Peter Diamandis is Wrong About UBI & Tech Unemployment

Why McKinsey’s prediction that 45% of jobs will be automated away is great news for humanity

From a 2015 Singularity University talk by Kathryn Myronuk

I’m a huge fan of Peter Diamandis, even though we’ve never met in person. If you haven’t come across what he’s doing, I highly recommend you sign up for his weekly communique at Diamandis.com. Peter has co-founded XPRIZE (solves the world’s grand challenges through prize competitions), Singularity University (teaching leaders to leverage exponential tech to solve global problems), Planetary Resources (planning to prospect and mine asteroids), Human Longevity Inc. (extending the healthy human lifespan through technology), BOLD Capital Partners (breakthrough investment fund targeting exponential companies) and Abundance 360 (a highly-curated group of 360 entrepreneurs, executives, and investors committed to transforming their success into significance).

Peter’s two books — Abundance and BOLD — both had a huge impact on me because of his visionary, abundant thinking. This is why I was particularly surprised by his apparent un-abundant thinking in his latest tech blog post, A Bridge to Abundance. Admittedly, Peter might not have written the post himself — he has recently employed writers and content creators. So, I’m not convinced that Peter believes this personally about Universal Basic Income and technological unemployment:

The challenge is a psychological and sociological variant. Humans don’t like having nothing to do. We love challenges, and have a deep need for significance and contribution. For many, a person’s job title provides them with a standing in society and is part of their identity. Lose that identity and people may revolt (some violently) against the technology that took it away from them. How will we tame such (potential) societal unrest? Who will be to blame?

If these really are Peter’s concerns, he is entirely wrong about recipients of Universal Basic Income having nothing to do and (paid) technological unemployment causing societal unrest. Since his post asks for thoughts and feedback, here are mine.

First, two important points backed by research:

1. You can’t motivate hungry people: they need to be fed first;
2. Poverty is not caused by the individual; poverty is caused by the system.

The concern by many that UBI will lead to widespread laziness stems from the belief that all people living in poverty are lazy. This is simply not true. Study after study shows that entrepreneurship usually triples when money is provided to all unconditionally. We’ve seen it in Namibia, India, Kenya and Uganda and we’ve seen it in Liberia and Lebanon. Entrepreneurship thrives in markets with basic income. F. A. Hayek himself knew this. Milton Friedman knew this. Both advocated free markets. Both advocated basic income.

The reason for an increase in productivity under UBI is because intrinsic motivation far surpasses that of extrinsic motivation, where people only do things for external rewards like money. It’s a recognition of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: once basic needs are met, focus shifts towards meeting higher needs like social relationships, creativity, learning, and personal achievement. The removal of the daily burden of chasing survival creates an abundance of new potential within the mind. When that happens, scarcity — humanity’s oldest enemy — is soundly defeated. When scarcity is removed from the equation, the mind shifts towards long-term thinking, and it’s even comparable to a gain of 14 IQ points. Imagine what’s possible when that happens to billions of people.

Will recipients of UBI end up doing nothing or cause societal unrest? No, absolutely no.

And I’m not even a fan of UBI as a long-term solution. Instead, I see UBI as a vital stepping stone towards Universal Abundance Income and a necessary measure to prevent a sudden and catastrophic collapse of market capitalism, but that’s an entirely different topic.

What will people do if there are no jobs?

What Peter is absolutely correct about is that humans “love challenges, and have a deep need for significance and contribution” and without something meaningful for recipients to do, UBI could potentially fail.

That’s why I’m creating a project specifically for recipients of UBI.

I’m calling it Project 2030, because that’s how long I think it will take to fully roll out.

Project 2030: SDG’s and the Blockchain

Millions of workers are required to transition from a centralised fossil fuel energy system to a decentralised, intelligent network of renewable energies. Millions of homes and buildings will need to be converted to micropower plants. The electricity grid will need to be reconfigured into a digital smart-grid. Hydrogen and other energy storage technologies will need to be developed and installed. Transportation infrastructure will have to be reconfigured to accommodate electric and fuel-cell vehicles.

Millions more knowledge workers are required to open source a decentralised society:

• Education: Hundreds of thousands of facilitators are required to help students caught in the education system to achieve life-long learning;
• Social Media: Millions are required to help shift the inane conversations happening online about what’s wrong with the world towards positive discussions about solutions and outcomes;
• Tech Designers and Coders: Millions are required to build open source decentralised governance, education, economic and medical feedback loops;
• Knowledge: Millions are required for a Wikipedia-style categorisation of the world’s knowledge into levels of consciousness;

And that’s just the start!

I think Peter’s concerns about societal unrest caused by (paid) tech unemployment and UBI are unfounded, and I hope he will continue championing UBI. Right now the world needs radical solutions. UBI is one solution that will help shift humanity trapped in a scarcity paradigm into a mindset that can ease us into the next phase of our evolution.