First the blockchain will steal your job, and then it will compensate you for it with tokens. For EVERYTHING.
(It's also totally possible that things happen the other way round and you get to earn tokens before you lose your job. After all, here on Steemit, we already live in the future.)
The future is tokenized.
What an exciting prospect!!
...If you ignore the fact that you probably won't have a job anymore in 10-15 years.
Most of us crypto enthusiasts keep talking about the fact that the Blockchain removes "the middle man", but I wonder if everyone truly realizes that we are those middle men.
We are the employees of banks; we are the call center agents at booking.com, answering customer queries and double checking requests. We are the notaries and registrars, we are the credit controllers at SoundCloud and AirBnB. We are the delivery allocators at fashion giants.
It's our jobs that are going to disappear, because 60-70% of jobs in our current society are non-producing, non-creative middle-men-jobs, where all we do is shuffle around information. Nothing a smart contract can't do faster than us, for less money and higher accuracy.
Personally I'm not worried about that because I haven't had a job for the past 10 years and quite frankly it would be the worst that could happen to me, having to go back to the 9-5 rat race.
But if you get your sense of security from a steady paycheck, then of course this future outlook can be scary.
We will get paid for that "third job"
At Steemfest2, at the end of his speech, William Mougayar mentioned that we all actually have "three jobs", and that we will be tokenized for the "third" of those three soon.
These are our three jobs:
- Our work - a business or a job - that we go to every day and earn a living from (the one we might lose soon).
- Our household and family - everything we do at home - cleaning the apartment, bringing the kids to school, etc. - all the stuff nobody pays us for.
- All the little things someone on the internet requests of us. Like, "Please connect with me on Linkedin", "Please like my post", "Please fill in this short survey", "Please watch this short ad before your video continues", "Please review the hotel you just staid at", "Please check out this week's special offers", and so on.
That third job - all the little online things - is what we will get incentivised for with tokens.
And this future is not far away at all. In fact, a lot of it is already in place - we are already being paid for "liking" each others' posts here on Steemit after all.
Other examples we will get paid for (some already in place):
- Get paid for listening to the radio and hearing the occasional ad
- Get paid for publishing your own music or guided meditations
- Get paid for answering short surveys
- Get paid for booking/staying at/reviewing hotels
- Get paid even for this.
With Manna and Circles we also have two Blockchain projects in development, that want to provide a universal basic income.
Universal Basic Income or Task-Based Tokenization?
Should we have an unconditional basic income for everyone, or is it better to earn our income through lots of mini tasks like ones mentioned above?
Should both exist alongside each other?
Should the basic income just be a solution for the transition phase until everyone has gotten used to the fact that they are no longer an employee or freelancer, but more like a free agent?
I totally support the idea of an unconditional basic income. However I also believe that earning a task-based income will keep us accountable and responsible for our own livlihood. This might actually have a positive affect on our mental health and prevent burn-out.
We will get to be creative and choose how to earn money every day. The artists and publishers amongst us might also have residual passive income from some of their art/products. We will basically all be entrepreneurs, earning our money from various decentralised sources.
Having to be creative every day will keep us young and sharp, too. After all there won't be any pension anymore either, unless there will be a pension-blockchain where we can mine retire-coins...
Though, who needs a pension if a universal basic income covers our basic needs and we can add to it as we choose, by completing some tasks?
I will have to circle back around and listen to some of the livestreem after I look for a little itinerary of sorts (I can't spare the 4+ hrs you referenced, right now haha). I have been spending time trying to understand the likely societal structural changes that would ivcur with and without universal based income, as prior to blockchain, it was free market capitalism all the way. This post-capitalist entrepreneurship future is very intriguing and I will continue my work toward an informed opinion.
I feel fortunate to have been interested in studying and finding the means for a career as a healthcare provider. This allows for a level of protection about the demand for my position, but I am currently working hard on the creation of my own business to become a private provider so that I may utilize blockchain technology to remove the large barriers created by the government middlemen to affordable healthcare.
Thanks for more valuable content!
I think you missed this part about the 4 hour video :)
Sound like you're on a great mission!!
Haha as I typed that, I noted but did not correct the ambiguity; I knew it wasn't four hours on the content but I'd like to see what comes before and after as far as topics in case I want to listen in for more and dont want to jump around and guess the topic. If anyone who attended could share, I think that'd be a very user-friendly way to manuever such a large file. Thanks!
personally, this is of great interest to me. from handling homelessness to 'chipping in' to people's needed to the 'basics' i think we will see a subset of society that will teach others or in fact do those little tasks for them, the people that like to work will do extremely well, but we will even build in layers of ability along the way too i'm sure, personally i feel like it's already happening. lovely post.
I think we will even be able to tokenize empathy - earning coins for visiting elderly people and playing cards with them for an hour or whatever. But then, if people don't get sick and old from dull jobs anymore, and instead grow older while being tokenized for doing sports and meditating - we won't even have lonely elderly people anymore as we have now... Imagine!!!
it's pretty stunning what 'maths' has done for the everyday world if you consider the base pairs of calculations that we are using to confirm actions. everyday in this space and considering where we fit in as humans is great. keeps me fired up about life ;)
i hate my job. jobs are for plebs. tokeniez everyhignfj
You've described a scenario that I really look forward to. It's time for a change - a global change. Uproot the crap of the past that we have tolerated for so long. Liberate our dreams & aspirations. Tokenise everything!
The future looks really cool and I think you are dead on that many of the mundane tasks we do now, reviews, sharing content, seeing/hearing ads, and so on will be tokanized and we will share in the money being created there.
I don't think we are anywhere near the point of tokens becoming THE economy. We still need farmers, janitors, plumbers, and so on.
We are a long ways away from UBI utopia but I think we are getting close to the point of getting paid for the social media stuff we already do.
We will always have farmers, janitors etc, I believe. These are jobs that produce something. They will always remain. Just like the cognitive jobs - the current "top of the pyramid" of thinkers and decision makers. These will remain, too. But all the rest - the people who work for the decision makers, will become obsolete.
But that is a big part of the problem, who is going to do those jobs?
Those jobs are hard, menial, and (currently) low pay so why would anyone chose to do any of those jobs (and there are 100's more like them) if the option to survive while not working is on the table?
I would think that we will have to start bidding the price of those jobs up, which drives up the cost of everything, which blunts a huge part of having a UBI (tokenized or otherwise).
I do think that the tokenization of many aspects of the economy can be part of the puzzle of how we can increase the standard of living while decreasing total time spent working.
The future is coming on! Great to be here, and a part of it.
Yes! Happy I chose to live at this time ;)
This was a pretty interesting post. I've always thought about this "third job" thing but never consciously. As of now, advertisers pay companies like Google for our attention because they can get us to look...but removing the middle man, advertisers could pay us every time we choose to look, effectively getting the same outcome and enriching those of us who they target. Interesting concept!
Yes! I think that's what the Basic Attention Token is for.
I think this is a great article!
Swiftdemand are tokens I've been collecting for a while now, they are looking to be UBI but are currently far from their targets.
I didn't know much about Manna, so thanks for explaining this - must look into it further.
I totally agree here. If we are happy doing these tasks (this should be the case as if everything will be tokenised then we should be choosing our interests!) then this sounds very reasonable and most excellent to me!
Thank you!
Oh I've never heard of Swiftdemand, thank you. Do you have a referral link? If you get extra tokens, post it here. You never know, you might need it one day :)
Yes, imagine, if everything will be tokenized, even meditating and jogging (all in the works already), we can truly follow our joy and choose our own lifestyle every day.
Gladly! https://www.swiftdemand.com/?referred_by=asher
Yes I earned some runcoin last year for a jog in the Turia, Valencia.
It's all coming, we just need to keep our eyes on the ball and go with who gets the job done properly. That's why I enjoy being here, we have many watchers/reporters 😁
True! All the education is here!
I agree with Steemit we already live in the future we are enjoying this reality, which we feel every day, creating quality content, reading and voting for good publications, having creativity on the move every day at every moment is of great value for the that we like to see a better future and contribute, it is great that we can already live and have our livelihood working in the blockchain the true decentralization.
Hopefully the second way around i can see block chain totally changing the way society works. I talk to many people every day about blockchain the conceit it currency i try to tell them its technology not just currency some people just listen to the media and dont really dig deep building person conclusions pity the fools..jpg)