Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

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> Are those people you mention actually productive now?

Well, kind of, but only enough to pay rent and eat.

But that's my point, individuals like this, who only work the bare minimum to just keep existing and have no drive or motivation to achieve more, are very likely to just not work anymore at all since their basic needs are now provided.

At the moment, they at least work somewhat. This helps keep local businesses running (even if just barely). With a BI, these folks stop all production and resort to their ideal lifestyle of not doing anything.

It's a little naive to think these individuals will suddenly change in light of all this new-found free time, and run out to create businesses or new things.

We can examine lottery jackpot winners for evidence of what many people would do if they didn't have to worry about money anymore (they do nothing in large part).

I just don't see any scenario where a BI leads to increased productivity like what is being claimed.

In contrast, I can foresee unemployment rates increasing, as fewer individuals participate in the workforce at all (to no determent of themselves, since their standard of living is provided free of cost). This will ultimately put strain on the system since not enough production is happening to offset this behavior, which will lead to drastic measures like dramatically increasing tax rates more and more.

I just don't buy the argument that giving someone a free living without any expectation of productivity in return will lead to a net increase in productivity.

You are linking human labor to production, which is not necessarily wrong, but not necessarily right either. Many of us who are cautiously supportive of BI think it sounds like an awful idea that is nonetheless one of the few that has a somewhat credible vision of a plausible future where production is almost completely independent of human labor.

That's the rub. I don't believe there's a "plausible future" where production is independent of human labor. Manual labor in assembly lines etc, sure. But humans are cheap. Cheap to build, cheap to feed, cheap to house. Compared with a robot, a human is extremely adaptable to situations and circumstances that far exceed robotic solutions. Now if you handwave and say "but AI" then you're not being realistic.

And never mind "work" that requires more creativity and intelligence. Programming, writing, art, sales, marketing, policing, military, the list goes on and on. There's a reason that humans are at the top of the food chain, and that's our brains and adaptability. The idea that these traits will have no or limited value doesn't track with history.

It's different for me. I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead.

The conflation of value and money is one of the worst things about our society. Money is, in many ways, units of suck. Jobs pay because no one would do them if they didn't pay.

> I know a bunch of people who are deeply creative, artists and musicians and such, who spend enormous amounts of time volunteering their productivity - or what's left of it, after "earning a living". I'd love to see them with the opportunity to not have to worry about eating, so they could make things instead

Well, I'd love more time for my hobbies too, however it's not realistic to think more time spent doing pleasureful activities will yield more productivity in general. The world is filled with musicians and artists, but very few of them actually produce anything beneficial to society.

Art and music are important components of society, but the influential pieces come from a very small minority, and that's unlikely to change. The successful people are more closely paralleled with an entrepreneur than a typical street artist... they posses the drive and motivation to do what it takes to become great. This involves schooling/training, often more than 40 hour work-weeks, managing people and the business around your work, etc. Everyone else is a hobbyist, producing things for self-consumption in large-part, which does not contribute towards society in a meaningful way.

The people we're discussing here are the types that loathe and bemoan a 20 hour workweek, let alone a 60+ hour workweek the Jay-Z's of the world find routine.

> Jobs pay because no one would do them if they didn't pay.

I disagree. There are many types of occupations which do not pay (volunteer work comes to mind). Further, if there was no means to generate income, there wouldn't be a way to purchase goods, which in turn keeps others employed, etc. In a society where things are all totally provided for free, society will stop innovating (there's no reason to push the boundaries anymore).

Pretty pessimistic - I'd suggest that only a small minority are influential precisely because of the making-a-living issue. Some of the most influential are lucky art-lottery-winners, not geniuses.

And I wouldn't worry about society falling around our ears if the work ethic is replaced by a creative-energy ethic or something like that. I'd love to try it.

I reject the notion that influential music is the only music of value.

Remember, the stuff we want to get rid of by automating is the boring stuff! And we discourage automating it now because our economic model is centered on full employment with abundant labor. What this model has produced is consumer demand that is perpetually shaped by price sensitivity, which encourages bullshit work, bullshit results, and bullshit pay.

We don't need more packaged food with the top ingredients being one or more of "HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, MILK PROTEIN, SOYBEAN OIL". We don't need fashion that falls apart within one season. We don't need pay-to-win video games, or advertorials, or Buzzfeed. Neither do we need gold Apple Watches, $9000 pens, or palatial mansions. Scarcity of our environmental resources is real, but scarcity in manufactured products? Hardly! We can and should shift towards a quality-centric model - practical quality, not slapping gold leaf on everything.

What we have inherited is a way of seeing the world that is not really using our full potential, but is simply insistent that it is the climb to the top that produces the rewards, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. BI is not the solution to all of that, but it will shift the demand profile towards quality in all sectors and allow consumers the option of choosing quality. If some of those consumers are "wasting their time" noodling on a guitar, so what? They aren't working at McDonald's.

Why is this comment grey?

Because political partisan trolls went through and downvoted everything I said on this subject. Happens every time. :(

The free loader problem exists but it's also known that it's essentially an edge case. It's not going to get smaller by making people poor or envious of others so that they work harder. It's a fixed problem.

And this is hardly "a free living", £6000 pounds is $8550. The average monthly Social Security benefit per year is $16092.

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