On Doug Ford cuts to basic universal income pilot, job automation and silence as complicity in the tech industry
The tech industry loves basic universal income. Why then has there been no outcry about the loss of a basic universal income pilot program in Ontario?
Last summer, Doug Ford and the Ontario Conservative majority government eliminated $50M in provincial funding for a basic minimum income pilot that was started by the Liberal Party of Ontario in 2016. The provincial Conservatives stopped the program even though they hadn’t seen the data on whether the experiment was working.
By all accounts, this kind of ideological disregard for data should cause fury within data-driven circles of the Canadian tech industry, who publicly declare their love for the concept of a universal basic income. Tobi Lütke, CEO of Shopify, once said universal basic income “fits the narrative Canada can offer the world”. Ryan Holmes, CEO of Hootsuite, has mused on his blog about a basic income as part of a larger shift to a new economy. In the United States, entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, and Virgin Mobile founder Richard Branson support a basic income. Tech venture capitalist titans like Sam Alton have supported, and even simulated, a basic income pilot.
If universal basic income is so beloved in the tech industry, why has there been a collective silence from numerous tech communities in Toronto, Waterloo and Ottawa in speaking out against Doug Ford cutting the basic income pilot? To answer this question, we must dig deeper to understand the infatuation that the tech industry has when it comes to data. Tech folks love to muse about basic minimum income, but only within a view of society that protects the sanctity of automating work. That’s because many, many tech careers — including mine — are based on the premise that the technology we build will make something in society cheaper, easier and faster. At the heart of this premise is an understanding that is frequently understood but rarely voiced aloud:
“Our technology is disruptive and savings will come from automating certain kinds of work, but it’s not our responsibility to manage that kind of disruption. That’s government’s job.”
Well okay, but what saves us from a Doug Ford government that takes away agency from people? Do we blindly accept that this phenomenon is the will of the people, and therefore we as technology people have nothing to do with its effects? If our jobs rely on automating, eliminating or reducing someone else’s work, we are likely contributing to a system that takes away someone’s livelihood and creating a more unequal society. A basic universal income would be a great first step to square the circle on how to undo the damage. So far, I have yet to see any evidence that the tech sector is taking Doug Ford’s cuts to the minimum income seriously. Further, there have been shockingly few calls from tech industry executives, CEOs and investors to denounce callous cuts, made by Doug Ford’s administration over the last several months, to transit, housing, childcare, education, municipal infrastructure, democracy, parks or public health in cities across Ontario.
The basic income pilot has been lost despite lawsuits, Queens Park protests and calls for federal intervention. The people whose lives were affected by these callous cuts return to a welfare system that is wholly inadequate for today’s realities. For the tech industry, it is easy for us to speak about ways to automate people’s work. It is much harder to speak about how to save a person’s livelihood when their work is automated. This will require a more difficult, honest conversation about how to protect people over profit.
