Par for the course.
It’s not my panties I worry about. The whole point is that automation should enable use to do what we want. My worry is whether they will be happy playing video games all day, even if they don’t have the discipline to do some non-renumerative, but long-term rewarding work.
Heck, if I was younger, I’d be terrified for me. I have the psychological need to not feel like a parasite, but I’m pretty certain that in the absence of any financial pressure, I’d be super dilettantish about producing ‘useful’ software for others, and then hate myself for being useless and getting nothing done.
(One reason I don’t buy lottery ticket for super jackpots. I think winning enough that anything I might earn in this lifetime would be trivial would be fatal for my psychological health. But I wouldn’t have the guts to give it all away (what about my grandchildren,etc.))
If we’re looking at a post-work world, it better allow for a good standard of living. Incentives to work only matter if there’s meaningful work that generates real wealth to be had.
Also, non-renumerative work can fall into the same trap. My mother-in-law hasn’t been paid a dime in the last 50 years, but she works herself to exhaustion serving everyone else. She resents the hell out of it many days, but that same work-ethic drives her and she’s incapable of letting go.
Yes, I find it all too easy to get pessimistic about our robotic future where the good news track is where we get UBI and possible large-scale ennui. I don’t even want to contemplate the bad news track.
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Well, in a sense it is because you’re projecting your own insecurities about your younger and perhaps current self on “them.” Some people can be dilettantish tinkerers without the angst and ennui you (or admittedly I) might personally experience. If they’re unhappy with what they’re doing or not doing, they’ll have the freedom to do something else without becoming homeless or starving.
I know quite a few people (heirs, dotcom 1.0 guys) who lucked into the equivalent of a lottery win and now have what is essentially a Basic Income (albeit one more generous than a Universal one would be). Some are happy video-game playing pothead trustafarians; some work only when it suits them (for more money, for fun, to stave off boredom); some dabble to varying degrees of success in entrepreneurship or investing or making art or volunteering; some go back to school; some are stay-at-home parents or homemakers; some work 40+ hours a week for a company or the government; some are professionals with vocations. And, yes, some drift through life in the kind of existential angst about purpose you describe. There are lots of outcomes and lots of options and combinations thereof.
What might help in the case of a UBI is an accompanying educational effort aimed at illustrating those options for people who, unlike the heirs, have never had options (sort of like the financial education that should be given along with the money to super jackpot winners). That would be as valuable as the monetary UBI benefit, and would probably head off the large-scale malaise you’re concerned about.
Any realistic UBI would provide a lifestyle slightly better than that the current members of the American working poor have without the requirement of work: enough for the basics of the Maslow pyramid (shelter, food, health insurance, local transit, etc.) every month plus a little extra spending money. If someone wants more, he’ll need to get a paid job or gig or other income stream (preferably meaningful) to supplement the UBI. As @some_guy puts it, it’s a mundane future, but it beats the Tory and GOP neofeudal or eliminationist or laissez faire solutions to deal with an unnecessariat created by automation.
Fair enough. I certainly don’t think everyone will be affected (although it would certainly hit my peer group). However, I could easily see it being a huge source of depression. Of course, the alternative to UBI being the starvation of most of the planet, I’m a big fan of UBI as we enter the age of automation and 2-5% employment rates over the next century or two.
That’s a suitable attitude for the next 20-50 years. But in the long run, there’s not likely to be any paid gigs for almost any of us.
Or as one friend put it. “You’re the only person I’ve met that thinks Star Trek is a dystopia.”
Absolutely correct. The “happy” path may not be all that happy. But the “bad” path is a nightmare.
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