Automationism - an Alternative to UBI?

Imagine you wake up tomorrow and your job has been replaced by AI. Despite your best efforts, you are left without opportunities to make a living for yourself. The machines have surpassed you, and under the narrow scope of capitalism, you are now considered worthless to society.

Nothing lasts forever, and that includes economic systems. Capitalism has had a good run - for hundreds of years, it's driven innovation and created opportunities for countless human lives. But it was built for a world where human labor was essential. As artificial intelligence advances, we're approaching an inflection point where that assumption no longer holds true.

Make no mistake - the AI revolution is coming faster than most realize. Companies are already racing to automate everything from customer service to medical diagnosis. While this technological leap promises incredible advances, it also threatens to leave millions without a way to earn a living. With the rise of AI, we are on the verge of an economic disruption which, quite frankly, capitalism isn't prepared to handle. The question isn't if this transformation will happen, but how we'll respond when it does.

 For many, the answer to this future is Universal Basic Income (UBI)—a policy where governments distribute regular payouts to citizen - give everyone enough money to survive, even if they can't find work. It sounds straightforward in concept, but it is fraught with economic challenges that remain to be solved.

But what if there was another option to UBI?

What if, instead of just receiving handouts, people could own the very automation that replaced them?

This is the premise explored in 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress,' a new novel that envisions an alternative economic system called automationism. Before we dive into this radical reimagining of our economic future, let's examine why UBI may not be the future to aim for.

What Is Universal Basic Income (UBI)?

The looming automation crisis has made Universal Basic Income (UBI) an increasingly popular proposal. The concept seems elegantly simple: provide every citizen with regular government payments to ensure they can meet basic needs, regardless of employment status. No complex welfare programs, no eligibility requirements - just a guaranteed income for everyone.

But here's where things get complicated.

While UBI might prevent immediate poverty, it doesn't address some fundamental problems that arise in an automated economy. Let's break down three critical issues:

1. The Healthcare Problem: Having enough money for rent and food is one thing. But what about when you get sick? While UBI can cover basic living expenses, it does not inherently provide access to healthcare. Without addressing medical costs, people could still face financial ruin from a single health emergency. To be perfectly clear: UBI does not solve America's broken health care system!

2. The Ownership Gap Under UBI:  The wealthy who own the automation still get richer, while everyone else becomes dependent on government payments to survive. Think about it: If you lose your job to a robot, wouldn't you rather own a piece of that robot than depend on monthly handouts?

3. Centralized Control: What happens when your entire livelihood depends on government payments? Political winds shift. Policies change. Benefits get cut. UBI could create a massive population that's completely vulnerable to the whims of whoever controls the purse strings.

   
   

These issues raise the question: Is there a better way to structure a society in an automated future? What if we could redesign our economic system from the ground up? As a thought experiment, let's imagine an entirely new economic system altogether, which we will refer to as automationism.

What Is Automationism?

Picture a future where instead of receiving a government check each month, you're a part-owner in your community's automation infrastructure. Every robot, AI system, and automated facility generates income - and you get a share of those profits, not as a handout - but your dividend as a stakeholder.

This is automationism, a hypothetical economic model explored in 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress.' The system is built around 'cells' - communities that collectively own and manage their automated infrastructure. Think of it as combining the best aspects of a corporation and a local government: the cell generates profits through automation, but instead of those profits going to distant shareholders, they go directly to the community members.

Here's how it works at a high level:

• When you join a cell, you receive ownership shares in all its automation

• The cell's robots and AI systems generate income through their work

• As a shareholder, you receive regular dividend payments from those profits

• The more productive the automation becomes, the more everyone benefits

But perhaps the most hopeful aspect of automationism is how it handles healthcare. Imagine never seeing another medical bill or fighting with an insurance company again. In the novel, one cell administrator explains it simply:

"As citizens of the cell, you are legal co-owners of all the automation and machines, including those which provide health care in our medical centers...You simply go to the medical center, get the treatment that you need, and the medical costs are covered by our cell. In other words, the machines pay for your health care.”

While fully automated healthcare might still be years away, automationism offers a framework for making essential services available to all, fostering both autonomy and collective well-being.

Automationism vs. UBI – A Vision of the Future

Let's get concrete about how these two approaches would shape society differently. Imagine two cities, side by side. One runs on UBI, the other on automationism. How would life differ for their residents?

Under UBI:

• Sarah loses her job to automation. She receives a fixed monthly payment from the government, just enough to cover basic needs

• When she gets sick, she still struggles to afford healthcare because UBI doesn't cover medical costs

• The automated factory that replaced her job? It's making record profits for distant shareholders

• Her income depends entirely on government policy - if it changes, she has no backup plan

Under Automationism:

• Sarah's job is automated, but as a cell member, she owns shares in that automation

• Her dividend payments grow as the automation becomes more productive

• When she needs medical care, she walks into the cell's facility and receives treatment - no bills, no insurance forms. She's legally entitled to the health care she needs.

• She has a voice in cell decisions through her citizenship shares

• Her economic security isn't tied to any single government or corporation

While UBI might prevent immediate poverty, automationism offers something more: genuine economic participation in the automated future.

The key difference? Ownership. Both systems aim to prevent poverty in an automated world. But while UBI maintains existing power structures - just with added government support - automationism reimagines who owns and benefits from technological progress.

In 'We Can Be Perfect: The Paradox of Progress,' automationism offers a hopeful yet complex vision of societal evolution. It invites readers to reflect on questions such as:

• Can automation foster both individual freedom and collective welfare?

• How do we ensure that technological progress benefits all, rather than just a privileged few?

• Is the key to a fairer future community ownership and shared responsibility?

But perhaps most importantly, the novel asks us to confront an essential question: When the machines can do everything better than us, what truly makes a human life worthwhile? Is it the ability to earn wages? Or is it something more fundamental - something that can't be measured on paper?

The automation revolution is coming, whether we're ready or not. The only question is whether we'll let it reduce us to passive recipients of basic income, or seize the opportunity to build something boldly different. Unless we design an alternate economic system to address these changes, our descendants will be born into a world where they have no power to improve their economic situation, but I am hopeful that we will build a better future than this.