Guaranteed Minimum Income.

Before anyone loses their minds and starts talking out of their butts on this, there are a LOT of jobs that will not be done by robots until we can start mass producing things on the level of R2D2, the Terminator, or Data from Star Trek. What kind of job? It's a long list, and you can use your imagination to fill in the pieces of what other jobs:

Plumber
Exterminator
Window washer
Welder/iron worker
Arborist/most anything to do with nature
Firefighter
Anything artisan

Basically, anything that derives from actual intangibles or creativity, or which relies upon trade knowledge and interpretive reasoning on completely unknowable or novel circumstances, in our lifetimes, and potentially our children's lifetimes. I wouldn't worry about it yet, if you're in one of those trades. If you're crafting burgers in McDonald's or any other highly repetitive unchanging task in a very static and fixed environment, then yes. Be concerned.

Wait, you're saying I have to WORK for my $40 an hour instead of programming useless Amazon apps? GET OUT OF TOWN.

How about we focus on educating the general population to be more competent beyond drooling-moron jobs that ARE easily replaced by robots? High school educations on their own are pretty worthless.

Well looky, looky...

The same people voting FOR high minimum wages, and AGAINST schools choice, and FOR generous college loan programs --- are JUST beginning to realize the consequences of their stupidity: Robot workers and an army of indebted mouth-breathers.

Wait until they start pushing for rent control in Seattle. That'll be a hoot...

My issue with this video is that the trend is already here and it has been happening all over. The philosophy for the poor is that of Repent Harlequin! Said the Ticktockman, while the rich hoard all the resources, though there is enough for all to live comfortably while working much less. This video is not that prescient when you consider that it has been true since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
The wealthy pay a pittance for the labor which builds their wealth, leaving the proletariat to languish. The Great Depression hit, and governments everywhere became more socialist, to preserve what was left of the feasibility of capitalism. The conservatives of today forgot the lesson, and have been rolling back or stagnating protections for the last 40 years, and we are once again facing a crisis.

The thing about this prediction is that it ignores any advances in bio-engineering or genetics.

For example, there are people, right now, who can lift 600 lbs. Not through exercise, but through how their muscles developed. Obviously there are people who can run the mile and those with genius level IQs.

Now history of eugenics aside, suppose we could all get that stuff, or something like it, post-birth, with a few injections affecting the chromatin.

A number of environmental factors, from nutrients to temperature to chemicals, are capable of altering gene expression, and those factors that manage to penetrate germline chromatin and escape reprogramming could, in theory, be passed on to our children and possibly our grandchildren.

https://kindle.amazon.com/work/understan…

If we could tweak ourselves a bit stronger, a bit faster, we might not need robots to carry stuff around for us. We might not even need cars. We could just run a mile to the train station without having to catch our breath.

Wait...if robots can do everything for us and we no longer need to do anything, hasn't capitalism done its job? Can we not spike that football, do our touchdown dance, get rid of "labor" entirely and devote ourselves to lives of leisure and the pursuit of hobbies? Labor of all kinds only exists to provide goods we need to live, and provide laborers with the means to buy those same goods. But if labor isn't needed, it's time to rethink the entire equation of capitalism. When we get to the point where machines can do everything, can't we just have everything for free? Or at least most things? I'm serious. If machines can, for instance, conceive of a new car, gather the necessary materials for the car, build the car and drive the car, can't I just have one? I don't owe the machine anything...it doesn't need to be paid. So why do I need money to buy it?

If this video is accurate, capitalism is doomed anyway. It's more than just a "labor crisis"...if nobody has the ability to spend money (because they don't have any after being replaced by a robot), then nobody can make money either, no matter how efficient their robots are.

We either rethink capitalism entirely and prepare for what's next, or the world descends into chaos after capitalism collapses.

@2 - That list of yours, it's full of jobs that sound real fun and also don't pay a whole lot.

If the unemployed-by-robot start flooding to jobs on your list (and more), basic supply/demand forces would probably drive the wages further down.

If the robots win we'll have to listen to techno.

http://youtu.be/YxZJYbVd1hE

Umm...@9, "don't pay a whole lot" - are you high? Have you ever hired a plumber or an exterminator or a welder or a firefighter?

@2: I have but one small quibble. Now that we have robotic floor vacuumers and moppers, how long before we have robotic window washers? That does not seem a particularly challenging problem.

@8 you might find the book--The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism--by Jeremy Rifkin interesting. It shows how the end of capitalism is inevitable and will happen relatively soon.

Asimov wrote about it 61 years ago in The Caves of Steel. In his Robot Trilogy (not to be confused with all his other novels about robots) Earth is in the throes of economic turmoil. Humanity is packed into teeming mega-cities with robot-tended farmland filling the interstices, and robots are steadily encroaching on the city workload.

Aw, you guys are discovering all my favorite YouTube channels. I wonder how much longer it'll take you to find Thunderf00t's "Why do people laugh at creationists?" series.

The same sentiments were prevalent at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Not to worry. It allows civilization to progress.

@11, Though some of those jobs do pay well, don't confuse what you pay a plumber for what the plumber actually gets paid. If your plumber charges $100/hr you have to account for the costs of doing business which is everything from the payments on the van to tools to advertising to office space which can make that $100 only $25 or less even for the self employed plumber.

One thing that isn't considered in this video is that the population among industrialized nations is falling rapidly. My parents had 4 children (who each married) but only had a total of 4 grandchildren. So while one generation made twice as many people as before (2 people made 4 new people), the next generation only produced half as many people (8 people made 4 new people). From what I have found on the internets (and I only looked for 60 seconds), couples in America are producing an average of 2 kids, i.e. replacement rate. That is bound to go down further in the future - so we WILL be like horses - there will be fewer jobs, but also fewer people to fill them.

@14 - Look, an actual FarmBot!

@11 - Yes, I was high, and No, I've never hired one of those. However, how many plumbers can Seattle support? My supply/demand wages-depression point still stands.

Anyway, the greater point is that we already have an unemployment problem (we all know the Govt low-balls the official figures). Compounded by this last "Recession" which created mostly crap, low-wage jobs in the recovery phase. Add to that the increasing # of unemployable PTSD'd vets from two 15-year wars, and coming soon MOAR unemployment because robots.

Anyone have any good solutions? Because if not....

...There'll be tent cities of chronically unemployed and mostly homeless in every city, town and neighborhood! And of course, militarized-cops to beat them up periodically whenever they try to do something about their situation.
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