By far, the greatest danger of AI is that people conclude too early that they understand it (good and bad). This is just one case
I can't believe Elon has fallen for this. He has to be one of the best "thought experiment" guys in the world.
We've already tried this. Go look at the inner cities and tell me how that worked out. Universal High Income sounds too basic so he wraps shit with a pretty bow and calls it a gift
Forget all the hard as frozen iron economic arguments and just start asking the most basic of questions.
"If everyone is gonna get a universal basic income, what is the point of getting good grades?"
What kind of future would that look like?
We just exited a global pandemic engineered and mishandled by governments that then tried to force an experimental, cancer-linked injection into people’s arms under threat of losing their jobs and basic freedoms.
The covid stimulus checks were a test run for universal income. How'd that work out.
During that very same period, the unelected globalists at the World Economic Forum aggressively pushed for the very same thing Elon is… Universal Basic Income.
Now he's suggesting we simply swap “Basic” for “High.” A bigger carrot on the same stick doesn’t make the trap any less dangerous.
Because once your food money comes from the same hand that makes the rules, the deal gets simple:
A handout from the state can be given today and weaponized or withdrawn tomorrow, depending on who holds power.
go along, stay quiet, and the fridge stays full. Step out of line, argue too much, or refuse to play the game - and suddenly the payments stop, the cupboards get empty, and you’re learning the hard way what “comply or starve” actually feels like
No one wants to grind themselves into exhaustion. But work is not just about survival - it is one of the core sources of human dignity, purpose, and self-worth.
When people build, create, solve problems, and provide value to others through their labor and ingenuity, they gain a profound sense of meaning. Work disciplines the mind, builds character, fosters resilience, and gives life structure and direction. It turns idle potential into real achievement and connects individuals to something larger than themselves.
Trading that away for a government check... no matter how “high”.... is a losing bargain.
History offers ZERO examples of large-scale Universal High Income or Basic Income experiments that did not erode freedom and concentrate power in the hands of the state. Instead of liberating humanity from AI-driven disruption, this path risks creating a dependent, purposeless underclass ruled by bureaucratic tyranny.
True progress means using AI to augment human potential - not to replace the very things that make us human: effort, creativity, responsibility, and earned reward.
Consider that he's made his money off of government contracts and government paid incentives. I too am surprised he has bought into this. God said that by the sweat of our brows, we will live out our days, and that there is opposition in all things so that we have to overcome it. We've seen the fruits of incentivizing people not too work, and the people have turned on one another. And THAT seems to be the plan. I will tell you that plan is closer to Satan's plan than God's plan, who seeks to build us up.
"And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death."
The welfare program aimed at black families in the 60's was an evil concept. They were so very prosperous in the early part of the 20th century, having been freed from slavery in the decades before.
^And this! This gets to the heart of what UBI, what those like Elon think about humanity. It's eugenics. Modern-day variety of the pseudoscience that assigns strengths, weaknesses, desirable, undesirable, capable, in capable to genetics.
Another Bastiat quote that applies:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
Elon Musk is a part of the hereditary authoritarians class that DOES believe they are made of a finer clay, a finer bloodline than the rest of man. If you understand that it is his beliefs about the superiority of his bloodline that drives his procreation with any willing Baby Mama he's selected, for whatever genetic advantage he thinks the Baby Mama brings to his offspring. He imagines himself a modern-day Genghis Khan - just like Jeffrey Epstein did - and his offspring will become the improvement of Human 2.0's gene pool.
The black kids, others deemed "undesirable" aren't considered to be "finer clay" like they consider themselves. And since they believe that the black kids and others deemed undesirable aren't the finest clay they will need to be taken care of by those who believe that they, themselves, are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind. Never mind the soft-bigotry of low expectations that conceptualization of their fellow man that is derived from.
They truly believe their own Bullshit. UBI is how they enslave us with the approval of their own consciences. UBI removes risk in life, which is the surest path to what CS Lewis described as the tyranny of moral busybodies:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
FF - Free people accept Risk as a part of living freely. UBI attempts to eliminate risk. And is backed up with eugenics beliefs that compare recipients to infants, imbeciles and domestic animals.
If I may ... I believe that I *may* have an alternative explanation to offer for that particular Biblical passage.
It is a radical, radical theory, and I do not expect anyone to believe me at this time. Eventually, however, people may want to have a gander at my Deposition as things begin to get Truly Weird.
I almost choked when I read his post on X. I really admire the guy, but, IMO he’s always been a liberal. Only recently he’s banged the drum for Republicans/conservatives. It now serves his dynasty.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20, in part: ".....when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and BE HAPPY IN HIS WORK - this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart."
Awesome reference ! I grew up rural without cable so I’ve never seen that film. Want to
Your comparison is scary good to me because it’s such a powerful film that even people who haven’t seen it k ow the plotline. It’s a cultural warning .
Well done. That profound meaning and dignity from productive work you mentioned is a result of giving the marketplace of fellow human beings a little something it couldn't acquire on its own. It's probably our only human super power. All unproductive shortcuts around the real productive work lead to long delays and avoidable suffering. DO THE WORK! :)
"When jobs are optional; you are optional." Then there is no need to make products for customers who are no longer there. then, there will be no need for AIs.
I have not seen that one. As a fan of Phillip K Dick books I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the 1982 Movie Blade Runner. Both very good and very different. I will have to watch the new one an see if androids still do. Too bad PKD died too soon. I met his 3rd wife, Anne R Dick at a trade show in the 1990's we were both showing our jewelry lines there and had 3 days to talk.
I agree UHI or UBI are both dangerous ideas. The problem is the Gato belief that we are only dealing with "next round of productivity tools" is not correct. We are not talking about a cordless drill that makes a person a force multiplier and lowers the price to have a roof built. Robots and automation will be built in the US moving forward as global trade is impacted. The US switched to a "service economy" and we now have systems that can out think the average college worker.
My team builds out fully automated processes that once took teams of people to do and manage. Middle management is gone in this model and out of the design all together using agents and Agentic processes. I already showed my wife who has a small business that I can take it over if it were not some legal issues, which will be sorted out soon.
Right now I can build you an specialized small business with lots of Ai staff. Calls your clients and you will not even know its not a person (thats a legal gray area). I have used one as my Executive Assistant and no one knew any better. Even joked around which is way creepy when you give them a life, like which college they want to, how many kids she has and her love of hockey.
She can Switches languages, documents the calls, reviews the customers situation, renewals, quotes new business, book the business, does collections, logs all of the cash flow, makes decisions and you get a dashboard. In this case you have a few people that actually make sure its the right goods and hands it to someone. Apply this to insurance, banking and so many services that it will be like online banking. I dont want to talk to a person at a bank anymore.
I would not be surprised if half of all jobs that require a college education are not wiped out by 2030. This is not cheap shoes or low price meat. This is all at once over a few years and this cliff is coming at us very fast. The real question is what will China do?
Yeah I get it. Just for shits and giggles I asked one of my AI agents to create a biz plan and a podcast by feeding it 2 pdf sales sheets my salespeople use on sales calls.
It spit out a 48 pg. biz plan that was better than any i have ever created...and I've done a lot. The podcast might as well have been done by little "gods". It was perfect in every way. And it did it in less than a minute.
Also I have extremely complex taxes because I have over a dozen LLCs. I fed in last years taxes and 2025s "books" and it finished them in 4 minutes
FOR FREE vs. $30k.
That said I still had my main accounting firm do them. They were basically the exact same results.
The people who bill by the hour are in for a rude awakening.
The key for kids is to find careers with "motes".
Kinda like a radiologist is to xrays...but instead of xrays all things AI that still require human interaction.
Im in deep discussions with my 15 year old twins about this now. They understand how it will effect them and I want to get ahead of it as much as possible so that they have a competitive advantage.
It's the vassal hierarchies I was thinking of. The Republicans have BigAg and the Democrats have the unions and NGOs. There's some crossover with both of them having the think tank/NGO models too.
The universal income thing makes me think about the fate of widows in Gaza. Hamas is offering them basic food (bag of rice) for sex. This is what happens when government controls the income or food.
He's ADHD and easily distracted by shiny things. UBI is a shiny for everyone, not just crows. Ten minutes of actual thought applied and he'll realize it's idiotic and work against it.
You don't even need to understand economics. All you need is to understand history. What I find tragic about humanity is that we love recycling the same concepts over and over again, no matter how often they've failed in the past.
Doom is the product they're selling. Why does everyone want to buy it? I hope the AI companies of SF switch out the marketing teams before we all go mad... (a report below from last week:)
But, the scary part for me is that all 5 of the CEOs of the top AI companies are in a race to be "first" because they think it will better in their hands once "AGI" is achieved - like somehow they are both guardian and wizard.
In other words, it's a race to be the first one with the "match" in case "fire" is inevitable.
AGI (artificial general intelligence) will never happen because intelligence is not a known process than can be replicated. Accounting can be automated because accounting is a known process with all the internal rules laid out and predictable input/output relationships established. Intelligence can be recognized (or faked) for it outputs but the internal processes are not known.
The wizards of AI are pumping a lot of hot air into the balloon ... I agree any one of them gaining control could be a dangerous ride for a lot of reasons (even if AGI never comes to be) :-).
I signed up for Econ 101 years ago: then IRS took all the money from my checking account and then the bank had the audacity to charge me $25 for the whatever it was!
Whew! I needed this! Now I know I'm smarter than Elon! And as smart as you since I agree completely!
How are the children of the rich doing? Wonderfully creative and useful, are they, with no worries about food and shelter? Exceptionally mentally healthy? Spending every day in a Garden of Eden of free time? Let's ask Rob Reiner and his wife about the joys of giving your kids sufficient leisure.
Throughout all of human history the only children of the no-worries-about-money who have ever done well did well by continuing whatever family business that did them so well, and by the third generation of no-worries they start to turn into a pack of losers.
Oh, but we're not going to make everyone *wealthy* with our handouts. We'll just expand welfare to everyone.
Great! Now the whole country will be ravaged by packs of feral teenagers free to do donuts all day. Welfare gives 'em just enough money to find their niche in life.
Now, keep in mind that I voted for Trump for the first and presumably only time, and joyfully, in 2024 with the hope that he would absolutely blow everything up and down and to smithereens. Not for any other reason or useful purpose.
But I've always thought how remarkable it is to compare his children to the children of every other politician we know. OK, Trump is not actually a politician but rather a huckster and reality show star.
But still. And even despite that photo I saw once of Trump's three eldest plus Jared and they looked like The Children of the Corn--
I do absolutely judge everyone I see by how their kids turn out. Judge judge judge judge, judgmental to the ultimate power.
And people couldn't figure out decades ago what a complete absolute piece of trash Biden has always been? There were no clues?
He's always been very gifted and consistent in ruining his advantages. He will never be a wise and subtle leader. He's a huckster and a provocateur and for all the exceptional instincts he has for some things, his lack of self-control diminishes that strength.
And I thought it was really too bad he encouraged Ivanka to ruin her sweet face and to get breast implants.
But he gave his kids real jobs in his business rather than having them go find themselves in useless vanity projects his money could've paid for. Perhaps a certain inherent tight-fistedness with his own resources helped him end up being a better father than so many of those who despised him were to their own kids.
Agree entirely with your assessment. Trump with more discipline, self-awareness, and wisdom would be a far more effective politician. But he's clearly been a good father.
I like the Garden of Eden metaphor for its irony, because even in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were required to tend it productively. It wasn't until the UBI serpent convinced them otherwise that we find ourselves here debating the merits of UBI. LOL!
"Why shouldn't I get my shot at being a useless freeloader like these guys?"
Answer the unfairness of working three jobs to make ends meet while Somali Bros have a harem and a Lexus and lounge around smoking joss and you'll be golden.
I hated getting up every morning to go to work. Heck, I hated getting up every morning to go to school. And I even tortured myself for a few years, getting up to go to work and then heading over to school after finishing the 9-5!
But I am absolutely the type of person who requires a little imposed structure in order to function at my best. I fight it all the way. But I need it.
The world is full of entire cultures who need others to impose that structure on them.
I hated working three jobs at once. The only saving grace was I was never suspending my life for days off. I didn't have any. Everything was reduced to a "now" thing. I can't believe the things I went ahead and did because... now.
Having a guaranteed income would have wrecked that and my life would not be a lovely and surprising as it is now.
Thanks for the unexpected inspiration! I have spent many decades doing work/things for others - work, family, and friends. All while wondering what I could or would or want to do but never feeling or seeing how to do any of it. The work/activities for others carried on relentlessly by the day, as you noticed. But i had the opposite approach as I could not figure out how to be as creative for my own self as you demonstrate so well.
And so now in my early sixties, I am realizing that I finally have reached a very happy and terrifying spot where one fork in the road will carry me down to the old age/happy retirement farms with zero effort at all. Or, the other fork offers a clean blank slate, fresh horizons, and the great wonderful unknown of opportunities.
But only if I can unwind myself sufficiently and correctly from a lifetime of ties and binds in a manner so as to not let very precious things slip through my fingers. Something, that, in the end, might be another way of helping those close to me.
Something that, your inspirational post has helped turned the light on this morning.
Unfathomably wealthy geniuses are even worse. At least I still have to *live* in the Real World, so it at least tends to grind the corners off my more esoteric ideas.
Well, not to quibble with you but Elon had a rough upbringing for many reasons. He wasn't playing in a sandbox full of ready cash.
What drives many of these fabulously wealthy genius oligarch types, I think, is that they learned very early what happens if you have no power over your own life. Rule or be ruled. I can't disagree with the feeling.
Yes, exactly. Malevolent boredom. It's most especially found among the children of prominent academics. Mamdani is a prime example, along with his idiot wife, child of a software engineer and a pediatrician.
What do you think helped darken too early my otherwise sunny nature? I thought it was far better and more terrifying than "1984" which to me layered on the horror like a Hammer film.
I want to see that whole movie! Now they can make a nice trailer, but can they make the whole movie?
Considering something like 40% of people have no internal dialogue, there is no way UBI is going to unleash those people's creativity. It will make them predators, since they won't have anything else to do. I can see me getting creative, along the lines of Last Man on Earth, to protect my home from the horde of Zombies that will be set free.
Just because a dude is super smart like Elon doesn’t mean he gets it right all the time. He once said on Joe Rogan that politicians should make a lot MORE money to not be corrupt.
He certainly didn’t read or understand John Dickenson’s language in our first constitution that included TERM LIMITS (which the majority agree with) and no added money for politicians. This is from Article V of the Articles of the Confederation:
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than seven Members; and no person shall be capable of being delegate for more than three years, in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the united states, for which he, or another for his benefit receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.
This is what happens when one player has bankrupted everyone on monopoly but wants the game to keep playing, so he creates some money to loan to the other players so they can continue to collect $200 to keep the game running.
When the players should quit the game. Why do they talk UBI and not eliminating taxes?
Because taxing employment, and self-employment, to pay for unemployment is whole the point. The trick is to provide enough relief to forestall revolt, without letting anything happen faster than it can be taken over. To stay on top, slow down wealth creation, then get in front of it.
Hence, our host is correct about the extraordinary promise of the technology, but the doom sayers are right, too - Bubble. Way too much financing in advance of business plans; only makes since if the winner expects to draw monopoly rents...
The fear at the top is that the bubble will pop -and someone else else will be rich, the end of (their) world. Welfare, assistance, stimulus -or UBI - is a bribe to stay poor, since the status quo has your back, after all.
Go visit Cuba and see the benefits of UBI first hand. The city of Havana is full of economically lobotomized zombies with no services, no modern possessions, and little food. All spying on each other to see who might be cheating by trying to to get ahead.
It was a very surreal visit. End of a sailboat race across the gulf from Pensacola.
I expected a poor but educated and sharp population yearning for freedom. That’s not at all what I observed .The simple effort to better your position thru work beyond what the state allowed got you in trouble, and snitching on others for trying got you a reward. It was truly pathetic and I’m not sure how a free society will even function. Going to take time and a shrewd leader to make the transition work.
I've been to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. I don't want the government providing me anything. My family will happily work at whatever vocation God puts in front of us, for no other reason than the dignity and diligence of it.
From a Christian perspective UBI is dangerous because many progressive Christian leaders and politicians effectively frame welfare as love. This is a persuasive argument and it is one that needs to be countered effectively because once a new welfare program is instituted it is practically impossible to repeal.
This is why the Affordable Care Act did not have to fulfill its “promises” and why Pelosi as an effective political operator said “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” because she understood that more important than the details was getting the program started. Didn’t matter that they lost the house in 2010 as we’ve seen no repeal effort can succeed. The emotional guilt manipulation is too effective, “you want people to die in the streets for lack of medical care!”
That the law itself made illegal the plans people were happy with (took away their healthcare as they say) was actually an act of compassion! Now if you my fellow citizen don’t wish to further subsidize someone else’s premiums you are now said to be “taking away their healthcare” even though you’re doing no such thing. Your plan gets taken away (literally made illegal) this is compassion, you seek to retain more of your earned income (you’re a moral reprobate).
Back to the Christian aspect of this. In the book of Romans, Chapter 13, verses 8-10 it says:
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Notice that “love does no harm to a neighbor.” This is intentionally overlooked by progressive theologians and politicians because it destroys the entire basis of their call to “love thy neighbor.” True love must do no harm. Their “love” always produces winners and losers and is zero-sum. True love is always positive-sum, both sides are edified. Using the state to take from someone their rightful earnings to be redistributed to someone who did not earn it does harm to the one it was taken from. It also does harm to the one it is given to because it creates in them covetousness which is socially destructive and from a biblical perspective is sinful. Thus, their “love” encourages sinful behavior.
UBI can be summed up as, “thou shall covet thy neighbor’s possessions.”
I agree that UBI is a fools goal, but unlike other disruptive technologies AI (and robotics) seems different as it's such a massive disruption in such a short period of time. Within a couple years entire sectors are being wiped out at scale. People are entering college for computer science programs as freshman and by the time they graduate it's basically a dead end. Most of these jobs aren't coming back.
If we eliminate 70% of the jobs permanently, and AI creates an additional need for about 20% more then we still have a crisis on our hands. It's happening too quickly. We can't all be robotics engineers and AI center electricians as there won't be enough jobs to fill the gap and a good number of unemployed people won't have the IQ to do them.
I used to work in tech and many of my former collegues are getting wiped out. Some are succesfully transitioning, but only those with substantial money to subsidize them. The rest are getting foreclosed on, bankrupcies... it's just a bloodbath. We are now living basically paycheck to paycheck and my husband is consulting for AI now, but the investors are sketchy as there's too many people desperatly jumping on this bandwagon as a lifeline. I transitioned to a passion project to work as a health coach, mostly for diabetics as I specialize in low carb diets, but this will probably be fully replaced even though what I am really selling is a personalized and human element. I have teenage daughters and have no idea what to tell them. I can't think of a job other than electrician for AI centers that won't be taken. And guess what! That's what everyone I know is sending their kids for! AI specialist and data center technician. The field will be flooded.
UBI isn't the answer, but this isn't like when the horse and buggy went out and the automobile came in. This is a bloodbath that spans all sectors of our economy. We need some plan other than "80% of us live in abject poverty within a decade" otherwise people are going to pick up guns.
> People are entering college for computer science programs as freshman and by the time they graduate it's basically a dead end. Most of these jobs aren't coming back.
This seems vastly short sighted to me. I work in tech. I've used AI. It's a useful tool, but it can't do my job for me. It's a new tool to learn, like going from a text editor to an IDE.
Some do not appreciate the scale of where this is heading. AI and robotics are in their infancy. The manual labor jobs you cite will be just as subject to displacement as white collar jobs as soon as robots with opposable thumbs match our own manual dexterity.
Society is going to need a new medium of exchange to allocate everything. Once tax revenue starts spiraling down due to job disruptions, the government distributing fiat credits backed by nothing (not even things of value produced by humans) to facilitate exchanges ain't it.
In 2002 there was massive hand wringing in the tech world that there were too many computer science graduates and H1B was ruining the industry. Only a few years later and the headlines are that there are insufficient computer science graduates!
Let's have Elon Musk show us he can run a trillion dollar corporate empire without humans and then we can take his ideas seriously. And as for humanoid robots, can we get a grip on reality! This is a flying car level prediction. The issue is not that a "flying car" can't be built. It is that they cannot safely and economically operate! So it will be with autonomous robots. Who will be able to afford them and who will want to carry the liability of a "robot" restaurant server accidentally decapitating a human person - oh that will sure be swell for that business.
The government that gives us everything is the government that can take it all away.
Dependency is the WMD and we already have seen it play out since turbo charging welfare in the 1960s. How did that turn out? We have generations now that are dependent and poorer than ever and ‘a hungry mon is an angry mon.’
Historians like Alexander Tytler studied the various democracies throughout history and saw that creating dependency was the last stage of any democracy before Tyranny.
America spends over one trillion dollars a year on welfare – creating dependency. Let’s come up with a better idea – how about we End the War on Poverty for real by ending welfare.
By far, the greatest danger of AI is that people conclude too early that they understand it (good and bad). This is just one case
I can't believe Elon has fallen for this. He has to be one of the best "thought experiment" guys in the world.
We've already tried this. Go look at the inner cities and tell me how that worked out. Universal High Income sounds too basic so he wraps shit with a pretty bow and calls it a gift
Forget all the hard as frozen iron economic arguments and just start asking the most basic of questions.
"If everyone is gonna get a universal basic income, what is the point of getting good grades?"
What kind of future would that look like?
We just exited a global pandemic engineered and mishandled by governments that then tried to force an experimental, cancer-linked injection into people’s arms under threat of losing their jobs and basic freedoms.
The covid stimulus checks were a test run for universal income. How'd that work out.
During that very same period, the unelected globalists at the World Economic Forum aggressively pushed for the very same thing Elon is… Universal Basic Income.
Now he's suggesting we simply swap “Basic” for “High.” A bigger carrot on the same stick doesn’t make the trap any less dangerous.
Because once your food money comes from the same hand that makes the rules, the deal gets simple:
A handout from the state can be given today and weaponized or withdrawn tomorrow, depending on who holds power.
go along, stay quiet, and the fridge stays full. Step out of line, argue too much, or refuse to play the game - and suddenly the payments stop, the cupboards get empty, and you’re learning the hard way what “comply or starve” actually feels like
No one wants to grind themselves into exhaustion. But work is not just about survival - it is one of the core sources of human dignity, purpose, and self-worth.
When people build, create, solve problems, and provide value to others through their labor and ingenuity, they gain a profound sense of meaning. Work disciplines the mind, builds character, fosters resilience, and gives life structure and direction. It turns idle potential into real achievement and connects individuals to something larger than themselves.
Trading that away for a government check... no matter how “high”.... is a losing bargain.
History offers ZERO examples of large-scale Universal High Income or Basic Income experiments that did not erode freedom and concentrate power in the hands of the state. Instead of liberating humanity from AI-driven disruption, this path risks creating a dependent, purposeless underclass ruled by bureaucratic tyranny.
True progress means using AI to augment human potential - not to replace the very things that make us human: effort, creativity, responsibility, and earned reward.
When jobs are optional; you are optional. Period.
But here i am repeating most of gatos points.
Consider that he's made his money off of government contracts and government paid incentives. I too am surprised he has bought into this. God said that by the sweat of our brows, we will live out our days, and that there is opposition in all things so that we have to overcome it. We've seen the fruits of incentivizing people not too work, and the people have turned on one another. And THAT seems to be the plan. I will tell you that plan is closer to Satan's plan than God's plan, who seeks to build us up.
"And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death."
Matthew 10:21-23
That seems like a good future.
Sounds a little like the scamdemic....
The welfare program aimed at black families in the 60's was an evil concept. They were so very prosperous in the early part of the 20th century, having been freed from slavery in the decades before.
Yes. They had more intact nuclear families than whites. Roughly 70%.
Now only 25% of black kids know who their father is.
All on purpose.
gato raised a great point. I didn't realize this, but they actually ran this experiment on black america with the massive increase in public aid.
You think they did this on purpose?
Yes . Yes. And YES
^And this! This gets to the heart of what UBI, what those like Elon think about humanity. It's eugenics. Modern-day variety of the pseudoscience that assigns strengths, weaknesses, desirable, undesirable, capable, in capable to genetics.
Another Bastiat quote that applies:
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”
― Frederic Bastiat, The Law
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/83241-if-the-natural-tendencies-of-mankind-are-so-bad-that
Elon Musk is a part of the hereditary authoritarians class that DOES believe they are made of a finer clay, a finer bloodline than the rest of man. If you understand that it is his beliefs about the superiority of his bloodline that drives his procreation with any willing Baby Mama he's selected, for whatever genetic advantage he thinks the Baby Mama brings to his offspring. He imagines himself a modern-day Genghis Khan - just like Jeffrey Epstein did - and his offspring will become the improvement of Human 2.0's gene pool.
The black kids, others deemed "undesirable" aren't considered to be "finer clay" like they consider themselves. And since they believe that the black kids and others deemed undesirable aren't the finest clay they will need to be taken care of by those who believe that they, themselves, are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind. Never mind the soft-bigotry of low expectations that conceptualization of their fellow man that is derived from.
They truly believe their own Bullshit. UBI is how they enslave us with the approval of their own consciences. UBI removes risk in life, which is the surest path to what CS Lewis described as the tyranny of moral busybodies:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
FF - Free people accept Risk as a part of living freely. UBI attempts to eliminate risk. And is backed up with eugenics beliefs that compare recipients to infants, imbeciles and domestic animals.
Isn't this just Eugenics all over again?
Funny how things never really change, just the elites get more elite.
This is 100% true and *beyond* diabolical, for reasons that I intend to Disclose shortly.
I was reading this and thought of the clot shots. Indeed. that was the vibe.
Hi, Boots! Long time no chat...;)
Yes. There's still 9 million people estranged from loved ones.
Because some people think it feels worse to be wrong than remain wrong their entire lives.
If I may ... I believe that I *may* have an alternative explanation to offer for that particular Biblical passage.
It is a radical, radical theory, and I do not expect anyone to believe me at this time. Eventually, however, people may want to have a gander at my Deposition as things begin to get Truly Weird.
(Hint: It's Aliens.)
I almost choked when I read his post on X. I really admire the guy, but, IMO he’s always been a liberal. Only recently he’s banged the drum for Republicans/conservatives. It now serves his dynasty.
He began making money with his own innovations. His own inventions.
Ecclesiastes 5:18-20, in part: ".....when God gives any man wealth and possessions, and enables him to enjoy them, to accept his lot and BE HAPPY IN HIS WORK - this is a gift of God. He seldom reflects on the days of his life, because God keeps him occupied with gladness of heart."
🔥
Awesome reference ! I grew up rural without cable so I’ve never seen that film. Want to
Your comparison is scary good to me because it’s such a powerful film that even people who haven’t seen it k ow the plotline. It’s a cultural warning .
Being worth $796 billion may have an effect on one's perspective.
And he understands, and has stated, that if he just gives that to everyone, it will accomplish nothing and be worth nothing.
Well done. That profound meaning and dignity from productive work you mentioned is a result of giving the marketplace of fellow human beings a little something it couldn't acquire on its own. It's probably our only human super power. All unproductive shortcuts around the real productive work lead to long delays and avoidable suffering. DO THE WORK! :)
Well met. Kudos
Bravo.
"When jobs are optional; you are optional." Then there is no need to make products for customers who are no longer there. then, there will be no need for AIs.
I think that neatly sums up the crux of gatos article.
If you want to see what it looks like once we give up agency, just watch Bladerunner 2049
One of the best movies in 20 years. Prescient.
I have not seen that one. As a fan of Phillip K Dick books I read "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the 1982 Movie Blade Runner. Both very good and very different. I will have to watch the new one an see if androids still do. Too bad PKD died too soon. I met his 3rd wife, Anne R Dick at a trade show in the 1990's we were both showing our jewelry lines there and had 3 days to talk.
I agree UHI or UBI are both dangerous ideas. The problem is the Gato belief that we are only dealing with "next round of productivity tools" is not correct. We are not talking about a cordless drill that makes a person a force multiplier and lowers the price to have a roof built. Robots and automation will be built in the US moving forward as global trade is impacted. The US switched to a "service economy" and we now have systems that can out think the average college worker.
My team builds out fully automated processes that once took teams of people to do and manage. Middle management is gone in this model and out of the design all together using agents and Agentic processes. I already showed my wife who has a small business that I can take it over if it were not some legal issues, which will be sorted out soon.
Right now I can build you an specialized small business with lots of Ai staff. Calls your clients and you will not even know its not a person (thats a legal gray area). I have used one as my Executive Assistant and no one knew any better. Even joked around which is way creepy when you give them a life, like which college they want to, how many kids she has and her love of hockey.
She can Switches languages, documents the calls, reviews the customers situation, renewals, quotes new business, book the business, does collections, logs all of the cash flow, makes decisions and you get a dashboard. In this case you have a few people that actually make sure its the right goods and hands it to someone. Apply this to insurance, banking and so many services that it will be like online banking. I dont want to talk to a person at a bank anymore.
I would not be surprised if half of all jobs that require a college education are not wiped out by 2030. This is not cheap shoes or low price meat. This is all at once over a few years and this cliff is coming at us very fast. The real question is what will China do?
Yeah I get it. Just for shits and giggles I asked one of my AI agents to create a biz plan and a podcast by feeding it 2 pdf sales sheets my salespeople use on sales calls.
It spit out a 48 pg. biz plan that was better than any i have ever created...and I've done a lot. The podcast might as well have been done by little "gods". It was perfect in every way. And it did it in less than a minute.
Also I have extremely complex taxes because I have over a dozen LLCs. I fed in last years taxes and 2025s "books" and it finished them in 4 minutes
FOR FREE vs. $30k.
That said I still had my main accounting firm do them. They were basically the exact same results.
The people who bill by the hour are in for a rude awakening.
The key for kids is to find careers with "motes".
Kinda like a radiologist is to xrays...but instead of xrays all things AI that still require human interaction.
Im in deep discussions with my 15 year old twins about this now. They understand how it will effect them and I want to get ahead of it as much as possible so that they have a competitive advantage.
I am training my 10 year old twins as well to be electricians as they earn electrical engineering degrees and become actuaries as well.
good man. electricians shall inherit the earth!
Good news for me is I get to play a lot more golf without feeling guilty!...lol
Easy to prove all of this. TURN OFF EBT CARDS. Then sit back and watch. It will be Black Friday at Wally World on steroids.
Lolol
Well, Clark that's just PERFECT!
The organizing of politics really always is on the principles of feudalism. They just always try to obscure that.
Yup. Nothing new here in the grand scheme of things.
People forget poverty/scarcity and bondage are default.
It's the vassal hierarchies I was thinking of. The Republicans have BigAg and the Democrats have the unions and NGOs. There's some crossover with both of them having the think tank/NGO models too.
The universal income thing makes me think about the fate of widows in Gaza. Hamas is offering them basic food (bag of rice) for sex. This is what happens when government controls the income or food.
Yes soylent green disguised as manna from "heaven"
💯 exactly tight!
cattle, or chattel
why are you surprised? he's the same guy who thinks we all need neural chips implanted in our brains and should get pumped up to go "occupy mars".
Nice
An entire semester of Economics 101 crammed into one article.
Amazing!
Idk, when I took Econ 101 I had been in the labor force for about 5 years and I thought, “This mf has never worked a day in his life”.
I’d say it’s a semester of SOHK (school of hard knocks) in a single essay :)
I agree. How many male "baristas" with college degrees do we have now?
Maybe they don't deserve tips...and should go pour some concrete...you effing pussy's...lol...:)
Ya do what you can
I wish I understood economics better but one thing I do know. Elon Musk has a wealth bias.
He's ADHD and easily distracted by shiny things. UBI is a shiny for everyone, not just crows. Ten minutes of actual thought applied and he'll realize it's idiotic and work against it.
He's all in for AI and so he is supporting UBI in order to remove objection to his desires.
Thats all this is.
Self interest.
IOW he won't support it, just saying so for PR?
He doesn't have the temperament to lie. I think it's more just random, unprocessed commentary. Once asked in detail, he'll recant. He has before.
I'm not sure why he'd be in on AI given its 143% record of screwing up, but possibly he and his team can make some of it work for some of their needs.
Correct. And this is far from the first time he’s promoted it.
You don't even need to understand economics. All you need is to understand history. What I find tragic about humanity is that we love recycling the same concepts over and over again, no matter how often they've failed in the past.
You don't have to, you just need common sense.
Which you have an abundance of.
Doom is the product they're selling. Why does everyone want to buy it? I hope the AI companies of SF switch out the marketing teams before we all go mad... (a report below from last week:)
https://aynsrants.substack.com/p/marketing-mythos-and-mania
Good article. I agree with you.
But, the scary part for me is that all 5 of the CEOs of the top AI companies are in a race to be "first" because they think it will better in their hands once "AGI" is achieved - like somehow they are both guardian and wizard.
In other words, it's a race to be the first one with the "match" in case "fire" is inevitable.
Seems a little dangerous to me....
AGI is not possible...and the techonology is way over-hiped
yes. or they are worried deepseek (or anything Chinese) will beat them, so that's their stated rationale.
and then there are the targeting systems (palintir, anyone?) which require AI, so we daren't "fall behind", the story goes.
AGI (artificial general intelligence) will never happen because intelligence is not a known process than can be replicated. Accounting can be automated because accounting is a known process with all the internal rules laid out and predictable input/output relationships established. Intelligence can be recognized (or faked) for it outputs but the internal processes are not known.
The wizards of AI are pumping a lot of hot air into the balloon ... I agree any one of them gaining control could be a dangerous ride for a lot of reasons (even if AGI never comes to be) :-).
right on - and so is your great article:
https://aynsrants.substack.com/p/marketing-mythos-and-mania
I signed up for Econ 101 years ago: then IRS took all the money from my checking account and then the bank had the audacity to charge me $25 for the whatever it was!
Whew! I needed this! Now I know I'm smarter than Elon! And as smart as you since I agree completely!
How are the children of the rich doing? Wonderfully creative and useful, are they, with no worries about food and shelter? Exceptionally mentally healthy? Spending every day in a Garden of Eden of free time? Let's ask Rob Reiner and his wife about the joys of giving your kids sufficient leisure.
Throughout all of human history the only children of the no-worries-about-money who have ever done well did well by continuing whatever family business that did them so well, and by the third generation of no-worries they start to turn into a pack of losers.
Oh, but we're not going to make everyone *wealthy* with our handouts. We'll just expand welfare to everyone.
Great! Now the whole country will be ravaged by packs of feral teenagers free to do donuts all day. Welfare gives 'em just enough money to find their niche in life.
But SCA, you are forgetting about the creativity Hunter Biden unleashed when he was freed by the high income of Burisma!
Now, keep in mind that I voted for Trump for the first and presumably only time, and joyfully, in 2024 with the hope that he would absolutely blow everything up and down and to smithereens. Not for any other reason or useful purpose.
But I've always thought how remarkable it is to compare his children to the children of every other politician we know. OK, Trump is not actually a politician but rather a huckster and reality show star.
But still. And even despite that photo I saw once of Trump's three eldest plus Jared and they looked like The Children of the Corn--
I do absolutely judge everyone I see by how their kids turn out. Judge judge judge judge, judgmental to the ultimate power.
And people couldn't figure out decades ago what a complete absolute piece of trash Biden has always been? There were no clues?
"I do absolutely judge everyone I see by how their kids turn out. Judge judge judge judge, judgmental to the ultimate power."
A parent's only as good as their dumbest kid. If one wins a Nobel Prize but the other gets robbed by a hooker, you failed. (Samuel Halpern)
This is some great quote. Should be reproduced on samplers and wall plaques by crafty people everywhere.
I'm ambivalent (at best) about Trump, but the way his children turned out are a huge testament to him.
He's always been very gifted and consistent in ruining his advantages. He will never be a wise and subtle leader. He's a huckster and a provocateur and for all the exceptional instincts he has for some things, his lack of self-control diminishes that strength.
And I thought it was really too bad he encouraged Ivanka to ruin her sweet face and to get breast implants.
But he gave his kids real jobs in his business rather than having them go find themselves in useless vanity projects his money could've paid for. Perhaps a certain inherent tight-fistedness with his own resources helped him end up being a better father than so many of those who despised him were to their own kids.
Agree entirely with your assessment. Trump with more discipline, self-awareness, and wisdom would be a far more effective politician. But he's clearly been a good father.
I like the Garden of Eden metaphor for its irony, because even in the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were required to tend it productively. It wasn't until the UBI serpent convinced them otherwise that we find ourselves here debating the merits of UBI. LOL!
Well. I have always considered the serpent to be the hero of the story.
Interesting. Tell me more.
Think about it.
I have, greatly. Do you have a productive reply or are we playing cat and mouse? I'm confident your thoughtful answer will interest me.
He was the OG "do your own research" guy, wasn't he?
Well spotted.
"Why shouldn't I get my shot at being a useless freeloader like these guys?"
Answer the unfairness of working three jobs to make ends meet while Somali Bros have a harem and a Lexus and lounge around smoking joss and you'll be golden.
I hated getting up every morning to go to work. Heck, I hated getting up every morning to go to school. And I even tortured myself for a few years, getting up to go to work and then heading over to school after finishing the 9-5!
But I am absolutely the type of person who requires a little imposed structure in order to function at my best. I fight it all the way. But I need it.
The world is full of entire cultures who need others to impose that structure on them.
I hated working three jobs at once. The only saving grace was I was never suspending my life for days off. I didn't have any. Everything was reduced to a "now" thing. I can't believe the things I went ahead and did because... now.
Having a guaranteed income would have wrecked that and my life would not be a lovely and surprising as it is now.
Thanks for the unexpected inspiration! I have spent many decades doing work/things for others - work, family, and friends. All while wondering what I could or would or want to do but never feeling or seeing how to do any of it. The work/activities for others carried on relentlessly by the day, as you noticed. But i had the opposite approach as I could not figure out how to be as creative for my own self as you demonstrate so well.
And so now in my early sixties, I am realizing that I finally have reached a very happy and terrifying spot where one fork in the road will carry me down to the old age/happy retirement farms with zero effort at all. Or, the other fork offers a clean blank slate, fresh horizons, and the great wonderful unknown of opportunities.
But only if I can unwind myself sufficiently and correctly from a lifetime of ties and binds in a manner so as to not let very precious things slip through my fingers. Something, that, in the end, might be another way of helping those close to me.
Something that, your inspirational post has helped turned the light on this morning.
Thank you so much for that.
The things hard times teach us.
I know a couple of useless freeloaders. absolutely unhappy and well deserved.
Yup. The easiest equation ever:
Deflationary production + concentrated ownership
= the cheapest dystopia ever built.
The problem with geniuses is they ain't got a grip on real life.
Unfathomably wealthy geniuses are even worse. At least I still have to *live* in the Real World, so it at least tends to grind the corners off my more esoteric ideas.
Well, genius in any form is dangerous. It's that playing-with-atoms thing.
Oh, I agree. I'm just saying that it's even *worse* when said genius is insulated from reality to the extent Elon is.
*goes back to babysitting computers for the people who play with atoms*
Well, not to quibble with you but Elon had a rough upbringing for many reasons. He wasn't playing in a sandbox full of ready cash.
What drives many of these fabulously wealthy genius oligarch types, I think, is that they learned very early what happens if you have no power over your own life. Rule or be ruled. I can't disagree with the feeling.
Or DNA with the rat juice they tried to force in our arms.
The hubris of man has no limits
I think it's not hubris, exactly. It's that so many sociopaths go into science.
love this
What's interesting is that many of the rich kids end up being in Antifa. Or embracing communism. Or both.
Yes, exactly. Malevolent boredom. It's most especially found among the children of prominent academics. Mamdani is a prime example, along with his idiot wife, child of a software engineer and a pediatrician.
Yup
Waking up every day with absolutely no imperative to a useful purpose. What could possibly go wrong.
Anyone interested in how this ends? Read “Brave New World.” Huxley, 1932. Book, not movie. You won’t need special effects.
What do you think helped darken too early my otherwise sunny nature? I thought it was far better and more terrifying than "1984" which to me layered on the horror like a Hammer film.
keep your sunny nature. we need all we can muster, and cultivate...
It's been transmuted into a taste for ruthless humor.
The "UBI" fantasy reveals the failure to distinguish between money and value, and they are not the same, the first being the _measure_ of the second.
Once some non-zero amount of money is associated with zero value, that amount of money becomes the new zero.
Exactly. Plus why would we ever put this in the hands of politicians.
If politicians ran their own households like they run the country, they'd be bankrupt, in prison, and forbidden from going near children.
Imagine how it would look if UHI "conditions" would end up with these grifters.
Might as well start building your own gulags.
"Might as well start building your own gulags."
Hmmmm. Detroit, East LA, parts of Frisco....
Its just ve easier if you said every democrat run city...:)
Actually, Coeur d'Alene isn't too bad - but the other 115,474 cities ...
You're right!
Most of them SHOULD BE in prison.
When do we get that shit started?!
This is encouraging…
https://basedunderground.com/legal-firebrand-joe-digenova-takes-over-stalled-spygate-probe-with-john-brennan-in-his-sights/
Nice
Neil deGrasse Tyson as the hero, though? That guy's a chump.
yeah, agreed on that. fried too (he's a clown).
would have been better with palmer luckey
And "chump" is putting it nicely.
Agreed
I want to see that whole movie! Now they can make a nice trailer, but can they make the whole movie?
Considering something like 40% of people have no internal dialogue, there is no way UBI is going to unleash those people's creativity. It will make them predators, since they won't have anything else to do. I can see me getting creative, along the lines of Last Man on Earth, to protect my home from the horde of Zombies that will be set free.
Just because a dude is super smart like Elon doesn’t mean he gets it right all the time. He once said on Joe Rogan that politicians should make a lot MORE money to not be corrupt.
He certainly didn’t read or understand John Dickenson’s language in our first constitution that included TERM LIMITS (which the majority agree with) and no added money for politicians. This is from Article V of the Articles of the Confederation:
No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more than seven Members; and no person shall be capable of being delegate for more than three years, in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a delegate, be capable of holding any office under the united states, for which he, or another for his benefit receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind.
This is what happens when one player has bankrupted everyone on monopoly but wants the game to keep playing, so he creates some money to loan to the other players so they can continue to collect $200 to keep the game running.
When the players should quit the game. Why do they talk UBI and not eliminating taxes?
"Why do they talk UBI and not eliminating taxes?"
Because taxing employment, and self-employment, to pay for unemployment is whole the point. The trick is to provide enough relief to forestall revolt, without letting anything happen faster than it can be taken over. To stay on top, slow down wealth creation, then get in front of it.
Hence, our host is correct about the extraordinary promise of the technology, but the doom sayers are right, too - Bubble. Way too much financing in advance of business plans; only makes since if the winner expects to draw monopoly rents...
The fear at the top is that the bubble will pop -and someone else else will be rich, the end of (their) world. Welfare, assistance, stimulus -or UBI - is a bribe to stay poor, since the status quo has your back, after all.
I could have done without seeing Bill Gates nude side shot in the sauna. Lousy way to start the day. Going back to bed now to wait for my UBI check.
Great article.
Go visit Cuba and see the benefits of UBI first hand. The city of Havana is full of economically lobotomized zombies with no services, no modern possessions, and little food. All spying on each other to see who might be cheating by trying to to get ahead.
- - - > ' economically lobotomized zombies' - great phrase - and scary too.
It was a very surreal visit. End of a sailboat race across the gulf from Pensacola.
I expected a poor but educated and sharp population yearning for freedom. That’s not at all what I observed .The simple effort to better your position thru work beyond what the state allowed got you in trouble, and snitching on others for trying got you a reward. It was truly pathetic and I’m not sure how a free society will even function. Going to take time and a shrewd leader to make the transition work.
I've been to the Pine Ridge Indian reservation. I don't want the government providing me anything. My family will happily work at whatever vocation God puts in front of us, for no other reason than the dignity and diligence of it.
From a Christian perspective UBI is dangerous because many progressive Christian leaders and politicians effectively frame welfare as love. This is a persuasive argument and it is one that needs to be countered effectively because once a new welfare program is instituted it is practically impossible to repeal.
This is why the Affordable Care Act did not have to fulfill its “promises” and why Pelosi as an effective political operator said “we have to pass it to find out what’s in it” because she understood that more important than the details was getting the program started. Didn’t matter that they lost the house in 2010 as we’ve seen no repeal effort can succeed. The emotional guilt manipulation is too effective, “you want people to die in the streets for lack of medical care!”
That the law itself made illegal the plans people were happy with (took away their healthcare as they say) was actually an act of compassion! Now if you my fellow citizen don’t wish to further subsidize someone else’s premiums you are now said to be “taking away their healthcare” even though you’re doing no such thing. Your plan gets taken away (literally made illegal) this is compassion, you seek to retain more of your earned income (you’re a moral reprobate).
Back to the Christian aspect of this. In the book of Romans, Chapter 13, verses 8-10 it says:
“Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Notice that “love does no harm to a neighbor.” This is intentionally overlooked by progressive theologians and politicians because it destroys the entire basis of their call to “love thy neighbor.” True love must do no harm. Their “love” always produces winners and losers and is zero-sum. True love is always positive-sum, both sides are edified. Using the state to take from someone their rightful earnings to be redistributed to someone who did not earn it does harm to the one it was taken from. It also does harm to the one it is given to because it creates in them covetousness which is socially destructive and from a biblical perspective is sinful. Thus, their “love” encourages sinful behavior.
UBI can be summed up as, “thou shall covet thy neighbor’s possessions.”
I agree that UBI is a fools goal, but unlike other disruptive technologies AI (and robotics) seems different as it's such a massive disruption in such a short period of time. Within a couple years entire sectors are being wiped out at scale. People are entering college for computer science programs as freshman and by the time they graduate it's basically a dead end. Most of these jobs aren't coming back.
If we eliminate 70% of the jobs permanently, and AI creates an additional need for about 20% more then we still have a crisis on our hands. It's happening too quickly. We can't all be robotics engineers and AI center electricians as there won't be enough jobs to fill the gap and a good number of unemployed people won't have the IQ to do them.
I used to work in tech and many of my former collegues are getting wiped out. Some are succesfully transitioning, but only those with substantial money to subsidize them. The rest are getting foreclosed on, bankrupcies... it's just a bloodbath. We are now living basically paycheck to paycheck and my husband is consulting for AI now, but the investors are sketchy as there's too many people desperatly jumping on this bandwagon as a lifeline. I transitioned to a passion project to work as a health coach, mostly for diabetics as I specialize in low carb diets, but this will probably be fully replaced even though what I am really selling is a personalized and human element. I have teenage daughters and have no idea what to tell them. I can't think of a job other than electrician for AI centers that won't be taken. And guess what! That's what everyone I know is sending their kids for! AI specialist and data center technician. The field will be flooded.
UBI isn't the answer, but this isn't like when the horse and buggy went out and the automobile came in. This is a bloodbath that spans all sectors of our economy. We need some plan other than "80% of us live in abject poverty within a decade" otherwise people are going to pick up guns.
> I can't think of a job other than electrician for AI centers that won't be taken.
Welder. Plumber. Machinist. EMT. Miner. Logger. Fisherman. Roofer.
> People are entering college for computer science programs as freshman and by the time they graduate it's basically a dead end. Most of these jobs aren't coming back.
This seems vastly short sighted to me. I work in tech. I've used AI. It's a useful tool, but it can't do my job for me. It's a new tool to learn, like going from a text editor to an IDE.
Some do not appreciate the scale of where this is heading. AI and robotics are in their infancy. The manual labor jobs you cite will be just as subject to displacement as white collar jobs as soon as robots with opposable thumbs match our own manual dexterity.
Society is going to need a new medium of exchange to allocate everything. Once tax revenue starts spiraling down due to job disruptions, the government distributing fiat credits backed by nothing (not even things of value produced by humans) to facilitate exchanges ain't it.
Never forget that the .01% want us all dead. Everything makes more sense if you keep that in mind.
except it wont. AI is nothing like the CEO's are making it out to be.
In 2002 there was massive hand wringing in the tech world that there were too many computer science graduates and H1B was ruining the industry. Only a few years later and the headlines are that there are insufficient computer science graduates!
Let's have Elon Musk show us he can run a trillion dollar corporate empire without humans and then we can take his ideas seriously. And as for humanoid robots, can we get a grip on reality! This is a flying car level prediction. The issue is not that a "flying car" can't be built. It is that they cannot safely and economically operate! So it will be with autonomous robots. Who will be able to afford them and who will want to carry the liability of a "robot" restaurant server accidentally decapitating a human person - oh that will sure be swell for that business.
One of the major tenets our Dad taught us is , “Nothing is free. You will always pay”.
“Poison peddled panacea”. Without a doubt.
yes. "there's always a price to pay" is another.
The government that gives us everything is the government that can take it all away.
Dependency is the WMD and we already have seen it play out since turbo charging welfare in the 1960s. How did that turn out? We have generations now that are dependent and poorer than ever and ‘a hungry mon is an angry mon.’
Historians like Alexander Tytler studied the various democracies throughout history and saw that creating dependency was the last stage of any democracy before Tyranny.
America spends over one trillion dollars a year on welfare – creating dependency. Let’s come up with a better idea – how about we End the War on Poverty for real by ending welfare.
Let’s try something different. We can give peace a chance and end the War on Poverty: https://lizlasorte.substack.com/p/give-peace-a-chance-end-the-war-on-9f8?r=76q58
Who made that video? How long will it be before Hollywood is actually kicked off stage? Based on that little masterpiece, it won’t be long.
We can hope.