Technological progress / AI / UBI / Work / Meaning
Both Bernie and Joe discuss their worry about the wave of fast technological progress wiping out a large part of the jobs leaving the workforce struggling for survival and also meaning. They both share that UBI would be a solution - at least during the transition - that solves the issue. My take is that what neither of them realizes is that we change when we need to change. Sure we shouldn't let people starve because their job has been automated away but UBI is a transition solution ONLY and not a long term one. Why? Because as both of them highlight the meaning we derive from work should progressively be replaced by something else. That something else can't be a top down elite driven idea, it needs to be a bottom up change in the population. They both say that work gave meaning since always to humans but that is not true. In abundance periods people were spending a relatively short amount of their lives working for essentials and a large part of their lives in playful, spiritual, self-development endeavors. The meaning through work is only here when there is scarcity and scarcity came in waves in the past. Neither of them discusses that once you remove existential fear from humans - say with UBI and robotized production - they will start changing. We don't spend our days watching youtube or television because it's the only thing we know how to do when not working but because it's a way to silence the voices in our heads fed by the existential fear itself. It's a coping mechanism. When we are relatively safe and at the same time relatively unencumbered by the trivialities of providing for our existence we become way more creative as children.
