Basic Income Is Posthumanist

I just realised a possible explanation for why transhumanists and accelerationists often push universal basic income as a solution. It's because they think most people and their possible endeavours aren't really worth anything, and somehow just giving them money is the most humane thing to do.  Also, if you suddenly find yourself in a situation where you can't afford to keep everyone alive, you can just cut off the spigot. 

I realised this because of two things.

First, this was the week where in my main Hertie School course, Governance and Politics of AI where I talk about the social impacts of AI particularly on the future of work. In fact, my lecture title slide reads: 

AI, ICT, and the Future of Work

old subtitle: what are people for?

new subtitle: what are wages for?

My lectures open with the students discussing the readings (for marks), but it wasn't until towards the end of my own half of the lecture that I noticed that no one had brought up basic income, which used to be their favourite topic (but has never been mine). I asked my colleagues at Hertie School whether something had changed in the earlier lectures, and Anke Hassel said she was teaching the failed UBI experiment in Finland, but thought the momentum had gone out of the movement more generally. (NB: it doesn't sound like the experiment totally failed to me, the thing about wellbeing is interesting.)

Second, for some reason (probably because it documents me talking about AI safety, and there's been a controversy about that this week where I was quoted out of context,) one of my several older blogposts preserving testimony I gave to members of the British Parliament was getting hits. Rereading it, I was struck by the statement (new emphasis added):

I want to close by focussing on employment. Employment is a form of security, it binds a local community together. 

• If we have money, we want to pay people partly so we have more capability and power, but partly because it makes us feel good, it improves our security because people depend on us.
• Similarly, if we have a skill, we want to get people to pay us, partly because that gives us more capability and power (money), but partly because it makes us feel good. It again improves our security because someone depends on us.

So I want to go even further out on a limb here and also disagree with something Barack Obama said this week. I think better than basic income is raising minimum wage and ensuring various employment conditions are met. These are proven means of getting more money to more people so they can hire each other.

This was when I realised that indeed, if we disconnect a bunch of people from the recognised economy, and give them less motivation to find a place for themselves within the states and nations they constitute, then we do them a disservice. We make them expendable, at least in the eyes of tyrants. 

Also no doubt salient, I have been reading Personal responsibility under dictatorship, 
because of something my coauthor Alex Stewart reposted on bluesky.