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Automation, economic collapse, basic income slavery: Our dystopic future?

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Sott.net
Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:58 UTC

Everything is awesome.

A thought occurred to me a few days ago about a potential chain of events that might transpire in the near future. It felt like a eureka moment; some things just kinda clicked and suddenly made sense when considered together. First, a quick background. There is a lot of talk that developments in artificial intelligence and automation will automate many jobs and create huge numbers of people whose skills are no longer useful because machines will be able to do those jobs. And worst of all, they won't be able to re-train and/or get different jobs because those jobs too will be automated - there are no replacement jobs coming. This video covers this really well:

This seems like a real possibility (in many ways it's already happening in many industries), though it's hard to say how "smart" these machines will be and how much they will be able to ultimately automate. But let's say they're smart enough to render billions unemployed and unemployable. What happens to all the unemployed? A very popular solution commonly proposed for this chaotic period is basic income. Here is a good video that explains that concept:

In addition, we have a very real prospect of economic collapse as well as a total elimination of paper currency, with all transactions made digitally, probably with some sort of microchips.

It seems like artificial intelligence, automation, and basic income concepts are starting to gain a lot of attention and popularity. It is happening incrementally but already people like Bill Gates, Steven Hawking, and Elon Musk have talked about the dangers of AI, and because of their popularity, this is bringing it into mainstream consciousness.

Many countries are starting to take the idea of basic income seriously. Notably, Finland is starting a trial on it:

Finland is about to launch an experiment in which a randomly selected group of 2,000 - 3,000 citizens already on unemployment benefits will begin to receive a monthly basic income of 560 euros (approx. $600). That basic income will replace their existing benefits. The amount is the same as the current guaranteed minimum level of Finnish social security support. The pilot study, running for two years in 2017-2018, aims to assess whether basic income can help reduce poverty, social exclusion, and bureaucracy, while increasing the employment rate.

France might try something similar too:

For the past two years, the think-tank Génération Libre has been promoting the creation of a monthly "Liber" — consisting of €450 per adult and €225 per child, balanced by a standard 23% tax on all revenues, including on capital.

"The simple deduction of the total of the Liber (which is basic and unconditional) from the Libertaxe (which is proportional to revenues) automatically leads to either a 'negative tax' (for the lowest incomes), a sum of money paid in cash by the local authority, or a 'positive tax' (for the highest incomes), a net contribution to the local authority," write economist Marc de Basquiat and philosopher Gaspard Koenig in an article in support of the payment.

There is a push to run the experiment in many other countries as well. There was effectively a basic income in Libya, though they may not have called it such, until that spectacularly successful social experiment was blown away by NATO in 2011. Gaddafi's people didn't implement it to offset the effects of automation; it was introduced there because it seemed like the decent thing to do.

Anyway, it seems like automating jobs away will push the Powers That Be to consider their options, if this is indeed on the agenda. What to do with the vast majority of unemployed humans?

So here's my suspicion about what might be happening here:

Automation increases corporate productivity dramatically, allowing the rich to get dramatically richer while the majority are jobless and broke as they are not the owners of the machines/facilities to benefit from them. Of course, this means we don't have any money to buy stuff either. So in the initial stages of automation, companies who are laying people off and replacing them with machines will benefit by saving money. What they haven't considered is the economic effect overall - people without jobs can't buy whatever these companies are selling. But of course those few companies who do think of the larger context and are loyal to keeping people employed will be driven out of business due to narrow-minded competition automating and out-competing them on price and quality. This results in the inevitable social and economic collapse - people without jobs can't buy anything, big shocker! What now?

The collapse may also be engineered - in whole or in part - and linked in some way to paper currency. But these people are slick; they like to make things "make sense" and not be completely out of the blue with no plausible explanation. Then people are left shrugging thinking, "well we knew it was coming, it was inevitable, it wasn't some freak incident no one saw coming." And using automation as a catalyst just makes sense - it's growing exponentially, many famous people are seriously concerned, it's bound to lead to an economic crisis, and all they have to do is gently guide it and manage the outcome in their favor. No need to "engineer" it arbitrarily.

Just as the riots are starting, the government implements basic income. This gives everyone an allowance and purchasing power. But this is where they drop paper currency in favor of fully controlled electronic-only currency. They will insist this is the only way basic income is possible on a truly large (possibly global) scale - to curb the corruption, money laundering, etc., that might compromise it. Whatever the stated cause of the collapse, people will be desperate so no one will really argue too much; they'll just be happy to get money again.

Ultimately, of course, if machines produce all goods, money is actually completely unnecessary anyway. But our social mentality doesn't allow for that idea just yet, and controlling money (and retaining the concept that it's necessary) means controlling people - this time much more directly and much more profoundly. People won't work for a living - but they will literally only live if their digital money handout isn't cut off. Who will rebel then?

Automation could offer a utopia - there is nothing wrong with letting machines do the annoying drudgery and allow humanity to stop laboring at pointless and stupid soul-crushing jobs and instead focus on whatever fulfills them in life - travel, reading, education, creative pursuits, friendships, families, whatever! But the elite won't just let us be free - any beneficial technology that should liberate us will actually enslave us even more. We might not be working for a living, but they will still get 99.99% of all the benefits from automation and we will get the "free" scraps - just enough to keep people content, but also fully dependent on the handouts from the elite who own the automation (it won't be socialized).

The key word is decentralization. Both automation and digital currencies can be decentralized. One thing is for sure: such technologies, once matured and implemented on a wide scale, are incredibly powerful. Either that power is concentrated in the hands of the few at the expense of everyone, or in the hands of everyone enabling freedom and abundance the likes of which has never existed.

Automation has one really pesky issue: right now the elite need us to produce. They want to control us but they need people mining resources and producing products and services, so they can't really get rid of us and still have their wealth and comfort. Someone has to actually do the work! Once machines do everything, the vast majority of humans are no longer needed to sustain the flow of resources and production and development of technology. We become obsolete with respect to production. Once we have no more value to them, what happens then?

Our value as human beings (not as worker drones) never mattered to them. Just look at the homeless, or the poor neighborhoods in inner cities. Detroit is a great example. Bottom line, people who are not needed for production are discarded at best - they form into slums and barely register on anyone's radar. This will be everyone when fewer and fewer of us have an actual use to the system. Just flushed down the proverbial toilet like Neo in The Matrix when he was unplugged.

So either we will control the means of production and be free from drudgery and labor, everyone will be fed and housed and supported by the amazing productivity of machines, or we enter the worst dystopia in history and for the first time in history are actually completely useless to the elite, who can now fully sustain themselves with machines. I really don't see any middle ground - it will either be absolutely terrible for the vast majority or absolutely awesome.

If history is any indication, we are screwed. Productivity is already dramatically increasing but jobs pay next to nothing, work hours are longer than ever, and people are working multiple jobs. The current state of technology makes each person armed with advanced tools 100x more productive than a person armed with a shovel and an abacus 100-200 years ago. But why aren't we working less and benefitting from this today? All the smart people from 100 years ago logically predicted a lot of leisure time and prosperity in this time, they just completely neglected to consider the psychopathy and greed that completely prevents this. The benefits have been realized from tech and productivity, but they are pooled at the top. The divide between the rich and the poor has never been greater. So if we continue on this trend, it sure doesn't look like it's heading in the direction of a "really awesome" future all this could enable. The top will continue to benefit until we are no longer needed at all. Then we are going into camps at best, or killed off at worst.

Sorry for being a Negative Nancy. The future is open. But it's just not likely to be nice given what we know of the past and present. And this isn't the far future. This dramatic shift is already starting and will be in full swing 10 years from now, unless something intervenes. And the intervention would have to be rather dramatic - massive natural disasters, global revolution. I don't know if cryptocurrencies will ever be simply allowed to take over - you think they won't put up a fight to prevent decentralization of money/power?

If the dark version of this scenario is at all plausible, I can only hope that an ice age or nice comet cluster comes soon after to end the misery and wipe the slate clean.

Reader Comments

rbateman1 · 2016-09-29T20:15:34Z

Extra-Terrestrial Equalizer

It is likely, given the history of nations through the millennia, that Cosmic forces/Terrestrial upheaval will unseat the power bases. The computerization/automation trend will go the way of all trends: It will terminate.

katesisco · 2016-09-29T20:26:36Z

What..........

we have recreated is Dickensen England. Remember those tales of odd people we couldn't quite fathom? Here we are again. The way England went forward was to colonialize. Well, surely you've heard those goofy tales of inhabiting Mars? Bingo! We cant even survive the voyage due to the radiation, tardigrades non withstanding. Ahhh, Its the hope that keeps is alive!
I fully suspect that we will patronize the power structure and take our morning meds like good little boys and girls. We will always be needed in that respect. Wars will continue to use people; we will be like rats, killed by the millions yet not exterminated.
Our current state of the world makes me think that there is a grand collusion behind the scenes with the ultimate goal of crashing the global economy down to the floor all the while preserving capitalism and the few elites so we can be allowed to agitate for the minimum safety and pay at work beginning at the bottom up.
That star wars show where the elites (few) live up in the clouds depending on an extracted ore to fuel their lifestyle without having to see, hear, think about how it gets there and the slaves (many) down below doing the mining exposing themselves to intelligence-degrading radiation---------that us.

Cousin Scootie · 2016-09-29T20:50:49Z

No one...

is going to provide a "Basic Income" to float the phony economy.

I've been repeating this for a few years now - we are moving into a post industrial economy. Like the pre industrial economy, most of us won't be needed for the economy to operate. As long as we aren't a drag (Basic Income!).

In pre industrial times most people worked on the family farm, and that provided a subsistence lifestyle along with a bit of slop to spend on the currency economy.

Since post industrial switch would require a massive land reform (taking it away from large owners who own much of Govt), most will have to make due with urban farming. Unless large scale commercial growing becomes profitable in urban enclosed farming operations. Either way, large scale food producers don't want a big switch to folks growing their own, any more than large energy providers want a decentralized grid. I don't know how this will play out, but as more people stop participating in the currency economy or are driven out of it, they are going to need to provide for themselves somehow. The technology to grow in urban and enclosed spaces exists now, as long as power costs can be reduced through a big improvement in storage capacity, enabling renewables to take over from fossil fuels.

If governments try to continue financing their operations with a general income tax, things are going to take turn for the BananaRepublic model very quickly, and I suspect this is our future to some extent. This will flatline the currency though, as Govts will need to constantly borrow or just plain print ever increasing amounts of money (already happening).

The other possibility - professional drivers are going to be the first large industry to collapse overnight to automation. It remains to be seen how all those thrown out of work will respond - perhaps by waging war on these replacements. Other industries will follow.

Either way we have a real butt grinding future breaking on us like a wave, sooner than any of us might think. Keep yourselves fit!

Ailios · 2016-09-30T13:19:03Z

Hey Cousin Scootie! I found your comment about a post-industrial society of the outmost significance. We are already beginning to see the events leading to such a society unfolding as more and more of those dumped by the exhaustion of capitalism (or those that just had enough of the consumerism/competitive lifestyle) start to move towards a "subsistence lifestyle", creating communities and eco-villages where in some cases even resort to creating their very own, independent currency/financial system.

We can see workers retaking abandoned factories in Italy, Spain, and Greece, and setting up cooperatives where everyone owns the means of production. Unemployed people occupying public squares and urban sections to form collectives. And let's not forget about immigrants all over Europe supporting each other through informal economic activities (like in Barcelona).

We also see communities forming eco-villages and applying alternative methods of working the Earth, of using local resources, of building ecological and natural houses, of applying permaculture, etc. We can even suspect that solidarity economies are beginning to emerge in all these cases: bottom line, People are beginning to exit capitalism = post-industrial society.

So basically it's good bye for the >. New modes of production are slowly developing -these are the seeds that may become dominant and thus overturn the capitalist mode of production on a large scale, as Marx's materialist theory outlines. Of course, this means (I believe) the breaking of the modern nation state. You make a good point also about Federal Governments expenditures. The new mode of production has no need to sustain such enormous political entities -a new form of political organization will arise (some propose direct democracy -I don't now). No body needs a federal government anyways safe if you keep insisting on the outdated idea of a Father/Motherland, of your Nation, your race, etc. We don't need any of that anymore.

So, do you have a blog /website where you write?

Cousin Scootie · 2016-09-30T15:46:24Z

@ Ailios

I do not have a blog, but if I get laid off it will be one of the first things I do!

There's reason to be optimistic - I like your observations re events in Europe.

I suspect there will develop parallel economies on a larger scale, but the Nation-state isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Also, if you look at the number of people involved in the currently growing parallel economies and semi-communal living, it is an extremely small percentage of the population, insignificant except as a good sign of what is possible but how scalable? I wonder how much resources would be needed, how many people can be provided for using this model - current urban farming trends cannot feed more than a miniscule fraction of the population.

High density metro areas that are largely outside the currency economy already exist - we call them slums and they're growing at an incredible pace globally - far faster than the positive models.

For sure though, unless mankind agrees to limit robotic substitution there's no reason to think it won't completely replace 80% or more of the workforce, heralding a sort of inverted Marxism/Capitalism where a huge majority of the people not only don't own the means of production, they are no longer exploited to a profit either. A dynamic like this in theory couldn't last for long - what would underpin the value of an issued currency if most of the people not only can't earn it, but are actively reducing their dependence on it? Then again, look at the phony derivatives market. The value of the US dollar is now largely nothing more than a gentleman's agreement among the very wealthy. The amount of currency in the hands of the working classes that is circulated and backed up by actual goods, services, and existing raw materials is barely a fraction of the total "issued" dollars. If my numbers are correct, the global derivatives market is now worth nearly 2000 times the total amount of circulating currency (in every form globally) plus all known physical gold, sliver, and cryptocurrencies combined.

Not just interesting times, but unprecedentedly interesting. Under the backdrop of collapsing fiat currencies, global climate change and pollution, collapsing labor force participation, increasing robotic substitution, genetic tampering, continued population growth, we have a growing number of people who are no longer willing participants in the rigged Global Capitalist economy. They want a change, and not just a new job and a new car and toys. They (I) don't have any road map. We all cannot go "off grid", there isn't enough land and resources. Some other way needs to be employed, but the conditions to make it possible don't exist yet (decentralized power grid, land reform), at least not from my POV. Heck, if you started talking about "land reform" in the US people would look at you as if you had a second head - even dumber then the first!

Yet, without food stamps, unemployment, disability etc etc, we'd already be at or past the point of talking about it - the economic foundations or lack thereof, already necessitate a major overhaul.

I'm hopeful for the best, but frankly I'm terrified for the future my kids will be living in.

sass · 2016-09-30T10:06:29Z

Yes, correct. We will beg them for a basic wage for all under the guise of economic equality. In exchange, entry into the system will be granted.

There will be no prisons, anyone who breaches will be cut off from supplies.

Ailios · 2016-09-30T15:00:47Z

Hey sass,
Your comment reminds me of what Deleuze termed the new "Society of Control" replacing the old "Disciplinary Societies" studied by Foucault:

>

Here's an excellent post on the subject, providing fresh and significant insights:

[Link]

nedlud · 2016-09-30T11:03:07Z

ego speak

I have a dream.

In my 'dream', I gain control and possession of all the other dreamers. Every single one.

I will work steadfastly and persistently and ferociously until this is the only dream there is. The one and only.

The one and only!

I am rich and getting richer.

I am famous and constantly increasing in fame and majesty.

I am all-important and ever becoming more important and more exclusionary and exceptional.

And I am greedy beyond any shadow of any doubt.

I am and will be forever, God.

signed,
technocratic ego-centric man, aka Satan

Have a nice day!

nedlud · 2016-09-30T11:09:31Z

don't break the oath

Hey people!

Do you know what rules and regulations are for?

And why there are so many?

They are in order to cut out your heart so that it might be eaten by Satan.

Once your heart is cut out and eaten, you are one with Satan Almighty.

Don't break the oath.

Follow all rules and regulations.

Every single one.

Be a good little technocrat.

ned,

OUT

nedlud · 2016-09-30T14:32:31Z

the making of puppets 1, 2, 3

Chucky says:

Step 1: Make a head. Make sure it is big and fat. This represents your leadership.

Step 2: Make a body. Make sure it is big and fat too. This represents your dutiful followers (organized members) and also your not-so-dutiful 'followers' who are pressed into slavery and servitude through various degrees of punishment and torture.

Step 3: Make a lot of strings. These strings go nowhere in particular, but must be EVERYWHERE. Make sure that you make a HELL OF A LOT OF THEM. These strings will ensure that the puppet grow bigger and fatter, and more ugly and violent and evil, every day. And this is really cool to watch!

Chucky says.

Now, have a nice day.

Don't break the oath.

CHUCKY SAYS!

ned, out

Leland Mellott · 2016-09-30T23:06:29Z

New Money

When all debts in this world have been forgiven and when a large portion of this world's population has agreed that money is being "earned" in time instead of by labor, a planetary power shift will have taken place. Many lives will be saved.

Top Gun · 2016-10-01T03:42:33Z

I'm glad to find such optimistic comments in response to the article above. Automation started as a back up human brain when in critical operations the human brain failed. I really prefer manual control and simplicity.
AUTOMATION IS NOT PROGRESS !
As far as economic collapse is concerned, it's already happening worldwide and for specific reasons destroying entire countries (Japan, U.K. , Greece...). Those working today will never reach pension time alive. Even if they do, as pension funds are continually being slashed, they 'll have to keep on working even after pension time as the money they 'll be getting won't be enough (they are not enough already).
Also, there's an old trick : If people start protesting for more money, those who have it will open the "money tap" for a while and people will cool off. That same trick is used over and over again.
Basic income is indeed basic slavery, they throw you a bone to get through the day and that's it.
But there are alternatives, counter measures : Either you start to operate illegally with your "ass covered"
or you deploy counter measures : Let me specify : The governments, are the CEO's of every nation, not the capital behind them that appoints them.
So basically if you start boycotting all the laws, paper rules and regulations and right is on your side even if you are dragged to court , you will be acquitted . That's why courts exist and I have seen them working properly all my life.
Btw, I have my own website, in which I express my right to speak my mind. That was the main reason I engaged with the internet, to relay info most people didn't have, still don't have access to which of coursed got me into trouble. I couldn't care less, because I'm doing nothing illegal, but the intel community hates my guts for exposing them. In the past 19 years they 've tried every trick on the book to nail me but all efforts
failed miserably. Counter Intel are not as smart as they believe they are and the first mistake they make is a strategic one, to underestimate the opponent.

ultra · 2016-10-01T06:22:30Z

Machines

....are rubbish at anything that involves a bit of artistry.

But yeah, will be interesting to see how the driverless Ubers thing plays out.