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Comment by stale2002 | Hacker News Reader

stale2002

What if instead of having jobs, you just let people do whatever they want?

If you want to work together with other people to do some goal, then do that.

If you want to spend all your time watching movies or traveling or playing video games, then you could do that and zero of the "work" stuff.

The mega rich already live in that world. They can choose to work, or not, and are generally able to do anything. I don't hear them complaining about how they are bored or need something to do with their life.

Now imagine that everyone had the same resources as the mega rich do now.

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If people can do whatever they want, does that include those running the robots?

Because if I'm a robot operator and you can do whatever you want, then I know I'm not going to get anything of value from you. So why should I work beyond Tuesday to make stuff that you need to live? I may as well go home and be 'free'. Your money is literally worthless to me.

We know what everybody doing what they want leads to. It leads to land redistribution and hyperinflation - as demonstrated in spades in Zimbabwe.

Unless you are completely self-sufficient then you have to look at the systemic impact of your idea on everybody. Then you'll find it has a severe fallacy of composition in it.

The mega rich get away with it simply because they have a slave class (the rest of us) to do their bidding. If you can do whatever you want, who is the slave class working more than they need to to service your needs?

To maintain an advanced society we need the robots working 24x7 and the land worked 24x7. To get people to give up their time to do that you have to give them something in return. Money isn't enough. That is the service to others you have to do if you want the carrots others grow.

As Ali said: Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth. What we lack is a mechanism to allow people to make that rent.

> If you can do whatever you want, who is the slave class working more than they need to to service your needs?

Obviously that would be the machines. You need people to maintain those, but less human time is required to produce the same goods. Basic things might get so cheap that they're almost free.

> What we lack is a mechanism to allow people to make that rent.

Sounds like you want something like a job guarantee. Sure, there is never a lack of useful work that you could force people into. But there is simply not enough work that is essential enough that you could argue, from an economic point of view, that everyone has to work 5 days a week just to earn their right to exist.

Robots would do the work.

The future may not need many human robot operators either.

If the world only needs a couple hundred thousand people to run the robots, maybe there will be enough of them who are willing to do it just because it is fun to run the robots and provide for the world.

People do charity all the time today and the world of the future would need much less charity.

Obviously most people would not be interested in doing this work for free. But fortunately we might only need. 0.001% of the population to be willing to do it for free.

I expect that at least 0.001% of the population in the future will be charitable enough that they will be willing to do work for free in order to provide for the entire world, by running the robots.

In England there are a large amount of people that live a better lifestyle than the mega rich lived say 100 years ago.

They can raise a family, get given a house, free health care, free education including university, TV, internet, computer games and even holidays.

They dont have to worry about dying from polio, TB, malaria etc. Very little hunger etc

On paper they live a lifestyle better than kings of the past did.

Yet depression and unhappiness is common. Drug use rampant. Suicides high.

University isn't free in England. And if you're on benefits, you might scrimp and save to get internet access or the occasional computer game, and maybe even a holiday, but you'll be making sacrifices elsewhere (such as eating or keeping warm) for that. The amount of money you get on benefits, even with the maximum amount of disability and child benefit, is really not very much compared to a single full-time minimum wage salary.

On top of that, you have to deal with being demonized as a worthless scrounger by the press, and having the government do everything in its power to find ways to take your benefits away.

It's not a good situation. To be fair, in the end, it is free money and it's definitely better than being in a Victorian poorhouse, but it's still miles away from the UBI world view where it would be possible to not work and live a meagre but comfortable life, and one which society didn't vilify.

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