--- title: "Andrew Yang’s Goal: Steer Us Away From a Bleakly Dystopian Future" description: "In a bleak profile by The Verge, 2020 presidential hopeful Andrew Yang lays out his grim vision of the future — if automation remains unchecked." date: "2019-04-17" modified: "2019-04-17" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/andrew-yang-vision-future-automation" categories: - "Finance" - "Future Society" - "Universal Basic Income" tags: - "andrew yang" - "automation" - "universal basic income" - "universal income" --- # Andrew Yang’s Goal: Steer Us Away From a Bleakly Dystopian Future ![]() *\Image: Stephen McCarthy/Collision via Flickr\* ## Public Enemy Long-shot U.S. presidential candidate Andrew Yang isn't hopeful about the imminent future of humanity — that much become instantly clear in a [bleak profile]() published today by *The Verge*. Public enemy number one: automation, which Yang sees as a destructive result of a rapidly globalizing market-obsessed future. The risk is millions of jobs lost and a host of undesirable side effects like financial insecurity and a decline in mental health — a joyless, dystopian future in which humans have been replaced by the machines they built. ## A Long Way Up Yang's core promise is to provide every U.S. citizen with $1,000 every month. That'd usually be called [basic income](). Yang, however, prefers to call it a "freedom dividend" — perhaps to make the idea more digestible to center-leaning voters. "Even now, we have an epidemic not just of drug overdoses, but of anxiety, depression, and mental health problems," he told *The Verge*. "If you load pervasive financial insecurity and scarcity on top, you will have a population that starts dying younger, is less rational, does not know what to do." ## "Meaningful Solutions" The idea isn't as far fetched as you might think. A city in California recently [started an experimental basic income program]() providing 130 residents with monthly payments over 18 months. But Yang has a long road ahead. Polls put him at around [three percent](). "The path from here to figuring it out is fraught with a lot of misery and suffering," Yang said. But that's not the end of the story. "I thought to myself, realistically, my choices are to watch the society come apart or try and galvanize energy around meaningful solutions," he added later. **READ MORE:** [Andrew Yang is the Candidate for the End of the World]() \[*The Verge*\] **More on Yang:** [*Presidential Hopeful Andrew Yang Plans to Campaign Via Hologram*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()