income makes me question how many people realize nothing good exists without condition.

Somehow we are supposed to trust huge corporations whose sole intention has always been consolidation

of wealth and economic power to the point nothing and nobody can question their dominance.

Corporations that track our every movement, follow our credit cards and cellphone IDs

everywhere we go in order to have a perfect track record of our personality traits and thoughts.

Corporations that in order to bring greater profit for their shareholders, exploit child

labor in undemocratic countries or failed states, just so that they don't have to

employ expensive labor in Western societies.

Corporations that aren't shy for being in bed with ones of the worst authoritarian regimes

in order to expand their business.

Corporations that actively pursue monopolies so that they have the power to influence social

discourse and our behavior, by manipulating what we can see, censoring what we can say,

and filtering what we can know.

Corporations that lobby and bribe our politicians by dumping hundreds of millions of dollars

every year in order to rig our democratic process and maintain their unquestionable presence.

Somehow we are supposed to expect that these corporations who have never cared about the

values and needs of the society, who have securely corrupted our democracy, and know

more about us than we know about ourselves, will give us all free income without any conditions.

Politicians left and right, corporate leaders, and people from all backgrounds seem to unite

behind an idea that could've easily worked if we implemented it hundred years ago, when

free market actually worked.

I am not here to question whether universal basic income

would successfully elevate people out of poverty.

I am not here to question whether this form of guaranteed income

would make people more productive.

I agree that universal basic income could successfully achieve both of those things.

I am here to express my skepticism towards the new system and power relationships we

are going to build when we implement universal basic income

in combination with centralized automation.

I am not saying I am 100% right.

I am just pointing out that we should be careful about what kind of world we are building under

the premise of hopeful dreams and good intentions.

The debate about universal basic income is essentially a debate about whether this time

technological revolution is going to be any different than the previous ones.

And I am on the side that argues this time is going to be different.

Artificial intelligence is going to destroy the need for human labor.

But not for the reasons others argue.

Elon Musk best summarizes this line of thinking:

I think that's right.

But it's only a part of the whole truth.

Robots are going to be better than us in everything.

Including manipulation, censorship, and propaganda.

It's not just that the robots are going to be better.

It's about what social contract are we going to implement around a system where robots

can do everything better than humans.

There may be a hypothetical time when robots will be completely indistinguishable from humans.

But that time isn't going to be in our century and thus shouldn't be a core issue of our debate.

We might never even reach that point.

Artificial intelligence isn't dangerous because of what it can do, but because of

how people who created it are going to use it.

Instead we should focus on how the development and deployment of automation currently takes place.

And this is where at least in my reasoning, the dream of universal basic income crumbles.

My argument is that universal basic income is not going to create a better world.

It might create a wathere is less poverty and starvation.

But because people will no longer be needed in production,

they will lose all of their power as workers to secure their rights and position

in the social contract with their economic and political elites.

Protesting and striking will lose all its value because corporations and politicians

won't be reliant on human labor to prosper and grow their power.

And that is going to happen if we don't change anything in the current trends of

centralization of power and consolidation of wealth.

So when Musk implies that because robots will be able to replace humans:

The emphasis should be on the word “choice”.

I think Elon didn't pick this word by a stuttering accident.

It might actually be one of his premonitions.

Why exactly are we not going to have a choice?

Isn't free market supposed to decide what people actually want in the so called 'law

of demand and supply'?

No business would want to create products in a system where they can't sell them because

their customers can't generate income anymore.

So is Elon Musk hinting that decisions of a handful of corporations will override the

desires of the whole free market?

I think this is what makes all the difference between technological revolution of today

and those of the past.

And that is precisely because human societies have never faced entities consolidating so

much power as the biggest transnational corporations are doing today.

The argument isn't that we shouldn't implement any form of a guaranteed income.

But that we should do it on our own terms rather than having it shoved down our throats

by big corporations with pseudoliberal agendas and politicians who only care about reelection.

Otherwise universal basic income is going to constitute a new social contract which

we aren't going to have any say in.

When we look at this issue from a historical perspective each technological revolution

completely changed the previous social order and created new forms of government.

The next technological revolution triggered by artificial intelligence

will also result most likely in a complete rearrangement of the social contract.

And as I will soon demonstrate, this process has already started.

Before the first industrial revolution in the 18th century, human relationships were

tightly locked to the land they were working on.

Ownership of more land meant higher position in the social hierarchy.

The highest rank belong to the king who owned most of the land in the kingdom.

The lowest rank in the hierarchy was held by the peasants, the majority of the population.

Most people that couldn't afford any land were working on fields for landlords.

But even if those that could afford to own a land usually didn't have enough means

to protect themselves from raids.

Just getting a sword not to mention a horse was usually extremely expensive.

Which is why these people usually formed pacts with nobility and knights to protect them

in exchange for tax from yields.

When industrial revolution kicked off, it completely dismantled the previous feudal system.

Mere possession of land was no longer a requirement for sustainable life.

Only those who owned bigger and better machines and

worked harder and smarter could accumulate more income.

Workers previously tied to their landlords could now go freely into the cities and offer

their labor at a plethora of working opportunities.

As the industrial revolution went on four things started to happen that are beginning

to fade out from reality today.

First: human labor entered free market and workers could choose from myriads of different jobs.

Second: Competition of business owners was very high and it was extremely easy for workers

to switch jobs.

Third: Climbing social ladder was for the first time based on merit and hard work and

not on just an inherited social status.

Fourth: the technological progress vastly improved living conditions and allowed for

equal opportunities even for the bottom class.

Presence of these four elements at the time of the industrial revolution brought about

immense social changes.

And likewise, their absence in our time is a symptom of an upcoming social restructuring.

In the 19th century, these four new elements empowered middle class and balanced the relationships

between workers and business owners, even the most wealthy ones.

It became easy for the middle class and workers to organize in unions.

Economically, all workers are replaceable as individuals.

But as an aggregate, they can unite to protest and strike to cause sudden systematic disruption.

Through unions workers and broad middle class were able to convert their economic power

to political power.

This is how working rights and universal suffrage were granted to people.

Not out of the benevolence of the political and economic elite, but because of the conversion

of economic power to political influence industrial middle class could pull of to win their cause.

The disturbance caused by workers not showing up at work but striking on the streets, was

too effective at damaging profits.

Unions and workers strikes are still present today, but they bear much less political power

than they used to.

Why so?

Because today workers even as an economic aggregate are replaceable, either by outsourcing

the production to countries with poorer working conditions, or by centralized automation.

Effects of the decreasing need for human labor is also multiplied by the new economy standard

where companies no longer make most of their profits from sales, but when people use their products

But that still doesn't explain how we got

to this state of extreme imbalance between current middle class and the wealthiest billionaires.

Why is it that almost everybody benefited from the inventions of industrial revolution,

but only biggest corporations benefit from centralized automation?

And that's precisely because something used to be happening in the 19th century that is

no longer the case today.

And it's this: To balance the power of organized unions at

the turn of the 19th century, businesses with significant market power

also organized themselves in groups.

By abusing the system of trusts, businesses started buying stocks from one another, forming

trade associations, or constituting conglomerates.

This is how few big business owners managed to accumulate more percentage points of a

certain market share when they couldn't do it purely by outperforming their competition

with a better product.

But unlike today, 19th century monopoly seeking attempts turned out to be largely unsuccessful

because the public outrage of empowered middle class forced the government to take action.

There are three most resonating historical cases.

John Rockefeller's Standard Oil, J.B.

Duke's American Tobacco, and James Hill's Northern Securities.

All of these companies used various methods to take advantage of their market positions

to form artificial monopolies.

All three of these companies sought to become monopolies in their industries following similar

formula: buying stocks of businesses that relied on them; merging and acquiring other

companies to gain bigger market share; and cut out other resisting competition by artificially

underpricing your products to the point others are put out of business.

Eventually the US government sued all three of these companies under anti-trust clause

from the Sherman Act.

The Courts later ordered to dissolve all of them as unlawful and artificial monopolies.

And while some big businesses continue to engage in anti-competitive practices today

the government and the public no longer take any sufficient counter-measures.

Since American Tobacco and Standard Oil were broken up in 1911 the only anti-trust case

that resulted in dissolution was the AT&T breakup in 1982.

Predatory business owners managed to win the fight for the balance of power against the

middle class.

When in 2005 the Southwestern Bell Corporation recreated AT&T by purchasing its parent company

together with a dozen of other children of the breakup from the '80s, the US government

did nothing.

When Verizon did the same with the rest of the baby Bells in the same year, the US government

did nothing.

And that's how the two largest telecommunications corporations were born that today enjoy either

a monopoly or a duopoly everywhere they operate.

Forming business trusts became the instruction manual for big businesses in every industry

to create monopolies.

Big banks caught up on the trend too.

Vast deregulation of the '80s and '90s allowed for the mergers of commercial and

investment banks, which was strictly forbidden under the Glass-Steagall Act (repealed by

Clinton in 1999).

Taking advantage of other regulatory loopholes opened up by Reagan and Bush, banks began

to engage in risky investments with people's money.

Investment banks could make outrageous bets with high likelihood of failure, because the

money they used from the commercial banks were federally insured and backed by government

bailouts in case of a downfall.

Nothing changed on this despite 2008 financial meltdown.

Banks took this old industry standard to a whole new level: if you seek to become a monopoly

today you don't get punished but rewarded.

But it wasn't the banks that started the new

technological revolution.

It was the Internet-enabled tech industry.

Previous industrial revolution had a strong affect on morality – feudalism was no longer

ok, slavery was no longer ok, and soon even child labor was banned.

So did the new tech start-ups brought any moral innovation?

They built-up on the old practices of predatory

banks and telecoms.

Google started off with the “don't be evil” but even they quickly realized that

being predatory at all costs is the way to go.

Merit of the product is no longer what brings the winning.

If you want to win you have to consolidate faster than everyone else.