Universal basic income doesn�t work.

[Sparko]

I don't believe an argument like this is actually very strong. One could say the same about more land being discovered, but since land is a finite resource, eventually we've discovered all of it. Which we have now. The same is true of oil fields, more and more are being discovered but at a lower and lower rate, and the oil that is being discovered is harder and more expensive to extract than before. This leads to Peak Oil scenario, albiet probably no where nearly as harsh as those who originally proposed the idea.

It is true that jobs are being generated. However they are increasingly technical and more difficult to do. I work in IT as a consultant. Most of my job is really just going into companies, figuring out why their setup isn't working as they hoped it would, and either spend some months fixing it or setting up something better. Through that I've come to realise, bitterly, just how few qualified people are employed in IT. Most people are really bad at it.

Automation, standardisation, and various services by the big companies can help ease the pain of managing IT solutions like that.

But we can't get enough people in who are good. We don't need more newbies in this field. We don't need a cheap code sweat shop in India. We need experts. We need college graduates with good grades, who can be molded into that.


And for a lot of jobs I expect it to be more and more like that. Not now, of course. Maybe not in fifty years, or even a hundred. But I believe we'll run out of jobs eventually. Farming all of the US will be a thirty man team job.

There will come a time when it is possible for a small team to own the means of production for pretty much anything. Right now cars, computer chips, resource processing and chemicals, require huge industrial setups to work properly. But I suspect when its possible to minify those setups to the point where they can fit inside a small warehouse, then we'll see a rather radical change to the economy.

Fundementally God has given us a lot of materials. Even on Earth there's vast amounts of untapped resources, and solar power alone can provide orders of magnitude more energy than we currently consume. At that point? With pervasive radical automation? With people being able of owning the means of production? That day I think either universal income, or something else will take place.

So its way in the future if ever.

Probably 70% of the land is unused in the world.

And it might take more and more technical skills to WORK ON Robots or the automation technology, but not to USE it. Like computers. It takes technical skills to work in IT, but 90% of the people who actually USE computers know nothing about how they work. Yet they still use them to make their jobs better and easier. And spinoffs from computers, like the internet, allow people to interact in ways never imagined before and to have jobs never imagined before. And even to become entrepreneurs and make and sell products to people all around the world. Hand made, low tech items, (etsy for instance) - giving people with no technical skills ways to make a living doing arts and crafts. People will always find a way to use technology to make money. Perhaps they will buy automated factories cheaply and have them generate products they sell on the internet. Or become their own franchisee who put up automated fast food restaurants around town. We can't even imagine the possibilities yet.

[Cow Poke]

Been very busy these past few months after getting hired the current company I work for. Had to get used to wearing suits for every day work (thankfully I discovered that the tie was optional - blech).

Just been busy. I realised that I burning a lot of energy arguing on web forums late at night so I cut that out and spent the energy elsewhere.

I look in now and then. And when I'm on a boring train ride like this one I don't mind dropping in.

Always good to see you. Even though you're wrong 99.99% of the time.

(KIDDING!!!!)

[Leonhard]

Probably 70% of the land is unused in the world.

You can call me a green hippy all you want, but I'd rather we kept our hands off the rainforest.

[Leonhard]

Always good to see you. Even though you're wrong 99.99% of the time.

(KIDDING!!!!)

Cue "Everything You Know Is Wrong" by Weird Al Yankovich.

[Leonhard]

Always good to see you. Even though you're wrong 99.99% of the time.

(KIDDING!!!!)

20% of the time I'm right 100% of the time.

[Sparko]

You can call me a green hippy all you want, but I'd rather we kept our hands off the rainforest.

forget the rainforest, over 50% of the USA looks pretty uninhabited. My point is that we have not run out of land by any means.

And at no time in the history of mankind has technology put the population out of work. I don't believe it ever will.

[Cow Poke]

forget the rainforest, over 50% of the USA looks pretty uninhabited. My point is that we have not run out of land by any means.

And at no time in the history of mankind has technology put the population out of work. I don't believe it ever will.

I remember back in school they were scaring us to death with "overpopulation", when the entire population of the US at that time could fit in the city of Jacksonville, Florida (given 2 square feet each) or something like that. Of course, Americans are a lot fatter than back then, so...

But the overpopulation agenda was part of the ruse to justify abortion and Euthanasia.

[Sparko]

I remember back in school they were scaring us to death with "overpopulation", when the entire population of the US at that time could fit in the city of Jacksonville, Florida (given 2 square feet each) or something like that. Of course, Americans are a lot fatter than back then, so...

But the overpopulation agenda was part of the ruse to justify abortion and Euthanasia.

The "population explosion" was the "global warming" of the 1960s and 70s.

Most civilized countries have near zero population growth now. Most western couples have 1 or 2 children, barely enough to replace themselves. And anyone who has visited Montana or any state out west will know how much unused land there is just in the USA. I think it started with overcrowding of cities in the 60s, when people were all migrating from rural areas to urban. But now the trend has reversed. People want to leave the cities and because of technology like the internet, we can work from anywhere. There is no reason to live in the "big city" any more.

[Leonhard]

I remember back in school they were scaring us to death with "overpopulation",

Yes, and with good reason considering the amount of population growth at that time. In fact we're going to be 11 billion before the numbers stabilise which is somewhat hard to do.

But the whole argument "They were wrong back then!" just isn't all that strong.

when the entire population of the US at that time could fit in the city of Jacksonville, Florida (given 2 square feet each)

The issue isn't living space. We know how to build tall buildings. We could squeeze together if we needed. The issue is: Pollution, crops, and the environment. There's not much areable land left. Most of the US might be desert, but unless you're planning on top soiling all of Arizona and bringing in huge garden hose, that place is going to stay pretty much a desert.

And people are talking about cutting down the rainforest to plant crops.

Meanwhile we're busy banning GMO (where I part with my fellow leftists), which is a shot at squeezing out more crops from the same area without increasing the environmental impact.

But the overpopulation agenda was part of the ruse to justify abortion and Euthanasia.

I don't know what propaganda was flowing around when you were growing up. I'm just looking at defacto materials, of today and there's only really a focus on birth control. Which does work. As people get more money they start using birth control and they have smaller families.

We've happily reached Peak Child. The number of children on Earth has stopped growing. They'll grow up of course, and as they do we will fill up a bit more until we're around 11 billion at which point the human population size is estimated to stabilise somewhere around the end of the century.

Resources might be infinite somewhere in the far future where we can make orbital habitats, and colonise asteroids. But for the time period we're living on the surface of a singular planet.

The Earth is not infinitely big, and crops can't yield infinitely fast. There's a finite ceiling for growth on Earth.

Its the same with oil. There's not an infinite amount of oil. Its finite, and its harder and harder to acquire. We will never run out of it, it will simply become more economically viable to do change the petrochemical industry to using a different substrate.

[Leonhard]

forget the rainforest, over 50% of the USA looks pretty uninhabited. My point is that we have not run out of land by any means.

You would start a potato farm in Arizona? Its land area, but its not exactly something you can use for crops.

[Sparko]

From your article:


Gee who does that sound like?

[Cow Poke]

The "population explosion" was the "global warming" of the 1960s and 70s.

A) Find a problem
2) Exaggerate its thread far beyond reason
C) Exploit it as a reason to employ drastic measures
iv) Propose government programs and control as the only possible solution

[Sparko]

You would start a potato farm in Arizona? Its land area, but its not exactly something you can use for crops.

You don't have to farm everywhere. If that were the case Arizona would have no cities. There is plenty of unused farm land in the USA too.

[Leonhard]

You don't have to farm everywhere. If that were the case Arizona would have no cities. There is plenty of unused farm land in the USA too.

The world data bank shows that the US had 48% (edit: in 1961) of areable land (that is land you can actually sow crops on) and that number was 44% today, likely due to housing development.

I doubt that the remaining 60% is fresh fertile soil ready to sow crops on, which is why I asked you about Arizona. Are you ready to start a wheat farm in a desert? Or to chop down your nature reserves?

I'd rather we didn't chop down anymore nature reserves, they're already fairly small.

[Sparko]

The world data bank shows that the US had 48% of areable land (that is land you can actually sow crops on) and that number was 44% today, likely due to housing development.

I doubt that the remaining 60% is fresh fertile soil ready to sow crops on, which is why I asked you about Arizona. Are you ready to start a wheat farm in a desert? Or to chop down your nature reserves?

I'd rather we didn't chop down anymore nature reserves, they're already fairly small.

how much areable land doesn't say how much is used/unused.

The entire midwest and northeast is largely unpopulated and suitable for ranching and farming.

most of the land west of the Mississippi has a population density of less than 40 people per square mile.