Optimus, the humanoid robot that Tesla and Elon Musk are developing, may very well be a huge step towards bringing that Jetsons future we GenXers were promised. Except, instead of George still having to work a boring desk job to make ends meet, the world’s richest man foresees a future of “abundance for all.” In this imagined utopia, humans will receive some sort of guaranteed “high income,” necessitating working an actual job only if we want to, not because we have to.
Just like socialism and its more evil twin brother, communism, a world where everyone is ‘rich’ sounds great in theory. Imagine no poverty, no hunger, no struggling to make ends meet, no robbery because everyone has enough and has miraculously lost the capacity for jealousy. Sounds like heaven, right? But would such a world be anything like that? As is always the problem, human nature begs to differ. In fact, while Elon is undoubtedly brilliant, it's sloppy thinking to imagine that such a 'utopia' created by a large universal income that made everyone 'rich' wouldn't be a hell on earth.
First of all, humans are made to work. The theme is all throughout the Bible, starting with God’s command to Adam to “take care of” the Garden. Work is what gives us purpose, discipline, and a sense of self-worth, but it’s not always necessarily enjoyable to the doer. Not everyone can be an artist, a musician, or would even have the talent or skills to do a job they would 'want' to do. In fact, a tiny percentage of people actually do those kinds of jobs. In a world without work being necessary, imagine what billions of purposeless people with idle hands would do with their lives. You think the drug problem is bad now? It would become infinitesimally worse.
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But obviously, work is also about more than just the doers. It's also what builds and maintains all the things that make our lives so great. Do you enjoy walking on clean streets, eating at restaurants, going shopping, having your healthcare needs serviced by a compassionate nurse who can relate to your situation, sailing on a cruise ship, getting your trash picked up, having your house cleaned or your yard mowed, or countless other things we take for granted because people do these jobs, not because they're necessarily enjoyable, although they can be, but because they need the work? If you really think robots will be able to do all of these kinds of jobs in your lifetime or that of your grandchildren, or even ever for many, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
And jobs don't just serve the public good, keep idle hands from committing crimes, and provide something for otherwise purposeless people to do, they also teach the work ethic required for those who desire it to move into better and better jobs, up and up the ladder.
The thing is, if everyone had a guaranteed "high income," who would do the jobs that robots can't do? And when everybody is sitting on their rears not doing any work at all, what happens to the small, often service-based businesses in this country that cannot do their work with robots and/or AI? Pay them more, you say? But everyone is already "high income." There is a joke among entry-level employers that the worst possible day to get people to come in is right after tax time. That joke exists because a significant percentage of the population is perfectly content to exist hand to mouth so long as their basic needs are met. Just look at what happened to the Native American tribes once the government started taking care of them. If UBI ever happened, this would exist on steroids for most people.
High-level jobs and jobs running AI and servicing the robots (until they learned to do that themselves) would exist and be super high-paid. Lower-level jobs requiring lots of motor skills and the ability to interact with people and analyze situations would also exist, but few would be willing to do those.
In Elon's dream, everybody already gets enough from the value added by AI to live a comfortable life, but in reality, it would also be a life without all those services mentioned earlier because nobody would be doing them. Thus, only an inordinate amount of pay would attract anyone at all, which would further increase inflation more than the insane amount that would already exist by cutting those massive checks in the first place.
In such a world, a world closer to WALL-E than utopia, it's hard to imagine what the price of a dozen eggs would be, much less how much it would take to get someone to mow your yard or clean your home. That is, if there are even any eggs available at all, since farming takes labor from people, a large portion of which, instead of working, would be using their "high income" to sit in front of their TVs playing video games.
These problems, of course, would affect everyone, regardless of how much wealth they have or had before the implementation of such a system.
Because, at the end of the day, if everybody is "high income," nobody is.
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