Yes, I think we should have a basic income guarantee, but that only solves the problem of persistent hunger and homelessness.
In order to provide a dignified living for a large number of people, wage earners need to take over decision-making in production.
Under the current organization, automation and "labor-saving" means more profit for the owners while the mass of people struggle with unemployment, poor education and poverty.
If workers made decisions about their own workplaces, labor saving could actually mean less labor without a reduction in wages. Or the surplus profit could be directed to benefits like higher education for the workers.
The classic union model has been successful to a point, but has often suppressed by police violence or legal machinations. While I support unions wholeheartedly, I also think new organizations should be started on a democratic, cooperative model. That way the problems of equity are solved upfront, rather than trying to expropriate powerful elites after they've gathered up the profit.
As the power of cooperative enterprises grow, workers will be in a position to directly antagonize traditional businesses. Some means include consumer boycotts, workers refusing to work for anti-democratic organizations, and pressuring the state for favorable legislation.
This is a long struggle, but I think the alternative is roughly what Gates described: Meager wages, extraordinary unemployment, and Oligarchy.
The GBI can solve more than that, I believe. A nice property of a system that has both that and a high level of socio-cultural development (i.e., lots of art, music, sports, etc.) is that it can free people to participate in an "arts, sports, and leisure" society. People will play games - cheap ones, and lots of them. We do this now, and has Cowen has pointed us, the western world is excellent at developing an endless supply of cheap entertainment. We'll likely do a whole lot more of that. How many people would play WoW or such 12+ hours a day at 15/month if they didn't have to work, and had all the basics taken care of? A lot, most likely.
Other things we'll probably be looking at will be extremely powerful, long-lasting, side-effect-free (or tolerable-side effect-having) drugs. That road of course leads to wireheading, but I think that collectively denying that as a possibility now is extremely naive.
Another nice property (especially if you throw in things like a real universal health care system) is that the "sharing economy " jobs go from looking borderline exploitative to perfectly acceptable, along with all other kinds of freelance and part time work.
With the GBI obviating the need for a minimum wage, people who are marginal in the current system wage-wise would simply be able to opt out, which would likely bring the wages of those jobs up as it would be much harder to find people to do them.
This would also apply to jobs up the wage chain; all the econo-dreams about "perfect labor fluidity" (sans perfect mobility) would be possible. Job sucks? Quit. Go elsewhere. Can't find another? Sit around and study new things, then go get a new job. Or don't. All possible with a (properly indexed and region-specific/cost-of-living-adjusted) GBI.
It'd be a different kind of freedom than we're used to in the US, but one that would be much more appropriate given the way things are going.
That utopian world sounds very Brave New World dystopian.
Of course having something is better than nothing, but part of me feels like people wasting their life away chasing simple pleasures like games and recreational drugs is dehumanizing in a way. Is that really what we should aspire to?
The larger question is: what do you aspire to when the world just keeps going on its own every day (so you're not needed for that) and the Big Accomplishments in fields like science are getting ticked off the checklists as quickly as skilled people can organize to get through them (so there's no guarantee you'll have some Important Task waiting for you).
If we want to talk Huxley, his answer was: when all else is done, time for spiritual enlightenment.
I support unions, but i think they need to be in the model used in sweden:one union for blue collar worker, one for white collar workers , which leads to distribution of power among all employees(and far greater negotiation power) .
This is far better than the union per company , because some unions get rich and powerful , and abusive , while other suffer.
Most unions in the US are associated with their particular trade, not a particular company, as far as I know. There is SEIU for service employees, UAW for auto workers, USW for steel workers, etc. In addition to these, there are federated organizational bodies such as the AFL-CIO and Change To Win which determine certain union strategies/positions.
I don't understand why you draw a distinction between "white collar" and "blue collar" labor. All wage labor is fundamentally about an individual or small board of directors dictating the terms of production for everyone else. The Board then makes all the decisions about what to do with the output of that production, and what to do with the profits which come from selling those outputs. Under the current economy, workers have no right to make any of those decisions, which are critical to their lives.
Wage workers should not be divided as 'blue collar' and 'white collar'. Instead, they should be united against this system of wage work. Their interests are the same: shorter hours, a better standard of living, and more personal autonomy.
In order to provide a dignified living for a large number of people, wage earners need to take over decision-making in production.
Under the current organization, automation and "labor-saving" means more profit for the owners while the mass of people struggle with unemployment, poor education and poverty.
If workers made decisions about their own workplaces, labor saving could actually mean less labor without a reduction in wages. Or the surplus profit could be directed to benefits like higher education for the workers.
The classic union model has been successful to a point, but has often suppressed by police violence or legal machinations. While I support unions wholeheartedly, I also think new organizations should be started on a democratic, cooperative model. That way the problems of equity are solved upfront, rather than trying to expropriate powerful elites after they've gathered up the profit.
As the power of cooperative enterprises grow, workers will be in a position to directly antagonize traditional businesses. Some means include consumer boycotts, workers refusing to work for anti-democratic organizations, and pressuring the state for favorable legislation.
This is a long struggle, but I think the alternative is roughly what Gates described: Meager wages, extraordinary unemployment, and Oligarchy.