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"whatever strikes my fancy" is very likely not something we need to survive on this planet as a species. Do you have any idea how much mindless, painful, miser

by hodwik 11y ago

"whatever strikes my fancy" is very likely not something we need to survive on this planet as a species. Do you have any idea how much mindless, painful, miserable work the people of Earth do to allow you to have a computer connected to the internet, with food in your belly, streets to your house, a house to live in, with electricity to turn on? Only on a site for programming could so many people honestly believe such a white-collar-centric hypothesis.

s73v3r 11y ago
""whatever strikes my fancy" is very likely not something we need to survive on this planet as a species." So? Neither is what 99% of companies are doing.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> Do you have any idea how much mindless, painful, miserable work the people of Earth do to allow you to have a computer connected to the internet, with food in your belly, streets to your house, a house to live in, with electricity to turn on? That's why Basic Income is a topic now and not 100 or 1000 year ago. We know we could automate most of that survival-level task, at least in principle; at minimum reduce it to small amount of maintenance job while we push for development of self-healing materials. Also, UBI seems inevitable now - because the market starts to incentivize automation of everything, and that means most people will be out of jobs soon anyway. You prefer them to starve and/or rebel and trash all our progress, or shall we just skip that bullshit and go straight to something better? > Only on a site for programming could so many people honestly believe such a white-collar-centric hypothesis. Or maybe this "site for programming" is acutely aware of our current level of technological development.
- hodwik 11y ago
  >"You prefer them to starve and/or rebel and trash all our progress, or shall we just skip that bullshit and go straight to something better?" Irrelevant. Technological progress does not erase work, it merely changes what work the market will pay for people to do: -People will hire teams of people to play video games with them. -They will hire teams of costume designers to create wild, highly personalized clothing for them. -They will pay for live musicians in their living rooms. -They will pay young beautiful people to lounge around in their living rooms. -They will pay large teams to plan and cater elaborate parties in their homes. -They will purchase expensive hand-thrown dishes, because they'll think it shows their authenticity and good taste. -Homes will be decorated to a degree which we have little conception of today. -Teams of well-paid cinematographers will produce their home movies. -People will buy social media teams to write funny twitter posts for them. To us this all seems very frivolous, but the general populace of the 1600's would have thought the same of most of what we do: Our insistence on buying numerous outfits, that we would pay someone else to paint our house, that we buy new shoes when our old ones look worn, that people are hired just to decorate coffee shops and concert venues, sign spinners, travel agents, ballet instructors, and so on. If you can't imagine what they will hire people to do, that just says that you're not "frivolous" enough to understand the whims of the people of the future. You'd hate them if you met them, but their system will actually work, unlike UBI.

by hodwik 11y ago

s73v3r 11y ago

""whatever strikes my fancy" is very likely not something we need to survive on this planet as a species." So? Neither is what 99% of companies are doing.

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> Do you have any idea how much mindless, painful, miserable work the people of Earth do to allow you to have a computer connected to the internet, with food in your belly, streets to your house, a house to live in, with electricity to turn on? That's why Basic Income is a topic now and not 100 or 1000 year ago. We know we could automate most of that survival-level task, at least in principle; at minimum reduce it to small amount of maintenance job while we push for development of self-healing materials. Also, UBI seems inevitable now - because the market starts to incentivize automation of everything, and that means most people will be out of jobs soon anyway. You prefer them to starve and/or rebel and trash all our progress, or shall we just skip that bullshit and go straight to something better? > Only on a site for programming could so many people honestly believe such a white-collar-centric hypothesis. Or maybe this "site for programming" is acutely aware of our current level of technological development.

hodwik 11y ago
>"You prefer them to starve and/or rebel and trash all our progress, or shall we just skip that bullshit and go straight to something better?" Irrelevant. Technological progress does not erase work, it merely changes what work the market will pay for people to do: -People will hire teams of people to play video games with them. -They will hire teams of costume designers to create wild, highly personalized clothing for them. -They will pay for live musicians in their living rooms. -They will pay young beautiful people to lounge around in their living rooms. -They will pay large teams to plan and cater elaborate parties in their homes. -They will purchase expensive hand-thrown dishes, because they'll think it shows their authenticity and good taste. -Homes will be decorated to a degree which we have little conception of today. -Teams of well-paid cinematographers will produce their home movies. -People will buy social media teams to write funny twitter posts for them. To us this all seems very frivolous, but the general populace of the 1600's would have thought the same of most of what we do: Our insistence on buying numerous outfits, that we would pay someone else to paint our house, that we buy new shoes when our old ones look worn, that people are hired just to decorate coffee shops and concert venues, sign spinners, travel agents, ballet instructors, and so on. If you can't imagine what they will hire people to do, that just says that you're not "frivolous" enough to understand the whims of the people of the future. You'd hate them if you met them, but their system will actually work, unlike UBI.