On the universality of UBI

our societies and cultures will have to change when there are fewer jobs available and in general less work for humans to perform. In order to avoid total chaos, new mechanisms are needed for redistributing the ever-increasing amount of wealth and prosperity our machines and algorithms will be producing. UBI could be a part of the puzzle, but I sincerely hope no-one thinks it’s a magic wand that’s going to solve everything. I also believe that the fairness problem needs to be addressed in one way or another, but I’m just not sure yet how.

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Labour Day thoughts on Automation and the Future of Work

To summarize, for a long time I have been very optimistic about technological innovations and about the future in general. I’ve often even described myself as a tech enthusiast and optimist. While that’s still largely true, I’ve come to share similar worries that Kevin Roose described in his book. Making the societal and political changes needed for enabling us to live good lives in the future will be a monumental challenge. One that I sincerely hope we will succeed in solving, but knowing how incredibly irrational humans occasionally can be, it’s not at all certain that we’ll be able to rise up to the challenge.

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