Why is is that the big shots in the tech world are such hopeless dunderheads outside of their own narrow field? And why in the world does anybody listen to them?
The Facebook wallah last week gave the commencement speech at the Harvard Dolt Factory, and advocated “universal basic income” (http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/26/news/economy/mark-zuckerberg-universal-basic-income/index.html)–that is, the government gives you a paycheck whether you’re working or not.
Oh, we just gotta do it! After all, robotics and Artificial (ahem!) Intelligence and self-driving cars are going to make us poor dumb humans obsolete and cause the loss of “tens of millions of jobs.” Therefore we all need checks from the government. And please don’t be so stupid as not to know how the government will raise the money for those checks.
And also we gotta Save The Planet from Climbit Change, even though it’s a big fat hoax.
At the risk of sounding simple-minded, where does it say we have to go whole-hog for robotics and Artificial Intelligence and put all these people out of work? Have we suddenly lost our free will? Just because we can do something, does that mean we must do it? Man, that’s way too Jurassic Park for me!
I know the world’s big brains and bigger mouths all think you can abuse the culture all you like and nothing bad will happen. That’s why none of them have even for a moment considered that doling out a “universal basic income” might have disastrous effects upon the character of a nation.
How hard do you want to keep working so the jidrool next door can sit home and play video games all day?
How hard will anybody try to excel, when it will always be possible to live in reasonably comfortable circumstances without lifting a finger?
Did I mention the speaker also proposed to “modernize democracy so that everyone can vote on-line”? Another great idea. Bet he’s got a million of ’em.
Oh, well. Why even have free will, if we’re not going to use it?
Do you see where this is going?
