Guest Post by Scott Adams
Lately I have been describing my personal political views as “left of Bernie, but with a preference for plans that can work.” In other words, I would love universal healthcare and free college. I just don’t know how to get there in any practical way. I don’t think anyone else does either.
This indirectly brings me to Sam Altman, CEO of Y-Combinator, and a billionaire investor. He’s embarking on an experiment to see what happens when you give citizens free money, no strings attached. This is important because our robot-centric future will mean the end of most forms of human labor. And that means one of two things, in all likelihood: 1) 90% of the world starves to death while the robot-owners thrive, or 2) 90% of the world receives some sort of “free money” from the rich, with no strings attached. Sam is testing option two.
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Stop right there. I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking it is far too soon to be thinking about a robot takeover of labor. But you might not know that Sam is heavily invested in robot startups. He’s seen things you haven’t seen. If he’s planning for a robot takeover of labor, get worried. He’s not guessing.
This is the sort of experiment your government should be doing but doesn’t know how to do. So Sam is doing it. And his results could easily inform government decisions when the robot revolution kicks into high gear.
I’ve said before in this blog, and on Periscope, that our old system of government – the republic – has already been replaced by citizen influencers. Thanks to social media, the best ideas go viral, and our elected representatives end up being more like followers of good ideas than leaders with their own plans. If Sam’s experiment shows us something we didn’t know, and the results can be reproduced, it will inform public policy on one of humanity’s greatest inflection points.
A smart investor always insists on small-scale tests of big ideas before committing big dollars. In the world of business, this is standard practice. Compare that to the current GOP healthcare plan that involves granting all the federal money for that cause to the states so they can work it out.
Dumb.
The responsible approach would be to test some healthcare ideas in a few states or counties and then work with what we learned. A wholesale change such as transferring responsibility to the states is reckless and, in my opinion, unethical. The unethical part is that moving funding to the states is little more than a political trick to protect Republicans in the 2018 election. It has nothing to do with helping citizens.
Regular readers of this blog know I am forgiving of politicians who intentionally exaggerate and ignore facts, so long as their intentions appear to be directed at the greater good. But shifting money for healthcare to the states is for the benefit of Congress, not the greater good.
My bottom line is that I can support a government plan that involves testing small before going big. But going big on an untested idea is not leadership. It is just bad management, or worse.
I don’t know if Sam Altman’s test of free money will tell us something important or not. But I do know it is a sensible and responsible approach to leading. Maybe someday our elected officials will learn how it’s done.
My experience is when you give people something for “free” be it food, money, clothes, housing, the end result is always the same. They don’t appreciate it, they waste and/or abuse it, and they always want more.
Humans are designed to have a drive to build, expand, better ourselves for our now and our future. If we don’t have a purpose, we wither and die.
If you look at more socialized countries like Sweden, you see lower level of productivity and lack of drive to create and design because there’s zero incentive to do so. You’re going to get the same crap as everyone else, or have your earnings taxed and given to anyone else, so why bother?
The best case scenario would be for humanity to focus on true, viable space exploration and colonization WITH robot helpers so we can make that our expansion. Otherwise, think more like WALL-E type existences of fat, lazy people gliding around on personal hover craft, eating all the time, bored, and depressed with nothing to do at all, or something like the Robopocalypse series by Daniel Wilson. Either way, it’s not going to end up like Star Trek.
“…our elected representatives end up being more like followers of good ideas than leaders with their own plans.”
Soooooooooo, The U.S. initiating Regime Change in Syria and supplying al-Qaeda and ISIS with weapons, training, and intelligence was a ‘good idea’ prompted by citizens in social media.
Same with Regime Change in Ukraine (Nuland’s “Fuck the EU” for those of you with a bad memory).
European leaders supporting millions of low IQ, inbred, unskilled, radical Islamist Musloids to enter the EU and eliminate nation states was from social media.
Treating Russia as the world’s villain instead of a partner for world peace – another social media idea picked up by our leaders?
Disagree with you Scott.
There has already been a successful “free college” system implemented. It was in Argentina from the 20’s until the 60’s (when the Che Guevara lovers took it over, and the Southern Command trained boots smashed them and anything 1 mile around, including the good things)
The main filter was failure. You needed a big classroom infrastructure for the freshmen classes, and setting the bar quite high. No grants, not high school gradings, no racial quotas. Just plain failure. And even allowance to repeated failures.
That system produced 3 out of 4 non peace non literature Nobel Prizes that Latin America hold.
In Latin America, including Brazil, there has been only 4 Nobel Prizes laureates in fields other than peace and literature. 3 from Argentina and 1 from Mexico)
May be there is indeed an example
The Nobel prize and the clown show that perpetuates is worthless as tits on a firetruck………keep your sorry ass Nobels……..
Altman’s experiment is bullshit. $1,000 a month isn’t going to change anyone’s life dramatically, except maybe a junkie. If you’re a regular working stiff, you’re damn sure not going to quit your job. People of any kind of means will be like “yeah, sure I’ll take the grand and put it in the retirement fund. .” Broke people will be like “how you like my new shoes?”
I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind having to do 1500 a month less work to maintain my standard of living while changing my lifestyle to a more leisurely one.
(1500 because that I how much I have to earn so I actually have 1000 left after taxes and such)
The real error I see in this experiment is that it isn’t a lifetime guarantee for all comers, it is an experiment based (presumably) on a known limited time and to only a small number of people that may not represent the general population that would be receiving it if it was a government entitlement sort of thing.
lol 1k a month extra would make 80% of millennials able to live rent free in the nice areas, and rent and food for free in the cheaper areas.
insignificant? hardly
You would not need a “universal basic income” or what not if 2 things happened. 1: The Federal reserve was abolished and this constant need for “2%” inflation (in other words, depreciating the currency of the nation even before you get any so government / business can pretend we are “growing”) was done away with. Then, a person could actually save money, and not need to “keep up with inflation”. It also would cause the monetary system (and citizens) to benefit from the robotic regime change, in that the cost of manufacture would come down, and deflation would make your dollars worth even more.
2: Stop the income tax. If we turned to more of a consumption tax, it would cause people to think about what they are paying, rather than the stealth of payroll withdrawal, and people would see how much they are paying for various “government” in all it’s glory, and then these agencies would find they had to be more efficient, and actually treat their constituents with respect, as they would be questioning the cost they pay for taxes when they buy something a lot closer. Business would also keep government in check, as people would buy less of an item, if the cost of it went up, not because of the products cost, but because of the tax. Think gas taxes.
This also may have the add on feature of not forcing employers to robots, as it would not constantly make cost of hiring people more and more expensive. I, as well as other business owners / investors frankly would rather have a human being answer the phone, greet people at a store, etc., but because of inflation, the constant minimum wage increases, various tax (revenue collecting at gun point) schemes of governments, healthcare monopolies etc. going to robots is a necessity, not a want…..get rid of all the crap, and the move to robotics, while still probably something good for menial / dangerous work, would slow considerably.
Of course, that would mean a lot of the people benefiting from the waste, graft, and wholesale stripmining of the middle class would have to work and innovate to earn their millions vs. just being able to steal it at gunpoint….
Simply beautiful
You sound like me in 1994. Sadly, the peaceful solutions are pipe dreams. We are a defeated, invaded, occupied and looted people. There is only to prepare and wait for the balloon to go up.
If everyone received the same basic income it wouldn’t change a damn thing. Means testing would have a affect but if no strings are attracted….oh boy.
We have been giving minorities free shit for 50 years, how has that worked out?
Mike, you win this thread.
Why does a universal income welfare payment make me imagine myself as a big, fluffy, fat sheep and Marx and Lenin are there rubbing their hands together, drooling, looking back and forth between me and a butcher table and a banquet table?
And what kind of utopian nonsense makes these people believe you can just issue free money to people and they’ll use it to somehow live a “dignified” life? I see them blowing it on booze, lotto tickets, and meth, then begging for more because they don’t have food.
The Free Shit Army is calling for a national draft!
This requires thinking about a complete shift in the entire paradigm of business. People buy products and services. If people are not longer required participate in the production and delivery of those products and services, then money is only half the equation. If robots build everything (housing, cars, food, the robots themselves etc.) and nobody works, this actually becomes the ultimate deflationary situation. Money becomes worthless. Ultimately money is a representation of the “fruits of our labor”, essentially a barterable representation of labor. No labor, no need for money. Any true discussion about this must take that into account. The complete and utter destruction of capital, in all it’s forms.
” … would love universal healthcare and free college.”
Pretty much tells you all you need to know about Herr Adams.
Regarding the give-away-free-money experiment … in the 60’s there was a good TV show called The Millionaire.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Millionaire_(TV_series)
Kokoda- I thought the exact same, what the fuck was he thinking with that Bullshit “and our elected representatives end up being more like followers of good ideas than leaders with their own plans.”
Is he that blue pilled out? No Scott, they do as they are fucking told by their handlers, or else a lot of bad things happen.
I’d like to try an experiment. How about returning the US to the Constitution?
You know:
No standing army (And de-militarize the police while you’re at it)
No income tax (Originally forbidden, later amended out)
No direct election of Senators (making them accountable to their states again)
No Federal Reserve (and all its abominations)
I can get the US a lot closer to ideal than all those idiots who think the government can do it cheaper, better and faster than the private sector.
Downside: you have to take personal responsibility for your actions