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RE: The Monsters, Inc. Argument for Unconditional Basic Income: How to convert an economy based on fear to one based on joy
Interesting read, and I like the correlation with Monsters, Inc.
How would you address the problem with 'work that no one wants to do?'
Not many people likely take joy in taking out the trash, or in cleaning the sewers. I don't know how many people would necessarily volunteer to clean out the bathrooms of an office, or dig up the graves of the dead.
Wouldn't these types of work still require some high level of incentive for the individuals?
When you stop to think about it, our labor market is broken for work no one wants to do. When it comes to pricing for a job with low demand, employers should have to do more to make that job attractive. That should involve higher pay, better hours, better benefits, better conditions, etc. The fact those jobs tend to pay the least, shows that there is no free market for labor. People are doing those jobs because they have no ability to refuse them.
This is also bad for productivity and automation. Basically, humans are competing against each other, bidding down their wages to make their labor cheaper than robots, because they need the money to live. Thus, the cost of labor is below what it should be, preventing greater rates of automation.
We want robots to do the machines we don't want to do. If people ask too much to do an unwanted job, that makes automating that job that much more attractive.
I cover all of this some more here: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/why-we-should-all-have-a-basic-income
Good point, forgot about automation. Robots are probably the answer.
Automation and AI, in my mind, is the primary reason for discussing a UBI in the first place. Won't take long before machine learning takes a good portion of information-based jobs away.
More money, I guess. Those jobs nobody wants to do, but somebody has to, would warrant a higher salary.