They said that there’s 9 meals between stability and revolution. Hopefully, that was a somewhat flippant comment back then…. However, the us is a heavily armed society and injecting a large group with nothing to lose will be a real problem.
This might be the factor that keeps the robots at bay. Politics seems to think that ubi “isn’t possible”, but a whole lot of people might want to keep jobs and thus food in their possession.
The world is a consumer economy, and the transition to Star Trek will be very difficult. Look for the rise of those promising to help their group vs those who’ll do it harm.
> Look for the rise of those promising to help their group vs those who’ll do it harm.
That’s everyone, the conventional wisdom is to form in-groups and out-groups, and to help your people. There’s no concern for truth, or establishing or maintaining universal moral or ethical standards; most conflate these with their political or religious beliefs. Regardless of whoever you are, the main concerns for anyone on average are related to resource acquisition and management.
Taking a step back, what’s the point of UBI? To sustain more of this thoughtlessness? Being able to work is a means to an end, and it’s unclear what that means for the majority when there’s no evolution of thought or purpose.
On a practical note, every statesman should support and find a way to implement UBI in the absence of providing means for acquiring basic human needs. There are a lot of examples in the world which show how to deprive populations and still maintain societal stability, but the conditions required for reproducing those effects will be absent from societies which were previously functioning democracies. It follows that such societies will enter into conflict, both internally and externally. If AI is an existential threat, then it’s because nation states will enter into nuclear or civil conflict (nuclear is less dangerous), and not because of the emergence of a super intelligence which will dominate humanity.
I'm sure the fact that the US keeps scratching the scab, what with comments, tariff threats and changes, increased hassle entering the US and the continued ICE news the Canadians don't have a cooling-off period. As wags posted early in 2025, Canadians have two modes: "sorry" and "you'll be sorry".
I didn't think there's a surplus of doctors, nurses and other medical professionals in the US (or any country). Partially due to the expense of training and partially due to resistance from the (self-)licensing organization unwilling to kill their future income. I'm also not sure there's a surplus of PhD's in the chemistry or biology areas to feed places like biotech, pharm, academia and related startups. To satisfy such positions, people are looking at 12 + 5 + 2 post HS education.
And then there's the scut work nobody seems to want to do - somebody has to pick in the fields, shred those chickens, ... And Connor and Maddie never seem to be interested in jobs at this level.
Will the governments step in to prevent companies from offshoring? Will people pay more at Walmart?
I’ve seen numerous accounts on Twitter that push visa bans - often far right supremacist accounts - that are also pushing to denaturalize existing citizens who were previously immigrants, and yes, to ban or heavily tax offshoring.
From my long-ago uni courses, current-day AI could have helped with the non-major courses: English and History, doing the first draft or even the final drafts of papers, etc. As a science major, I'm not sure what the point of relying on an AI is as it would leave you empty when considering further education or the tests they require. And as far as a foreign language goes, one needs to at least read the stuff without relying on Google Translate (assuming they have such a requirement anymore).
But I like to think that actually learning the history was important and it certainly was a diversion from math/chemistry/physics. I liked Shakespeare, so reading the plays was also worthwhile and discussing them in class was fun. Yeah, I was bored to tears in medieval history, so AI could have helped there.
>As a science major, I'm not sure what the point of relying on an AI is as it would leave you empty
Why do you think it wouldn't do the same for other fields? The purpose of writing essays in school is never to have the finished product; it's to learn and analyze the topic of the essay and/or to go through the process of writing and editing it.
It'll get you an academic integrity investigation if you get caught using it to write either a first draft or a final draft of a paper, and especially for an English class where the whole point is for you to learn how to write.
If you're going to try to fake being able to write, better to try to dupe any other professor than a professor of English. (source: raised by English majors)
1. Cleaning up the junk left after the AI bubble burst. 2. Debugging code you didn’t write and didn’t really spec. 3. “Would you like fries with that?”
I suspect the argument is for the forces to be available in house, at least for the near to mid term. Depending on how the n American auto industry turns out, there might be various military vehicles being built to transport them.
If they ban immigration, will we hear a repeat of Japan’s “aging population, declining tax income” stories? If you need young or specialized workers, get cracking on birthing as that’ll provide candidates in 18-30 years.
The overwhelming majority of swiss immigrants are either highly skilled individuals that the swiss population cannot produce in numbers or they do jobs locals won't do (cleaning, etc).
Good luck telling Swiss pharma or any other of their specialized industries to live without immigrants, they can close tomorrow. Immigrants are an insane boost to Swiss economy.
Also, I lived and been in Switzerland few times after, there's virtually no problematic immigrants. I've never ever felt the slightest danger, even walking at night with nobody but the kind of immigrants you don't like, you just don't.
Even though foreigners are overrepresented compared to locals (as in any other country in the world with immigrants they are the poorest and thus more inclined) the absolute numbers are very very low.
So no, higher or lower number of immigrants don't have linear correlations. Switzerland has an insane number of expats and immigrants as % of the population, insanely higher than the US or other countries like Poland or Italy, yet their crime numbers are fractional.
It's markedly more difficult and expensive for even highly skilled individuals to obtain Swiss residency, speaking from personal experience. Unlike the rest of Western Europe where you can claim to be a Dr. Engineer on asylum and become a citizen a few years down the line so that you can threaten Christmas markets and take shits in churches without repercussion in future. Maintaining a low target population helps in the vetting process and ensures companies prioritize skill needs over lowering costs. The drawback here being it becomes more appealing for companies to export jobs abroad, at the citizens' expense.
Another country which has a similar strict immigration regime - Singapore. And for a direct opposite, there's the Gulf countries, which let everyone and their dog in, so that they can be part of the slaving class for the locals.
Find the market clearing price for unwanted jobs with domestic labor. Any job will be done at the right compensation. This is what UBI would do. I prefer this versus continuing to require an imported underclass. With my apologies to the conservative mental model, “starve the beast” but of cheap labor.
You know that 30%+ of Swiss population is foreign born?
36% of the workforce is foreign born.
In Zurich, Geneve, Lausanne, 44%+ of the residents are foreigners, and more than half the workforce is foreigners. And that's even ignoring how many people work there but reside in neighbouring countries (France border is close to Geneve and Lausanne is close and even has a boat between the two sides mostly carrying workers).
If you think that a Swiss national (which has several advantages from a hiring perspective) is going to be cleaning your toilet, no matter the money, without having higher paying options you're absolutely out of your mind.
Switzerland is a tiny country, it cannot grow endlessly in population.
Albeit it's density is lower than comparable Belgium, Switzerland is crossed by the alps so the real available land is much smaller, virtually all of the residents live in 30% of the space.
In any case, that's the beauty of Switzerland: Swiss citizens can decide for themselves. I've seen many referendums in Switzerland and I've rarely seen Swiss citizens vote against their interest. Proposals have often an initial support, which fades as people discuss it and investigate it more.
Populism has really low grip there, politicians riding emotions have little legislative power.
i'm okay w importing workers if they're treated the same as domestic workers. its the system we have now that incentivizes importing and abusing workers by somehow pretending that employers have no role at all in illegal immigration and only punishing the immigrants that fails miserably at everything immigration policy says it's supposed to do.
Ahh, but the purpose of the system is what it does. Would employers and countries import immigrants if they had to treat them the same as domestic workers?
Switzerland doesn't really have jobs locals wont do like other countries. e.g. cleaning pays enough that it's as respectable a profession as any other.
I've never ever met a single cleaning staff that wasn't foreigner, and I lived both in Lausanne and Zurich.
Low paying jobs are predominantly staffed by foreigners. Swiss youth has a huge array of opportunities even without education, let alone many interesting tricks to not work a lot and still make money.
> "many interesting tricks to not work a lot and still make money."
As someone not very familiar with Switzerland I'm curious what you mean by this, as I assume from your wording you don't simply mean generous benefits available to unemployed and low wage people?
The Constitution doesn’t require a well-regulated militia - it simply says the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The militia is mentioned as a reason, not a condition.
It clearly says a well regulated militaries is necessary for the security of a free state. You can dither on whether the Constitution establishes a secure state or a free one, but the syllogism is there
The militia is mentioned first, but I’m not an English major who is able to parse old sentences. The militia is “necessary” so they need to know where the, erm, candidates are located and what they pack.
This might be the factor that keeps the robots at bay. Politics seems to think that ubi “isn’t possible”, but a whole lot of people might want to keep jobs and thus food in their possession.
The world is a consumer economy, and the transition to Star Trek will be very difficult. Look for the rise of those promising to help their group vs those who’ll do it harm.
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