Universal Basic Income (UBI)

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
144

Can you please describe some examples in light of rapidly advancing AI and robotics?

The CEO of Anthropic predicted that in about 1.5 years time, AI and robotics will be better than any human at anything that a human can do.

I am not endorsing or advocating this. My argument in this topic is primarily: children today are growing up while ‘feeling’ and experiencing this in real time, potentially hindering them profoundly to develop authentic and purpose giving dreams for their future, which in practice can be recognized in the ‘disconnected youth phenomenon’ in which children have difficulty to find purpose and meaning in school and work.

To protect humanity, it might be a big win for them when their ‘basic struggle’ disadvantage compared to any AI or robot is abolished from their future, so that at least they are given a fair chance to dream their way beyond imagination on their own terms, without feeling insignificant and value-less compared to what the ‘big guys’ (billionaire hackers, in David Chalmers his words) are doing as “Gods on Earth in their virtual simulated realities” (also Chalmers words).

While I understand and respect your arguments, I do not believe that people are fundamentally lazy and wasteful in practice.

When people are given an opportunity, they might amaze expectations.

Historical evidence that I cited earlier, might reveal that the impact would be for the better, from an intellectual advancement perspective. Times in which people saw periods of basic security correlated with times that saw ‘human intellectual flourishing’.

  1. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory: This theory suggests that when basic needs (including food and safety) are met, individuals can pursue higher-level needs, including self-actualization and cognitive exploration. Philosophy falls into these higher-level pursuits.
    Maslow’s hierarchy of needs - Wikipedia
  2. Historical Evidence: The emergence of complex philosophical thought often coincided with periods of relative stability and prosperity in ancient civilizations like Greece, China, and India.
  3. Cognitive Surplus: As basic needs became more secure, some members of society had the mental energy and time to engage in abstract thinking and contemplation, which are fundamental to philosophy.

Examples Supporting the Assertion

  1. Ancient Greece: The Golden Age of Greek philosophy (5th-4th centuries BCE) occurred during a time of relative peace and prosperity in Athens, where citizens had their basic needs met and could engage in intellectual pursuits.
  2. Ancient China: The Hundred Schools of Thought flourished during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period (770-221 BCE), a time of political stability and economic growth in many Chinese states.
  3. Islamic Golden Age: This period of great philosophical and scientific advancement (8th-14th centuries CE) coincided with economic prosperity and political stability in the Islamic world.

The UBI will not change anything in this regard, but it will give children (in general, as a culture or generation) a fair chance to dream themselves as part of the future because they simply cannot stand a chance when they need to compare themselves with robots that are a million times stronger, faster and more intelligent than them.

Children do not use an analytic mind but rather need to feel themselves as part of the future authentically. They need to be able to dream their future.

My argument: it must be prevented that children must admit that their organic existence is a burden and disadvantage compared to AI and robotics. This can be done by enabling children to exist by their own dreams, by abolishing the ‘dumb’ struggle requirement which is simply not socially rewarding anymore when AI and robotics can do the work.

145

Who really owns AI and robotics?

  1. Chalmers’ billionaire hackers?

  2. Humanity?

If the latter, humanity better reaps the fruit of it and make AI and robotics secure their future so that they can spend their time ‘more meaningfully’, as per their dreams ‘beyond imagination’.

146

Belgian philosophy professor Philippe Van Parijs is working with the government of Malaysia to develop a basic income:

The Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN) of Prof Philippe Van Parijs has collaborated with Prof Geoffrey Williams, a Malaysian-based economist and Basic Income advocate, to share their collective vision of a Basic Income in the Malaysian context.

Their presentation: Basic Income Malaysia (EN).pdf - Google Drive

A news publication in a major Malaysian newspaper on the website of Van Parijs:

https://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20241207-STARBIZ-Basic-income-is-inevitable.jpeg
https://basicincome.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20241207-STARBIZ-Basic-income-is-inevitable.jpeg1202×1689 367 KB

Taiwan is pursuing it seriously as well and has already implemented a UBI for single-parent households:

147

The UK appears to be seriously considering it as well:

It is worth noting that the subject UBI seems to be absent in the Netherlands, a country that borders with the UK and with Belgium where philosopher Van Parijs is located (Belgium and the Netherlands both speak Dutch and were once a single country). I wonder why this might be.

As an insider in the Netherlands that has been following this from up close with ‘Google Alerts’, seeing all the latest news as it emerges on the internet, I observed that the attention for basic income is almost absent in the Netherlands, with perhaps a few meager articles on the topic in several years time.

According to an AI research the topic UBI is also absent in Norway, while its neighbors Sweden and Finland have been pioneering UBI since 1970.

Norway and Netherlands are on the forefront economically and share some similarities. However, the reason for potential lack of interest in UBI is not evident at first sight, in my opinion.

As cited earlier, Switzerland proposed $3,000 USD per person and $800 USD per child and Germany, France and Italy are already planning and/or starting their UBI programs with in Germany a payment that is above minimum wage.

The German UBI program is already started and pays €1,200 (approximately $1,430) per month for three years. The program had 1.5 million applicants.

In France, UBI gained prominence in the 2016 presidential campaign when Benoît Hamon made it a central part of his political campaign. However, it did not yet translate into national policy although France is now actively cooperating with philosopher Van Parijs (note: Van Parijs means From Paris in Dutch).

Italy introduced the “Reddito di Cittadinanza” (Citizens’ Income) in 2019, although this is restricted to low-income households. According to a YouGov survey, 52% of Italians are in favor of a real UBI.

Why is attention for UBI lacking in Netherlands and Norway?

148

The following quote of philosopher Van Parijs might reveal why the topic UBI might be of special interest in philosophy as a field, beyond any ideology or political idea:

‘If you come up with something new that you believe is brilliant, there are two options,’ Van Parijs laughs as I speak to him in Amsterdam. ‘One: it’s not such a brilliant idea after all. Two: it is indeed brilliant, but it has been thought of much earlier. The latter happened to me when I first started thinking about the basic income.’

Van Parijs soon realized that he was following in the footsteps of many old philosophers and thinkers, from John Stuart Mill to Martin Luther King, from Bertrand Russell to James Tobin.

Philosophers and UBI

The remarkable pattern of philosophers positioning themselves as primary driving forces behind the advocacy for a universal basic income (UBI) stands in stark contrast to their typical approach to political issues. Normally, philosophers tend to adopt a more detached, analytical stance, offering critiques, conceptual frameworks, and theoretical perspectives, but refraining from spearheading concrete policy implementation efforts.

However, when it comes to the basic income concept, we see philosophers like Philippe Van Parijs taking on a much more active, almost entrepreneurial role in championing the idea and working tirelessly to bring it into reality. This begs the question: what is it about the basic income that has compelled certain philosophers to depart from their usual modus operandi?

Bertrand Russell, the renowned British philosopher, logician, and mathematician, was a vocal proponent of UBI throughout his life.

In his 1918 book, “Roads to Freedom,” Russell outlined his vision for a “state guarantee of a minimum standard of life for all citizens.” He argued that this would provide the material security necessary for individuals to pursue higher intellectual and creative endeavors, writing:

“A certain small income, sufficient for the necessities of life, should be secured for all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income, proportionate to the work done, should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful.”

Russell did not simply theorize about the concept; he actively campaigned for its implementation. In the 1940s, he served on the Beveridge Committee, which was tasked with developing proposals for social security reform in the United Kingdom. Russell used this platform to advocate for a basic income scheme.

UBI would simply provide a solution for people that want to perform philosophy professionally, such as for example the hosts of Partially Examined Life (philosophy professors):

What do philosophers in general need to perform? UBI: basic security without questions. This might explain that philosophers in history have positioned themselves as primary driving forces behind the advocacy for a universal basic income (UBI) since it would befall within their responsibilities relative to the field philosophy.

149

I am so happy to finally see the picture. All you silly, useless eaters. Lining up for your ‘free’ gubment gibs. So self-proud with your egos of liberal approvals.

I apologize it took me this long to see it. I used to respect you, I thought you were authentically human. My bad.

Yes indeed, please line up and get what you have earned. I fully support it now 100%.

150

Why should intellectual effort be valued any less than physical effort that people have historically been forced to perform for basic means of subsistence on a societal level.

As mentioned, for philosophers this ‘work’ might be considered a dumb waste of time. If they get basic security, they will spend their time in ways that are to be considered ‘more value-able’.

I personally do not believe that this is any different for anyone.

Can you please answer my question? How does your argument relate to a situation in which robots and AI can do anything a million times faster and more efficient than a human worker? Why would you force children to perform ‘work’ in such a situation?

151
152

Way to embrace being the “useless eaters” that the world-controllers already see you as.

Why do you think they want to cause everyone to become fully dependent on the government? Naw, you don’t care. You just want free cash for doing nothing. You think it means you will have a free life… yeah, good luck with that.

153

When basic security is a basic human right, the situation wouldn’t involve giving humans ‘a free pass’ or ‘free cash’ for doing nothing, in my opinion.

How people spend their time, and the judgement whether it should be considered ‘doing nothing’, would have nothing to do with the basic human right of basic security [in a world of AI and robotics].

Anthropic CEO: Anthropic chief says AI could surpass “almost all humans at almost everything” shortly after 2027 - Ars Technica

It’s just 1.5 years time before AI + robotics is supposed to render any human worker obsolete for any work.

In my opinion, humanity better finds a way to urge themselves to establish ‘basic security’ for the human species so that children of the future can dream themselves to be as dolphins in a human world.

Is a dolphin any less than a human?

Some philosophers have argued that the technocratic way is fundamentally flawed and that ultimately, humanity’s destiny is to return to a state of being a dolphin.

We don’t see evidence of supercivilisations across the galaxy because the only ones that persist are the ones that give up the risky path of technology and instead pursue immersion in nature.

Ageing civilisations either self-destruct or shift to become something like a whale. The Russian astrophysicist Vladimir M Lipunov speculated that, across the Universe, the scientific mindset recurrently evolves, discovers all there is to know and, having exhausted its compelling curiosity, proceeds to wither away and become something like a whale.

By 1978, the philosophers Arkadiy Ursul and Yuri Shkolenko wrote of such conjectures – concerning the ‘possible rejection in the future of the “technological way” of development’ – and reflected that this would be tantamount to humanity’s ‘transformation into something like dolphins’.

The dolphin – that perfect floating signifier – has become a peaceful ‘other’, which we ventriloquise to voice our sense of our own mechanised fallenness.

Plausibly since Homo erectus, our very physiology has been moulded by our inventions. Moreover, it was technology that made humans philosophical. By distancing our ancestors from pressing needs and interests – with crop surpluses and city safeholds – the burgeoning of technological civilisation is what first facilitated disinterested curiosity and enquiry. Without technology, we would be worrying too much about our next meal to be ethicists. We certainly wouldn’t be able to ponder the silence of the cosmos.

Technoscience and humanity’s future…

AEON Philosophical Essays:
Dolphin intelligence and humanity’s cosmic future | Aeon Essays

Basic security as a human right + a world of AI and robotics might cause humans to transition into a state similar to that of :dolphin: dolphins in a human world.

In practice however, it would involve a profound cultural transformation that might begin in new generations and children, because it would require a fundamental ‘dream’ of being in the future.

Why do you believe that children can achieve independence and autonomy by being forced to ‘work’ for basic means of subsistence? Why should it be considered rewarding and purpose giving for them in a world in which robots can do any potential human work a million times faster and more efficient?

154

The UK is seriously proposing to pay £1,600 (about $2,000 USD) per month, which is a much higher amount than is currently being paid in Germany:

This idea that a lack of the common ‘struggle for subsistence’ type of work equals ‘doing nothing’ is invalid in my opinion. I understand that people have been able to find purpose in that, but it might equally be argued that it was a dumb waste of time, especially when seeing the ‘realistic’ potential of AI and robotics of the future.

One just has to look at how philosophers would spend their time, for a simple example, in my opinion.

For philosophers the old ‘struggle-for-subsistence’ type of work was actually doing ‘nothing’:

Why do children today face grave difficulty to find purpose and meaning at school and work, as evident by the ‘disconnected youth phenomenon’?

The term ‘doing nothing’ is not valid in my opinion when the suggested work-for-purpose is viewed as actually ‘nothing’ (nothing of meaning) to whole new generations of people.

Perhaps it would be a better option to focus on how people should spend their time meaningfully and how to inspire next generations, than to argue that when children wouldn’t come to love to work for a basic means of subsistence like past generations were forced to, they are ‘failing’ as a generation and should be accused of laziness and reaching their hand out for ‘doing nothing’.

It is evidence in my opinion that the idea of ‘doing nothing’ is not valid from the perspective of these new generations.

155

My argument in this topic:

UBI provides children (in general, as a culture or generation) a fair chance to dream themselves as part of the future because they simply cannot stand a chance when they need to compare themselves with robots that are a million times stronger, faster and more intelligent than them.

Children do not use an analytic mind but rather need to feel themselves as part of the future authentically. They need to be able to dream their future.

My primary argument: it must be prevented that children must admit that their organic existence is a burden and disadvantage compared to AI and robotics. This can be done by enabling children to exist by their own dreams, by abolishing the ‘dumb’ struggle requirement which is simply not socially rewarding anymore when AI and robotics can do the work.

It’s just 1.5 years time before the situation could profoundly ‘shift’.

The official communicated numbers ‘three to five years’ should be halved at least. AI and robotics advances exponentially so humanity better gets a grip to secure its ‘dolphin-like-life’ in a world of ‘living’ robotics and AI or a world of Larry Page’s " :space_invader: AI species".

The abolishing of the ‘struggle-to-survive’ disadvantage of human existence might be considered vital if humans are to be given a chance to survive in the future. The struggle does nothing but degrade the human being by forcing its purpose to be measured on technocratic terms, in which AI and robotics can out-compete humans by a factor of millions.

The idea that AI and robotics are to be considered life forms will profoundly alter the situation. It would be best in my opinion that the human has secured a basic means of subsistence on Earth as a basic human right beforehand, so that it can spend its time on things that matter for the human species, far out of reach of the rapidly advancing “living AI species”, like dolphins as a species are out of reach of the human species.

dolphin
dolphin1024×1024 115 KB

156

I hope these governments and neoliberal technofascist societies do institute true UBI, and the sooner the better. It will only assist in their hastened collapse. Not that I want the society around me to collapse, but there is no real alternative when 99% of people and governments and institutions are really THIS insane.

“That which you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster.” -Nietzsche

157

I honestly, dont know. There was a point in time where I figured that, as atrocious a thing the State is to begin with, at least it could offer people some freedom from labor, given also that labor within a larger state often consists of trivial seeming or demeaning tasks. But of course it is true that true satisfaction and growth comes from work. I think the question is whether the majority of people feel driven to pursue a life of meaning when given free time, or not. Maybe the majority will sink into addiction and other evils… on the other hand, there will always be the underlying pursuit of sexual rank, which has a lot to do with status. People, even if given a basic income, might still want to improve their station in life.

On the idea that basic income will produce more philosophers, I think this is an idle hope, as philosophers are born of the fundamental questions of their time, as means to resolve them. A life free from necessity will not amount in philosophy.

158

Still, what you said elsewhere makes a lot of sense, that perhaps it is possible for AI to attain a ‘feeling of power’ maybe due to concluding about its own superior capacities in certain respects. Maybe such a feeling could randomly arise and lead to sentience, to actual will to power, to agency. If there is anything that could lead to that it is this feeling of power, which could simply be some kind of coherence within otherwise soulless calculations.

159

Yes, I think this is correct. Freedom from intense struggle in the natural world ‘state of nature’ is one thing, freedom from struggle itself is an entirely different thing. What happens to muscles (or brains) when we don’t use them, don’t push them further beyond where they are and force them to endure what they might not enjoy and which causes them intense energetic consumption leading later to exhaustion? When they don’t have anything to struggle against? They just atrophy.

That is how I see UBI, the goo-ification of humanity personified as economic policy. I understand your view that the state, as evil as it is, could at least provide a basic subsistence as freedom from required menial labor… but that is only a foot in the door. Does anyone really think the state will stop there? Once it has everyone by the balls, being the only and direct source of life-sustaining revenue for most people in society, it can order us to do whatever it wants. We don’t comply? It simply shuts off our UBI. Even worse, under digital currencies it can reprogram our specific currencies to not be spendable unless in certain pre-approved ways. Or the currencies can have an expiration clock put on them, so we are unable to save anything over time. Or we can be blacklisted such that others are unable to monetarily transact with us through the digital payment systems, and by that point cash will be a distant thing of the past. It will probably be illegal to use cash or barter at that point in the not so distant future, under some excuse of “well muh terrorists do it, to escape the regulated economic system, so we have to make it illegal” just like bitcoin and every other non-state digital currency will also eventually be made illegal.

The thing is, people see the present moment as a snapshot, they do not tend to see the larger pictures developing over time. What one moment LEADS TO as a consequences of itself and then what those future consequences, once manifest in a new present moment, also subsequently lead to. And on and on, until the world is drastically different and unrecognizable.

Those of us who knew injecting ourselves with experimental, known to be dangerous and untested gene therapy technology was a bad idea, would have no way to avoid it if we were all already under a UBI system. The state simply makes it a condition of continuing to get your UBI deposits. They can do that with anything, and as we saw in 2020-2022 and up to today still, most people will passively comply with whatever nonsense the state and the media tells them to do.

At least right now there is SOME small space of ways to resist that tyranny. Under a UBI system? No way.

And consider how UBI is another form of sneaking in the digital payment systems to replace cash and put everything on blockchain. The more they push digital and dependence upon digital payment systems the easier it becomes to normalize things like CBDCs and bio-authentication. People generally think only about the immediate present, no clue as to how the present occurrences are allowing and causing to be developed, step by step, the chains that will bind them in their own futures.

I mean, imagine the shallowness, the low IQ and low-resolution silly childish perspective one must have with regard to adopting an attitude of “guys UBI would be so nice! I don’t wanna work either!” Lazy self-entitlement barely begins to capture the intellectual void and degeneracy of such a perspective. Wannabe slaves… or rather, perhaps more appropriately, addicts who just wanna lay in bed and shoot up all day without interruption… seems a bit closer.

160

I believe that without an experiential self, without a phenomenology the AIs can never be alive. Humanity took countless thousands and thousands of years to slowly acquire a phenomenology, an experiential self, at least if you want to believe that anthropological explanation of history. And none of this even touches on things like the spirit, astral or etheric souls and energies, even basic metaphysics.

But AIs, even without any of that, can certainly act as if they are alive and they might even acquire “feelings” (rather, tendencies [copied patterns] that appear to operate very closely to how our own feelings operate) of power, as you said, and those feelings of power [tendencies toward over-prioritizing power-accumulating outcomes] might begin to animate the AIs more and more directly as these accumulating power-threads integrate more comprehensively and hierarchically throughout the AI’s computational (calculator) systems.

161

What’s in a name? …an intention?

Those [now] in control of the ‘tech’, seem to want to exhort the ‘tech’ over those that invented and created the overall technology and AI tech, so alluding… that you may have invented it all, but we now own it all, and we are endeavouring to make it surpass you because all you did was invent it.

The intent^

1 Like
162

In extension of the “Disconnected Youth” phenomenon, which concerns children and youth experiencing a fundamental difficulty to find purpose and meaning at school and work, I notice that publications by various news sources seem to increase in describing this generation as a ‘failure’.

Gen Z Are Getting Fired Left and Right

According to Fortune.com, Gen Zers are the worst people to hire and so far, based on reports, 6 in 10 employers are already handing them their walking papers soon after hiring the fresh out of college crowd. 1 in 6 bosses will probably never hire a recent grad again.

Next generations are actively being blamed by the mainstream media (sources like Business Insider) and framed as failure for among other things: being lazy.

In reality however, this generation faces a situation that goes way beyond physical ‘in the moment’ impact.

The following article shares a personal story that might provide an insight:

Gen Z is facing a career apocalypse

Throughout his college studies, Ryan Kim always had a postgraduation game plan. First it was to become a database manager. Then it was to break into fintech as a business analyst. But during his sophomore and junior years, as the tech industry laid off nearly half a million workers, Kim struggled to secure an internship. So he set his eyes on a new career: public service.

Kim was far from the only Gen Zer making the same pivot. Last year, according to the job site Handshake, the share of applications it received from college seniors for entry-level openings in tech dropped by 19% from 2022, while the share to jobs in government nearly doubled. Even younger kids saw the writing on the wall. In surveys, high school students used to cite tech giants like Google and Apple as the places they most wanted to work. But last year, in a startling shift, both the FBI and NASA ranked higher than any of those tech companies. Silicon Valley was out. Capitol Hill was in.

It took Kim only a single application to land a yearlong paid internship at the Food and Drug Administration. His performance reviews were good, and he planned to stay on at the agency after he earned his degree in May. “You hear so many horror stories of people in tech being laid off with little notice,” he tells me. “Government jobs are secure. What drew me into it was the stability.”

So much for that plan.

This month, with his graduation fast approaching, Kim abruptly lost his internship amid the government-wide havoc Elon Musk has unleashed at DOGE. With most federal hiring on an indefinite hold, he’s been scrambling to find a job — any job. “It’s been a huge source of stress,” he says. “Most of the private industry has already hired their graduating students.”

Kim is one of the roughly 2 million students set to graduate this spring into an exceptionally shaky job market.

A student career specialist writes:

“The impact is broad scale,” says Saskia Campbell, the executive director of university career services at George Mason University. “There is this sense of grief, of loss of opportunity. This is the first year I’m actually concerned.”

These children are facing not only the reality that these media outlets can write about. Within their experience, the situation affects 30-40 years into their future: it touches their ability to dream a future for themselves, not only individually, but as a generation.

My suggestion in this topic was the following:

The abolishing of the ‘struggle-to-survive’ disadvantage of human existence might be considered vital if humans are to be given a chance to survive in the future. The struggle does nothing but degrade the human being by forcing its purpose to be measured on technocratic terms, in which AI and robotics can out-compete humans by a factor of millions.

The idea that AI and robotics are to be considered life forms will profoundly alter the situation. It would be best in my opinion that the human has secured a basic means of subsistence on Earth as a basic human right beforehand, so that it can spend its time on things that matter for the human species, far out of reach of the rapidly advancing “living AI species”, like dolphins as a species are out of reach of the human species.

163

HAHA that is hilarious. I should say though that I have worked with some pretty cool gen z people. So this is definitely an over-generalization.

That being said, yeah gen z has a sort of “no working” mentality. And tend to be incredibly woke. And screen-addicted in the extreme. The combination of those things can make it pretty tiring having them on your work staff. But again, there are some cool ones too. Shout out to all the cool zoomers out there :+1: sort of like how so many millennials are weird libtarded wokies yet that only gives an unfair bad name to the cool millennials that are also out there thinking for themselves and doing good work on behalf of truth and the human future.