Discuss this video: http://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGrey/comments/2dfh5v/humans_need_not_apply/ http://www.CGPGrey.com/ https://twitter.com/cgpgrey ## Robots, Etc...
Reflecting on the referendum in Switzerland today - a different approach to basic income
The video above by CGPGrey depicts a frightening, futuristic, but quite likely future for humankind. In a nutshell, it talks about automation and how sooner than we expect it will take over most of our everyday jobs that we take for granted today, leaving 45% of the human workforce unemployed, including white and blue collar workers, professionals and creatives. The change is in the making right now, and we have to start coming up with an alternative for the times when human labor will be less cost-effective than automation. Giving it the benefit of doubt that people would still have solidarity towards each other (and that in a crisis like this, the best platform for being elected will be the following), we have to consider a new method to provide the necessities of living for the population.
In this context basic income seems to be the most convenient solution. If self-teaching computers take over most, if not all of our jobs, the most feasible way to guarantee and even increase the standard of living for the citizens (and honestly to avoid a possible civil, or in this case, luddite war) is to provide them a constant and reliable flow of income, by redistributing the money governments and companies save on employing automation rather than humans. As utopistic as it may sound, this might be our best chance for eradicating poverty and income inequalities in the future.
It might sound like a vision that is completely divorced from reality. But then again, could you have predicted 20 years ago that the majority of people will be carrying around a mini-computers in their pockets, willingly providing private information about them to private companies and governments?







