I’m all for an UBI but a future where people have no purposeful jobs, no way to actually make a real difference to anything around them, is a bleak one.
I would love such a future. I would be perfectly content focusing on my hobbies and playing video games rest of my life. Perhaps the UBI would be sufficient even for a little bit of travel.
Even if in the unlikely case UBI gets implemented, there is no way payment will be equal. Why would the rich give up their positions of power? They’ll just get more security and bribe politicians, enough to build private armies and fortresses so the poor and starving can’t touch them, and have no choice but to live out their lives in squalor…we’re seemingly headed that way according to many even without pervasive autonomous machines taking away all work.
> The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.
I can't see a future in which almost every system (both physical and virtual) are not automated and optimized by autonomous entities.
What do you do when everyone is out of a job?
If you don't want pitchforks and riots in the streets, you give everyone UBI and housing so society doesn't collapse.