Trump AI Czar Sacks on Universal Basic Income: 'It's Not Going To Happen' (businessinsider.com)
- Reference: 0177944890
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/06/06/1357256/trump-ai-czar-sacks-on-universal-basic-income-its-not-going-to-happen
- Source link: https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ai-czar-david-sacks-universal-basic-income-ai-jobs-2025-6
> The future of AI has become a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they want. The Left envisions a post-economic order in which people stop working and instead receive government benefits. In other words, everyone on welfare. This is their fantasy; it's not going to happen."
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-ai-czar-david-sacks-universal-basic-income-ai-jobs-2025-6
Good (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a socialist and good. It's a scam that some members of the ruling class have put forward because they don't think they can sufficiently control the bottom 99% using their regular combination of voter suppression, propaganda and threats of violence.
UBI is only ever seriously proposed in the context of eliminating all other government programs and regulations.
If I throw you into dog eat dog techno feudalism and then kick you even $5,000 a month that's worthless because the oligarchs are just going
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
It's unfortunate that a UBI test in a complete vacuum is not feasible. But I would say from the ones done since the 70's, the following is true:
1) People lived generally better, happier, healthier
2) Bad things did not happen in general.
I suspect the wealthy are willfully ignorant to this because they don't really want people to be happier. They want them to be better producers through creating a life of required and forced work.
Re: (Score:2)
As you said, we can't "test" UBI.
The attempted tests are always plagued by at least some of the limitations:
- Small enough so that the larger economy made no adjustments to them
- Limited duration so participants *know* they need a long term strategy
- Trivial and/or unreliable amounts of money
- Means tested, only the ones that need it pay
- No modelling of the "taxpayer" half of the equation
We have repeatedly shown welfare can be an effective way of breaking the "chicken and egg" problem of hard to get good w
Re: (Score:3)
On the contrary, welfare creates a big problem. Once people go on welfare they can't get out of it again because once they collect a paycheck ZAP welfare is gone. If they cannot live on what they make in that paycheck then too bad for them. UBI can be thought of a way to do welfare that allows a kinder transition to working again.
Re: (Score:2)
> On the contrary, welfare creates a big problem. Once people go on welfare they can't get out of it again because once they collect a paycheck ZAP welfare is gone. If they cannot live on what they make in that paycheck then too bad for them. UBI can be thought of a way to do welfare that allows a kinder transition to working again.
Why not just amend the current welfare system to correct the problem that you're describing? Why do we need something as utopian (and as out of reach) as UBI to solve this issue?
Re: (Score:2)
How would you solve the [1]Welfare Trap [wikipedia.org] without a UBI?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_trap
Re: (Score:2)
In the province I live in (within Canada), there is Income Assistance (basically welfare), and there is Disability Assistance (DA). Welfare is about $900 a month, you need to be actively looking for work to qualify, and it gets clawed back basically dollar for dollar when you're making money. This is the one that we'd talk about the welfare trap on.
DA is about $1500 a month, but it works differently. You're not required to be looking for work (because you're disabled) but there is something called an earnin
Re: (Score:2)
> Only after you hit that limit (per year) does the assistance get clawed back...some folks will thread the needle so they can work as little as possible in order to keep their welfare at maximum
Thus keeping them in the welfare trap. So it really doesn't solve anything. Thanks anyway for trying!
Re: (Score:2)
They can't amend the welfare system for the same reason we can't move to UBI. People want taxes to go down not up and they don't like to see other people they deem to be worthless get more money.
Re: (Score:2)
> On the contrary, welfare creates a big problem. Once people go on welfare they can't get out of it again because once they collect a paycheck ZAP welfare is gone. If they cannot live on what they make in that paycheck then too bad for them.
Actually, during the period of enhanced unemployment benefits during Covid, we saw a bunch of business owners complaining that they'd have to offer better salaries in order to attract workers. It was one of the reasons many red states fought to end the enhanced benefits early, because people weren't willing to take jobs that paid less than sitting around doing nothing.
Taking the "U" out of UBI would actually fix most of its problems. If it was given only to the unemployed, the negative economic effects wo
Re: (Score:2)
No that obviously won't work. If getting a job means you lose the UBI, then the job would have to offer substantially more than UBI. If UBI is enough to live on that is going to effectively mean minimum wage is huge, more than twice the rent for a single person.
Generally with UBI people can get a job and that income is in addition to UBI. The tests have shown that people do this quite willingly. It is possible the minimum wage can go way down (probably not to zero to avoid scammers fooling people into doing
Re: (Score:2)
> Taking the "U" out of UBI would actually fix most of its problems.
It not only doesn't fix any problems, it creates new ones. A huge part of the benefit of UBI is that it replaces a number of other programs. It reduces eligibility determinations to only two questions: 1) are you alive, and 2) do you have a disability that means you require more aid. The SSA is already quite capable of tracking the first thing. They do a spectacular shit job of handling the second (the determinations of whether someone is disabled enough to be eligible to disability benefits are made by peo
That's not a welfare problem (Score:2)
That's a republican trick used to dismantle social programs to improve society.
There's a major mental trick that's been used here that you're completely unaware of
Noticed that you call everything welfare. You've been trained to think of getting help from society as something that you only deserve if you are extremely disadvantaged or completely destitute.
The idea that society exists for making everyone's lives better is something you're not allowed to think. It's outside the Overton window.
I
Re: (Score:2)
Oh my.. a society that protects all of it's citizens! What a novel idea!
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure about that. The republican trick is to make sure everything is "means tested". This allows them to complain about cheating, and they completely ignore the bureaucracy needed to prevent cheating probably costs more than the payments. It also means the average person never actually gets one of these payments, since they would easily learn how exaggerated the "cheating" stories are. Yes you can buy lobster using EBT, but so few you will starve, and direct knowledge of this would defeat all the sto
Re: (Score:2)
These tests have to be means tested, since most of the questions are about the effect on lower-income people. But this is just used to select the subset of the population to test, the behavior is not "means tested" in that changes to job or income do not effect the UBI payments. IMHO this is perfectly reasonable testing criteria.
Your other criticisms of tests do apply, though the impracticality of testing the taxing effect is also a reason any accurate test has to be only of poor people. A problem I also se
Re: (Score:2)
"I'm a socialist and good."
The usual socialist solutions to problems is either mass starvation (Holodomor and Great Leap Forward), or to just drop the pretenses and get on with the killing (the Great Purge, the Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot). I'm not inclined to believe your claims you are about to make that this time will be different.
I do think it likely that the world Dorothea Lange photographed so well will return at least for awhile. Once the AIs crush the general economy there will be no one to rep
Re: (Score:3)
So every country in the Europe is not in any way socialist. Got it.
Re: Oh Jesus Christ this again? (Score:2)
Stop trying to No True Scotsman your way out of this. They seized the means of production and implemented a command economy. That's textbook socialism. Full stop. History has also shown repeatedly that it's incompatible with democracy. Look what happened when Croatia voted out socialism and why, and then how the socialists responded. In all cases, their economies were in the gutter until they legalized free markets again.
Re: (Score:2)
Requiring that UBI be deployed while eliminating all other government programs and regulations, is impossible. "The only two sure things are death and taxes." The government isn't going to suddenly stop collecting taxes or regulating things, it's literally what government does.
But let's suppose they did, for the sake of your argument. UBI only addresses the 80% of relatively normal people, living relatively normal lives. It does not address people with severe and expensive physical or mental handicaps or co
Curious (Score:4, Insightful)
I've always wondered what this post work utopia would look like.
There are certain jobs that don't fit well into the group that believes that milk comes from the grocery store.
So Who'll keep the oil rigs running, who will resurface roads or fix plumbing in a world where people will still need to do the tough jobs. And why should they do those tough jobs when they can do what others are doing - nothing?
Re:Curious (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the people living on UBI are not living well. It's the same thing as asking why people work on an oil rig today if they could just go on welfare; because they have a much better life working on an oil rig. People want game consoles, nice phones, going out to eat, etc and that will require having a job.
Re: (Score:2)
> Because the people living on UBI are not living well. It's the same thing as asking why people work on an oil rig today if they could just go on welfare; because they have a much better life working on an oil rig. People want game consoles, nice phones, going out to eat, etc and that will require having a job.
So who on earth would be agitating for adopting a system where people do not live well? Welfare for everyone sounds like something horrible to me.
While I can't say for certain that this latest thing will eliminate jobs forever - I don't think it will.
Because if people are not living well, who is going to buy the things the 1 percenters need to pad their bank accounts?
Re: (Score:2)
> So who on earth would be agitating for adopting a system where people do not live well? Welfare for everyone sounds like something horrible to me.
Because not living well is still better than not living at all. If your choices are a welfare barely-making-ends-meet existence or starving to death, most people choose the former.
Re: (Score:2)
How thick are people here???
The idea with UBI is you CAN get a job. Getting the job does not mean you lose your UBI, which is a serious problem with welfare (which this idiot compared UBI to). This means the job can pay a lot less and still be worth taking. It also means people will gravitate more towards interesting jobs.
There are problems with UBI but you are not identifying them. As I see it there will be vast numbers of job openings, limited only by regulations needed to prevent scammers from fooling pe
Re: (Score:2)
That's very interesting, I always thought UBI was supposed to provide a "living wage" for everyone.
Re: Curious (Score:2)
That wouldn't be "basic".
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, it would be.
> A living wage is defined as the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet their basic needs.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage#:~:text=A%20living%20wage%20is%20defined%20as%20the%20minimum%20income%20necessary%20for%20a%20worker%20to%20meet%20their%20basic%20needs
Re: (Score:2)
> So Who'll .. do the tough jobs
I think that for most use-UBI-to-deal-with-AI advocates, the premise is that robots will do that, and presumably would already be doing it by the time UBI is enacted.
If this is a problem (i.e. robots can't do it yet, or they can't do it as economically as humans), then you're not in a post-work situation yet, so you can't have a post-work utopia yet.
Keep improving those robots! You're not done until unemployment is over 90%, and ideally not until 100% though that may be asympto
Let's see.. (Score:2)
People sacked because of the advent of AI, actually sacked twice because one job is not enough to even buy groceries without a loan when there's a student loan as high as a mortgage to be paid of. If not also medical bills because the insurance company claims people being alive is a precondition for them becoming injured or sick.
Without any job prospect there's just one job always available, steal from the rich. Eating them is optional but fatty and spoiled food might make one very sick and increase medical
It's not a matter of "if", but "when" (Score:3)
Sorry, David Sacks...and yes, it takes a huge Sack to be so confident about something you know so little about, but while today's AI just ain't there, someday, it will be. There will be some form of "singularity" where we automate the process of building machines enough that it becomes SUPER cheap to make robots...or AI will actually get useful enough to replace human being in existing jobs...that we actual value (no writing romance/Nigerian-prince scam e-mails is not a valued job). In our lifetimes, we will see a large swath of current jobs replaced by technology.
In the past, the disruptions occurred slowly enough that job creation typically outpaced it, on balance (this is purely automation losses, not losses from globalization...a much different story)...but with technology advances and global collaboration, it's quite likely we'll have a huge disruption. We already have huge chunks of people working middle class jobs in trades that in an ideal world should employ a LOT less people...think every middleman or everyone who's profession could be argued as overhead...think accountants....if our tax laws made more sense, we'd need a lot less of those...same with lawyers...with better laws, we'd need less attorneys and have less lawsuits. Many people would LOVE to rely on AI to do their taxes or review contracts.
Imagine if the following professions were reduced to 1/4 of their size due to automation:
1. accountants
2. lawyers
3. all those people whose profession is to ensure forms get filled out correctly
4. elder care aides that clean bedpans and change sheets
5. cleaners
6. stocking shelves
7. everyone who's job is to resupply - ensure physical goods are placed somewhere at the beginning of the day (like pills for patients, food in restaurant kitchens, surgical instruments, etc)
Here's the kicker...all those will go obsolete at about the same time. We're not there yet, but we're pretty close on all fronts...all it takes is slightly better machine vision processing + slightly more nimble robot hands (which current demos hint we may be there).
UBI is not welfare. It doesn't replace gainful employment, it just lowers the stakes for people...and more importantly, it has a HUGE economic advantage. It ensures people can participate in the economy and we can have a proper free-market economy. If no one, even those with jobs, can afford anything, the market disappears....we go back to feudalism. You can already see this in failed states run by warlords.
No one has ever done widescale UBI...it's a new system...mistakes will be made....we can master it now...when there's numerically more jobs than people...and the consequences are lesser...or we can try it later...when it's needed to keep people from rioting and killing the 1%.
Re: (Score:2)
Good points. But before getting UBI, I'd sure like to see public sponsored healthcare. That would eliminate major fear and costs for a lot of people. (Speaking from the USA, here.)
Re: (Score:2)
> Imagine if the following professions were reduced to 1/4 of their size due to automation: 1. accountants 2. lawyers
No, I can't imagine that. 1. will make numbers for transition look bad and 2. will make it illegal.
UBI can't work (Score:2)
UBI is what you get when you combine communist/socialist and capitalist ideals, if tried in full, it would be terrible.
UBI just gives a bunch of money to everyone, that, if spent wisely, will allow everyone to live decently. Except that not everyone spends money wisely, and I believe it contributes more to poverty than the lack of a job. Giving these people a bunch of money will not solve the problem. You can instead give them a house, food, health care, etc... but that's not a UBI, that's just regular soci
Re: (Score:3)
No, they will live with the barest essentials on UBI. They will stay alive. It won't qualify as 'comfortably'. Also they probably won't be able to get much credit etc.
Re: (Score:2)
That kinda depends on the level of taxation applied to the corporates and those who chose to supplement their UBI by doing some additional work for extra income, which would therefore be taxable. If you have enough revenue from taxation to cover everything else with a surplus, then UBI can be raised above "subsistence level" (which the minimum it would need to be if it's supplanting most current forms of welfare) to something a bit more comfortable. OP is probably right on the "not everyone" front though;
Re: (Score:2)
The issue then is that if UBI is insufficient to live on, then it can't really replace welfare for those who can't get a job at all.
Also, in this hypothetical, where there are negligible "job opportunities", it's not like folks even have an option to augment with earned income.
I agree with the concern about "just cut checks" gives a lot of risk of the rich to change the practical value of the numbers being doled out compared to measures to assure actual access to the relevant goods and services directly.
Re: (Score:2)
If you can't get a job at all then that's a different thing altogether. No one says we have to turf current disability benefits, etc. Which aren't high enough either but different conversation.
Re: (Score:2)
Whatever you call it, if there are no jobs out there because AI automated a lot of them, then jobless people will have to survive somehow. Yes, the economy will eventually transition to a state where everyone has a job doing something, but that will take decades. Meanwhile, we know society becomes unstable around 20-30% unemployment.
We will have to pay people money to do nothing, because do nothing includes "not destroying things that enable society to function".
meanwhile the right lives in a dreamworld (Score:2, Troll)
Meanwhile the right lives in a dreamworld where the American working poor will work in sweatshops building iPhones and manufacturing trinkets that the rest of the world will buy to even out our trade deficit. Sacks has no plan for what to do when AI eliminates 50% of white collar jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Seems both the left and right are in a dreamworld. One dreams of free money for all, and the other dreams of factories for all.
BTW the only people saying AI will eliminate 50% of white collar jobs, are companies pushing their AI products, and the podcasters and journalists who make money on drama.
In other words (Score:2)
Suck it, peasants!
Sine of a prejudiced/partisan government employee (Score:3, Interesting)
"The left envisions..." could have been "Some envisions..."
The difference are multiple. The first acts as an insult to the named political section, and attempts to push the right away from agreeing with the view point - even though some 'right' wingers might do so. Also it falsely implies that all left wingers agree with that statement - another attempt to use this issue for his own personal political desires.
Finally, it refuses to admit he works for the left as much as the right, (by law), and politicizes a discussion that does not need it.
If instead he simply said "some envision', that avoids the inappropriate behavior while saying the same thing.
Without UBI everyone will have to be influencer (Score:3)
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The classic world view clash (Score:3)
He may as well just say. "They see a world that's more equal, I see a world that's more unequal."
France got to a highly unequal point in their history too. I think he should look what happens in that situation.
Full inversion (Score:2)
We don't need automation to eliminate real work. We don't need UBI to keep real workers afloat. We just need to get rid of billionaires so that the people who actually do real work have something to show for it.
UBI - can we stop tje stupid (Score:2)
Seriously, UBI is a stupid idea. First, because people *need* to be productive. Even in fantasy worlds like Star Trek, people have jobs.
Second, basic economics: where the fsck is that kind if money supposed to come from? Especially in the US, which is not far from defaulting on its massive debt.
I don't think you know what a Czar is (Score:5, Insightful)
They are members of the ruling class. They are the chosen ones. So now we don't fire those guys. You don't fire them any more than you fire your king or your emperor.
People have this dream that the ruling elite are going to be hurt by the collapsing economy.
This is coping that they're using to deal with the fact that our institutions are collapsing and need to be reorganized but nobody wants to do that because folks like things to stay the same.
The ruling elite understand that the institutions they depend on are collapsing and they are building new institutions to keep themselves in power. You are not part of those institutions.
The system they are building is called techno feudalism and it is not good for you.
Re: (Score:2)
The "ruling class" won't have anybody to rule, if the people all starve. They themselves still have to eat, who's going to feed them? They certainly aren't going to want to do their own gardening and cooking! AI won't do it for them either.
Re: (Score:2)
> The "ruling class" won't have anybody to rule, if the people all starve. They themselves still have to eat, who's going to feed them? They certainly aren't going to want to do their own gardening and cooking! AI won't do it for them either.
They are inbred and believe robots and AI will while they only need to keep enough humans alive to be entertaining and so they can still inflict suffering on at will to try and fill the insecurities deep within.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't fire them any more than you fire your king or your emperor.
You might want to check your history books before making that claim. I rather think that Charles I, Edward II and Richard II of England might disagree with you, along with Louis XVI of France. And, of course [1]Pertinax [wikipedia.org], Emperor of Rome for 87 days before being assassinated and [2]Didus Julianus [wikipedia.org] who's reign of 66 days as Emperor was the shortest of all, would laugh at your claim, if they were able to.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertinax
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didius_Julianus
Re:The AI Czar. (Score:4, Informative)
>> The future of AI has become a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they want. The Left envisions a post-economic order in which people stop working and instead receive government benefits. In other words, everyone on welfare. This is their fantasy; it's not going to happen."
> That isn't a "leftist" fantasy, moron. AI hype doesn't give a shit what color political tie you're wearing that day when Greed decides to let you go. Greed is deaf, dumb, and blind. Although Greed is often sponsored by politics, it has but one primary vision, mission, and goal. More. By any means necessary.
> This Czar either has a plan to outlaw all use of AI in Capitalism, or they're gonna be one of the worlds first Czars replaced by AI. As if that fucking job can't be replaced by a very small shell script.
Whatever the case, The concept of no-one working is a pipe dream. If an attempt to implement UBI, what to do about the work that doesn't fit the concept? There are a lot of Jerbs that need done to keep civilization running that don't go away under any present UBI system.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, the UBI promoters I've seen have largely been on the techbro right, "Don't worry about this technology, yes it'll make your job obsolete but we can do UBI instead!". I'm not saying it's a right wing idea, it's not an any-wing idea, but the idea it's "the left" pushing it is bizarrely out of touch. The left is usually the group pointing out the obvious problems, like the fact that some people who cannot work need more money than many who can work - people with disabilities for instance. Plus there's th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Trump and Musk are what you get when you allow people who are virtually children to vote and you end up with people who are virtually children running the country. I'm not sure if anything from here on in with regards to the Trump administration can be taken seriously any longer. Squabbling in a public forum. How can a country seriously come to this and have a serious and respectfully diplomatic conversation about anything? Furthermore, legalities aside, the tariffs were only ever temporary in the first place-- so why would any country attempt to negotiate while the US is holding a sword over their head when that sword disappears into a puff of smoke soon?
I've outlined what happened many times. It gets summarily rejected. Cites from people who the Dems thought were like money in the bank who didn't vote for Harris.
And as usual, the party of identity politics tries to claim racism and sexism. Of course, that's how they roll.
From Gallup:
"The Democratic Party's wide lead over Republicans in Black Americans’ party preferences has shrunk by nearly 20 points over the past three years. Democrats' leads among Hispanic adults and adults aged 18 to 29 have
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
spare me the MAGA accusations. I much prefer a
government with a lot of Democrats in it, even if I
have issues with their science denial
Well, if you don't want MAGA accusations, maybe you should not be simping for them by parroting the MAGA narrative that democrats, and not republicans, are the party of science denialism. I mean... FFS... have you SEEN the bullshit coming out of RFK, "doctor" Oz, the HHS department, the slashing of science and research grants, and all their shenanigans with t
Re: (Score:2)
So basically people couldn't put aside their personal differences enough to keep a felon from running the country.
Re: No money for lazy bums (Score:2)
People sitting around unable to feed themselves sounds like a recipe for civil war or the very least total anarchy where stores and warehouses and infrastructure are raided robbed and burned to the ground and anyone that gets in the way better pack a lunch because nobody is going to give up once this gets rolling
The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
What does *he* envision a hypothetical scenario where AI has taken over an extremely large amount of the labor?
I'll grant that it is an *unlikely* scenario, but should it come to pass that we manage huge reductions in the need for human labor, and large chunks of the population pretty much have to 'stop working' whether they like it or not, what does he imagine the outcome?
Make an argument that AI isn't going to be *that* game changing, sure. But I really dislike the argument that humans don't deserve to get by unless they are somehow needed for work. Everyone do their part, but if there aren't as many parts to be done...
Particularly rich from a spoiled guy who hasn't had to *really* work a day of his life...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that anyone would be looking to this administration to expand social spending is laughable on it's face.
Of course it would never happen while these monkeys are in charge - they've already shown that they're willing to literally kill starving children in order to save a few bucks.
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
> they're willing to literally kill starving children in order to save a few bucks.
They're not doing it save a few bucks. They're doing it to kill starving children.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
To be fair, what have those poor starving children ever done for them, right?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
How many of those poor children "give" dear leader a jet or 288 million dollars?
Re: The question is... (Score:3)
None, until child labor is legal in all 50 states as the Founders intended.
Re:The question is... [in reverso world] (Score:3)
Mod parent funny, though it's currently modded insightful and meta-moderated overrated. And though it isn't clear if he understands his own joke:
If these YUGE liars say UBI will never happen, then that PROVES that UBI is inevitable.
Me? I'm not convinced. Long, long ago UBI was actually the main debate topic for the high schools of America for an entire school year. I never did hear a compelling affirmative case for the UBI and after all these years I think the evidence remains mixed. I just started reading
Re: The question is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Are we Dallasites or Texans or Americans or Humans? Why do New Yorkers have to have so much of their federal taxes go to pay for programs in Alabama. We can debate the can but for much of this it's the will. Can people in country X pay or provide food for their starving poor, maybe, will they no. So, we need to ask ourselves do we as Americans point the finger and say shame on them not my problem OR do we as humans go we need to help our fellow man. I see both sides and if you want to argue we should ignore country X until we have A, b, and c solved here or we really can't afford it for whatever reason I understand.
Re: (Score:2)
> So, we need to ask ourselves do we as Americans point the finger and say shame on them not my problem OR do we as humans go we need to help our fellow man.
Americans would have no problem temporarily helping a nation that had a crop failure one year, or had food supplies destroyed by a hostile force. What they have a problem with is permanently taking responsibility for feeding that nation, when that nation is more than capable of feeding itself. And that became the problem with USAID. It became a permanent burden, often with the expectation that US tax dollars were always going to show up to do the job that the native people and their governments should be do
Re: (Score:2)
> I also suspect that much of USAID wasn't for humanitarian purposes as much as it was for buying influence abroad, under the guise of humanitarianism. One of the primary objections to cutting the USAID budget at places like the Brookings Institution and CSIS is that if the US stops paying foreign food and medicine bills, then China will step in and play sugar daddy. Well, good . Let China drain their coffers then. As far as I'm concerned, that's not a bug, that's a feature.
That was the point. Soft power and influence. Every medical station supplying care and every bag of food handed out, had an American flag and the letters USA printed on it. Every person knew that it was the USA keeping their family alive.
When some new resource is discovered in their lands, and the world wants to mine it to build future technology, who do you think they will grant the rights to? Who do you want them to grant the rights to? USA or China?
Re:The question is... (Score:4)
Because it's a way to give money to farmers for their excess product and it's a good soft-power move to help others.
Re: (Score:2)
It is not uncommon for the rich to help the poor. For the proportion of GNI given in foreign aid by the OECD to members, see: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The largest DAC donor, Luxembourg, gives 1.05% while the US gave a modest 0.22%, before stopping 90% of that.
China gives 0.36% and India 0.65%.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_development_aid_sovereign_state_donors
Re: The question is... (Score:3)
I always thought foreign aid was more about power and influence and being nice.
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
>> Helping the less fortunate is a form of human decency.
> The people of the United States are exceedingly generous in giving their money to charities, foreign and domestic. Americans sent almost [1] 30 billion dollars [iu.edu] abroad to foreign recipients in 2023. Americans pretty much have decency covered. But this isn't about decency. It's about responsibility.
I think it's more about diplomacy and soft power. If the US was instrumental in ensuring your survival, you're more likely to have a favorable view of the US when you're an adult and can affect your nation's policies.
Same goes for allowing foreign students to attend US universities.
[1] https://philanthropy.indianapolis.iu.edu/news-events/news/_news/2024/giving-usa-us-charitable-giving-totaled-557.16-billion-in-2023.html#:~:text=D.%2C%20Associate%20Dean%20for%20Research,future%20of%20the%20nonprofit%20sector.”
Re: (Score:3)
> I think it's more about diplomacy and soft power. If the US was instrumental in ensuring your survival, you're more likely to have a favorable view of the US when you're an adult and can affect your nation's policies.
BINGO. This was the reason for creating these international programs (food, medicine, military protection). We reap long-term rewards from those who owe their very survival to our ongoing generosity.
This outlook has been replaced by a selfish need for immediate gratification: "Pay me, now."
You reap what you sow. Good and ill.
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
How is it responsible to let food and medicine rot in a warehouse instead of giving it to people that need it; as the Congress has voted repeatedly to do so, and passed laws mandating it be done?
I don't give a fuck who's responsibility it is to feed those children - our government has a separate responsibility to follow the will of The People as expressed through The People's representatives in Congress as written and duly passed as statutory law. This government is violating those laws, and the only beneficiary of that violation is that each American saves ~$24 a year. If they want to no longer do that anymore, why aren't they changing the law in the Congress that they hold a bicameral majority in?
I would gladly give my $24 to make sure that we don't end up with tens of thousands of starving children and a drug-resistant HIV variant if it's all the same to you. Please practice those "christian values(TM)" that the Republican Party is always bleating on about, and help the less fortunate and impoverished with our excess agricultural production, won't you please?
Also, don't you think a few farmers in red states are going to miss the huge customer they used to have to sell food to called USAID? They're going to go bankrupt because now the market is going to be oversupplied with their produce, and there won't be enough demand so commodity prices are going to crater.
Don't give me this bullshit about how it's not our responsibility. That's a cop out where you just don't want to take accountability for wanting to lawlessly save a few bucks while thousands of children starve and die. It's pure evil and you sound like a fucking asshole.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> What does *he* envision a hypothetical scenario where AI has taken over an extremely large amount of the labor?
> I'll grant that it is an *unlikely* scenario, but should it come to pass that we manage huge reductions in the need for human labor, and large chunks of the population pretty much have to 'stop working' whether they like it or not, what does he imagine the outcome?
> Make an argument that AI isn't going to be *that* game changing, sure. But I really dislike the argument that humans don't deserve to get by unless they are somehow needed for work. Everyone do their part, but if there aren't as many parts to be done...
> Particularly rich from a spoiled guy who hasn't had to *really* work a day of his life...
Probably for everyone not rich or in a job to service the rich that AI cant do to "die and decrease the surface population"
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet these very same people who very obviously want the poor to suffer and die ALSO have this weird obsession with the narrative they made up that the world's population is actually collapsing and we all need to make more babies to save the human race; hence Dobbs, their attacks against LGBT people, forcing all that bible crap into the schools, et cetera.
Make that make sense.
This is a problem that should be taken seriously (Score:5, Informative)
This is a problem that should be taken seriously. Our entire economy-- our entire social structure-- is built on the premise that people need to work in order to buy the essentials to stay alive. What do we do if, and when, AI and robots do all of the work, and there simply ARE no jobs for humans?
The current paradigm is, the rich people who own the robots get all the money, and the rest of the people, who now have no jobs... what? Do they starve? What happens?
Re: This is a problem that should be taken serious (Score:5, Funny)
they revolt, and kill the bastards that have the money. it already happened, it will happen again.
Re: This is a problem that should be taken serious (Score:5, Interesting)
Won't happen. Especially if most US citizens are deemed unemployable due to AI taking over most work. Most citizens would be a write-off then.
My future prediction:
Democracy will be ending in the United States. This is because those in power know that most people are not going to be able to be employed in the intermediate to long term future, and the citizens will try to use their voting power to try and reverse this.
Here is the plan of those who are currently running the US government: Slowly strip away constitutional protections, make voting harder, close the supreme court, suspend habeas corpus, throw people in prison on "Trumped" up charges, create an autocratic state.
Now, they are in a position to deal with those pesky unemployed citizens.
They would probably have voluntary euthanasia for a while. They'll start with senior citizens, then work their way down to younger unemployed people. The eventual endgame is mandatory euthanasia after that for anyone who is viewed as a "parasite" on society (i.e. those who are chronically unemployed). Eventually, after most of the citizens are put down, there will be 10 million people left in the united states. Out of these 10 million or so, there may be 10,000 to 100,000 who are living in a life of luxury. These will be the party and inner party members. The rest will be living on a very precarious edge where losing their job will mean being taken away to be euthanized by the secret police immediately after being terminated from employment.
Let's look at what would happen if there is a widespread attempt to overthrow the US government due to the forced euthanasia program:
If the revolutionaries are looking like they are going to win and overthrow the US government, a warning would be broadcasted stating that nuclear weapons are about to be used. If they continued to capture more and more territory, I think all it would take is one nuclear explosion in the revolutionaries center of power to force them to back down.
Sure, guerilla warfare would inevitably result. But the government could threaten to explode another.
The authoritarian government would do anything to stay in power using any means necessary up to and including nuclear civil war.
Science Fiction [Re: This is a problem that sh...] (Score:2)
> They would probably have voluntary euthanasia for a while. They'll start with senior citizens, then work their way down to younger unemployed people. The eventual endgame is mandatory euthanasia after that for anyone who is viewed as a "parasite" on society (i.e. those who are chronically unemployed). Eventually, after most of the citizens are put down, there will be 10 million people left in the united states. Out of these 10 million or so, there may be 10,000 to 100,000 who are living in a life of luxury. These will be the party and inner party members. The rest will be living on a very precarious edge where losing their job will mean being taken away to be euthanized by the secret police immediately after being terminated from employment.
> Let's look at what would happen if there is a widespread attempt to overthrow the US government due to the forced euthanasia program: If the revolutionaries are looking like they are going to win and overthrow the US government, a warning would be broadcasted stating that nuclear weapons are about to be used. If they continued to capture more and more territory, I think all it would take is one nuclear explosion in the revolutionaries center of power to force them to back down...
Wow, and I thought that I was the science-fiction writer here.
Re: (Score:3)
Good luck fighting the robot army
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> Good luck fighting the robot army
Good luck to them building and maintaining anything when knowledge is criminalized, and they only operate on nepotism and favors. Those robots and nukes will all be in disrepair or paper only fakes to support their super yachts and lifestyles, the only thing they have is throwing the youth into a meat grinder which only accelerates the decline. America is rapidly becoming Russia.
Re: (Score:2)
> they revolt, and kill the bastards that have the money.
Such revolutions always end up with the revolutionaries killing the very people they were supposedly fighting for. Ask the French [1] how that turned out for them [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror
Re: (Score:2)
Bring back workhouses.
Re:This is a problem that should be taken seriousl (Score:4, Insightful)
If the system no longer serves em, they WILL need to create a new one.
When the options are starve or create a different, separate system where they can actually live, they will choose B.
Re:This is a problem that should be taken seriousl (Score:5, Insightful)
You've outlined the bad science fiction scenario that makes for an okay movie premise, but doesn't consider past history or the full implications of the hypothetical world. What stops one of these rich people from having his robots make other robots to distribute to the people without robots or using their robots to provide for those without robots? A large part of the expense of many goods and services is the human labor cost associated with providing it.
I'm not particularly concerned about the future you envision in your post. Trying to make plans about what to do concerning hypothetical futures is almost assuredly pointless when those plans are based on too much speculation to be useful when the eventual future does arrive. Most predictions about the future have historically been wrong, often in absurdly humorous ways. People focus too much on whatever they might be worried about that never comes to pass and miss entirely the things which they never considered.
I think we'll eventually get something like a UBI, not because humans cannot work, but because it's a more flexible, easier to administer, and more market-oriented form of social safety net. It may not be a perfect way of solving the problems of society, but it will be a more practical solution.
Re: (Score:2)
> The current paradigm is, the rich people who own the robots get all the money, and the rest of the people, who now have no jobs... what? Do they starve? What happens?
I believe the French answered that question in the 1790s. Vive la revolution!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> What does *he* envision a hypothetical scenario where AI has taken over an extremely large amount of the labor?
> I'll grant that it is an *unlikely* scenario, but should it come to pass that we manage huge reductions in the need for human labor, and large chunks of the population pretty much have to 'stop working' whether they like it or not, what does he imagine the outcome?
> Make an argument that AI isn't going to be *that* game changing, sure. But I really dislike the argument that humans don't deserve to get by unless they are somehow needed for work. Everyone do their part, but if there aren't as many parts to be done...
> Particularly rich from a spoiled guy who hasn't had to *really* work a day of his life...
This administrations vision for everything is, "Gimme." They're operating on the idea that if we just hand everything in the country over to those who already have plenty, everybody else can just fuck off. They don't have a vision for what happens if AI or automation happens to put the vast majority out of work. They already think the only "homelessness problem" is that there are homeless people, and I don't doubt in another round of two of escalation, one of the solutions to that problem will be to ship h
Re:The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
This hypothetical scenario is not only unlikely, but zero probability.
Just because technology exists that can replace human labor (of any kind), doesn't mean human labor of that kind will be wiped out.
As a trivial example, I recently replaced one of the fence lines in my back yard. There are machines that can dig post holes much faster and better than I can, with a hand post hole digger. Why didn't I used such a machines? Simple...cost. I don't want to spend the money to buy or rent such a machine. Most *businesses* that build fences, also don't use such machines, for the same reason.
AI also has a cost. AI tools that go beyond AI search summaries, require license fees. The more capable the tool, the higher the license fees, to the point that they often are no cheaper than humans. Many, such as Office Copilot, give you a set of "tokens" which you can spend, each request requires one token, and your subscription has a hard limit on number of tokens.
The point is, using AI isn't cheap. This alone will keep whole categories of jobs from being wiped out. And those that do, will happen over decades, not years.
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> Why didn't I used such a machines? Simple...cost.
So you were paid absolutely nothing for your human labor. Yep, that is exactly the future.
> Most *businesses* that build fences, also don't use such machines, for the same reason.
It's cost vs. benefit. If the current machines can't do it cheaper or better than you, they're not very good machines, now are they?
What if such a machine/robot is developed (and it will be)? It does whatever you do with regard to building fences better and cheaper than a human employee does. What business owner would then choose the more expensive human employee over that robot?
> The point is, using AI isn't cheap
[1]https://epoch.ai/data-insights... [epoch.ai]
Yeah.
[1] https://epoch.ai/data-insights/llm-inference-price-trends
Re: (Score:2)
> So you were paid absolutely nothing for your human labor
This is misapplying the scenario. Labor is paid for by the one who wants it done, not by the person doing it. I wanted the labor done, so I paid for it. There wouldn't be an expectation, even under capitalism, that someone else would pay me for the labor I want done. If someone else wanted me to build them a fence, that person would need to pay me for the work, and the machines to do it aren't cheap enough for me (the worker) to afford it unless I do it at scale.
> If the current machines can't do it cheaper or better than you, they're not very good machines, now are they?
That's not a logical conclusion. Complex mach
Re: The question is... (Score:2)
transition.
everyone and I do mean everyone will lose their job.
how does fearless leader feel about consumers and cake
Re: (Score:2)
I'll answer your question with another question... does it really matter that the Trump administration thinks about this problem? AI probably isn't going to take over the majority of jobs by 2028, so it doesn't really matter what the Trump admin thinks the "solution" for this is. Sure, unemployment caused by AI takeover will slowly increase over the next few years, but we're probably not talking 20% unemployment rates like it was the next great depression.
This will likely be a problem for the next administr
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He's a Trump stooge. He envisions the poor's culling through cannibalism, obviously.
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I don't see the complete eliminated of the need for human input to go away any time soon, so the best way to do that is to spread what labor is still needed amongst a larger pool.
Eventually work weeks may drop from 40 hours to 20 hours. Instead of working 40 years before retirement you might only need to work for 15 or 20 years.
Eventually if enough of it is automated it might be like the mandatory military service everyone puts in in some countries - after high school you have to put in your required 4 yea
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This is a strong case for fixing the mechanisms that demand "full time" work, particularly benefits. Need to split especially health insurance off from employment status, one way or another. We need the flexibility to reduce working hours or years without being hit by the limitations of "part time work".
Also a good way to let some folks better assemble a 'full time' work life from multiple 'part time' jobs.
While more drastic measures may be premature, I do think it has always made sense to do something to
Re: (Score:2)
> Make an argument that AI isn't going to be *that* game changing, sure. But I really dislike the argument that humans don't deserve to get by unless they are somehow needed for work.
That's not the argument. The argument is that simply giving people money all their lives with no requirements for work in return will make them permanently dependent on others. Worse, they'll come to have a sense of entitlement that their neighbor owes them a living. The West has always prospered with the worth ethic: He who does not work, shall not eat .
So, if AI takes that work away to an extent that will truly leave masses of people permanently unemployed? Then better a Butlerian Jihad than [1]Behavioral Sin [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_sink
With gov't money comes gov't strings ... (Score:2)
> What does *he* envision a hypothetical scenario where AI has taken over an extremely large amount of the labor?
The problem with Universal Basic Income is that it assumes government will pay people and let them decide how to spend their time. That's politically naive. Government may very well have to "employ" masses of people, but with government dollars will come government strings. Basically the government will dictate work for the recipients. Look at the various work projects from the Great Depression. For example:
"The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a voluntary government work relief program that ran fro
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That's why they want the chinese jobs, it will be universal basic servitude
Re:It's not that (Score:5, Interesting)
The overall labor participation percentage in 1950 was 59%. Now it's 62%. The absolute max over the last 75 years was 67% around the year 2000.
Every generation laments the up and coming generation as hopelessly stupid and lazy. You can find writing to that effect dating back hundreds of years. It's like every generation forgets they were the "lazy and stupid" generation growing up.
Re: (Score:2)
> The overall labor participation percentage in 1950 was 59%. Now it's 62%. ...
> Every generation laments the up and coming generation as hopelessly stupid and lazy.
In 1950, most women were married and stay-at-home moms, with the female labor participation rate at just over 30%. Most men did the working. We have a vastly different social situation now. The women's labor rate is now [1]57% [bls.gov]. Men are now under 67%. In the year you citied, 1950, men had an [2]86% participation rate. [bls.gov] The male rate has been steadily dropping since the 60's. So there's definitely been a change in attitudes and work ethic since the 50's.
[1] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300002
[2] https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2007/jan/wk2/art03.htm#:~:text=The%20labor%20force%20participation%20rate,and%2073.3%20percent%20in%202005.