Thread by @scottsantens

I just walked into a store, picked up something to eat, walked out, and automatically paid for it. No lines. No cashiers. No human interaction whatsoever. Relatively cheap prices. And in my 9 mins of shopping I created valuable data based on what I looked at. This is the future.

Something I want to stress here too is that I created data even by NOT buying things. What did I do? What did I look at? What did I almost buy? What did I pick up and put back? I could have bought nothing and still enriched @amazon with my ambient data.

basicincome.org/wp-content/upl…

I included the above link for a reason, because I recommend reading it. The point here is that with pretty much everything you do, you're creating data and metadata. This data feeds and trains AI. AI starts doing your job. You just trained your own replacement. UBI is your right.

For those new to the concept of cashierless shopping, we also don't interact with a cashier when we shop online. We've been eliminating the job of cashier for years and it will continue, just as we eliminated the job of telephone switchboard operator.

Demand more time, not jobs.

The amount of labor market disruption we're on the verge of seeing is an exponential curve. It'll happen fast and no governments are moving fast enough to make sure prosperity is shared instead of further concentrated.

That's not a recipe for victory. It's a recipe for violence.

So is the answer to halt? To move backwards? To "Make Earth Great Again" where everyone is toiling away in a world free of machinery and full of drudgery? Of course not. The answer is to prepare for the future, & make it work for us, for ALL of us. That's why UBI. It's essential.

Once we finally free ourselves from the requirement of selling our time to each other in order to exist, that's when we can finally focus on being human, and what that truly means, as a social, empathetic, and endlessly creative species.

Now THAT's a world of human interaction.

The responses to this thread have been fascinating. One thing that stands out is the concern of a less social future, but do we really want a society where our interactions are paid for and coerced with the threat of poverty? Consider better interactions.

medium.com/basic-income/t…

People don't exist to make sure you don't feel lonely buying a sandwich. There's a far bigger world out there of truly meaningful human interactions beyond doing your bidding in order to avoid going hungry. With UBI, our interactions can be based on civility instead of servility.