Hacker News Reader

> People don't want "hand outs" or "charity", they want to do something to generate value

Agreed that it will be a cultural shift: there is a divide between meaning and economics.

People need meaning in life, but meaningful work and economic value aren't always the same.

Raising children or providing caregiving to the elderly can be very meaningful and happens to pay poorly. Building community is incredibly meaningful, and is usually volunteer work right now.

> People go all in on retraining (even though it obviously can't work for everyone)

I've heard that federal retraining programs have a success rate (defined as difference between placebo of nothing) of 0-15%. The current government solution to displaced workers is in practice is getting on disability.

I think you'll have a much harder time convincing women to not base sexual selection, at least in part, on resource gathering. That's pretty ingrained, and not just culture.

Then men will continue trying, as they have since time immemorial.

Exactly. A cultural change is big, but this is even bigger than culture, it's hard wired in our genes since before humans even became a species. So there will never be a magical fairy land where people just accept equal economic outcomes gifted to us by the robots. So we have to start there and figure out a different solution, the suggested solution is a nonstarter.

Not sure I follow, what does this have to do with meaning and work?

And even in a post-scarcity society, some things (like attention and social status) will always be valuable.

The whole discussion is built on a fantasy socialist utopia where the robots do all the work and we just issue everyone a paycheck to not work. Socialists have been singing this song since the beginning of socialism. It will never work because it doesn't match with human nature. Some kind of work must be found, and people will demand differential outcomes based on that work. People will destroy the robots before they let this socialist u/dys-topia come to fruition.

Well people will always "work", but I think the nature of what we consider "work" and "outcomes" might be different.

In our current scenario "work" is generate economic value, and "outcome" is dollars.

In another scenario "work" could be stories / media, and "outcomes" could be attention.

In another, "work" is playing video games, "outcome" is level.

In all these scenarios you have people feeling the dopamine and at some level deriving satisfaction. It seems a bit dystopian (and anti-social) even to me, but if we're just talking about "human limitations on society" then I don't see why it couldn't be the case.

If we really lived in a post-scarcity world like The Culture, I'd imagine we'd have to evolve how we think about "work" and "outcome" in the same way that most of us no longer "work" for the glory of god for an "outcome" in the afterlife.

>post-scarcity world

Well, we don't live in a fictional world. We live in a real world.

Without all the hoops to jump through and prove disability or attend useless classes, people would largely find productive things to do. Sure it might disrupt other businesses, but if I had all the free time in the world and enough money, I'd find something to do. Maybe I'd start my own small farm, or sell prepared meals, or sharpen knives professionally, or run a political campaign, or volunteer for my favorite charity. You know, the kinds of stuff well off rich kids do.

Why is everyone so convinced people need to be told what to do to stay busy and engaged in the world?

There is unlimited meaningful work available that doesn't generate much real profit. You can easily perform music on the street which others enjoy but you won't make a lot of money. You can easily learn crafts to create things for your friends and family that they will appreciate but not pay for. You can easily get in to competitive sport without having to be part of the very top % who get paid for it.

We just need to realise that life happyness and meaningful work doesn't mean generating profits for some ceo.

I agree with you. I also feel the same way about people studying a "worthless" degree at a university. I think it should be much more heavily encouraged to let us develop deeper thinkers, artists, and others. We should learn to celebrate that not everything needs to be economically/financially driven.

> We just need to realise that life happyness and meaningful work doesn't mean generating profits for some ceo.

I believe that's GP's point in a nutshell. The thing is for the USA "just need to realize" is a major cultural shift. Not to say it's insurmountable by any means, but making people just realize something is very tricky IMO.

People realize it, just not he old ones with the money.

This reminds me of Scott's post over at Slate Star Codex about Moloch [0]. The issue here isn't so much about _realizing_ the futility in pegging one's happiness to one's profitability. The issue is that for any one person to forgo this standard (s)he would be required to give up the status conferred on being a profit-generating American. This is against his/her interest. Thus, most Americans would rather work harder and be more productive/profitable and maintain their status, than attempt to achieve a more authentic happiness, and risk being perceived as a failure by others. To actually alter this standard would require changing the cultural norms around status and profitability either from the top-down, or from outside entirely.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

That's a fairly privileged take on it.

Most Americans don't continue to work for status—they continue to work to eat.

> Most Americans don't continue to work for status—they continue to work to eat.

I was speaking with regards to American society under UBI, not the current day.

> I think it should be much more heavily encouraged to let us develop deeper thinkers, artists, and others.

Totally agree. I think the combination of emphasizing on STEM for all, along with smaller colleges facing shrinking enrollments, will result in losses to society that won't be obvious/measurable.

Look at the list of notable Hampshire College alumni: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampshire_College

They range from Ken Burns, to one of the founders of Stonyfield Yogurt, to a Debian contributor, along with many other musicians and other creators.

We need to keep this kind of educational freedom alive.

Teaching in particular comes to mind as something that quite a lot of people might be more interested in if it didn't mean living off low teacher salaries.

It kind of frustrates me that I keep seeing UBI being described as a sort of unemployment assistance. Unless you drop the "U", a UBI is something EVERYONE receives- the separation between givers/takers would not be obvious, especially if the unemployment rate remains low. And I think the unemployment rate would remain low because workers would be willing to accept lower pay if it is bolstered by a UBI. A UBI that is aggressive enough would actually create jobs by lowering the cost of labor in this manner.

The thing that prevents people from having jobs isn't a lack of demand for labor- it's the unwillingness of companies to pay for a worker's full cost of living. A UBI could correct for that.

Absolutely. But we can't look at workers in a dying industry like coal mining and say "Hey, your industry is dead. Time to re-train. Hop to it!"

The society that benefited from having these workers should give them time, money and resources to retrain. Some of these people have their identity wrapped up in their job (as you allude to), so the psychological jump may be the most difficult of all.

Maybe we should have insurance for large industries that are essential to society (I can't see how that could go wrong!) ;)

I would add that while people may take pride in work, that doesn't mean they'll work for pride alone.

Most people want to work

You grossly underestimate how many people would be content watching cheap entertainment, copulating without concern for consequences, and otherwise enjoying a life of mundane leisure.

The US poverty line is 80th percentile of world income. That’s pretty comfortable for most.

> People don't want "hand outs" or "charity", they want to do something to generate value. While I agree that we will ultimately have to pursue some sort of UBI or payoff solution, implementing it requires a complete cultural shift in the way we think about work which will likely be a difficult uphill battle.

"Generating value" is such a capitalist fake idea though.

With UBI, people could potentially pursue whatever fulfills their soul, whether or not it creates economic value for others.

But the capitalist notion of "handouts" being personal failure and "generating value" as the meaning of life is so ingrained in American culture that I don't know how we'll ever move beyond it.

By overcompensating people for under-valued work, is how we did it in the Great Depression.