(TL;DR at end)

UBI has been thrown around a lot recently, and it’s currently the forerunner among futurists as the solution to a highly automated, robotic future.

Unfortunately, this plan has a lots of issues. Most significant among them the political barriers. Most Americans, and most politicians, would not support the direct transfer of money to people, for “no good reason”. These plans would be attacked as socialism, or wasteful government spending, or overreach. And they wouldn’t necessarily be wrong in these accusations (but still a lot of wrong).

So what could be an alternative? Already, many jobs have been lost to computers and robots. Already, companies, the capital owners, are trading human workers, for the massive returns on capital costs that robots/automation provides. But this can be exploited for the benefit of the common worker.

Historically, the capital owners and workers have been in a constant struggle with workers. This is the reason labor unions were first created. Our government spends a lot of time trying to balance and negotiate this relationship. Our modern capitalist society is built on the relationship, and our existing systems are intricately dependent on this relationship, which is why it’s of utmost importance to address the disruptions robots will cause for this relationship. The best solution might be to work within the worker-owner paradigm, rather than trying to disrupt this paradigm as a UBI intends to do.

How you ask? Let workers own the robots. A vehicle assembly line for example contains dozens of robots that produce millions of dollars worth of vehicles, while merely costing a few hundred thousands of dollars in maintenance and lifecycle costs. What if, rather than the factory owner owning the robots, and reaping the benefits of the robots at the expense of humans, they were required (or encouraged) to lease the robots from workers? Workers would get together and “purchase” the robots from robotics companies, “lease” them to the factories for fees that could more that support the income needs of the workers, and be responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the robots?

The system that would evolve would be “employers” being the worker-coops that manage and maintain the robots. These worker coops would necessarily have to hire people to maintain the robots and keep them functioning, they would hire people to acquire the best robots, and hire people to negotiate usage of the robots with the factories. The factories would seek out coops with the best negotiators, or best workers, which ensures they pay competitive leasing fees. This way, the market economic system incentives creation of the best robots, people still have productive work to do in maintaining the coops, businesses still have meaningful pressures to seek better efficiency, and a basis for setting prices, and our economy keeps ticking along.

Compared to a UBI, this allows workers to control their destiny. Workers can figure out new ways to run coops (that i can’t even begin to capture here) that increase their incomes. Some workers might be okay with a coop that seeks a meager income, while others will work hard to make the best robot coop ever. Under a UBI, masses of people will have no job, no real opportunities, and a true underclass would form. The UBI might only let people buy the cheapest of goods, and stay in low quality housing. It would result in massive growth in ghettos as people try to survive on their meager basic income.

Under worker-owned robot cooperatives, anyone has the opportunity to buy into these robot coops. And to be clear, these coops don’t have to by physical robots, it could be intelligent software. It may be possible for each individual to own an intelligent software agent, rather than having to buy into a more expensive robot coop. There are many ways this system could evolve.

Fundamentally though, it would require laws that force employers to “hire” human employees who then send a robot (software or physical) in to work for them. This would see massive opposition to implement (since factory owners aren’t going to want to give up their lucrative robots), but should result in a superior system in a post-automation society than a UBI.

TL;DR: Forcing companies/factories to lease/buy robots from humans is better than a Universal Basic Income