Canaille Couyon
I've had the wonderful pleasure to finally make it back home to see my friends and family in my hometown after the whole media circus began last year. Many of them have followed my story and I wanted to hear their opinions on the issues I've been raising in the press. They all had well thought through well informed opinions and I was very proud to be related to them. They did the work that I asked people to do. One friend in particular convinced me thoroughly that we need UBI very soon or the economy will get bad. This is his story.
He's my oldest friend. A few people who read this will know who that is but he'll remain nameless here because he's a private man leading a private life and I wish to respect that. Why he might want to maintain his privacy … will become evident.
When we were children we both wanted to be inventors. We also both were terrible makers who thought that every single rule was negotiable. He's the first person I ever got drunk with and to this day whiskey makes me sick because it reminds me of the Seagram's Seven we drank way back then.
We've kept in touch over the years. Many of the political opinions I've shared over the years have changed after critiques he's made of my arguments. We share many of the same passions but different skill sets led us down different paths. He thinks of me as “the smart one” but I think of him as “the canaille one”. And boy did he whip up an amazing efficiency system for bringing the productivity gains from AI to individual workers.
When I told him about the AI and how much it would change the world he dove in head first. He has thoroughly educated himself on what AI tools are integrated into which products and which ones work best for him personally. He experimented with it and he got good. He's a skilled contractor who managed to get so productive that he could do a fourty hour a week remote work job in ten hours with another ten hours overhead in management. What would he do with AI??? Two jobs. That's what he did with AI.
He has developed a system (the specifics of which I will not reveal) by which he is legitimately able to use AI to deliver value to two remote employers by the terms of the contracts that they offered him. One man. 40 hours. Two salaries. Canaille!
And I fully approve of this usage of this technology. What he showed me is that the efficiency gains in since sectors are going to be so great in short order that we could see 20 or 30% unemployment in certain sectors. Those increased profits from efficiency will inevitably go somewhere and if the government won't tax the megacorps I'd rather the money go to my friend than some “shareholder” on his yacht.
Sitting there listening to him explain how he did it while he was literally distilling moonshine right next to me was magical. I felt like the city slicker in a Hank Williams Jr song come home to receive wisdom from old Hank. And we talked about our worries and we drank his moonshine.
The disruptions to the economy which AI will cause are coming faster than we had hoped. We need a preventative stopgap measure. UBI is the best me and him could come up with. We're two country boys from Moreauville, LA though. We see the asteroid. We're pointing at it. UBI is the best suggestion we got. Hopefully people will listen.
Meanwhile, if they don't, I'm highly encouraging him to write a book detailing his method for publication as a how to guide to easily double your income using AI working from home OR make the same money and work half as much. Works either way. It's a brilliant method!
