320 Years of History
Gold Member
All of your 'solutions' focus on one single thing: suppressing the change rather than actually addressing it. That is not a solution and will ultimately fail miserably. Resisting change (or even trying to slow it down) is not only pointless but very counterproductive.Well, the Third Industrial Revolution aka Digital Revolution is already in full swing.
We have seen real inflation adjusted after tax Middle Class incomes stagnate and go down since 1970 and this is just the first negative aspect of robotics, computerization and automation.
Other risks such as a Robot Revolt (i.e. Skynet), or Automated error in services that cannot be fixed (Hello Steam!) and so forth are all risks from the Digital Revolution we all face.
So how can we make this transition to a mostly Jobless economy more positive and less threatening to the average worker?
1. Disincentivise Automation. Give tax breaks that encourage companies to continue the hiring of people and less the automation of the work force. We dont have to rush to fully automate and there are benefits to letting it percolate slower.
2. Require all automated services have an human element that the customer can appeal to if/when they have issues with service. Think you Robo-doc got the dermetitis diagnosis wrong? There must be a human doctor on staff to appeal the robo-diagnosis to. Same goes to every other service from online stores to an automated medical staff.
3. Require all maintenance and installation of Robots and other automated devices be done by human beings.
4. Require all code written for a Robot or automated device to be at minimum 51% of all top level code to be written by a human being. All other code must be 10% human origin and signed off on by a human for passing validation and integration testing.
If we can reduce the speed at which the automation and robotic conversion of the work force occurs, then we can have a much more stable and risk free transition to our technological utopia.
One possible idea that has actually been floated around even in conservative think tanks has been a guaranteed basic income. Essentially a check that the government pays you for being a citizen. In a society with a super majority of needed goods, this idea actually makes a fair amount of sense as the incentive to get people to contribute is no longer a necessity.
We could even tie in some form of community service or such to receive this "basic income" even if it was just a couple hours a week volunteering to pick up trash or coach a kids' sports team, or whatever. Who could object to making that a requirement to receive this basic income, and if they did complain, cut them off, b/c no doubt no matter what system we use going forward, we can't have a situation where some people contribute nothing whilst earning the same as others who will. The problem with this of course is convincing liberals that they have to be tough at times. No one will starve, those who are currently doing nothing for their welfare would certainly do something for it if they had to, it just takes someone saying "no you can't have that for doing nothing" this of course excepts those who are incapable of doing so.
Red:
Though you didn't end your sentence with a question mark, I presume it is a question (rhetorical or otherwise). It's answer can be found here.