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Comment by ekianjo | Hacker News Reader

> Eventually we'll have to move away from the notion that everybody needs a job that contributes to GDP.

The goal is not maximum employment, The goal is maximum production. Whether that involves more employees is a totally different topic.

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Sometime in the last century, there was a massive shift from producing what people need to producing needs. I don't think that was a step in the right direction.

> The goal is maximum production

Paperclips?

All well and good, but that doesn't address what to do with all the people not working. Take away a man's purpose and you end up with a shell of a man.

If you do this at scale, you're going to see a rise in medical (mental and physical health) needs. You'll see crime go up (bored people with nothing to do will fill it with something). You'll see suicides increase (again, purpose).

Man needs a purpose for being, plain and simple. So, when we do away with all the jobs through automation and shipping them elsewhere, we'll have to set up community programs where people can find things to do.

> Take away a man's purpose and you end up with a shell of a man.

This is a religious belief. Also, you're equivocating between purpose and job.

edit: my job facilitates any purpose I may have through providing me with money. In every other aspect it hinders me. That's why they pay me and I don't pay them.

>This is a religious belief.

Is it?

>Also, you're equivocating between purpose and job.

I'm saying once people have no work, they'll have to have something to do. They can't just stand around all day; it isn't healthy.

To question 1 it is definitely not a well founded belief - evolutionarily humans in general have had the purpose of "eat, survive and copulate" - none of which will change in any near term worlds. There may be less to struggle against though.

So, our natural state is to eat, sleep and screw?

I just can't believe that. I just don't think we'd be where we are today, if that was it.

Mine is!

Well there is also socialization with a small to medium sized group - which still occurs - and some members of the species fight for status. But these are not universal traits - most humans simply want to survive and play safe.

Well quite a lot of us have other things we want to do, actually. People really do seem to oscillate too radically back-and-forth between the Human as Heroic Capitalist and the Human as Impulse-Driven Stereotype of an Animal (when in fact most mammals are quite a bit more complicated than "eat, sleep, screw").

Yes it is a religious belief. Whether you realize it or not, what you're describing is the Protestant work ethic imported into North American culture by Puritan settlers from Germanic regions of Europe and Scandinavia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

Pretty sure those people who need something to do will find something to do, and those who are OK with idling will be fine too.

But is it only a religious belief? Just because something is religious belief doesn't mean it can't be true.

I'd like to pipe in though and say that some form of work, of purpose, is important for happiness - be it a job, hobbies, volunteer work, raising a family, etc.

I suspect this is cultural deritrtitus - I'm not American and I don't hold hear this belief echoed loudly in the religions around me - but it is still true.

Furthermore there's enough psych studies which show that human beings crave and feel rewarded when they focus on a task and achieve mastery.

Working towards a common goal is one of the known methods of reducing intergroup and inter tribe friction.

Work also is often rewarding - people do tasks they enjoy being excellent at, and people reward them for that excellence. Your experience is the other end of that spectrum - being rewarded to do something you otherwise wouldn't.

The goal should be maximum happiness.

Employment and production are easy to measure. Happiness, less so.

That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

So we track the kinds of things that we can measure and that we hope correlate with happiness, but we carefully check that they keep doing so. We shouldn't let one of them (like "maximize production") become the end goal itself!

> That's a bit of an odd reason to change the whole goal, isn't it?

Having a goal of 'maximising production' is the status quo - I am not proposing any changes.

I agree with you that the world would be a better place if our economy was focussed on achieving maximum global happiness, I just wanted to point out why it is easier to focus on an objective, numeric value like production than a subjective feeling like happiness (Gross National Happiness notwithstanding).

Then let's produce lamborghinis and mansions for everyone and automate healthcare

I'm not sure what point you are making here. It does not appear to have any connection to the point I made.

Let people move without barriers. Countries will have to compete basing on happiness not production. Happiness will equalize. The only problem - population density is part of happines, so borders should be adjusted for population.

Easiest way to do both automaticaly is to let people declare which country their immediate neighborhood belongs to.

I do not think eradicating the concept of national sovereignty is the best solution to the problem. That would certainly decrease the happiness of a lot of people :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_National_Happiness

Humans may not be needed to maximally produce. Be careful what you wish for.

Whose goal?

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