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Comment by dnadler | Hacker News Reader

I think what most people are saying is that if you're not working to feed yourself, then someone else is. And further, it's not fair to ask society to pick up the slack for people who could contribute, but choose not to.

In other words: by saying you shouldn't starve for refusing to work, aren't you also saying that someone else should grow your food for you for free?

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My job is completely detached from the processes and people that ensure there is food on my table. There is no slack to pick up because there is no contribution. Most software developers are in the exact same position. There is no "contributing" in programming casino sites, optimizing trading algorithms to make fat cats richer, or developing aaa games. Society would be better off if we didn't work.

Programming casino sites has value because people choose to spend the money that they earn gambling.

Society decides which tasks have value and which don’t by whether consumers spend money on the work product produced by those tasks.

Now, society’s way of working this out isn’t perfect, but how else should we determine which jobs are adding value and which are not?

I reject the idea that money determines what has worth. Because believing so leads to absurd conclusions. Like dealing drugs being more valuable than taking care of sick people, or pills against male pattern baldness being more valuable than aids medicines for sub-Saharan Africans, or Jeff Bezos being a million times more valuable than me. In fact, the very idea that money is what decides worth is what got us into this mess in the first place.

You ask how we should decide what jobs has "value" and which hasn't. Well, if it isn't obvious that a job has "value" then perhaps it has no value?

Obvious to whom, and how do you define ‘value’?

I’m not being difficult here, these are tough questions.

Allowing the market to decide value is the option we currently have, and seems to be the fairest so far.

I am sure that it is not optimal, and it has flaws, but no one has yet convinced me that there is a better model.

Workless societies depend on voluntarism so there is no need to precisely define value. For instance, who decided that creating Linux was valuable use of Linus Torvalds time? In situations where you really have to define value, democratic votes is fairer than "letting the market" (i.e rich people) decide.

> Workless societies depend on voluntarism

This presents a workless society as a real thing, rather than a hypothetical. I might be wrong, but I’m not aware of any workless society (apart from hunter gatherer tribes and history). If you have examples of a society that functions fully without work, then please share, I’d be interested to see how you solve volunteering for unpleasant or undesirable tasks that no-one wants.

They have existed on small scales. Everything from hippie communies to Christian monasteries to Israeli kibbutzim. The reason tasks are undesirable is because the tasks are detached from people's lives. Raising kids is certainly "objectively" undesirable, yet people do it for free and at great costs. Why? Because it's meaningful.

Kibbutzim is an interesting one. My uncle lived on one for a while, he definitely describes them ‘working’ alongside each other.

Work is a severely overloaded word. I'm using the Marxist definition which I described in another comment.

I would counter by saying that entertainment is actually valuable. Gambling and playing games are things that people choose to spend their time and money doing because they are fun. (Obviously taking advantages of addiction is immoral, but that’s a whole other bag of worms).

As for optimizing trading algos, the counter is that making markets more efficient is also valuable to society at large, and that is what most quants would say they are doing.

As you pointed out in some other comments, there are certainly issues with the current system. Though, I don’t think the conclusion is for people to stop working entirely. If that were the case all of these “useless” jobs would go away and we would then ask farmers to give us food in exchange for nothing at all?

I think what might be better is offering more incentives for people to work in industries that make a real positive impact on the world. And in lieu of that, people who feel they aren’t contributing in a meaningful way can try to seek out more meaningful work. And we as a society should support *that*.

Your counter-argument to my examples of worthless work is "well, actually, that work is valuable!" The reason why you use this argument is because we are so conditioned to believe that money is the same thing as value. Thus, by definition, every work is valuable because someone pays.

Try and think of it from a utilitarian perspective. Is some aaa game creating or destroying more happiness? Is it a net positive for society? For some games perhaps the answer is yes, for others it is no. Children getting obese from sedentary lifestyle and not socialising with friends is certainly a large cost.

> If that were the case all of these “useless” jobs would go away and we would then ask farmers to give us food in exchange for nothing at all?

Sure.

Well, yes, people find the work in your examples valuable. I can say that for sure because they are willing to spend their money on it.

> Sure.

Ha, then the farmers would say "no" and you'd starve to death?

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