I was watching a TED Talk today about jobs is the future...
Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?
...and in the talk McAfee talks about a lot of the things we've been talking about here in terms of how the future will likely have less jobs for laborers — as robots replace their jobs. Truck drivers, construction workers, miners, call center operators, warehouse stockers, cashiers, etc., all replaced by robots in the not too distant future.
How will all these jobless laborers feed themselves and their families in a world that renders most of them unemployed? McAfee believes the following may have to be an option...
Andrew McAfee wrote:But over the longer term, if we are moving into an economy that's heavy on technology and light on labor, and we are, then we have to consider some more radical interventions, for example, something like a guaranteed minimum income. Now, that's probably making some folk in this room uncomfortable, because that idea is associated with the extreme left wing and with fairly radical schemes for redistributing wealth. I did a little bit of research on this notion, and it might calm some folk down to know that the idea of a net guaranteed minimum income has been championed by those frothing-at-the-mouth socialists Friedrich Hayek, Richard Nixon and Milton Friedman. And if you find yourself worried that something like a guaranteed income is going to stifle our drive to succeed and make us kind of complacent, you might be interested to know that social mobility, one of the things we really pride ourselves on in the United States, is now lower than it is in the northern European countries that have these very generous social safety nets. So the economic playbook is actually pretty straightforward.
Source:
Andrew McAfee: What will future jobs look like?
While it's obviously advocated by socialists, interestingly, if you look up "Basic Income" — a form of Citizens Dividend used to combat poverty — on Wikipedia, it turns out that, as McAfee suggests, some Libertarians have supported the idea...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income
Wikipedia.org wrote:Basic income has been promoted by people associated with political views that are generally opposed to the public provision of welfare services, such as libertarianism, economic liberalism, and anarcho-capitalism. These people support basic income as a strategy to reduce the amount of bureaucratic administration that is prevalent in many contemporary welfare systems, as well as acting as a form of compensation for fiat currency inflation. Notable libertarian-capitalist proponents of basic income include Milton Friedman (in the form of negative income tax), Robert Anton Wilson, Gary Johnson (In the form of the fair tax "prebate") and Charles Murray.
It is clear, however, that Friedrich Hayek did not advocate that any modern nation act to implement a minimum income. This was a concept that he attributed to his "Great Society," which was his Utopian liberal society, in the classical sense. Hayek emphasized a minimum income in the far future, and stated clearly that no wealthy countries such as the United States should guarantee any income not available to all around the world, as it would attract mass immigration and overwhelm the procedure:
Friedrich Hayek wrote:"It is obvious that for a long time to come it will be wholly impossible to secure an adequate and uniform minimum standard for all human beings everywhere, or at least that the wealthier countries would not be content to secure for their citizens no higher standards than can be secured for all men. But to confine to the citizens of particular countries provisions for a minimum standard higher than that universally applied makes it a privilege and necessitates certain limitations on the free movement of men across frontiers... we must face the fact that we here encounter a limit to the universal application of those liberal principles of policy which the existing facts of the present world make unavoidable."
Many of the people mentioned above have united in the Basic Income Earth Network, which recognizes numerous national advocacy groups. Here is a breakdown of all partisans of basic income, listed by region or country.
Geolibertarians seek to synthesize propertarian libertarianism and a geoist (or Georgist) philosophy of land as commonly and equally owned by all people, citing the classical distinction between unimproved land and private property. The rental value of land is produced by the labors of the community and, as such, rightly belongs to the community at large and not solely to the landholder. A land value tax (LVT) is levied as an annual fee for exclusive access to a section of earth, which is collected and redistributed to the community either through public goods, such as public security or a court system, or in the form of a basic guaranteed income called a citizen's dividend. Geolibertarians view the LVT as a single tax to replace all other methods of taxation, which are deemed unjust violations of the non-aggression principle.
Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_inco ... bertarians
Interesting stuff.
Nothing I say should be construed as advice or expertise. I am only sharing opinions which may or may not be applicable in any given case.
