In a world where humans need not apply, the hearts and souls of those humans may be the product that is for sale for the price of guaranteed basic services and wages.
You see...
As automation reaches more and more sectors of the evonomy. More jobs will be automated removing the human element and retail prices will drop towards the input costs. Glass and silicon chips to the cost of sand, transportation to the cost of energy, education to the cost of storage, etc.
Humans may not have jobs, but they may not need much income either.
We will need laws that protect and value human existance for it's own sake, not for it's commercial value.
Products are made for sale, in order to move money from the hands of the buyers to the hands of those who own the means of production.
But this can't happen if most humans are destitute. Corporate taxation revenues must be plowed back into the pockets of all humans.
We are just playing an immense game of chicken, waiting to see which government will deploy minimum income laws for its citizens and thereby loose corporations to higher taxes while other countries attract corporations by not providing guaranteed minimum income to their citizens.
These economic quakes will unleash financial tsunamis that will wipe out unsteady economies. Offering them up to the highest corporate bidder who may simply buy millions of clients in impoverished parts of the world for the price of survival rations.
If Ford paid his employees above the market rate so they could buy his products (the model T) in exchange for dictatorial control over their lifestyle. Can one imagine a world where guaranteed minimum income would be linked to maintaiming the ideological standards of the corporations providing the cash?
Unless our governments seize the opportunity to define the terms of the guaranteed minimum income system before it falls into private hands, we may find ourselves adopting the ideologies of the highest bidder to secure our income.
