Interestingthread. I disagree violence is inevitablefor the change but with the millionaire’s club called Congress running thingsit seems likely. The rot startedwith Milton Freedman in 1976, stating that the purpose of business was tomaximize short term profit for the shareholders. Business schools started teaching that andnow it is the normal practice. Thisinevitably leads to growing income inequality that history shows always resultsin revolution if carried too far. A better interimsolution is socialism as carried out by the Scandinavian countries. These are now rated as better places to livethan America and they don’t have large slums and hundreds of thousands homelesspeople. It would be far easier tochange the economic system that will be required by robotics and AI from thatstarting point. Communism doesn’twork. Greed is needed for motivation andeven if it started out with good leaders, Jerry Pounelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracyshows it will it fail. What is requiredis something like Universal Basic Income (UBI) where the individual decides howto spend the money. The limited trialsso far show that people actually become more productive. If UBI is set at >$15.000 people won’t be soanxious about losing their jobs to AI and robotics. Switzerland proposed $30,000.
How to pay for itis the question. It would replace allthe existing welfare schemes for starters. Healthcare costs could be halved by going to a single payer system asused by all the other advanced countries. America has spent $14.2 trillion dollars on 13 wars I the last 30years. The “defense” budget for 2018 is$700 billion. Some could come from there. Taxation would pick up the rest. Short of somedisaster, AI and technology will advance exponentially. That people have money to spend is necessaryfor the economy to grow. Too many people here are in debt and can’t afford tobuy new stuff. America could affordsomething like UBI but with our Congress a financial crash is more likely.
