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Comment by kubiiii | Hacker News Reader

It would clearly be more human to automatize a task that is characterized by low wages, permanent performance pressure and short term contracts. A few years ago while discussing with a cashier about the automated cash registers they had just installed: -Dont you fear losing your job? -You call that a job? -...

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That type of work is demoralizing to one's soul. I couldn't imagine having to do that as a 9-5. However, I'm going to guess within a decade or so there will have to be a 3-4 day work week instituted as the norm, since there simply won't be enough jobs for people to support themselves with.

Either this or bullshit jobs.

"In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week." ...

http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Keynes was half-right.

We have the capability to operate on a 15-hour work-week while maintaining a 1930ish standard of living. We just choose not to.

Or maybe we'll give a Basic Income Guarantee a more serious look, when > 50% of the population is unemployed and they take to the streets.

Mandating a 30-hour-limit on the work-week with firm controls on overtime would get a lot of people back into the workforce and would give a lot of people some work-life balance back.

But it would also be politically unpalateable to the conservative/libertarian wings of just about every country.

The alternative is Basic Income. But yes, countries need to decide how distribute work in the future (automatic cars will destroy a lot of low level jobs, taxies, logistics, ...)

That's not really how it could possibly work because labor isn't fungible. You think that instead of having some engineers working 50 hour weeks and some warehouse workers working 0 hour weeks you'd convert the warehouse workers to engineers and have everyone work 25 hour weeks? If they could have become engineers they would have already done so.

I wonder as more and more jobs are replaced where the people are going to come from who can afford the shiny things in the Amazon warehouse?

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