The radical idea of a world without jobs
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This is the real message of the article. Its not about giving everybody a robot butler, its about reorganising society to allow us to do all of the things that need to be done. We don't need to have lots of people working long poorly paid shifts at Wallmart, but we do need people to look after the young and the elderly. At the moment we have a tendency to look at working class people who dont work as morally lacking, when often they have quite a lot of useful (non-paid) things to be getting on with. We need to change the way we think about what makes somebody a useful member of society
Because there are other types of profit, more subjective ones, like feeling good, emotional well-being, long-term sustainability etc, which are more elusive by definition but nevertheless super important.
Because if you're really talking about a lack "profit" in the very general (aka inviting a straight loss), then the question simply becomes: Who will pay for this loss, and why?
In the end we have moved from women not being able to join the workforce to women not being able to not join the workforce. It doesn't seem an obvious improvement to me, although I should mention I'm not a woman.
If we're going to talk about "reorganizing society", it should factor in EVERY person in the world. Not just the lucky 10% in first world countries.
I don't know about you but the homes, roads, cars, plumbing, healthcare, energy, food, and most other things vital to our lifestyle do not come from China or Taiwan. And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist.
I feel like people in the tech sphere can't look or see beyond smartphones, laptops, and other tech gadgets.
I can think of Miele. That's the only one that's propely German still. Bosch/Siemens are both very much Asian on the inside. They do some assembly in Germany as far as I know. Can't think of any other European brands in this space.
Best example - the mobile phone. Even the poor can get one that is better than the best smartphone of a few years ago.
Access to content has seen a similar trend - we now all have access to massive amounts of information, videos and online conversation. No money needed, so the poor get immediately the same level of access as the rich.
Except for everywhere where poor connectivity and low data caps (+expensive plans relative to the income) are common.
Where do you think the problem lies?
If you look at the instantaneous\* derivative, it's not the fact that you owe the federal government $2M for that MD that counts but rather your monthly obligation. Debt doesn't matter, required repayment per unit of time does - so almost like cash-basis accounting.
Finding a $100 on the street or borrowing $100 from a friend are the same in terms of their addition to your instantaneous wealth, it's the fact that one needs to be repaid that detracts from your "actual" wealth, and the repayment period matters. Compare the lifestyle of two neighbors working at the same institution making the same amount of money that each took out $500k mortgages to buy their identical houses, only one took it out for 15 years and the other for 30. On day 1, they both take the same hit to their net worth, but that doesn't change their wealth derivative in and of itself, it's the rate of paying it back that you should be counting.
That explains why one college educated individual can get a loan for $1000 from the bank and at time 0 they are, under this metric, better off than someone that needed to hit up a payday loans place for the same loan but at a higher interest rate. They both "earned" the same amount of money, and may even "spend" it on the same thing at the same rate, but when you take the repayment period into account (let's say 1 year vs 2 weeks, respectively) you can see why the graduate student is measurably better off.
Just like stocks you hold aren't actually contributing to your day-to-day wealth (and as such aren't taxed) but it's when you cash out that you've either made or lost money.
\* let's define an "instant" as a month, just to make things easier.
Yes, and (ideally) currency in an economy is a liquid representation of value. A college degree translates (after accounting for inefficiencies) to higher income potential, more efficient spending, etc.
EDIT: typo, "liquid representation of value," not "wealth"
In this respect, having debt is a positive sign, because banks evaluate loans based on expected ability to repay, i.e. future income streams.
So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we don't really need to do the math on this one, do we? It doesn't even pass the sniff test - "these eight people are LITERALLY THE WORST" is just far too uncomplicated a proposition to accurately reflect the reality of a human world which, though many things, is never simple.
Thats just the top 8 people...Take the sum of the rest of the the global 1% or even 10% and do your math...
OH nm, the math has already been done.
280 trillion in global wealth / 6 billion people = 46k per person
And the top 10% has 86% percent of it, and the inequality is just growing exponentially.
I'm not advocating that wealth should be equally distributed OR that capitalism is all bad..however, that in-equality is STAGGERING....unregulated capitalism with no income redistribution is a one way ticket to a third world PLANET.
https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...
What I see is that Wal-Mart makes a ton of money and their employees have to be on food stamps and still work 80 hour weeks while the owners reap all of the profit.
To me this is simply unregulated capitalism which nowdays has become thinly masked slavery.
Well, considering that financial and monetary policies are aimed at deregulation, and that financialization of the economy in developed countries is a thing, it would appear that unregulated capitalism is precisely what is causing massive inequality.
Um, why? Because you're one of the lucky few to whom $165 is not a significant sum of money?
Paul Graham has an essay about this error, how people thinks that there's a fixed amount of money. Once you understand that wealth is created and how, you can't talk like that with a straight face.
He fails to even begin to discuss capital, return on capital, and capital ownership as drivers in economic inequality. Basically it feels like a piece written by a smart guy who has no idea what he's talking about but feels emboldened because "economists are all idiots".
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/we...
> a $150 cash grant to poor women in the northern part of [Uganda] doubled their earnings within a year, while one-off $382 transfers to 16- to 35-year-olds were associated with 40-percent higher earnings four years later.
i'm not saying we should do it, but your analysis doesn't account for any knock on effects, and so is itself far too simple.
When in fact top 10% richest helped much more people along the way than all average combined. And the consequence is being rich.
Instead of complaining about inequality (aka making the rich poorer), better to think about how to make the poor richer.
That's complete bullshit. That's maybe how you wish things were. But it's not. I'm in the top 10%, and I've done nothing for it other than having been born in a wealthy country to middle-class parents, with my every need attended to by society. Had I been born somewhere else, I certainly would not be successful as I am now. Instead of being a physicist, maybe I would be boxing cheap plastic gadgets in a factory in Asia. I was born into the top rung on the current global economic arrangement, instead of on the bottom.
To put it this way: if hard work led to wealth every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.
In fact the top 10% keep the statu quo as it is because it benefits them. It benefits them that global economy is arranged in such a way that they are in the center, reaping the benefits of it, and keeping the "periphery" down and in their place, feeding them and their high standard of living. This means everything from stacking "democratic" governments with plutocratic cronies, to simply being a middle-class voter interested in maintaining things just as they are.
This. This is the root of the issue in its entirety. As a civilized species (civilized in the sense that we "have" civilization) we should ban as a practice and ostracize those that propone the privatization of capital gains and the socialization of capital losses. Period. The figure posted by parent speaks volumes of the flaws of the currently dominant economic paradigm.
I hate to get too tangential and throw shade in a generically, but I've always felt like those of us that aspire to be millionaires, etc., are doing it wrong.
(I don't have prime, I don't use prime, and I don't want this to be our future.)
Wish Amazon would offer an entirely "Made in first world with protected workers" store.
In many of these countries people voluntarily choose to work in these factories. They're terrible places to work, but apparently its still better than working in the fields.
A more effective strategy might be something like: https://www.ijm.org/who-we-are . They work within these countries to protect workers from the worst human rights abuses. (ie child sex trafficking and slavery)
That's a very narrow definition of "voluntary".
Show me people doing things they would do even if they weren't getting paid to do it. That's voluntary.
The presence of compensation does not preclude an action from being voluntary. Neither does the presence of universal biological imperatives like the need for food or shelter. These things are forced on us by nature, not other people, and are part of the basic human condition.
Providing necessary things for yourself is a voluntary action.
Interacting with others of your own free will to provide the things you need more easily than you could do on your own is also a voluntary action.
It only becomes involuntary when that interaction is forced on you, making you worse off than you would have been on your own (as always, from your own subjective point of view).
there are far worse jobs out there and no amount of automation will rid us of them. from friends that work as linemen; and they all seem to enjoy their jobs; to another who works as a vet; you want a job that not only soaks hours but heartbreak be a vet.
we have plenty of "not fun" jobs but that is exactly why we pay people to do them. there are those around you everyday, I love doing my lawn but have neighbors who don't want to.
modern economy hell, its gotten leagues better than it used to be. people don't realize how much better many jobs are because they believe the sensationalized stories of the day. I am not saying there is no room for improvement but just open your eyes to what was and realize how far we have come
> I've been calling amazon prime a "hiding of the poor" to my friends and family. (I don't have prime, I don't use prime, and I don't want this to be our future.)
Amen, parent and grand-parent posters.
Anecdotal, but I have visited a few of the Amazon warehouses in the Seattle area. I was surprised by the amount of effort Amazon went to to emphasize safety, work-life balance, healthy activities, and good work habits. There were free vending machines for PPE everywhere, and during the lunch hour each day, managers led workers in 20 minutes of organized exercise to keep people active and moving.
This is just one cluster of US-based warehouses, and probably doesn't account for the working conditions in all Amazon warehouses, but it was far from a sweatshop and workers seemed genuinely content with their jobs.
Employers are required by law to provide PPE for free.
My work is all the things I ought to be doing, but have to fit around the daily makework. Less of it gets done than I'd like.
I work a full week at one job + 2 nights per week. Feel that I do a lot of unpaid stuff (ie taking care of the household, cooking, ...) but still endlessly hear about how other people "don't have the time".
The useful non paid things that people actually do are greatly overestimated imo, because more often than not it will end up in the "don't have time for it" even though they could manage to find time for it if they really wanted to. Just a matter of priorities.
I'm far from perfect, and I don't do sports (which I also consider an useful non paid thing) for an example. Yet I wish I did, and I totally could if I had some discipline there. But it's not having more time, or less work, that would change it.
It's hard and everyone is lazy and tired, and there are so many easy ways out of the present moment, but the majority really doesn't push themselves much.
So since I moved out 22 years ago, my hypothesis has been that people who think housework is a full-time job are actually probably suffering from severe depression and/or anxiety.
Although most working parents report feeling rushed, the majority say that they spend the right amount of time with their children and that parenting responsibilities do not interfere with their career advancement. College-educated whites are, by some margin, the group most likely to report difficulties in balancing work and parental responsibilities.
We might feel like we're increasingly stretched by the demands of work and home, but that perception simply isn't supported by any data I've been able to find. I'm not saying that we've perfected work-life balance, but the overarching trend is substantially positive.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ320/orazem/addendum...
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/
http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/201...
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...
This was especially true in the Northern European countries where snow and lack of daylight would make it virtually impossible to work during the winter.
So both surveys include part time jobs, not sure how that contradicts the original point.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/22/the-a...
I have coworkers doing 2 hours each way. A 4 hour commute each day would certainly eat into your time.
If you have a time machine with 20 laptops in the boot, that's enough to let you live like Biff in the almanac timeline. Does that mean anyone with a macbook is a millionaire in 1992 dollars?
This is not a solvable problem. It works ok for YoY inflation (that's the point) but, the phrase '2018 dollars' gets meaningless as we try to represent earlier years. Saying we are n% more wealthy than people in 1300, is just cheesy journalism mostly.
Anyway (long preamble, sorry)....
Just like trying to adjust inflation by 70 or 700 years is difficult, trying to account for hours worked and/leisure is difficult. Too much has changed.
Woman joined the workforce. Children left it. Work got homework added. Training became more of a leisure time activity. Commutes got longer. Lunches got longer. The first one is probably the biggest.
Btw there's an illustrative thread running through both... Childcare and elder care. These were done at home (mostly by women) as non economic activity. Now these are jobs. The generate GDP, work hours... But, children were being raised before. They are being raised now. It just didn't used to be counted as GDP/work hours.
I think one thing that people miss slightly is that some of this is our own fault. Everyone is heavy on the chase (me incl.) of things. We want full meals in a box at our door without the annoyance of doing any work for it. Some of our need for extra work and both adults working comes from our demand that we have a huge house and two new cars and two huge vacations and everyone has an iPhone X and on and on. You have to either work more or spend less and we've generally chosen work more. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that but we need to accept the consequences.
It is a waiting game. Waiting for more assignments. Waiting until 5PM. Waiting for my paycheck. Waiting to get fired. Waiting to retire. Waiting to die.
(n * (Commute. Sit. Wait. Commute. Eat. Sleep.)) Die. Where n == the days I have left in this world.
The things I work on feel like absurd, meaningless boondoggles with no head and no tail. So here I am spinning my wheels as I hurtle toward a grave.
That I know this is my reality forces me to deeply question the society I participate in. If I am so bound, restricted, constrained in my actions and daily routines, why not just cut to the chase as die already. The repetitive script for how my invarient pattern of living shall progress is obvious. Do I really need to live through it 10,000 more times?
The less meaningful work I get done during the day, the less energy I have after 5. Most days, I'll make quick dinner, turn on YouTube, watch videos for 10 minutes, and suddenly it's 11pm.
I guess there's an upside to being a long-time single with no attachments.
If your reality is so bad that you want to die, then how is taking action to potentially change things worse? A big part of this discussion is people want meaningful work and a meaningful life, but they want other people to give it to them. Why is that expected?
Unless, of course, you're saying we need to start a civil war to free all the office workers...
Not a fan of learned helplessness or woe is me. If you want to change, you can. It might not be easy but if you feel like waiting until you die, there's not much to lose, anyway.
What does saying "my life sucks" solve? The world isn't kind to most people, you have to make the most out of it.
The world isn't kind. But there's no reason we can't work to make it less so.
Even if you have to have an "interesting" job, most people aren't but a few years of schooling out. Hell, we're in tech where you're a few years of study and practice from being world class and/or making hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Yeah, you've got to work at it, but that's really meaningful work.
If only that was as easy as saying it. People have responsibilites and stomachs that don't like (naturally) staying empty. Sometimes you just can't do it.
who said easy? change is difficult. life is hard and then you die, so you might as well go down fighting.
I wasn't as unhappy as you sound, I just didn't see the purpose of it (working) anymore.
And so I decided not to do it anymore. Instead, I've decided to buy a small amount of land, live sustainibly, start a market garden, and spend much more time with my family and integrate with nature more.
Life isn't bad, but it sounds like you're stuck in a rut. Perhaps you just need to find your passion, and make a plan to transition from where you are now, to where you want to be?
Started cheffing at 17, always wanted to code, self taught enough to be qualified as a chef and get a job programming for a fairly large company by 22.
It sucked. As you said, waiting for assignments, no decision making and just another cog in a very large wheel.
Went back to cheffing, I've now travelled all over Australia, lived in Japan for 6 years, met a woman who became my wife and is currently pregnant with our first.
I may work 70+ hours some weeks, but it's fun. I have ran 3 restaurant successfully as an executive chef, now I'm helping a family member with a take away and loving it(haute cuisine food from a take away? Can't plate as I useto but damn it tastes good at an affordable price).
Long story short I'm enjoying life now, seems you need to broaden your horizons work wise more than how life just is.
P.s when I get the urge, I still have a massive side project I work on, so that training in coding, definitely not wasted :-)
I hope you find a better fit for you mate.
High demand, high skill... why doesn't it pay better? The only answer is that there must be some other benefits to the field. They have to pay people better to work in an office because office work sucks a lot more.
The best I've gotten so far was 2k Au a week while running three restaurants as an exec.
Hospitality in general isn't the best industry for making money, although I am planning on my own place in a few years :-)
That aside, I think work has been debased because the values of currencies have been debased by central banks. The 1% fully and significantly invested in the stock market may be feeling somewhat differently, though.
Also, I think to some extent that the tech dreams promised by my childhood have largely been replaced by corporate simulacra that are in no way as satisfying.
The inertia of your current situation probably drains your energy and motivation to even experiment with making changes, but it is worth to find a trained professional that can help break that cycle. There's no shame in seeking therapy or support of some kind.
I suggest reading "Man's search for meaning".
This is a bleak message, yet it's true: most people do not like their jobs very much. They can just deal with it because they're not totally depressed. And the reason is, surprisingly often, simple brain chemistry. At least try some more roads before talking of suicide.
Very few people actively enjoy laboring for others. That's why they need to pay you to do it.
I enjoy building my own projects, but I have never found work stimulating unless I maneuvered myself into a position where I could learn something new. Unfortunately once you learn that new thing, and then refactor it as far as you can, you're back to boring uninspired work again.
Not to mention the parts of work which are actively terrible. Like hunting down a bug in a dependency.
The problem preventing a jobless society is the reverse: what happens to you if your personal projects are not valued by society enough to pay you for them, and therefore you can't sustain yourself from them?
Someone without the skills to create marketable projects can decide to work towards projects created by others, and be compensated for it; that's what a "job" is.
For a jobless society, you should be able to pursue your own projects without starving in case that they do not sell. These projects may involve pursuing leisure, starting charitable deeds, or taking care of your family, all without the direct beneficiaries paying for it. For this to happen, we should:
1) find a way to provide a basic livelihood for everyone in that situation (Basic Income is the most talked about); and
2) value people pursuing their own projects, more than we value people being the most productive* they can possibly be.
*(where "productive" is defined as "building stuff that people will pay for". This is the most common understanding of productivity, but I find it somewhat circular).
In essence, in order to exist, a jobless society should value you being happy more than it values you accelerating the velocity of commercial capital. This doesn't require radically new economic theories; but it requires an adjustment of the parameters by which we measure "efficiency" in what we consider an "efficient economy".
"No human being ever wants to do anything in a more cumbrous way than is necessary. Hence the absurdity of that picture of Utopians saving their souls with fretwork. In a world where every-thing could be done by machinery, everything would be done by machinery. Deliberately to revert to primitive methods to use archaic took, to put silly little difficulties in your own way, would be a piece of dilettantism, of pretty-pretty arty and craftiness. It would be like solemnly sitting down to eat your dinner with stone implements."[0]
If a society is jobless thanks to automation, I see this as the inevitable fate.
And as for a society that values my happiness; I don't see being happy as a worthwhile goal for an individual to aim for. To be happy and content for a long period of time is, in my eyes, akin to being dead in the water.
[0]: In "The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell (I think it's chapter 12?)
This article also correctly places the roots of the conception of work as the core of human identity as side effects of Europe’s Protestant movement. Amazingly, given that this is the Guardian, they failed to invoke the lazy trope of “colonialism” for the spread of this culture worldwide — for in this case it is accurate. The British empire, in particular, once it became run by the government, spread this model to the “lazy natives” as part of a cultural package. (It is no coincidence that the standard worldwide business attire — as with military uniforms — is based on 19th century British aristocratic fashion).
The final piece of course is the cultural reform required for UBI. Just as our conception of work is modern, our conception of money as a reserve of wealth is modern. Even back when Augustus personally paid off he national debt, the conceptions of money and power were backwards to where they are today (“Plutocrat” is another Industrial Age idea). Money was a way to show off your power, not a way to acquire it.
But money also serves a more much more important function as a signalling mechanism (a change in price indicates that there is more demand for T-shirts and less for TV sets) — one of the many fatal flaws in communism was a failure to understand this, and the current obsession with banking in the western economies demonstrates a related misunderstanding. When we have a robotic economy with a marginal cost of production close to zero, why should “wealth” reflect a bank balance? What would be the point of accumulating one?
What will you spend your UBI on if the goods and services are not being produced, because no one is being paid to do them?
None of these are a necessary consequence of people receiving an unconditional amount of money regularly. People can still may want to work for luxuries, or I might want to pay others to sway their personal projects in the direction I prefer.
Plus, maybe some services may be "essential" only under the current working scene, but might become less so if everybody adjusted their way of life to a slower rate of consumerism (buying more virtual goods rather than physical, traveling less, working from home, buying local, etc). A lower income level could be sustainable under those conditions, if some percentage of it is guaranteed.
The belief is that this category of goods and services would be rare - that most things are not so inconvenient or tedious to produce, that most demand could be covered without making people put themselves out a lot. Of course it's possible this is wrong.
Or the unicorns? I mean, as long as we are just handwaving this stuff.
All the same, let's not forget there are huge numbers of people in terrible situations they did not bring upon themselves. These are the people worth helping, even if it means a bunch of selfish, badly behaved people get helped along with them. At some point, mitigating the consequences of people (predictably) behaving badly has to be looked at as basic damage control.
You are correct that I do not need a car, but you are wrong to assume it is trivial to lose 2+ hours of free time each day as just another luxury.
Frankly, your position on needs vs wants seems like a convenient excuse to look down on other people who have different concepts of value.
There is very little, in the western world, that we NEED to survive. You do not need electricity, for example, but no reasonable person would call it a luxury -- point being it is more subjective than you imply. Would also help your argument if you realize your perspective is extremely privileged.
Some people have kids who did not want them, and yes it was a mistake but not as much a decision as something that happened -- they may not have the monetary, intellectual or moral foundation to handle an unwanted pregnancy. So this woman, maybe a single mother, now has a child and is struggling to pay her bills, a paycheck (or car repair, or medical expense) from being evicted.
Your speech would not be relevant to a person in such a situation and there are many many many such people.
People who eat out 5-10 times a week don't get to complain about being broke, but how is that a new insight? To me it trivializes the real struggles of the working poor.
Let's not leave the radical alternatives to the racists and nationalists.
Of course if we weren't occupied by work all day then we'll find something else to compete in and "stress" ourselves about. And don't we already do this to some extent through innumerable athletic/mental feats like climbing mountains, and other ways that are essentially displays of wealth like a vacation in Haiti and so on. This is a simplification, one can successfully argue that many of these activities have "inherent" benefit besides signaling but that aspect is usually not spoken of at all so I emphasize it more here.
So the stressors of everyday life (whether they come from work or other means of competition) are an inescapable fact of human life. Too bad if you don't like it.
This Time It's Different, honest.
Now the claim seems to be that it will work if only the people own the automated factories. That's close enough to the same claim for "this time it's different" to be a valid description of the claim.
> Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing advances of technology?
Agriculture was a huge, game-changing advance of technology. So was industrialization. We've seen them before. So claiming that this huge advance will make work obsolete requires a bit more than "but look, there's a huge advance!"
> It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion...
I've seen lots of discussion, but not much information. Rhetoric, but not information.
I mean, yes, factories are becoming more automated. That's true. It's not leading to a world where nobody needs to work, though. (Current US unemployment is below 4%. That's not looking like evidence for a world where nobody needs to work.)
What does this even mean? It's a very specific metric, not sure it is backing up your argument in the way you think. There are a lot of discouraged or under employed workers who would disagree that things are not changing in a fundamental way.
I have a more aggressive timeline than most on the spread of automation (a catch-all for job replacement, obsolescence, changing labor market). I'm of the opinion there will be a significant shift on our lifetime with whatever social repercussions and accommodations follow. But I don't think people will ever stop "working."
I guess to some, the fact to be doing something is better than the job being interesting, a career, well paying .. (as long as it's not to extreme of course)
btw, I believe that we're wired to like work as a basis for social bonding (if you believe that social bonding was selected to help for survival, and work is basically mutualized survival). So doing something in group is probably always good as long as the group factor is good enough (aka not being slaves)
If people don't enjoy their work, their mission should be to keep looking until they find something that suits them. It's worth the effort finding something that you enjoy doing everyday.
Have you ever worked on a factory line for 40 hours a week on minimum wage, doing something only slightly too complicated for a machine?
My favorite gig was probably stocking groceries, as I enjoyed my coworkers and working at night.
Almost all of these jobs have been “truly boring”, but I’ve also been unemployed and completely without direction. That period of my life was very difficult, and I found that work, no matter how boring the job is, afforded me a dignity and purpose that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Of course, others may feel differently, and I understand that.
I think the biggest challenge to this utopia vision (assuming automation gets to this point) is more that, frankly, labor is not wealth. Land is land for instance regardless of what is automated or not. Rent seeking for various things is rather common, most of which automation will not touch. I can envision strong resistance to any sort of UBI scheme from this group (some of this group frankly seem to not even care for our current safety nets now).
Before we go through a true "post work" phase, we'll probably go through a phase where service oriented jobs are the norm -- this is also harder to automate away completely, although probably not near impossible like tackling assets and rent-seeking. The main problem here is that this side of the workforce is currently rather undervalued IMHO. So if one wants improvements in the world of work, I personally think putting more efforts here would be better vs. banking on UBI.
It's actually pretty good at it. The really fulfilling jobs like nursing or teaching go to those who are willing to sacrifice most other luxuries to do them; those who don't get a fulfilling job get more consumption to make up for it. Enjoyable work is a commodity like anything else.
It's significantly better at it than the alternatives.
Even UBI. Sure UBI sounds great in principle, you'll be given enough to live on and you can spend your time doing whatever takes your fancy, but in large-scale practice I don't see it working.
Making the majority of the population dependent on the government for their income is not something that has historically worked well.
Two, the idea is not that people will goof off all day. Some yeah. Most, no. Most people will find work they like doing and do it. What does go away, however, is the fear of failure, unemployment and poverty. So they will have much better options to search for their most effective niche, rather than leaping in panic upon the first offer.
Two, ideas and reality are very different things. The idea of communism is that everyone is provided for and people give what they can and only take what they need. Sounds great, very altruistic. In reality, it's been a nightmare everywhere it has ever been implemented at a societal level because the idea fails to take in to account human nature. UBI proponents overlook or understate this factor too.
…And it is by working that a man becomes more philos than other men to the immortals and to mortals. They all hate the idle.
— Hesiod, Works and Days, 600 BC
It's just that five days a week, I have to stop working and go to my job :)
He said that some "known" Silicon Valley folks have expressed that the recent opioid epidemic is a positive because these addicts aren't needed will fall out of the workforce, thereby making the transition to the "world without jobs" easier.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-intervie...
The obsolescence of humans in the workforce means that we are gradually being stripped of the power to put a roof over our heads and bread in our plates while capital becomes independent.
At this point, feeding non-productive humans still benefit the economy (by preventing riots and allowing the productive individuals to contribute), but if the vast majority of humanity does not participate in the economy anymore, I don't see why the market would keep on feeding it. And at that point we would be so dependent on automation that we'd all starve to death.
Our economy is a dissipative structure, not unlike fire, nuclear chain reactions and living organisms. It consumes energy (dissipates it, actually, increasing total entropy) in order to perpetuate itself.
Its real currency isn't money, but energy. Money and finance are tools to set its goals and direct its actions.
Fundamentally, supply is energy/matter/recipes to transform either.
Demand stems from survival instinct and reflexes. Humans demand material security, the market provides it in exchange for labor. The economy demands to be kept running through our work and keeps us mostly safe in exchange.
Those instincts/reflexes were acquired by anything alive thanks to evolution.
Currently, companies are subject to heavy selection pressure. They've been morphing at an impressive pace thanks to technological progress, becoming ever more efficient thanks to automation. Only the most efficient stay afloat. At some point, feeding humans will not be the most efficient way to keep themselves up and running, and when that occurs, we will be too dependent to survivie without them.
The primary and secondary sectors are becoming autonomous fast (autonomous tractors, trucks and mining equipment), and so is the industry. The tertiary sector is only useful as long as humans themselves are useful to the first two sectors.
Startups do what they do because they hope to find gold.
However, I think you're on to something here -- something like a reversed kickstarter; anyone could post something they would want to have and how much they would spend on it, more people could join the campaign and creators could get to work on solving it. Probably people already tried it, but off the top of my head I can think of about 10 reasons why it won't work...
Yes, that's exactly what needs to change.
With my limited understanding of history, I understand that jobs still existed before industry. Extreme wealth inequality existed as well. The difference is that most wealth is inherited, except for artisans and administrators, who concentrate mainly in cities, and traveling merchants. And the concept of a job being something that defines who you are and carries your entire family from poverty into affluence will probably die out. It's already dying to an extent.
My colleague felt alone, even though he lived with his girlfriend. I think our material abundance fosters isolation. There is no reason go to your neighbor and knock on their door. You live isolated in your home, you move anonymously through traffic, you work in a closed environment, you go home, and the cycle repeats. There is little room for accidentally making friends or even just having conversations.
>"Now, the workday is ripe for another disruption. Research suggests that in an eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for two hours and 53 minutes." https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-aver... //
Other studies show the most productive workers take long breaks (~25% of working time).
Coding a quick Perl script to solve a real world problem on a factory floor and watching a dozen machinists start grinning and get way more productive is something I've been paid to do, and I never got unmotivated by. One of those jobs where you simply stay until the job is done, and don't feel put out in the least you got home at 11pm.
It's when you're slogging away 12 factors removed on some crap you know is utterly meaningless to anyone - even if it's in tooling you like - that's when I get severe motivational problems. I'd rather work as a cashier at a gas station where at least I can see the effect I have on society with my labor.
My point is, few people can walk up to a keyboard and program "productively" for three hours -- and then do the same thing the next day again indefinitely. Hidden in those productive hours is a lot of informal coordination, necessary for those three hours to be actually productive.
By no means is it given that 8 hours is the optimal workday, nor that the way we generally structure work is the most efficient, but luckily, our field is especially receptive to radical experiments, so someone will surely try this any day now. (/s)
Sort of. For the week, I would agree, for a lifetime, not so sure about that. I mean what happens when you are unable to work? That could come sooner or later, but when it does come, you will need a chunk of change to get you through the rest of your life. Also, at the other end of life, children can't work until 16, so someone needs a chunk of change to take care of them too.
I never became acclimated to owning a car, and every time I consider buying one, I just can't justify the value add. I don't even mean that financially it wouldn't net out (it certainly wouldn't), but the cognitive overhead of having to manage yet another thing doesn't really appeal to me. And then there's the thought of passively sitting in a box for about an hour a day in lieu of being out in the open air, which sounds awful.
Unless there is some new slave class that's going to do our work for us, your can't have productive society without someone working.
There are simply too many humans and not enough resources for everyone to homestead or farm, and even then, people have to work for themselves, and it would end up in more work.
Re: your second point, homesteading or farming on the individual level makes no sense, that is why farming is specialized and scaled up. Why would this no longer bte the case?
I've yet to read any research without crippling flaws that suggests this kind of prediction isn't rooted in fantasy.
To take one example, look at https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Fut... section on call centers and imagine that Comcast applies ML to the next call you make with them. How well would that work?
Society cannot be ruled in a top-down manner, period.
I'd all for a universal paycheck, if it weren't for that nagging suspicion that it won't work out like in Star Trek. That the powers that be will decide something altogether unpleasant for the non-working majority.
Instead,a world where you "work" in anything you really like (without having to worry about getting paid or not), where everything is virtually "free" and achievable, as long as you mantain an active "working" status. Think of it as a 1 - working, 0 - not working. If you are in 1 status, you can acquire anything you need (and even want) in modic proportions.
More to elaborate later on.
> In 1884, the socialist William Morris proposed that in “beautiful” factories of the future, surrounded by gardens for relaxation, employees should work only “four hours a day”.
> that life with much less work, or no work at all, would be calmer, more equal, more communal, more pleasurable, more thoughtful, more politically engaged
> Graeber has a point: “I do think there is a fear of freedom – a fear among the powerful that people might find something better to do than create profits for capitalism.”
> Graeber argues that in a less labour-intensive society, our capacity for things other than work could be built up again. “People will come up with stuff to do if you give them enough time. I lived in a village in Madagascar once. There was this intricate sociability. People would hang around in cafes, gossiping, having affairs, using magic. It was a very complex drama – the kind that can only develop when you have enough time. They certainly weren’t bored!”
(Or just supporters are absolutely nuts like this one.)
> “The postwar years, when people worked less and it was easier to be on the dole, produced beat poetry, avant garde theatre, 50-minute drum solos, and all Britain’s great pop music – art forms that take time to produce and consume.”
> “You get your UBI payment from the government. Then you get a form from your local council telling you about things going on in your area: a five-a-side football tournament, say, or community activism – Big Society stuff, almost.”
> One common proposal is for a new type of public building, usually envisaged as a well-equipped combination of library, leisure centre and artists’ studios. “It could have social and care spaces, equipment for programming, for making videos and music, record decks,”
> “Instead of having jobs, we’re going to do craft, to make our own clothes. It’s quite an exclusionary vision: to do those things, you need to be able-bodied.”
> With people having more time, and probably less money, private life could also become more communal, she suggests, with families sharing kitchens, domestic appliances, and larger facilities. “There have been examples of this before,” she says, “like ‘Red Vienna’ in the early 20th century, when the [social democratic] city government built housing estates with communal laundries, workshops, and shared living spaces that were quite luxurious.” Post-work is about the future, but it is also bursting with the past’s lost possibilities.
Telling people they will have less money and resources - they will have start sharing housing, but they'll like having less.
Are those quotes supposed to fill me with disgust or something? Most of them sound quite nice.
You better have something for them to do, because (and I say this in a non-religious way) idle hands are the devil's playthings.
And honestly, would xir be wrong? If we ever get to the point where robots can fully take over most human jobs even intellectual ones, we will have had to reach a level of artificial intelligence where even many not so radical religions and philosophies will wonder whether we are exploiting them.
When Tesla delved and Google span, who was then the gentleman?
The reason this matters is it's conceivable that an AI in a robotic frame could emulate practically all the behaviors we associate with a human (including behavior to display artifacts humans interpret as emotions, like smiling or crying). At that point, is such a thing a human? Or is it merely a fully-realized model of one? Does it make a difference?
This is the subject of tons of speculative science fiction. From a strictly computer science perspective, though, you can easily define a "square" class that fully implements all the behaviors of the geometric concept of a square. That doesn't make instances of it a square, though. They're merely digital models of squares. This is also the significance of the famous "There is no spoon" scene in The Matrix, when Neo has a realization that everything in the Matrix is a model which he can reach into and alter the properties of. Therefore, there's a strong argument to be made that from an objective perspective, even an AI that perfectly mimics human behavior is just a perfect model and not a human. However, humans being emotional creatures the objective argument will almost certainly not matter in that scenario.
This also has implications for the science fiction concept of "copied personalities", which Black Mirror loves playing with. If you make a digital copy of someone's mind, do they still have rights? I'd argue no for the above reasons, but again, there's an emotional angle which will usually override the scientific angle.