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Comment by Symmetry | Hacker News Reader

Ultimately all progress in human material conditions comes from "eliminating jobs". Back In The Day it took 80% of the US population just to keep everyone fed. When tractors came along most of the population went into manufacturing, and with robots people go into services. You can't have more stuff without finding ways to produce the current level of stuff with less people.

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>>Ultimately all progress in human material conditions comes from "eliminating jobs".

I think it should rather be eliminating the need to work for things like food, clothing, medicine and shelter.

As automation increases by multiple folds, I see this as a inevitable fallout. Needing to have a job to even survive might not even be relevant as concept in the future.

Needing to have a job to even survive must not be relevant in the future.

I agree with your main observation, but don't forget that 'jobs' in the sense of selling yourself to pay for your basic survival needs (and maybe a bit more) are historically a fairly recent phenomenon. The negative connotations that come with 'eliminating jobs' all have to do with that.

I think that automation could play an important part in a post-capitalist society.

I'm not sure I understand you. "Selling yourself to pay for your basic survival needs ... [is] a fairly recent phenomenon" seems pretty clear cut, but surely you're not trying to claim that jobs are more onerous today than they were in the past? Peasants in Sumer were working far harder than the average westerner today, and their effort only bought them their basic survival needs (with none to spare).

I assume, given the robots will run 24 hours. THe comment: According to a translated page from the Chinese site Techweb, each robot costs between $20,000 to $25,000, which is over three times the average salary of one worker. However, amid international pressure, Foxconn continues to increase worker salaries with a 25 percent bump occurring earlier this year.

This seems like a easy choice, each robot should pay for itself in a year or so.

Notice though, how you define "progress" as "more stuff".

I'm not that convinced that even life expectancy raises are to be automatically qualified as progress.

Is life and civilization merely a quantitative issue?

Should the life in today's L.A., for example, be qualified as progress over the conditions of, say, early 20th century Vienna?

Please believe that when I said "progress in human material conditions" I meant progress in human material conditions rather than progress in general.

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