I started to notice a intense automation and Artificial Intelligence Investments from companies and that made me wonder, what would happen or what should be done with the people who can’t be trained for a new job and can’t use his current skills to to get a job.
How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?
The goal of every society should be to free us from wage-labor to pursue other values beyond the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid and generating even more wealth into pockets of 0.1%:ers. AI and automation should (in theory) free us to pursue research, art, improving life of others and other things that are actually valuable for the society and humankind.
Universal income is one of the solutions floated around this and it’s been tested in some countries, but we’re not quite there yet and in any case, most societies need to go through a transition periods where they switch from current free market capitalism to a system where only a minority has to do wage-labor.
In the meanwhile, most wealthy, civilized places have social security safetynets in place even today. These provide minimum income for those who can’t participate in wage-labor for some reason (unemployment, disability etc). Minimum income through unemployment/social security benefits combined with free healthcare and education are essential building blocks, even in a society where majority or workforce is still trapped in menial wage-labor systems and this is really nothing new.
Of course the United States is one notable exception to all of this.