Posted on 08/29/2026 9:17:36 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s hard to avoid the constant prophecies of doom about how AI is going to take our jobs – with some of these already being borne out.
However, AI leaders such as Elon Musk have declared that the population will be supported by Universal Basic Income (UBI) instead, in which the government will financially support everyone through the huge revenues produced by AI. “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk posted on X earlier this year.
Musk imagines that we wouldn’t be unemployed but rather liberated – UBI would allow us to live without the mundane tasks of everyday life, like making PowerPoint presentations, writing emails or finding synergies in our deliverables. We’d be pensioned off to enjoy endless leisure time, to pursue our own interests rather than pesky career development.
I wouldn’t be so sure. While many of us look forward to vacations and retirement, history shows us that humans like to be busy, and we’re unhappy when we can’t be or when this busywork is meaningless.
To demonstrate this we need only look back to the 1950s and 1960s, when Betty Friedan wrote about “the problem that has no name.” Middle-class housewives, with their husbands out working to support the family and their homes now full of modern labor-saving appliances, had virtually unlimited free time. However, we now know that many of these women were desperately unhappy without a sense of purpose, with high rates of depression and alcoholism. Endless leisure time had created a void that all the modcons and activity groups in the world can’t fix. It would probably affect men in the same way.
Already, research shows that male unemployment is linked to rising rates of suicide and substance abuse, and while this cannot be untangled from the pressure on men to be the breadwinner, it seems simplistic to say this is the only factor (and it seems too early to tell whether this cultural pressure would vanish once everyone is relying on UBI).
We also see how the loss of a clear purpose affects retirees, often adrift once the structure and stimulation of work is removed. Even when the job itself is unappealing or unsatisfying, humans take pride in feeling we’re supporting ourselves and our families, whether it’s young women #girlbossing with side hustles or a parent providing for their children.
While hobbies can fill some of the gap, people are reporting fewer of these; in fact any leisure activity outside of doomscrolling is now in steep decline.
Consumers are increasingly choosing convenience over quality, fast fashion over independent designers, shorter books over the weighty classics. Without an awareness of what it takes to be successful at a task or activity, or an appreciation for a finished product, these hobbies can seem pointless and obsolete.
UBI reliance could very well make this worse, because it is much harder to take up a new hobby or calling if you are already in a rut of doing nothing. Looking at housewives aged 25-35 in The Feminine Mystique, Friedan noted that:
“[T]hough they wanted jobs and felt inadequately prepared, of the 45 percent taking courses, very few were working toward a degree… When an alumnae association sponsored a two-session forum in the suburb on ‘How Women in the Middle Years Can Return to Work,’ twenty-five women attended. As a beginning step, each woman was asked to come to the second meeting with a résumé. The résumé took some thought, and, as the researcher put it, ‘sincerity of purpose.’ Only one woman was serious enough to write the résumé.”
It is easy to see how universal UBI would produce more and more of this unseriousness in the population, a basic shiftlessness about applying any effort to try something new.
Techies continue to create tools that automate other people’s interests – too focused on their own passion for technology to see their role in taking away those of others. It’s hypocritical of tech leaders, working notoriously long tech startup hours to develop these new technologies, to assume that everyone else simply wants endless leisure time. UBI would trap the populace, not empower it.
This does not mean that leisure time is in itself a bad thing. But if our jobs become obsolete, UBI won’t bring about a utopia of leisure. In all likelihood, our sense of purpose will simply be the latest sacrifice to technology’s relentless drive towards optimization.
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we’re unhappy when we can’t be or when this busywork is meaningless.
there was an article written saying instead of the VA
Try universal basic income on VETS first.
The theory was, 2k a month would take the pressure off the vets, they would go the drs more and get the treatments they needed knowing their rent, car and food was taken care of every month
$2K a month via UBI is not going to take care of many folks rent, unless they already qualify for Section 8 or other Gov. Programs based on need. Some may qualify, but remain too proud to accept such a handout.
I haven’t even started to take auto and food expenses in for each month.
I suspect this article is on to something (speaking as someone who retired young). I ‘unretired’ to serve as ops manager at a Christian NGO, then did tornado disaster relief work, now volunteer firefighting. Take away meaningful work from millions of men and replace it with nothing better than doomscrolling and you are going to see already deteriorating social dysfunctions shoot skyward.
UBI? Perhaps as a temporary measure until the age of universal plenty causes money to become irrelevant. The irony is the wealthiest man will make his wealth worthless.
Indians brought over to the USA are literally writing the code for the top AI companies. The Claude team is 70% imported Indians.
The Matrix tried this out at first.
Didn’t work...
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