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I would have been against this 5 years ago or super against it outside of that time frame. Here’s my thoughts:
American fiscal capacity is amazing now. It really feels like we can run an economy with only 10-15% of the population working and everyone else on benefits or make-work programs. With half of our smartest people playing zero-sum games like trading or market making on prediction markets. It would be nice to get back to 80% of people working but I don’t know how. For all the things we subsidize I think subsidize children is the best.
I don’t like it with current demographics. If we deport more I like it more. 50% of blacks are on government programs or government jobs (basically fake). I am fine with sharing with them now because we are rich enough but seems like we have migrant communities that will max abuse it.
Way better than unlimited disability for benefits. If we are going to do UBI it should be for everyone.
Decent chance the amount of people who need to work falls to <5% of the population by 2040 so something needs to happen. This actually isn’t rare event in human history. At one point 90% did agriculture so it’s not impossible we basically figure out how to make everything without working. The rest of the economy will be tastemakers. Weirdly architect was a terrible career for a while but the jobs of the future will be the tastemaker - someone who can make a neighborhood look nice.
Somehow I think rich and poor people will still exists even with unlimited material wealth. Baltimore or Haiti will still be a ghetto while Greenwich and Palm Beach will not be. It’s just the poor areas will have a lot of stuff but lack all the other things that make a community great. Being high IQ, Conscientious, honest, fun to be around, good looking etc will still matter. The Southside of Chicago will likely still be shooting each other even when unlimited money exists.
When was Architect ever a terrible career? There definitely have been periods of oversupply versus demand and/or people learning that their dreams of being Frank Lloyd Wright that drove them through University aren't going to happen and please boxtick the generic townhouses. But that goes for the vast majority of creative jobs, and even other 'high agency' ones where it turns out the Orchestra of whatever requires a lot more Triangle players than it does Virtuoso Soloists.
I thought it always had a reputation for bad pay versus the amount of education required. In part because it attracted people who thought it would be enjoyable. Maybe I’m wrong on that. And there are definitely some routes you can make money like getting more into construction management/development.
I needed a career to pick as an example where human taste would have value versus AIs being very productive. Something that is affluent tastemaker and architect seemed like it fit that.
I mean sure you're not gonna make Surgeon or Corporate Lawyer money but I'm pretty sure you're still better off as an Architect than like pursuing academia or a bunch of other things that might require a thick stack of degrees to get you through the door. The most successful architects definitely end up more in construction management or in a generic quasi-sales/general business management role, but that's essentially every career.
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I would have loved to be a boxticker architect. Sadly, when I was looking at universities, they all wanted the next Frank Lloyd Wright. I walked into the admissions office, excellent SATs in hand, and before the topic came up was told, "oh, don't worry if your SATs are bad, we only really care about your portfolio!"
To which I (whose art courses had ended only slightly past stick figures) effectively responded, "Portfoli-what?"
Interesting. Maybe educational pathways in Australia are different for Architecture since my Architecture ambitious friends had essentially the inverse experience where they were great at sketching beautiful buildings then ran into a wall of the civil engineering adjacent subjects
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Architecture is an art degree, while civil engineering is a STEM degree
But the govt. requires you to be an architect, not a civil engineer, in order to design a utilitarian apartment building, office building, school, or prison
Make it make sense. (Though, to be fair, not all states have this requirement.)
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It's a general issue with university admissions, I think. No university department wants to be known as reliable producers of pretty-good-quality employees, they want to be known as the people who first spotted and nurtured a genius.
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