Back in 2025 before cheap bots, our grandparents endured lives of servitude. They spent an enormous amount of time doing simple chores like folding clothes, driving, programming, washing and dusting, grooming themselves. They had to walk their own dogs and play with their own children. They sometimes even had to cook their own food, directly over fire. "Hygiene" was a primitive joke. A full day's work usually wasn't even enough to buy a single new car. They wrote checks to the government, rather than the other way around. Life was brutal, desperate and short.
Why is UBI assumed as part of techtopia? When the government has access to unlimited labour and military via robots, why do they need citizens anymore? Beyond some antiquated moral obligation, why would a government actually do anything for a population that is net value extracting?
> When the government has access to unlimited labour and military via robots, why do they need citizens anymore?
Wait a minute, didn’t you just assume Western countries are not democracies?
I’ve noticed how fashionable it is in the US in particular, to distrust the government — not just this government, but on principle. This idea that a government never acts on behalf of the people, unless forced to. I wouldn’t disagree to be honest. But then we need to follow this up to its logical conclusion: governance by elected officials is not democratic.
Then we need to decide if we actually want democracy or not. Personally, I’d like this decision to be… err… you know, it would be nice if everyone had a say?
> governance by elected officials is not democratic.
Correct. In a (representative) democracy, one does not elect officials. They elect representatives. The representative is not an authority like an official is. They are merely messengers who take the constituent direction established at the local level and travel with that message to deliver it in a country/state/etc.'s central gathering place.
> Then we need to decide if we actually want democracy or not.
We (meaning most people) do not. Democracy is a lot of work. An incredible amount of work. It requires active participation on a near-daily basis. Most people would rather do things like go to their job to put food on the table or spend time with their hobbies or other pleasure activities. Which is why most people seek — by your own admission — officials to lord over them instead.
> Personally, I’d like this decision to be… err… you know, it would be nice if everyone had a say?
It is nice when you are independently wealthy and no longer have to worry about things like giving up an enormous amount of your day to keep a roof over your head. But most people are not so fortunate, so they do not find it fair that, for all realistic purposes, only some people get to participate in democracy to their own advantage. Hence why democracies devolve into a system of officials instead, with most people believing it offers a better balance for all involved, albeit at the cost of losing say.
But in your example, it sounds like representative democracy is a choice freely taken. If people actually want representatives to worry about the details of policy for them, then that is real democracy, because the alternative is a form of government that the people don't actually want.
> They are merely messengers who take the constituent direction established at the local level and travel with that message to deliver it in a country/state/etc.'s central gathering place.
No. That is exclusively an USA thing. I live in a representative democracy and I vote for the parliamentarian. Representative vs. direct democracy is about whether the people vote on laws directly or not.
> We (meaning most people) do not.
Most people don't want to write the laws, yes. They still want to have a say about the content. Most house owners also don't want to build the house. They still want to have a say what the construction company does.
Maybe something like a publicly traded company, Citizens can vote directly on individual bills, or choose a proxy to vote on their behalf (and change that choice at any point that desire).
It wouldn't actually change anything, because your single direct vote wouldn't have any outcome at all. It would by negligible compared to all the votes from the proxies, because they represent millions and you just one. It would result in the same outcome, talking to the proxy gets your point better across than voting yourself.
> Which is why most people seek — by your own admission — officials to lord over them instead.
I don’t recall saying that. On the contrary, I believe people are forced to let officials rule over them, in part by lack of time and other resources, but also in a big part because they believe their government is democratic, even when it is increasingly not.
To give a couple examples in France: in 2005 about 60% of French people voted against the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, despite predictions to the contrary by mass media, and overwhelming representative support. It wasn’t just defiance, there were quite a few objections to the text itself. Then a relatively short while later, a functionally identical text was voted by the parliament. That was the first time I realised my country was no longer, if ever, a democracy. Then over time we had unpopular reforms over unpopular reforms, culminating retirement reform, which all indicators show like about 70% of the population was against. All passed. Not long before that there was a popular demand for citizen initiated binding referendums. Ignored.
The people there did more than discuss in their private homes and answered surveys. We voted. We protested, down in the streets. The state answered with increasing violence. Documented repression tactics, turning a blind eye to police misconduct… A real shame in what was supposed to be the country of Human Rights — that too, we are no longer.
So yeah, politics takes time and effort. But it goes beyond that: work is inequitably spread, split between working overtime for relatively little benefit, and utter unemployment. (The split isn’t all that clear cut, I myself work 4 days a week, because I can afford the pay cut.) And on top of that, peaceful protests now put us in increasing physical danger. People lose their hands, their eyes, and in some (thankfully still rare) cases their lives.
No wonder so many people chose to just disengage at this point.
> But most people are not so fortunate, so they do not find it fair that, for all realistic purposes, only some people get to participate in democracy to their own advantage. Hence why democracies devolve into a system of officials instead, with most people believing it offers a better balance for all involved, albeit at the cost of losing say.
I believe this is false, as a matter of historical fact. At least in France. When we had our Bourgeois Revolution (sure the people were starved and all, but it was coopted quite quickly), there were discussions about whether we should have democracy, or a representative government. Note the wording: "representative democracy" would have been a ridiculous oxymoron at the time. Anyway, democracy was shut down, in big part because the bourgeois discussing this decided that the people couldn’t steer themselves. Nevermind the Paris Commune, who did steer themselves for a very short while, but never got the chance to prove itself — the army disbanded them with bullets, over 10,000 killed.
Another example are randomly sampled assemblies. Constituent assemblies, or assemblies with a specific purpose. When analysed after the fact we generally find that their decisions are pretty well reasoned, well grounded, well documented, and (shocker), serve the actual interests of the people — of course they would be, since the members would then go on being subject to their own decisions.
Democracy is a less a form of government than a form of containment of government. And it leaks like all of the others. The form of government itself is a hungry serpent.
> governance by elected officials is not democratic.
I'd agree that this is the case.
When billionaires, or the ruling class, own the media, and when you have media and capital lobbying influencing everything in government, who is actually in control of people being elected?
A great example is what happened when Jeremy Corbyn (socialist) did well in the UK elections. The media absolutely crucified him and made sure he didn't become the next PM. That's not a democracy.
It's a real hell of a mess we're in and I'm not sure how we go about changing it.
>why would a government actually do anything for a population that is net value extracting?
Because we outnumber them a million to one, and history is littered with examples of what happens to leaders who squeeze their population a little too far
I'm not really convinced it's actually possible to overthrow a modern government. The disparity in killing power available to the two sides is just too great. Like yeah we outnumber the government a million to one (figuratively), but that's not going to help much when they have tanks, artillery, and planes to defend themselves with.
The people that run that killing power are also citizens, and they either must be bought at an increasing steep price, or they will go with the bulk of the nation (mostly with their near and distant relatives who are suffering) - network effects are very real here.
Most dictatorships make no less than a half-hearted attempt to convince the population to support them.
And then they make a point out of terrorizing the people who don't support them. Just so the others have no trouble discerning whether believing them is a good idea or not.
It's a very valid concern, but technological advances are also available to the people. Asymmetrics war (terrorism, depending the side you're on) is always a possibility, unless the gap between the possibility of states and those of citizens grows too wide.
The highly specialized vehicles of war are not that threatening in a civil conflict. Think about how much tax money it takes to purchase a tank for example. There is maybe 1 tank for every 1000 people, let's say. Yet it only takes a single rocket launcher to destroy a tank.
Look at what happened to the USA in Afganistan recently. What really threatens the chances of popular revolution are the systems of surveillance and inter-dependence that we are building up, and the existence of killer drones that can compete with armed peasants at scale.
Didnt the nation armed with all of this modern tech lose to a guerilla force of ricefarmers armed with sharpened sticks and AKs?
Or do you think the Vietnam war would go very different now?
The US could have easily, easily won the Vietnam war if they just dropped 1 or 2 nukes. The modern military is going to have drone that swarm the sky 24/7. They can develop virus that only they have the cure to. They can drop EMPs. They can grow their own food in their own lab while we all slowly die and wither outside.
These are powers that are actually, technically, plausibly be granted to a single or several individual in the future.
The future where human is obsolete is scary. Just reread that sentence again. Humans are obsolete.
Since no one has bothered to explain how wrong you are… I’ll give you the easy version…
Tanks and drones, don’t stand on street corners and enforce non-assembly and curfews.
The tanks and drones argument and later Biden’s “we have F15s” claim are wildly devoid of reality. You do not understand what a “modern military” is. Each MRAP takes multiple people to keep it running, and it’s just a diesel truck.
You think tanks and drones don’t take teams of people to keep running?
Thinking that people won't fall in line is blind idealism. Autonomous weapons of war are already here as it is - formidable individually, worse than a WMD at scale. Day by day, we're getting closer to a militaristic reality where a commanding officer doesn't need a subordinate's turnkey or permission to enact scaled conflict.
Open a browser tab or start a conversation at a bar today, millions of people are in uproar because elected representatives and military officers issued a video that was JUST A REMINDER that military members have a moral and legal duty to reject manifestly illegal orders. Nevermind how they'll inevitably act when the chips are down, and it's now actually time to reject an order from the commander in chief - or someone that answers to him.
This place fetishizes CGP Grey more than anything - watch his dictatorship video about only needing to hold a few "key" (figuratively and literally) officials in place to get your bidding done most efficiently.
No offense, but ask someone in the military how wrong you are.
Tanks and drones don’t stand on street corners and enforce curfews.
Our “modern military” in handicapped in multiple ways, primarily that society does not have the stomach to win wars anymore. And, beyond that, it takes TEAMS of people to keep the simplest vehicle or weapon system running. It’s all logistics and fuel.
In a civil conflict it was dissolve quickly without a unified force and a ton of fuel.
So, you literally read "unlimited supply of military via robots" in the parent comment, and still reply with this? Humanity truly doesn't stand a chance...
It's pretty easy to imagine a world in which, for example, UBI is available, but it's contingent on sterilization.
Aside from being more compassionate than the Terminator movies, it might simply be the cheapest way to handle humans in a world where we've become a liability.
People like being served by human beings, rich people especially. So that work will still be around and all the brightest and most diligent people will compete to be the one who brings Jeff Bezos's grandson his dinner.
And here I got the impression, that the government's job was to enrich themselves, coasting along on the back of the common goods, letting themselves be bought by lobbies and lining up for supervisory board positions, looking out first and foremost for themselves and their clans.
> They had to walk their own dogs and play with their own children.
Oof, that one hits hard. My dad was an executive, mom was a housewife/socialite, we lived in Mexico. Had our own live-in maid, gardeners/handymen for outside chores. I saw them more than my parents. I can totally see them hiring robots instead of humans. Once technology gets cheap enough, the masses adopt it (in the 60's TV was an electronic babysitter)
Could be they aren’t trying to come down on a nice easy high-contrast color and are figuring anywhere society lands will still be some shade of gray with a bit of flair here and there and a dash of spilled paint in other places.
Also, back in 2025 people's mental models were so primitive that they could only consider one parameter at a time. And the reward function was wired into their survival instincts, imagine that! This caused them to see a person whose mental model held a different parameter value as a threat to their survival. These primitive serial thinkers used something called "wars" to update model weights, where they physically eliminated compute elements! Truly a barbaric age.
Yup, it’s funny seeing people say how bad the past was without realizing people 100 years from now will say the exact same thing about today.
Not to mention the opinions and beliefs that people hold “as the right side of history” without realizing these things change and no doubt some view they hold will be seen as “barbaric” in the future.
No, I really don't think so. You used to have to build your own house and stable. Dig up your own well and carry water from it. Shower maybe twice a week (usually just once). Remember, you're doing hard physical labor in the sun all day long. Someday you can finally afford a tractor, but develop hearing damage thanks to it. No electricity. Wash clothes by hand for hours. Cook all the time. Your babies might die, your husband or wife might die, and then good luck. This is literally within living memory in most developed countries. Many here have grandparents who lived like this for a big chunk of their lives (not just growing up).
No matter what the future looks like, the present won't look like that, relative to it, than the past does to the present. The average developed country inhabitant objectively lives in decent material conditions.
