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RE: Universal basic income and true economic stimulus.
I feel that automation will completely wreck your vacuum analogy. If AI and automation are the ones producing something that is desired, how much will it cost? What happens when the cycle is complete with solar or fusion power and the labor value approaches zero.
I think the current economic model will have to be radically altered. Especially when space travel is factored in and resources become post scarcity. Furthermore, digital assets are already approaching post scarcity with nearly limitless information, education and entertainment being open source. Even the block chain technology that allowed this platform to arise is open source! I feel Austrian economics was good for a less technologically developed time.
Those are very interesting questions! I have only partially thought about them, but I would guess the laws of exchange would remain the same. When we eventually get to the point where everyone has a food replicator, and a free energy generation device, you'll still need technicians to create and maintain. You'll still need scientists and specialists in many fields to evolve things. AI is grossly overstated. It's just an expert system (IF THEN ELSE), and that's all that it'll ever be. It won't generate new technology or software.
I have no doubts we'll have to evolve a new economic system, however, my only claim here is that UBI won't work, and will just turn us more into SLAVES.
Can you explain what you mean by "approaching post scarcity"?
I don't think you and I will be around for space travel (much to my chagrin) so that's not part of our current equation.
Please don't misconstrue this as a challenge. I've heard people bring up this idea before of free food and energy, but I can't wrap my head around it.
That's a bold statement. What grounds do you have to predict the future of a technology that isn't even mature yet?
I'm a software engineer. I know that electricity only has 2 states. Off and On. And it can't become self-aware and create things for which is wasn't developed to do.
Sure, you can fool people into thinking they're talking to a person instead of a computer for so long (the Turing Test), but code isn't self-aware, and it won't ever be.
It makes for great sci-fi and scary doomsday scenarios like the Matrix, but even that film is a metaphor for the current state of our world. Not for self-aware software that takes over the world.
Not to say the technology isn't useful and amazing. I just want to clarify that it's not going to spring to life and replace human creativity, nor conquer the world.
You do realise that human consciousness is just electrical signals, yeah? To presuppose that humans can do it but machines can't, has to involve some sort of magical thinking about "souls" or the like.