The only point in clarifying the response chain is because you acted as if I were supposed to be defending ucim's viewpoint. I'm not. My viewpoint is different, and I have no interest in defending that particular chain in reasoning. I am happy to discuss inequality, as I have repeatedly in this thread, you just seemed to have strange ideas regarding what I was talking about. So, I clarified. Is this enough meta-conversation, or are you going to stall still further? I believe I last discussed the incredible lack of real world evidence in favor of a Citizen's Wage, and pointing out that observing that inequality exists is not sufficient to support this as a superior solution. Have you come up with data to support some universal income scheme being better than other forms of safety nets?
I mean, if there's absolutely no data, then I guess, continue with the ad hominems, I suppose. Looks like it's the best you've got.
Trebla wrote:Tyndmyr wrote:The general thrust of the conversation thus far has been that we should convert over to a citizen's wage in preparation for these technological developments or because it is a better system than current social welfare systems, depending on who is doing the arguing. In either case, a pro-active approach is being argued for, not merely that it is the inevitable result of the passage of time, etc.
If it's inevitable, it seems like a proactive approach would mitigate the difficulties that some people would feel when getting to that as a balance in an "after-the-fact" fashion. If we can meaningfully predict (big IF, I know) that automation is going to cause the loss of ~3M jobs between 2021 and 2025 in the trucking industry alone (even if just temporarily while new industries arise around them), then I don't see why we wouldn't consider a citizen's wage (as well as other options) proactively to deal with a problem even if we don't technically have the problem yet.
Back to futurism, we don't need a driverless society to switch to driverless trucking. The segments of the population that see the greatest benefit (i.e., trucking) will be the first to move into the technology. So while it may take 100 years to truly get to a driverless society, it takes significantly less to supplant the trucking industry. (I kind of hate that I used this as an example since it's not the only industry that will likely get redefined in unprecedented ways by automation).
The precise example isn't critical, I think, we can swap that out if a different one works better.
The inevitability of it seems doubtful. It hasn't arisen as a system in any country yet, I think it's awfully premature to insist that it'll inevitably arise in them all. Hell, even though democracy has had a pretty good run, it's been around a long time, and isn't universal yet. I think very few social changes actually are inevitable, and social change can often be particularly slow. I'm not sure that forcing it to happen early is necessarily advantageous, either. Even if future changes would make something optimal in the future, that doesn't make it optimal now.
Sure, being able to predict job losses is great, but nothing about a CW grants us additional predictive power. Nor does it establish why a CW is the proper solution to use for the problem. It's a solution seeking a problem. People have invented this system that seems really nifty, and are casting about for a reason to use it. I am as skeptical of that as I would be a salesman who walks up to my door, certain that his product is the cure for whatever ails me. The step about comparing a CW to existing solutions usually seems to be skimmed over, and it seems like you'd want to establish that fairly well to justify restructuring society and employment in a pretty major way.