Hacker News Reader

Comment by PopsiclePete | Hacker News Reader

Why is a job a good thing??? I don't need a job. I need income. The two don't have to be necessarily connected. If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace humans, that's a good thing - it frees us up to pursue more interesting pursuits.

Now, all of this wealth that will be generated, if it's concentrated in the hands of the top 0.5%, then yes, we're screwed.

But some form of basic guaranteed income would go a long way to make sure we're not turned into serfs.

I love programming. But if I could focus on the projects I wanted to write instead of what I'm forced to write, why is that horrible?

View on HN

Work, in the form of a job, is the basis for our economy. If you provide work to someone with capital then you get capital in return. Critically, basic necessities are part of this economy, so food, water, shelter etc... are traded in the same markets as t-shirts, toys and printer paper.

What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy. The mechanism that this works through attempts to retain the structure of the "market economy" and in general terms would set the basic wage at the market basket rate for necessities. Previous experiments on this have been either limited in duration or scope and would be argued could not be extrapolated to an entire national or world economy.

I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world. My guess is that workers will be displaced faster than our systems can catch up.

> What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy.

I don't think of it that way. I think of it more as establishing common ownership of the social foundation on which the entire market depends, charging rents on them, and distributing the rents to the owners (i.e., all members of society equally).

> I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world.

I think "post scarcity" is a bad term -- its not a post scarcity world, and if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources. Its just a world in which the nature of the market opportunities is such that the problems with our current manner of managing distribution of resources become even more pronounced.

establishing common ownership of the social foundation

That is exactly as I said, decoupling certain aspects from the market. In effect you are socializing some portion of the market. I don't mean that as an epithet either, just a defining term. I also don't disagree that something like it should happen.

if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources.

Ah, actually that's not true at all and is a foundation of this debate. If an individual had a machine that created infinite bread for free the person, under the current market, could restrict access and distribution all they like. I think in practice this (not the bread thing) is what will happen with certain goods where marginal costs go to zero.

> Ah, actually that's not true at all and is a foundation of this debate. If an individual had a machine that created infinite bread for free the person, under the current market, could restrict access and distribution all they like. I think in practice this (not the bread thing) is what will happen with certain goods where marginal costs go to zero.

Funny how the optimists throw out all the law of conservation of energy and the 2nd law of thermodynamics to make their points. Quite an interesting kool-aid you drank there...

It would certainly raise a lot of questions as to what it means to be human and what is fulfillment.

I know a fair few people that are just lost as to what to do when they do not have work. It seems bizarre to me in a way how many people are just simply lost without the confines of a job and being told how to occupy their day.

I hope those people would rediscover what truly fulfills them.

Back in the day, people had hobbies. Collecting butterflies, studying physics, cataloging all the fungi on earth etc. Maybe today it would be more like visiting all the places Survivor filmed, or collecting a model of every sword in any Conan movie.

"If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace humans, that's a good thing - it frees us up to pursue more interesting pursuits."

Like participating in dystopian future death games for the amusement of the upper class because we don't have any food?

We could call them.....the Hunger Games!

> Why is a job a good thing???

Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Which is why your government will make sure, that you do either have to or want to work. But for the majority only not-automatable work will be left. Those might be jobs that create status for the top 0.5% - they will essentially become servants - to put it mildly.

> to make sure we're not turned into serfs

A robot slave won't be as interesting as a human slave, makes sense, right?

Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society.

Funny, the world seemed to operate just fine before the industrial revolution created the modern 9-5 work week.

There's literally no evidence at all for what you're claiming here. High unemployment that leads to poverty creates instability. High unemployment where people's needs are met, though... that's pretty new territory. I'm not aware of any precedent that allows us to predict the outcome.

Since the industrial revolution people work less and less ... until the 19th century for most people life mostly was about working. That's why people's last name was inferred from their profession b/c they were even identified with their jobs.

The problem I see with this is that's your attitude towards free time now because you are used to the notion of work. Whether it be purely for an exchange of money or for personal enrichment (non monetary)

In a society where work is not the norm, people may not seek out to be productive, but rather passive consumers of things and services. A nice docile population used to some modicum of comfort but with little desire.

Does everyone get to have as many children as they like? Does everyone get an equal share of the food and land? How do we decide who lives and who dies without capitalism ....

Or do we assume we will have (practically) infinite resources sometime soon?

We already produce enough food per day on the planet, such that if everyone had an equal share, we'd all become morbidly obese very quickly.

In the US, we already have so much wealth and productivity that we're well past the "who lives and who dies?" question...except that what we make and own is so deeply imbalanced that yes, people do die for lack of medical care, heat, cooling, and so on.

So...my thinking is, capitalism already isn't doing a very good job at deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. because it suggests that not everyone lives).

"everyone lives" will only work if we continue to produce enough food and if the population growth does not exceed that food supply.

You say capitalism is wrong because it does not allow "everyone lives". Why is "everyone lives" an option? If everyone lived we would run out of space ...

We are not past that question in the U.S.

Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?

>Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?

By making people rich enough that they stop having so many damned babies because they can soundly expect the first one or two to survive infancy, and because they don't need seven children for farm labor.

In 1st-world economies (the only ones suggesting a basic income) its checking itself. Germany, Japan, France, the USA have negative population 'growth'

Why do citizens of those countries deserve basic income when the rest of the world does not?

What did they do to deserve that?

Why do they have negative population growth ...

Oh get off your high horse. Because, by definition, they have the economies that can afford it. You can't just have whatever you wish for; it has to be practical and achievable.

That's all I'm saying.

It seems unrealistic.

I see it as a progression of technology. We used to see a bright future of automation, robots and leisure. Now we label it unemployment and call it a problem.

I was not witness to that "used to see a bright future" ... I have been worried about the machines replacing us for some time myself.

Not because I'm worried about being bored, but because I'm worried about who controls the finite resources.

>>>> We refer to the question: What sort of creature man’s next successor in the supremacy of the earth is likely to be. We have often heard this debated; but it appears to us that we are ourselves creating our own successors; we are daily adding to the beauty and delicacy of their physical organisation; we are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race. In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race.

Darwin among the machines in 1863

Emotional pseudo-scientific claptrap. You don't like your robot, you get a better one. Who cares about inferior or superior? Different is good enough. One built to serve the other.

Well, of course if suddenly farms stopped producing (they won't), or the population exploded (it isn't), then suddenly we'd have food scares again. That's not happening now, and it seems unlikely it will happen again.

As for running out of space...no. Just, no. In the U.S.? Run out of space? I don't even know how to make sense of that.

And one quick note--I didn't say capitalism is "wrong," just that it isn't doing a very good job at being an economic system that supports life, though some like its liberty (e.g. those who don't have to worry about food and shelter) and some like how it lets them pursue happiness (e.g. those in a position to pursue it, instead of having to work 3 minimum-wage jobs).

(Though, in fairness, if you read my other comments here, you'd see that I don't have a particularly charitable view of capitalism--like one of those old guys said, useful servant, destructive master, or something like that.)

In other parts of the world people are killing each other over land and space to live.

The U.S. prevents people from using it's land and space with violent force.

I suppose if it continues to do that, the U.S. specifically won't have a problem ... as long as it keeps doing that?

I can't reply to your replier, so replying here.

Population growth is already taken care of in any modernized country. We're only getting to replacement level by immigration.

People need a purpose. Work gives people that purpose.

Work does not imply job.

Jobs are where people are financially rewarded for work. Work that is not financially rewarded still exists. See topic: Hobbies, Charities, Volunteering.

You are right, but given present political realities the jobless are more likely to be marginalized in ghettos, imprisoned for slave labor, or left to starve.

In the USA yes, I don't know why you all seem to hate each other so much.

A half century of propaganda convinced Americans that common interests do not exist and that any form of cooperative social contract equals Leninist communism. Because you know,if we help each other pretty soon all independent business activity will be illegal and we'll have Gulags.

We need our jobs. The rich may play with their robots however much they want, but I will not have my job take away from me.

Basic income or what not, it is unemployment. You may want to spend your life sleeping 15 hours a day, binge watching TV rest of the time, but I choose to be gainfully employed. Do not take that choice away.

Having spent a looong time as a grad student and postdoc, I can assure you that people can work quite hard without the threat of job loss hanging over their heads. There's an argument to be made that the job structure provides direction to someone's work, but there's also a lot to be said for allowing more room for creativity, and freedom of collaboration that you don't get in the current structure.

You don't have to do nothing, you just no longer would be forced to do something.

I don't want to sleep 15 hours a day or watch TV. Last time I was unemployed (3 months following graduation from my college program), I was so busy playing bike polo, volunteering at the local bike co-op, putting on races and tournaments, and swimming at the lake with friends that I didn't even have time to catch up on the TV I missed during exams. I don't know who the hell has time to sleep 15 hours a day and watch tv when there's so much STUFF to do in the world! I guess it's a personal choice. I'm pretty good at keeping busy without a boss telling me what to do though.

>I guess it's a personal choice.

Bingo! It's going to be so depressing if we don't get basic income because people are worried about what about people will do with it, and (horror)disagree with those choices!

You realize that "being employed" very explicitly means "being used for some purpose", i.e. is a only a slight enhancement over "being mercilessly exploited". I'm not employed (I work for myself) and I won't stand being employed ever again.

Here's a fun fact: You can do productive things even if nobody threatens to take away your livelihood if you don't!

Maybe you need someone looking over your shoulder to tell you what to do all the time. Many of us don't. I'm sure we can get a robot to periodically check in on you and yell at you if you aren't doing something productive.

I won't spend my time watching TV. I have at least 3 solo projects I could be working on. One of them could be the next-biggest-thing since Facebook, in theory. Small chance, but either way, I'm not sleeping 15 hrs a day.

Are you telling me that the only way you to do anything productive in your life is a constant axe hanging over your head?

If your wife tells you to empty the dishwasher, does she have to threaten you with divorce at the same time?

Because that's totally the only thing to be able to do. There's no pursuing of personal interests, no other hobbies that one can engage in. It's just nothing but watching tv and oversleeping.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com