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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

I entirely agree with the author's main point:

  there may simply be not enough important things to 
  do to keep everyone busy

If people only bought what's truly needed then only a tiny fraction of the world population would be employed. I for one am very glad that people keep inventing iPods and other stuff to keep everyone productively occupied.

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As long as any human needs or wants are unfilled, there's infinite potential for people to do work. We can always be healthier, have lower infant mortality, make knowledge easier to diffuse, and make products cheaper. Nowdays, we can eat peanut sauce made in Thailand, tea from China, beef from Nebraska, chocolate from Belgium, coffee from Brazil almost anywhere in the world.

Philosophically, how much of this is "important"? I think overall, looking at the world in big chunks of time, things have been and will continue to get better. I talked with a PhD Physicist friend of mine recently for a while, and he sold me on how awesome the world is going to be when the cost of electricity approaches zero - without getting into a ton of details, it's going to be a massive party. Battery and transistor advancements meaning running a 1 pound, high powered laptop for weeks without charging it, free internet throughout the entire globe even in the most remote places, and a hell of a lot of human knowledge freely available to everyone in all of the major languages.

I'm pretty psyched for humanity, and think there's a hell of a lot to be done. We're not perfect, but we're generally trending upwards with a few blips here and there.

That is neat, how does your friend foresee free electricity coming about? Something specific like "alternative energies," fusion, etc.? Or just the general trend of people trying to develop and diversify sources of energy?

He was talking fusion, but I don't have enough background in the hard sciences to really make sense of the nuances of personally. He did give me some impressive general numbers about how a single reaction could power New York City for something like 10 years. Maybe fusion will happen, or perhaps something else, but a lot of the most talented people on the planet are working on more/cheaper power so I'd bet on something breaking through.

I always thought our current problem is not really producing energy but rather transporting it? So if you have a reactor in New York City it'll be rather useless for the people in, say, Moscow. That's the reason nobody is doing this power the world by establishing solar power plants in the Sahara project. Could someone clear this up?

If you have all the free energy you need, doesn't that make it easier to transport?

A wise man once said that a man would live in a cardboard box, were it not for his need to impress women.

Sexual competition will always drive work out of men. And women only recently started working, as a way to avoid depending on men (and a few other good reasons, but I digress).

> And women only recently started working

Nope. The 4-70s US stay-at-home Mom was an abberation. She didn't exist before the Great Depression. (Farmer's wives worked.)

I think there are plenty of important things for people to do (automation, biotech, energy). Unfortunately, I think they are getting harder and harder to do (and ergo fewer and fewer people have the skills necessary to do them (retraining at the local community college, just won't do)).

The other problem seems to be that they are longer term problems with much lower success rates. Businesses, and I get the feeling VCs, are focused on the sure thing with a high return in a short time period. I don't think "important things" fit in that group.

Ultimately I think we will all be enjoying a lot more free time, but it think it will take a painful transition to a different social structure to get there.

If there is no other solution, than what you suggest is ok...but a rather boring and provably unsustainable "ok".

but, there most likely is a better solution...there are many problems to solve in the world that would keep the majority "employed": clean water...disease...racism...housing... Is it possible to build an economy around solving these problems? Since we have never really given a serious attempt at doing so, I guess the answer is yes. Most likely, concepts of "employed", "debt", "education" all have to be redefined to fit this new economy.

Presumably, if an individual wishes to consume far less, they also work far less. There is no reason to work 50 hours a week just to hoard a bunch of dollars until the grave. If they work less, then the supply of employment decreases naturally, and it all balances out. Those who wish to work long hours and consume a lot of goods can still do so. There would be no need for involuntary employment.

Making useless clutter is not productive.

Who decides what is useless? If I compare the enjoyment that I receive from having an iPod and being able to listen to any song I own at pretty much any time I feel like it against the amount of labor that I performed in order to acquire it, I feel like I came away with a pretty good deal. I expect that there is an item or an experience that you value which could only be purchased with labor via money that I would consider useless. That is the whole point of having markets, so that people can make their own decisions about what is and isn't useful to them.

By "productively occupied" I mean "people do something that they think is useful". This in contrast to watching TV where people are occupied but do not have illusion of doing anything.

I believe this distinction is important to the well-being of those people and the community they are in - prolonged idleness has negative effects.

Useless stuff is productive within the bounds of the existing economy. However, that economy is provably unsustainable.

Best to move on and try to build an economy that is sustainable. I suspect such an animal will have a far higher useful::useless ratio.

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