Over the centuries, many great thinkers have come up with ideas and visions of a world without work. On 2nd November 2023, Elon Musk joined the ranks when he spoke with Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister.
PLEASE NOTE: I am not a fan of, nor do I endorse, Elon Musk or any of his actions in any way.
The Guardian, Caroline Davies, Friday, 2 November 2023
As the article rightly states, A LOT OF smart people are talking about automation, technological unemployment and the end of the working world as we know it. The problem, as I see it, is that we are not preparing for what’s to come as is apparent in the article:
“Hodgkinson said … that a radical overhaul of our economic and education models would be needed to eliminate work on the scale that Musk predicted.”
The Guardian, Caroline Davies, Friday, 2 November 2023
And:
“The labour market, as a way of distributing money around the economy, would have to be transformed, as would the education system, “to teach people how to fill their days, by writing poetry or going fishing or whatever, instead of going to the factory or the office”, Burchell continued.”
The Guardian, Caroline Davies, Friday, 2 November 2023
In short, they know what needs to be done, but instead of taking action saying “this needs to be done now before it’s too late” they effectively say “a future without work can’t happen, because this hasn’t been done (yet).”
They say all of that despite actual positive experience in the real world during the recent COVID19 pandemic:
In fact, given more free time, such as on furlough during Covid, “they start living better”, Hodgkinson said. “They are starting neighbourhood groups, doing more gardening, doing up the house, spending more time with family, doing creative things, playing music, writing poetry, all the things that are part of what I would call a good life.”
The Guardian, Caroline Davies, Friday, 2 November 2023
The time for a UBI is now; before it’s too late and we end up in the dystopian future where the unemployable starve amidst the abundance of the few who own the technology, the robots and the AI that do all the work.
Marcel Admiraal