Artificial Intelligence and Basic Income

For big problems, big solutions. If the advent of artificial intelligence means the disappearance of millions of jobs, what needs to be done is to separate the concepts of income and work, and make sure that people have income even if they don’t have a job.

Well, that’s fine. As a letter to three wise men, it sounds pretty good. But there are a few problems that it’s not a bad idea to review.

On the one hand, this view implicitly assumes that more jobs will be destroyed than created, thus contradicting the optimistic idea that progress has always been made, and that as some jobs are destroyed, others are created. Once this is recognized that this is a fallacy, and partly it always was, although that is another discussion, we find that there will be winners and losers, and we are not talking about a panacea, but about something that, like a rainy season, will benefit some and harm others. And no, it will not benefit the poor. You can be sure of that.

On the other hand, we are in the same situation with this issue as with climate change. This is a local problem and cannot be solved with local solutions. The theory, very beautiful, says that robots will do the work, those robots will be taxed, and the money will be distributed among the people. Doesn’t it sound wonderful?

But the reality is that there is no reason why the owners of these robots shouldn’t just take them somewhere else, where they can’t be taxed and thus have no way of paying out the famous universal income.

If the solution were global, it may or may not work, but it would be a possibility. But without a global government and global sovereignty, this idea would only serve to destroy the first people to implement it.

Insisting on a basic income at the expense of the incomes of those who can easily move is stupid, evil or both. And this is even when it is said that it is also convenient for them to be able to sell the products produced in those automated factories. No, really: the factories are not dedicated to selling their products so that they can be paid with their own money. Can anyone imagine a fruit seller putting a ten euro bill at the door of his fruit shop so that people come to buy apples and grapes? Well, they are, but there are still people who keep it up without laughing out loud.

The balance will be hard, and we still don’t know where it will come from. But the robots won’t pay for it. We will pay for it, as always.