Basic income and other ways to fix capitalism | Federico Pistono | TEDxHaarlem

A few years ago, those who warned us about the risks of technological unemployment were labelled as luddites, crazy, or techno-pessimists. Now some of the greatest economists agree that automation poses a serious threat to the economy, with jobs disappearing and inequality on the rise. Today, those proposing radically new ideas to deal with this problem are being called crazy and idealistic. Old ideologies are outdated in the face of exponential change; we need to embrace a more holistic and adaptive system. I believe experiments with unconditional basic income, coupled with the utilization of crypto currencies and blockchain-based technologies, will help us find the answers.’

Federico Pistono is a futurist, social entrepreneur, hacktivist, public speaker, founder and CEO of konoz – a startup that curates and organizes educational videos, whose mission is to become the largest online community for free learning in the world – and he's author of the best-selling book "Robots Will Steal Your Job, But That's OK: How to Survive the Economic Collapse and Be Happy", which has been translated into Spanish, German, and Italian. He lectures regularly at Universities and Fortune 500 companies about the future of humanity.

[SteveV]

If you like this talk, you need to look up presidential candidate Andrew Yang on YouTube.

[Orf]

He's changing the slides just by pointing. It's magic.

[AbeDillon]

What's stopping land lords from raising rent when basic income is implemented? Same thing that stops them from raising rent without basic income: competition.

[AnnoyedDragon]

Regardless of whether the UBI is or is not the solution, we need a solution, this problem cannot be ignored.

Even if you're a hardcore cut throat capitalist that adopts a Scrooge position to the surplus labour force, your business cannot survive without a customer. Can we at least agree on that? Well who is the customer when a great deal of the population are unemployed?

Human resource costs are often businesses largest expense, the first thing they try to minimise. By fully automating your business you can produce your good or service at a much lower price, but if everyone does this; then consumers won't have any disposable income. It won't matter how cheap your product is, people with no income will still be unable to afford it.

There will be some that still have an income from employment, but the competition for their business will be very fierce. Many businesses will be in surplus to the spending power available in the economy. What they imposed on their workforce will become their own fate.

So this needs to be solved. Not just to be humane, but to keep the economy afloat as well. Business after all is a cycle of transactions between producers and consumers, one cannot survive without the other.

[backgroundcharacterj]

I swear it feels like yang watched this video and brought it into politics

[VampireSquirrel]

I am willing to volunteer to be experimented on!

[yantivermeulen]

one of the best TED talks I've seen, I love the emphasis on the data

[rufuspipemos]

All money is derived from "production." When you create money without underlying production and hand it to people not producing, the money becomes devalued in purchasing power. Also, you and I all know plenty of people who would love to get just enough basic income to not work at all. Thus, most of us would work so that a large swath of people can be lazy. Not.... happening.

[NaNa-nusf]

Hardcore Absolute Fact: 1.) Private building ownership ( rent control ) must be calculated based on the poorest sovereign human beings ( homeless ) who are excluded from society from livable wage, respectable jobs and make a living panhandling to survive! Property owners are too greedy and never moral = always raising rents on the hardwork of those on fixed incomes!

[nova]

Basic income isn't capitalism you nitwits.

[MassDynamic]

dude's right. without enough data, making an accurate model and prediction is impossible..

[MrPhilsterable]

I suggest we run a U.S. wide 250+ million sample size UBI experiment at the level of 1000$ per month for the next 50+ years.

[chrisscoggins]

I think this guy may have warmed up my frigid opinion against UBI. Very impressive, I need to do more research

[maximkazhenkov]

UBI is not even a left-wing proposal. It entirely depends on the amount. If social security was replaced by a UBI of 200$ per month, it would be an extremely right-wing policy because it would A) reduce tax spending and B) unemployed people would receive less than now.

Also, unemployed people would have MORE incentive to work because getting a job does not conflict with the UBI they receive, as opposed to social security, so that counter-argument doesn't make sense either. If you truly believed in capitalism, shouldn't you trust people's self-interest motivating them to work, rather than having the government forcing unemployed people to apply for jobs?

[ammaribrahim]

we're the youth. We must take control over the chaos created by influential greedy capitalists

[johneurek]

I would consider myself far right... but I love this Milton Friedman idea.  This idea rewards WORK! Our current system gives food stamps, welfare, section 8, but when you WORK, you get less help. It punishes people who try to help themselves.

[richcampus]

"VENTURE CAPITAL FOR THE PEOPLE"
UBI ~

[_Wai_Wai_]

Aliens will look at us and ask why it took these creatures so long to make UBI a reality

[wtxe]

YES give me my basic income so I can quit my job, and play with my RC cars

[necelticsox]

I love the message behind this video. Capitalism is good, but when it's nor working, you don't get rid of it. You improve it.