Recent international headlines featured a story about a developing technology that might well begin to replace positions in the food service industry as humanity takes another step towards automation.
“Flippy” the burger flipper is an automated robot arm that uses, among other technology, heat sensors in its mission to grill to perfection as many as a dozen patties at a time.
Shortly after Flippy made headlines, a wave of interest overwhelmed the California restaurant that installed the robot, and it was for now taken offline. Although the budding high-tech burger flipper remains far from flawless, efforts are nevertheless moving full steam ahead to perfect this next step towards automation.
Some people lament the significant loss of jobs such a development would have around the world, calling these kinds of positions crucial to a global economy that largely depends on rewarding service sector employees with practically nothing while top paid executives stash untold fortunes in secretive offshore tax havens.
Even billionaire entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk — the mastermind behind Tesla, SpaceX, and the push for a colony on Mars — are starting to speak louder about a not only sensible but also frankly quite pragmatic approach to a world where more and more jobs are being replaced by robots that do not require training, benefits, breaks, paid vacation, or parental or sick leave.
“There is a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income, or something like that, due to automation...I am not sure what else one would do,” Musk said.
I would go so far as to add this step could bring us that much closer to unlocking our potential.
With a basic annual guaranteed income, people could dedicate their time and energy towards pursuing their passion — whatever that path might be — instead of working 40-60 unthankful and unappreciated hours a week to just barely scrape by on poverty wages.
How many doctors, architects, scientists, teachers, artists, tradespeople, leaders, engineers, athletes and so on remain hindered not by lack of natural talent but rather by lack of opportunity to escape stiflingly restrictive financial chains.
Allowing people to tap into their potential by providing them with the opportunity to pursue their passion makes far more sense than asking them to be eternally grateful for tedious, unrewarding work.
Additionally, the vast majority of — if not all other — social welfare programs could simply be ceased, essentially instantly saving vast sums of taxpayer dollars by eliminating no shortage of over-bloated and burdensome bureaucracy.
And critics who claim that providing a minimum guaranteed basic annual income will erode or undermine people’s drive to work or improve themselves should consider the fact that an exceedingly unexceptional $20,000 or $30,000 a year would still not exactly be a life in the lap of luxury. Such a modest income would leave plenty of room to motivate people to find a more prosperous path without being paralyzed by fear of starving or becoming homeless.
People whose cognitive functions are fully preoccupied with survival mode as they go from one low-paying job to another simply do not have the means to spend time or mental resources pondering — let alone pursuing — other options.
Oftentimes, “what I’d like to be doing” sadly gets swept aside and buried, largely forgotten under the overwhelming weight of obligation to pay the bills and put food in the stomach.
So as opposed to triggering economic Armageddon as unprecedented levels of unemployment herald a cataclysmic financial crash, automation — coupled with guaranteed basic income — is actually seen by some, including this journalist, as a great liberator that will not only help to free people from the shackles of borderline poverty, but also give them the opportunity to reach a higher potential.
— Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up, a Great West newspaper
