On Friday, Musk said that he believes the solution to taking care of human workers who are displaced by robots and software is creating a (presumably government-backed) universal basic income for all.
"There’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation," said Musk. "I'm not sure what else one would do. That’s what I think would happen."
Not saying its more workable, but one other alternative is to cap the number of hours a human can work relative to how much they get paid. So if 10 human jobs are replaced by 9 robots and a human earning 10 times as much, they have to work 1/10th the time, forcing the employment of the other 9 people again for the rest of the time.
Obviously theres all sorts of ifs, buts and exceptions, but the principle would be to divide up the remaining human labor into progressively smaller chunks as it shrinks.
As we automate more.. we'll have to figure something out. The largest hurdle is that those automating things are the ones with all the money… eliminating jobs for those who need it. We'll need to get them to let go of some of that and not further the divide in the haves and have nots.
Indeed. While I advocate Basic Income in general anyway, I do worry a little about the social implications as jobs reduce. Already people on welfare are resented. Will we get some sort of extreme class split when the large majority of people are unemployed?
I think we will unless we get on that with a quickness. We already see it to some degree as things are right now.