I believe OP was referring to a utopian Star Trek style UBI where all things are provided with matter replication. Essential life at that point is the betterment of ones self and evwyone around them.
But you are correct in our world currently UBI would work more as a cushion or buffer. It would ideally allow individuals that are stuck in jobs they hate, to move to jobs they actually enjoy and are good at.
It would mean less fear of loosing a job and give workers more power. You would not be able to live on the wage at your current life style, but it would allow you to at least survive in someway if you lost your job.
I believe the best way for something like this to get implemented is by taxation of businesses that have automated they workforces. For example a car production line has removed human roles and replaced them with machines, or a store removed cashiers and replaced them with self checkouts.
HubertManne@kbin.social 5 months ago
I disagree on automation taxation as that is exactly what we want for post scarcity. What we really need to do is tax all forms of income progressively. No lower corp or capital gains or such. land tax possibly to. if it was like star trek that is a bit hard to handle as many of the things I might work out would theoretically already be solved.
NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Good point on the taxation, as taxing automaton may result in less incentive to automate.
IMO the Star Trek type utopia would only work if we had replication technology like they have in the show. Those machines that essential make anything you want from food/water to material things out of thin air.
HubertManne@kbin.social 5 months ago
well its possible once machines can source materials, build themselves, and repair themselves we will have what it takes assuming they can do that with spare cycles to farm and such. I don't think we quite need replicators although something like that or nanobots on that level will help a lot. We certainly have to moderate our consumption unless we figure out how to actually live in space and source from other solar bodies.