OP likely was sarcastic, and I agree with you that basic income appears to provide a better solution. That said, they're also extrapolating from existing trends. An inordinate amount of office work today (including a lot of software development) exists solely to keep people busy.
While that might sound absurd, consider the following:
* Companies, particularly large ones, need to have staff on hand for when heavy work hits, but can't just fire them in their off season, not without destroying morale.
* Classic hiring practices are terrible at selecting for actual technical ability, and no one wants to trust the demonstrably valuable work to "the new person." Busy-work provides a way to test their proficiency without ruining the business in the process.
* Management prestige (and pay) is often tied to one's direct report head-count. Worse, stack rankings and similar systems tie career survival to extraneous, buffer head-count.
* Firing someone is surprisingly hard in most companies. A single lawsuit or a few days of outage from a legacy system maintained by only one curmudgeon can wipe out all the (on-paper) savings from firing an ineffective or even counter-productive person.
* Some managers genuinely care about their employees, and want to shield them from the existential and health threats of losing their job and insurance.
While that might sound absurd, consider the following:
* Companies, particularly large ones, need to have staff on hand for when heavy work hits, but can't just fire them in their off season, not without destroying morale.
* Classic hiring practices are terrible at selecting for actual technical ability, and no one wants to trust the demonstrably valuable work to "the new person." Busy-work provides a way to test their proficiency without ruining the business in the process.
* Management prestige (and pay) is often tied to one's direct report head-count. Worse, stack rankings and similar systems tie career survival to extraneous, buffer head-count.
* Firing someone is surprisingly hard in most companies. A single lawsuit or a few days of outage from a legacy system maintained by only one curmudgeon can wipe out all the (on-paper) savings from firing an ineffective or even counter-productive person.
* Some managers genuinely care about their employees, and want to shield them from the existential and health threats of losing their job and insurance.