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Comment by chadcmulligan | Hacker News Reader

Maybe a better approach is how can we spend the surplus labour? There are lots of things I see need doing looking around my neighbourhood - public parks need cleaning up, old houses could be torn down and make some nice new ones, old roads could be fixed. Probably stacks of other things. Maybe some creative accounting will enable us to do these things? I know national parks near me have great paths that were built in the depression as a job creation scheme. Maybe this is the new status quo, there are still jobs that need skills and some are in shortage, though people with labour skills are in abundance - maybe use them instead of having people sit around while there's stuff to do but society can't put the two together.

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I agree with this sentiment. There is a lot of work that needs doing. There are also a lot of parents out there with young children who could use a nanny. There's a need for more therapists, or just people to talk to.

There's a lot of work that needs doing. There's an abundance of people to do the work, and I feel like we have plenty of natural resources. It seems to me that we could build housing for everyone, we have the capability to do it. It's just that our economic model isn't about the betterment of manking, providing the people what they need, etc.

If you told an unemployed man that he could have guaranteed food, clothing, medical care, lodging and basic income for his family if he goes work a job where he builds houses for other family in need, I think that would be a very appealing offer.

Heck, even if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead. Maybe even to an office drone, who knows.

Right now people work because otherwise they die, socially in civilized continental Europe, possibly literally in "modern" America (and possibly the UK).

> Heck, even if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead. Maybe even to an office drone, who knows.

You imply that being a fast food worker, janitor, or "office drone" is not meaningful work. To many people it is. Your comment comes across as demeaning.

I'm willing to give GP the benefit of the doubt and was only speaking of the people who don't like, or are not suited for, those positions. I think there's enough people that fit that description in any reasonably sized profession to make it a valid statement in that context.

Almost by definition, there are aspects of work that you don't like. The trick is to find meaning in your work so that you have the strength to complete it.

The post seems to be suggesting that we should just eliminate all of the "least desirable" jobs, which is a fine idea as long as you realize that the next tier of jobs will then immediately become the "least desirable".

No it's just saying some people aren't happy with it and could do something else. Let's not focus on that bit, hey? Let's talk about the main point?

Everyone could be happier doing something else. The main point is: if you want other people to maintain the apartment building where you live, drive you around on the bus, grow your food and deliver it to the supermarket - you need to be prepared to do something useful in return.

"Being" a fast food worker, a janitor or "office drone" is not socially nor financially rewarded to a measure commensurate with the toll exerted on the soul or body of the human _occupying the function_.

Also, you're not your job, you're employed, however tenuously by the fast food industry.

As I said in another comment, "being" a fast food worker is not "feeding people". Working in a soup kitchen is feeding people.

The janitorial function is a necessity in any specialized society which doesn't reward you for cleaning after yourself.

And you really have never heard of someone in an office job that is soul sucking? Like say people organizing layoffs, or accepting/denying coverage at HMO, or call center employees trying to ensare retiree into getting extra fees for services they never use etc...

Don't you think society would be better served if these kind of jobs could not find warm bodies because there was more morally satisfying and equally (or better) financially rewarding proposition around?

if you made that proposition to a fast food worker that he could do meaningful work instead of smelling like fried stuff all the time and always be worried about working enough hours for a crappy boss and no future, or to a janitor that he could help someone instead of cleaning pee all day, maybe they would do that instead

Are you saying that making food for people is meaningless? That cleaning doesn't help anyone?

Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.

How meaningful are jobs that could fairly easily be automated out of existence if we didn't feel the need to occupy every human?

The reason those jobs haven't been automated is because automating a job is an expensive and difficult process, not out of charity for the people doing those jobs.

I've often thought about how meaningful my own work is, in the sense that: what if people just didn't buy my company's stupid product? Would anybody be worse off? Not really.

The only meaning I've found is the satisfaction of doing my job well, on its own terms - whether that's sweeping the floors at a burger joint, or making software builds.

I'm saying that churning out barely edible mater for a highly structured organization that pays you less that living wages and provides no benefits of any kind (maybe a free meal once in a while?) and treat you less well that the consumables that comes in, is not something that people aspire to.

If you want to meaningfully feed people, I believe it's called working at a soup kitchen. Usually staffed by volunteers. The reward for most meaningful work is often only in the human element. It sure ain't in the pocketbook.

Working in the fast food industry is not "making food for people," it's being a cog in a machine that transform the maximum amount of uncaring for its employees and products into the maximum of profits.

Janitorial work is necessary but not paid in proportion to the social good it provides.

And I take offense at your comment about "Humans are always going to regard someone as being "at the bottom", just because that's how we think.", it's not human nature, it's a social construct.

There is no need for additional construction to meet housing demand. In the continental US there are something like 6 empty units for every homeless person in the country. In turn this means there is no pent up demand for building materials, so putting people to work in forestry, quarry, cement, steel, etc is also a non-starter. Global food surplus indicates there is no pressing need to put additional people to work in agriculture. I'm not certain that there is pent up demand for 3.5 million new nannies or therapists in the country, which is a relevant number as that's roughly how many OTR truckers that are on the cusp of losing their livelihoods to automation. There simply isn't enough work to go around.

There are empty houses, but not in places where people want to live.

There is absolutely a housing shortage in popular metropolitan areas (take your pick) . If there wasn't, then prices wouldn't be so high.

Popular because people are clumping in areas that have jobs...

Also because they like those areas? Many people dream of moving to New York. And they would dream that with out without the jobs.

It may more or less boil down to lots of movies and television shows being set in New York.

>It may more or less boil down to lots of movies and television shows being set in New York

Movies and TV shows are filmed in NY because it's a world class, iconic city. It didn't become that because of media.

I'm sure there are many who live in New York who want to move out but can't because of the work. Certainly that's the case in London.

Desires change through life. Sure when I was 20-something I'd be happy living in manhattan, but in my 30s I want somewhere in the country with a nice small school for the kids. When I'm in my 50s I suspect a house by the beach would be good, maybe even abroad. When it comes to my 70s and I've got grandkids I'll want to be near them.

How many people want to live in Ny to live the "friends" lifestyle, find out reality doesn't meet expectation, then want to leave but can't due to work?

Why aren't we building down?

Each plot owns the land beneath, yes?

So build downwards if zoning prohibits building up.

The cost per sq ft is higher. You often hit aquifers. Less light. More difficult egress in an emergency. (Just giving some reasons why building down isn't done more, but it is happening.)

Yes it is happening I know, I remember a 99% Invisible podcast episode talking about it. Also there was a documentary on London millionaires doing it.

I find it striking it is not done even more. I recognize the technical difficulties but the costs are surely lower than the potential value of easily doubling the sq ft.

There are interesting tricks you can do with fibre optic cable and mirrors to send daylight down there. Not to mention CoeLux and similar products.

You don't gain that much by building downward, one or two floors at most, and you also run into other laws.

For example, an apartment is required to have a window or fresh air source.

There are technical difficulties but you're doubling the sq ft! That is huge. Have you seen London's iceberg buildings?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLJ0zZQb9x0

I admit I just want this because the idea of hidden labyrinths behind our cities is just intrinsically appealing to me. There could be shops! Neon signs! It would be cyberpunk and then I would know the future has arrived :-)

The monetary payoff does seem to be there. I wonder if the delay in transformations of this sort might have a lot to do with a lack of 3D expertise among builders.

Good luck doing that in Florida where places are already below sea level. Ever dug a hole that filled itself with salt water?

> There simply isn't enough work to go around.

Dissagree. Technolgy works best when augmented with humans, however the training needed for ppl (ie truck drivers) may take longer to retool their minds then they have life left. So there may be a generation gap in jobs. Also consider space as the final frontier. How much work will be needed to build fleets of ships to colonize space and all that entails?

Disagree all you want to, the market clearly finds your argument unpersuasive.

Yes, that's the point. "The market" is not a system that is suited for this. The market is not going to get people to make cool paths through parks, clean up the neighbourhood, etc. because the market doesn't derive shareholder profits from that at current wages. That work though is indisputably valuable stuff that could be done. Clearly, we have proven that there is plenty more work to go around and that the market is "wrong" about this.

I'm fairly certain that no proof of any kind has been presented that there is plenty of work just lying around waiting to be done. Idle speculation certainly, but proof?

It's trivially true. Garbage men could pick up the trash 5x as often. Individual people could come cook for everyone. Parks could be maintained 10x as much. Trash collectors could clean up the streets all the time. More people could help the IRS catch crooks. etc. All of those things happen but 5x more people could do those jobs as well, but that would make them unprofitable to shareholders i.e. not worth paying someone minimum wage to do it. So this system doesn't get people to do that work.

Do you have citations, particularly for housing? I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm genuinely interested in the sources because I have a sense that you're right but have never found great evidence to back it up. The raw number of residential-zoned buildings vs the number of homeless people is not as useful as it could be. I'd love to see some deeper analysis.

I initially ran across those numbers in a comment thread somewhere and spent some time researching them. To date I haven't come across a reputable source like the New York Times quoting them online but also wasn't able to find a snopes article demolishing the claim. I spent some additional time this evening looking up the base numbers:

Vacant units in 2016: http://www.realtytrac.com/news/foreclosure-trends/u-s-q1-201...

Snapshot of US homeless numbers (likely low): http://www.endhomelessness.org/library/entry/SOH2016

Assuming these numbers are in any way accurate that leaves us with roughly 2 and a third houses per reported homeless person in the US.

So it looks like the initial statement may not be accurate but a housing surplus certainly exists.

There are a lot of musicians, playwrights, authors, and visual artists of various stripes who would love to practice their craft full time but work crappy jobs to pay the bills.

And don't even get me started on large-scale planet-care projects— is there a way we can pay people to reclaim destroyed farmland, to grow things locally and organically, replant forests, study and clean up the ocean garbage patches, etc etc.

There's a great example of this now. Uber drivers.

There are a lot of people out there with a lot of free time who are willing to work for very little.

Maybe the Govt should make an app that people can use their phone to sign up and do jobs like cleaning up parks etc.. and the Govt can pay them.

this would be lovely, but it's utopian. uber drivers drive someone to a place, and if they dont they dont get paid.

the sorts of jobs you're talking about arent always all so clearly verified/verifiable. you'd need other government workers just to verify that the job was done properly... ufff I can see the waste now

Also those jobs wont be around that long. Every year we have quite a bit of progress on Self-Driving Cars.

Drones verify the leaves were raked etc..

Where we reach the singularity not through the progress of machines but by the decline of our own abilities.

It's just as hard or possibly even simpler to just make drones that pick up litter and robots that rake leaves.

The problem with large scale low skilled jobs (e.g. fast food) becoming automated is that these jobs aren't really special as jobs, even if they have a very important socioeconomic role in our society - it's not yet cost effective to automate them, but when it will, then at the same time (roughly speaking, +/- 10 years) all other low skilled jobs will be ripe for automation as well.

A good semi-trailer truck driver will have his job for years to come, but when it does happen, then all the reasonable jobs to which he could currently shift would have their own downsizing due to their own automation and an excessive supply potential workers of poor ex-drivers who were shed years before the good driver.

Seems to me that everyone basically agrees about a subset of the beneficial ways that surplus could be spent. The problem is how society would need to be reorganized to make that happen. There is some concentrated power out there that is very opposed to this kind of change.

The biggest labor need in the next 40 years will be caring for the elderly. When my father was out of the hospital after an operation and needed live in care it was insanely difficult to find at any cost. This is work that cannot be automated.

After watching Big Hero 6, I'm convinced that even that work could be automated.

??? Sarcasm?

What in Big Hero Six says anything about the tractability of automating elderly care in the real world?

I presume what the poster wanted to say is that BH6 made them believe even robots can look and feel humane (and possibly also that they can be made soft, translating in less injuries for the people they care of)

This is why Japan is so clean and orderly. Look closer and you'll see someone cleaning some hand railing in the train station in some corner of your peripheral vision.

Yes I was stunned to see how much low level and seemingly unnecessary labour there when visited Tokyo.

There are people literally inviting you to escalators in the airport. An empty train station would have half a dozen attendants. Road repair, in the middle of the night, 6 people directing foot traffic, with only two (us) pedestrians in sight.

This was surprising against the stereotype of machine-based Japanese efficiency. I assume it's some half employment, half social support programme going on.

That's one of the odd things about the situation. Lots of unemployed people, lots of things needed, no way to match the two.

I resent the idea that my surplus labour is anyone's but mine to spend.

Certainly you could create infinite amounts of "paid" makework but in the end it amounts to keeping a system going for its own sake, and wasting people's potential by allocating them "dig a hole and fill it in" jobs when they could be being creative.

I think you've take the uncharitable view of an implication that everyone is forced to work to fill up hours.

Realistically there are loads of things that could be done to make the world a better place. Equally there are lots of people out of work. If someone can provide the funds to marry those things together, it's a win win. But who pays? Maybe Apple could go all philanthropic and depart with all that cash they're carrying.

Bingo. It's not a work problem; there's so much work to do. The problem is who will pay and how much.

Oh really? Doing what, exactly?

Not hard to imagine that there would be a lot of work out there of marginal economic value but not enough to employ someone at the minimum wage to do.

The original comment suggests a few things.

Feed me grapes?

I'm much more concerned that everyone is forced to work on things that aren't what they want to do and is still running under the whip of starvation. I want that whip entirely removed. I want people free to follow their passion. And I want these things for myself, because I selfishly object to having my life wasted.

This is not the same as resolving the Great Depression. The goal is to create jobs that do work that is not getting done; not creating faux-jobs to feed people.

I don't think the author of the original article would agree with that goal.

The problem with "creating jobs" is that someone (the government) has to decide (for its citizens) what kind of work is worth doing. The no-longer-needed workers are then forced into those non-essential jobs to earn their right for bare survival. They won't have time to do what they think is important.

The underlying assumption is that unpaid work is somehow worthless to society. And that people cannot decide for themselves how the spend the time freed up by automation.

The irony is that government is already arm-twisting private industry to do this.

Whether it's a New Deal style public works program, or the new car plant opening that isn't yet fully automated because the government gave them tax breaks, it's makework and a distraction from what people would do if they could work their vocations.

You just described Australia's work for the dole program.

There's no spots for talented people to work on shit like the failed $30 million IBM census disaster.

But smoking pot and filling in holes with low lives? You betcha! You better earn your welfare and enjoy it or you'll be reported!

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