[carapace]

> If the technology really advances to that point it will be very cheap to live.

Yes. But the flipside of that is that it's hard to earn money. The cheaper it is to live, the harder it is to make money.

The problem UBI solves is when most humans can no longer compete with machines in the economic system. Once that happens there are only a few options, and the least unpleasant is simply to give them (us) money tokens.

[nightski]

Humans don't need to compete with machines in the economic system. Machines aren't out to make a profit. Only humans are. The truth is if this technology really advances to the point we are talking about money won't really be a relevant concept. Money at it's essence imho is a claim on future labor. If that labor is extremely cheap, then all money is nearly worthless.

But LLMs/transformers are not this technology. We need some significant advancements before we start seeing things like this.

[soco]

Machines aren't out by themselves for anything. The machine owners on the other hand, they are out to make a profit. So human workers compete with machine workers for the profit f the owners, and at least here I'm sure we can agree who wins in the end. Because as popular the comparison with the horses vs cars might be, at some point the machines will be smarter than humans with or without AGI. From that point on, any job a human would be able to do, and I mean any job invented or not, a machine would do cheaper and probably better. Zero options for the jobless humans from that point on, zero money to spend except welfare/UBI. And even that doesn't sound very appealing, because humans will look at the machine owners with jealousy and yeah I expect quite some fuss with many only unpleasant outcomes.

[haccount]

UBI assumes the entire financial sector doesn't exist. That companies grow like plants without agency. That everyone just accepts UBI as an equal portion and that the future is rosy and fair.

The predatory institutions will still be there in the UBI future and price things accordingly, do a little hostile takeover here and there, bribe some politician and get a totally not monopoly started in as many sectors as they can.

For UBI to actually work it needs to spring out of the goodwill from a monstrous institution that brutalizes all other financial entities or from a financial apocalypse that leaves virtually no one standing.

A much more likely entry point to "free living conditions" is free as in advertisment driven data mining and resale. Think of Google being your landlord, offering free Google fiber with some extra packet inspection clauses. McMeta down the street offering free fastfood adhering to the latest "dietary meta" catchphrase. And Palantir hands out free phones with preloaded internet and bomb homing beacons to streamline military interventions against you when the gov decides you're a terrorist.

That's a more likely "UBI scenario", simplified by a few steps as whatever UBI money you'd get in a cash scenario would end up pocketed by the usual suspects anyway

[ConspiracyFact]

Advertising and data? Really? So people can’t pay for anything, but companies somehow see value in trying to sell things to them?

[emmanueloga_]

Right! Also note that some concerns in this thread include displacement of humans in jobs that are likely to be automated first. UBI mitigates a lot of those concerns.