People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis | Hacker News Reader

People are coming out of retirement due to cost-of-living crisis

theregister.com

48 pointsLinuxBender27 comments

Sort of a side tangent, not 100% certain it belongs in this comment thread but I'll put it here anyways and let the votes decide :P

On the one hand, I feel really proud of how far we as a species have come in the past 200 years—we went from almost everyone being farmers to jobs like mine (Python programmer) existing. But I'm not trying to imply that farming is somehow inferior to programming, because it isn't! It just makes me happy that the percentage of humans who are free to pursue careers they actually want is so much higher nowadays than it was in antiquity.

But I can't help but hope for more. Right now, if you're privileged, hard working, and lucky, you can work a high-paying job doing something you enjoy for a few decades, then retire comfortably. This is already semi-decent, but it really only applies to a tiny fraction of the worldwide populus. I envision a future where it's no longer necessary to work at all to provide basic necessities for yourself and your family. I imagine a society where privilege and lucky don't determine how much agency you have, how much ability a person has to choose to do good things with their life.

Maybe I'm waxing overly prosaic, but this is why I'm working in AI. I firmly believe that AI is the field of study that can get us to this utopia. It may take a decade or a millenia, but I think it's possible — when we can decouple the act of living from the necessity of survival by building adaptible, benevolent machines, we also pave the way for a society where all is provided for everyone.

I know some people don't like this vision of the future. They worry about what will happen to humanity if everyone can just "freeload". They believe everyone will just sit around lazily 24/7 and be bums. I understand this viewpoint! And to some extent, I agree with it—there will be large parts of the population who embraces complacency and sedentary life. But the key to me is the ask the ever-relevant question "compared to what?". I would rather have a society of lazy freeloaders than a society where poor people die from starvation on a regular basis. I would rather a third of the population spend their lives in the metaverse than watch non-privileged people slowly work themselves into depression and misery to counteract the classism they've battled their whole life.

I'd rather everyone survive, and let them make their own choice whether they thrive or not, than accept our current status quo, where people must either thrive or suffer with slim in-between.

Anyways, sorry for the long, off-topic spiel, as well as for the disorganization of its presentation. As always I'm curious to hear others' opinions and am open to having my mind changed.

I wonder how this utopia would hinder further technological and scientific advancement. There will still be the curious and the capable of course, but I can't help but think that their output and rate of advancement alone would be far below what a strong, private industry sector is capable of.

I imagine that if AI gets to the point of being able to provide humanity with a utopian society, it will also be capable of doing its own research, likely at a faster pace than that of modern civilization.

And why does it matter at all? Technological and scientific advancement is only means to an end. If utopia is somehow not enough than I suppose nothing is (it reminds me about the famous scene in "Wall street 2" - when asked "what's your number?" The answers given is "more")

Personally, I think it is far more likely that year after year the amount of "excess deaths" will go up as more jobs are lost due to technological innovation leading to more people falling through the cracks and dying due to suicide, drugs, homelessness, poverty etc. I think the wealthy and powerful would prefer a working, vastly smaller population (but more educated and therefore, in their eyes, more tolerable) propped up by AI and robots than current population levels with a sizeable 'leisure' class.

I fully expect the trend of depopulation in the developed world to continue, despite the forecasts of system collapse due to a misbalance in population age. I don't think the predicted system collapse will happen - they'll simply accept OAPs dying sooner than they would have given proper care and they'll come up with some new financial instruments to smooth over budget deficits in the meantime. After the old generation has died out, the system will stabilise and there will be a wealthier population as the wealth will have been concentrated in fewer hands.

The developing world is different as they still need the manpower to build up the infrastructure. Once that's done, expect the same thing to happen there.

EDIT: Coincidentally, shortly after writing this I came across a link to this wikipedia entry whilst browsing reddit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder

Age of retirement should be 50. If more people don’t retire, how will the young people find jobs? We are educating everyone these days. The youth need jobs to support their families and buy homes and plan for their own retirement.

25 years in the work force, 30 years in retirement? What kind of social service system would be able to support that?

Technology

When I was a 26 year old newly minted manager, I interviewed a guy who was pushing 60 who had retired early due to a stock windfall. Ten+ years later, with the market not doing so well and having overspent, there he was looking for a job. It's easy to think the good times in tech of the past decade will keep going, but these years have been somewhat of an anomaly - sure tech workers overall make pretty good money, but eff-you money is rare.

I think the whole point of being able to retire early is not to rely on speculative markets like the stock market, but create a world where energy is free.

If energy is freely available, all price supports and controls can be seen for what they truly are…..artificial constructs.

Food, medicine, housing, energy and transportation are basic necessities. What do we spend most on? Everything else is tinder to keep the fires of consumption going.

Human beings have enormous reserves of potential. None of it has been unlocked because we have been suckered into wage slavery.

Work is essential. Everyone has to contribute. TANSTAAFL. But it doesn’t have to be 8 hours/day grind for 40 years of our lives.

If you step back and think about it…it’s nuts. And entirely artificial.

Many people don't make it to 80, and many people who do have serious dementia and would be on social services by then anyways.

I feel like people who haven’t grown up with grandparents don’t understand the value of seniors in our society. They are not just ‘old people’.

From a non material perspective, life is rich when there are relationships and companionship and love. And we learn from our older generations and they are memory keepers. Society cannot learn and progress and evolve if we don’t treasure the elders amongst us.

Sadly, this is lost in today’s world and especially in the west. Even in India where I grew up in a large multi generational family, the notion of multi generational families participating in child rearing is become rare with the current generations.

We see the downsides of this. At least, I do. You can learn how to code or be a nuclear engineer at a college…but how do you learn what it takes to be in love and to be able to love? Learn cooperation and create partnerships..how to be kind and when to be kind. Or stern.

We need elders. A society that doesn’t care for its most vulnerable is doomed to perish. That’s how we learn to be humans. And to be human is to learn how to cooperate and co exist in order to survive.

In a post scarcity economy, human beings don’t have to be gaslit into working till we die.

This is in the realm of possibility within our lifetime.

Funny because I know people still working past 65 because there are not enough youngsters in the pipeline. Everything from the trades to engineers. I’m not sure a lack of opportunity is what’s keeping the young people down. Talent and a good work ethic is scarce. There’s a surplus of young people without both.

Geography?

Too many people decided to ride the wagon at once and it got too heavy. Some will have to get off and help push again.

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