Response to Automation: Universal Basic Income?

As a person generally interested in technological trends and as a follower of the transhumanist movement, I’ve been repeatedly hearing about this “new” concept called the Universal Basic Income. UBI is a concept that has popped up in the transhumanist movement in response to the increasing automation we all see coming. Many believe that the level of automation will get to some point in the relatively near future that it will make the capability of average humans obsolete in comparison. They believe that the answer will be to have a minimum amount of income guaranteed for all in response to this “problem” of automation.
There are a couple of glaring problems that I see with both the assumptions that people are making about the results of automation and the perceived solution to it. First, this argument that automation will eliminate jobs has been used before, and so long ago and so frequently that there’s a word for people who use this argument. They’re called Luddites, named after a fictional character, Ned Ludd, invented by workers who were displaced from their entrenched work by automation in the early 1800’s. They and others like them have since claimed that with the advent of machine automation, that people would lose their ability to work, en masse, and that there would be dwindling economic opportunity for your average worker and economic chaos would ensue.
This is obviously not the case, and the empirical evidence for the falsity of the above assumption is so resounding, that anyone who is aware of the history of the last few hundred years should laugh it off as ridiculous. The world has seen both an unprecedented population explosion, coupled with steadily increasing standard of living in every corner of the globe since the time of the Luddites. Both of these trends completely run counter to the predictions of the Luddites. They were so completely wrong that the word Luddite is often used today as an insult, implying backwards or conservative thinking that prevents adaptation to and adoption of beneficial technological advancements.
A possible counter-argument to this glaring empirical evidence against the Luddite perspective, is that this time is different due to the exponential nature of technological advancement, and the speed with which it will happen will overwhelm people trying to survive in the new economy. Ray Kurzweil, extending Moore’s Law to other technologies, has invented a concept called the Law of Accelerating Returns, showing that all technologies advance exponentially in the same way that information technology does. I believe that Ray Kurzweil has discovered a trend in technology that’s accurate and empirical in nature. The claim that humanity will be unable to cope with such a trend is not empirical in nature, because it fails to acknowledge the tendency of the human animal to very quickly adapt to technological change, in the past and especially in recent history. For example, just 15 years ago, most people didn’t even own personal computers that were connected to high speed internet connections, but now they carry them around in their pockets and nearly everyone can afford them.
These are the technological trends that the Luddites claim will displace workers, and yet people are more prosperous in general every single time we’ve seen such increased automation. All automation does to workers, is allow them more time to do more important tasks, and therefore to be more productive in their work. People create value for each other no matter how little time they need to spend doing physical, or even mental labor.
This is not to mention the rebranded economic folly that is the concept of the Universal Basic Income. UBI is a socialistic policy directive, plain and simple. It assumes, like all socialist policies, that people are unable to care for themselves, and that state intervention is the only way to protect them from the evils of industrialized society. It’s an income redistribution scheme, and like all others before it, it will tend to have the opposite effect of the claims its proponents put forth.
Again, empirical evidence is on my side on this one. Income redistribution always results in a two pronged disincentive to be productive. First, it discourages productive people from continuing to produce, because it penalizes them for being successful; and the more successful people are, the more they tend to be penalized in these systems. Second, it discourages people on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum from taking any kind of initiative, since many are satisfied with simple subsistence living, which is what a proposed UBI would provide, work-free. I’m speculating here, but it’s an educated guess based on trends I’ve seen with other government subsidies; but I also think that a UBI would nearly immediately cause price inflation in markets for things like housing, food, utilities and clothing. This would necessitate a continual increase in the UBI year after year, hastening the demise of such a scheme should it be put into place. Because of the subsidized price inflation, people at the bottom end would be kept on the bottom, and as the few productive people go about their lives, they will accelerate away from the rest of society economically speaking, increasing the gap between the rich and the poor.
People who are afraid of the coming technological wave are simply Luddites, and are unable to comprehend what things of value people will shift to when they don’t have to sit in a cubicle all day, or push buttons on a cash register. As a result, the fear-based response to their erroneous assumptions is the UBI, a socialistic, forced income redistribution program. Like all others before it, it will fail, and it will stifle not only general economic growth, it will help to widen the gap between the upper and lower economic classes.