Interesting Links for 25-06-2013

[andrewducker]

• Housing report critical of government short termism (tl;dr: BUILD MORE)
  (tags: uk housing )
• What's going on with the EU's farming subsidies?
  (tags: europe farming )
• Basic income versus the robots
  (tags: robots GuaranteedIncome )
• Stephen Fry writes about Loneliness
  (tags: stephenfry loneliness )
• This is how I learn to use new tools
  (tags:

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

I wonder how much capital one would have to hold post the robotic roll out, say 2040, in order to have sufficient income to lead a modest middle class life and whether this is within the expectation of many people. In other words can many people self-manufacture a citizens’ income.

I think that may be the political-economic question of the century.

[andrewducker]

I'd imagine that it will continue to be the case that massive factories are vastly more efficient than individual workers, even when the workers are robots.

[danieldwilliam]

Sorry, unclear.

Financial, not physical capital.

Can ordinary folk save up enough that they can live on the proceeds and pass on the accumulated capital to their grandchildren?

If the answer is yes for approaching half the population then you have a different economic and political outcome than if the answer is only yes for the richer 10%.

[andrewducker]

Isn't that the definition of post-scarcity economics? When the mass of people have access to enough of the means of production that they do not need to perform any work

[danieldwilliam]

I suspect you’re right

[nancylebov]

Of course, if everyone had ten times as much money as now, we'd all be spending ten times as much on housing, as the price of housing is set by a bidding war for resources whose scarcity has nothing to do with production costs.

On the other hand, might a richer society have a higher proportion of very good places to live?

[andrewducker]

We'd be able to make it out of nicer stuff, certainly. And it would have better stuff in it.

[danieldwilliam]

I think so.

There are factors like the quality of the individual housing unit. As Andrew says we could make them out of nicer materials with nicer better stuff in. We could make them cheaper to live in with energy efficient design and appliances.

A richer society should also improve the local area. Better local schools, libraries, shops, museums and transport links would mean we all wouldn’t be trying to cluster round the good ones. Richer societies might imply safer localities, even in less well-off areas - less street crime and vandalism.