Most people today identify themselves by their work. We say, “I am a teacher”, or “I am an
engineer”. It is part of our identity in
western culture. In most of my
conversations with individuals about a future without the need for work, past
their concerns to have their basic needs met, they question the wisdom of eliminating
their obligation to work in society.
Most of us believe that work is the only way we can fully contribute to
society.
I usually answer: “Do you think raising a child is a
significant social contribution? How
about volunteering time for a good cause?”
The point I’m trying to make is that there are many ways to participate
and bring value to society. When we contribute
through actions we really care about and enjoy, we don’t care if we get paid or
not. Other examples of free social
contributions are programmers working on open source software or people that
donate or pledge on systems like Patreon, Kickstarter or donate money to
causes. These contributions lead to
further social, service or product development without which some projects,
artists and actions could not be pursued.
Thus, being paid for a job is not a reason to live. We can still be paid for work we do… that
doesn’t need to change. But there should
be no obligation to do so.
According to a study made by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in
2017, 38% of today’s American jobs will be automated by 2030[1]. In 2013, Oxford University has calculated that
about 47 percent[2] of
total US employment was at risk due to artificial intelligence and
robotics. That was almost 5 years
ago. According to American census data
(2017),70% of all American jobs today are in transportation, manufacturing and
services. Most of those could be
partially or fully automated within the next 10 years of we put our minds to it. We could accelerate the deployment of AI and
automation technologies to free human beings from the absolute need to be
involved in essential work. With a
smaller percentage of people needed to work to provide basic needs to all
members of a nation, those of us who are not required to keep automated systems
running, could use our passion and skill to work in non-essential capacities
and fill in the gaps that automation cannot until automation catches up.
Human beings have a need to feel part of society[3]. It is embedded into our biology, hence why we
feel the urge to contribute in the first place.
In our ideal future we need to change how we define our purpose to
better align it with the basic truth: we
want to contribute positively to society by doing what we like to do.
This contribution would be different for every individual,
but all contributions add value. Worried
that we don’t cover all the bases to keep our society operate smoothly? That’s what robotics and AI are for. We should use them to cover the bases and ensure
society runs smoothly as much as possible.
Innovators and entrepreneurs like myself are trained and
enjoy the challenge of finding solutions to problems. As a society, we can choose to engineer a
world where every individual can do what they want. We still need to monitor and regulate
population’s actions to ensure we act according to some accepted social rules
of conduct. Not something unusual or
different than what we’re currently doing now with our legislative and
judiciary systems.
Social contributors can still be organized in companies to
achieve specific goals, just like we’re organized today, with some changes
described in the next sections.
Corporations, cooperatives, creative commons and other collaborative
systems, for profit or not, are still valid.
We wouldn’t need to reinvent the wheel. All we really need to do here is give people
the basics and many adults will choose of their own free will to find a job or
another occupation. The difference is, as seen in UBI pilots of the past[4],
the population will spend more time in education, will wait a longer time for
the job they will be really interested in or they will start their own
innovative exciting businesses.
Some will be passionate parents and strictly focus on that
for a while because that’s where their minds and hearts are. Those parents will produce very well adjusted
and socially adept children which will be much better equipped at contributing
to society themselves later.
Others will go back to school in fields of interest and then
go back to society better educated, happier and more capable.
Live long and prosper
Here is something else to consider: our next generations could live long, long
lives. It is even foreseeable that we
will have the opportunity to live forever.
Several research teams in the US and elsewhere have developed clinically
proven treatments to make human lives healthier and longer[5]. We’ve effectively started working on ways to fix
with our body’s natural tendencies to deteriorate with age using multiple
strategies such as gene editing, stem cells and medicine. There are no one-treatment-does-all solutions. Aging is in fact caused by seven very
specific biological processes[6]. Modern researchers have already figured out
ways to stop and reverse the damages time and use has done to some of those
systems.
The first treatments which should be going to market in the
next five years or so should extend the recipient’s lives by a few healthy
years, which is good but not enough to really celebrate[7],[8]. However, if this gives human beings a few
more years of life, on average, this is additional time used to improve on the
treatment and find other treatments that deal with one of the seven
aging-problematic categories, thus extending our lives further. This duel between aging and treatments
against aging can occur for a while and depending on research success,
deployment of treatments to the public and individual health, some people in
our youngest generations and the generations following could live healthy for
hundreds of years. Aubrey de Grey, Chief
Science Officer at the SENS Research Foundation calls this tug-of-war Longevity
Escape Velocity (LEV). He also told me
in an interview the estimated timeline to successfully achieve LEV:
“If you’re asking
how soon we will get to longevity escape velocity, I think it’s probably 20
years. I think the most difficult
treatments that we’re talking about are probably a good 10 years away from
clinical trial, which means conservatively we should be talking in terms of
about 20 years before they actually arrive.”
We really need to consider this as part of our plans. Not only will AI and other technologies make
human work to produce humanity’s basic needs illogical, but humans will be
living much longer very soon. Our
economy has difficulty with the average age of death being 80 years old. People are living much longer than before,
and that average will only increase in the next few years. We are having trouble with the fact that people
need to work more than 40 years to sustain our economy. Are we expected to be forced to work for… say
300 years, just to support a work-free end of life?
That’s just ridiculous. All the more reason to create a new
social paradigm and a new economy that supports a healthy population that will
live extremely long healthy lives.
Ensuring everyone can support themselves and their families
with the basics for the full duration of their lives is an important foundation
to our ideal future.
Decentralization and
entrepreneurship
I’ve mentioned several times already the importance of
innovators such as entrepreneurs in this plan.
Honestly, all the entrepreneurs I know, don’t start new businesses to
get rich. They do it because they
frankly can’t do otherwise. It is a
burning passion that allows us to go through incredibly uncomfortable and
insecure social positions to complete projects dear to us. We do it because we want to see our project
succeed. We want to fix problems in we
see in the world and we want to make improvements in the world. Some of us want to be the first to do
something that has never been done.
With the massive amounts of information on the Internet and
very advanced software allowing people, AI and information to collide and work
together these days, it’s even easier to be an entrepreneur or inventor. We can develop ideas on our own with limited
financial resources. It is often enough
to create a minimal viable product and to test it out to see if it works in the
market and if people like it.
It is a glorious time.
Innovators are creating solutions to problems that traditionally
required government control or large amounts of funds from companies or controlling
benefactors. Families today can generate
their own power (solar panels), make their own drinking water (wells, MOF water
extraction technology, etc.) and eliminate their own waste/recycling (this
needs a bit more development, but we have solutions for apartment buildings and
bathroom blocks already available[9]).
I believe we’ll see a transition from government-controlled
energy grids, water purification systems and waste disposal/recycling systems
to privately owned systems. This transition is already happening today, and it
is a good thing. Government can take
care of regulations to ensure new products sold by businesses won’t be a danger
to health or the environment, and just let the private sector create better and
better options for the population to choose from. Offer and demand will balance there rest out.
Decentralization of these services means the same as
consumers buying into just any other traditional product today. That’s great because the bigger the
government, the less efficient it is.
Letting us create new products through entrepreneurship and choose the
products and services we desire keeps the economy flowing nicely and
efficiently.
We can also anticipate more and more families will be using
3D printing technologies or the like to make their own goods at home from raw
materials found around the house. Some
of the raw materials could even be what we consider waste or recyclables
today. When you use something up, you
need to dispose of, soon, it will eventually become possible to decompose this
item at home and then “print” a new one from the components afresh using power
pulled from your own personal solar power grid.
Families will be able to control their own needs this way. Current 3D printers are not efficient enough
to be interesting for end users just yet, unless you are producing low quality
prototypes, but the technology is rapidly becoming more interesting. We’re also developing some very neat
nanotechnologies that could be used to produce goods. Not to mention smaller home robots powered by
AI.
The Internet, an essential basic and essential tool for the
future of humanity, needs to be updated somewhat as well. Currently, only a handful of companies
control Internet infrastructures. I
believe this needs to change to ensure the Internet is controlled by the whole
of humanity and not by central entities that may choose to deprive some of
information while others are starved of it.
Some companies, like Substratum.net are trying out a peer-to-peer
distributed approach to give individuals Internet access, which is very
cool. Other companies like Elon Musk’s
SpaceX have plans to deploy a satellite constellation with ground receivers
that will cover the whole planet and thus provide Internet to every individual
with access. The current Internet is old
and uses very inefficient communication pathways that could be eliminated
through entrepreneur innovation. Again,
offer and demand means people will choose what type of Internet they really
want to use and which company they prefer.
It is fair and allows for further iterative innovation down the road.
Finally, we must consider the decentralisation of
money. I’m dedicating a whole section on
this subject later in this book since it deserves a lot more attention to fully
explain. However, for the discussion
right now the important thing to understand is that we would no longer need
fiat currencies controlled by government.
We would still need money to trade for products and services and to
participate in the offer and demand market.
Money should be used to acquire goods beyond those required to satisfy
basic needs (UBI money is provided for free to ensure that’s covered). In our global economy, the appearance of
blockchain and other cryptographic algorithms like hashgraphs, means we no
longer need central authorities that control the value of money and
security. Money systems can be
collectively owned by all and thus by none.
It needs to be a way to securely trade for against value in a fair way
with no single entity able to dictate fees, changes of values without the consensus
of the whole network.
Ultimately, what we want is full control of our own
freedoms, choices, creativity, time and families and create or adapt towards a
governance system that takes care of us all without limiting our freedoms and
choices.
[1]
Will robots steal our jobs? The potential impact of automation on the UK and
other major economies. PricewaterhouseCoopers
(March 2017) - https://www.pwc.co.uk/economic-services/ukeo/pwcukeo-section-4-automation-march-2017-v2.pdf
[2]
Frey, C. B and Osborne, M. A. (September
2013). The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerization?
- https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
[3] Gregg
Henriques Ph.D. (2012). Relational Value.
- https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/theory-knowledge/201206/relational-value
[4]
Ben Chapman (June 2017). Finnish
citizens given universal basic income report lower stress levels and greater
incentive to work. - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/finland-universal-basic-income-lower-stress-better-motivation-work-wages-salary-a7800741.html
[5]
Fergus Walsh (December 2017). How long
could we live? - http://www.bbc.com/news/health-42404083
[6] A reimagined
research strategy for aging. SENS Research
Foundation. - http://www.sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research
[7]
Michael Irving (March 2017). DNA-repairing
drug could fight aging and radiation damage.
- https://newatlas.com/dna-repairing-drug-nmn/48584/?utm_source=Gizmag+Subscribers&utm_campaign=99a1f64d61-UA-2235360-4&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_65b67362bd-99a1f64d61-92296889
[8] Houston
Methodist (July 2017). Researchers
develop technology to make aged cells younger.
- https://m.medicalxpress.com/news/2017-07-technology-aged-cells-younger.html
[9] NYC
high-rise reuse proves decentralized system works. Michael Zavoda of Water
& Wastewater International - http://www.waterworld.com/articles/wwi/print/volume-21/issue-1/features/nyc-high-rise-reuse-proves-decentralized-system-works.html
