become welfare recipients rinse and repeat.
Or what about the money paid to the children of illegals JUST FOR BEING BORN NORTH OF THE BORDER?
What America needs is a eugenics program.
Call it UEP.
Universal Eugenics Payments.
Basically we pay low IQ and unproductive people (wellfare recipients) not to have children.
We then pay high IQ people to have more children.
In a couple of generations we should see significant improvements in our economy.