Now some will be unlucky and end up with a clone that makes them way less than average. So to fix this the salaries of all the clones are put into one pot and redistributed as "UBI". Given the wealth disparity, most people would end up better off than before, the high earners of the past will be a bit worse off though.

But of course we are not in a perfect world, in reality there are many inefficiencies, and no company would accept a 100% AI worker tax. However, these AIs are presumably not just our clones, but 100x better. So we are in a position of abundance not scarcity. There's enough eggs for everyone. It becomes a question of distribution and policy

Is what you're saying that since UBI would disconnect someone's production from their income, then this will cause shortages of goods? I think UBI only works if the income generated by it is tied to production. That production would not be generated by human labor, but instead by robot labor. I think if you disconnect that then the system would not work, but why would you need to?

Capitalism is based on two simple, fundamental assumptions about the world:

- everyone works

- everyone consumes

1. Turned out not to be true. We have disabled people, elderly people. We patch it with legislation like SSI. That only works because everyone else is still working.

Our monkey patch solutions have held up well for a long time. But, if either of those two assumptions are broken in a large way, the entire system collapses. UBI is yet another monkey patch. As you know, it won’t hold if we bend the invariants of the system enough.

Eventually, a fully planned economy will not be optional.