∞ | Finland is killing its world-famous basic income experiment

In recent years, a growing number of tech entrepreneurs have endorsed universal basic income (UBI), a system system in which every individual receives a standard amount of money, simply for being alive.

And…

These tech moguls recognize that UBI, as well as combatting poverty, could also help solve the problem of increased robotization in the workforce, a problem they are very much part of creating.

This will be interesting. Official results of the experiment are to be published in 2019.

The push for a universal basic income comes from economically skeptical left-leaning millennials, and industrialists who see in workforce automation their answer to the problems of human labor — the need to provision, maintain, scale, and accommodate large numbers of comparatively inefficient workers, with all of their troubles and demands. Widespread automation would allow for an even greater profit efficiency than slavery, without any of the associated ethical considerations — provided, of course, that the masses of dispossessed workers are maintained in a kind of minimally acceptable lifestyle.