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"The productivity boost we could get just by eliminating people manually copying and pasting (or, dear god, re-typing) things from one spreadsheet to another wo

"The productivity boost we could get just by eliminating people manually copying and pasting (or, dear god, re-typing) things from one spreadsheet to another would be enormous, let alone other applications." You do realise that: a) Historically working hours have not decreased with an increase in productivity, and b) The notion of a basic income, and the concept that not everyone needs to work is regarded with extreme suspicion (in the US anyway)? All those people who are copying and pasting things are doing a certain job. You can eliminate those jobs with a single script, but I'm not so sure doing this en masse would be a positive thing without making a parallel effort to reduce work hours for everyone and making a push for basic income.

lisivka 10y ago
Historically, working hours are decreased with increase of productivity. 10-16 hours working days 6 days a week was common just few centuries ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Historically, working hours are decreased with increase of productivity. 10-16 hours working days 6 days a week was common just few centuries ago. Those long days arose in consequence of the industrial revolution (both because the things which enabled them were products of the industrial revolution, and because they were adopted to maximize the return of the capital investments in factories in industrialization), working hours were shorter previously. Its true that they later came down as a result of social movements spurred by the conditions those long hours produced, but its not clear that those were net shorter hours from productivity or just a reversion of the increase. (In some areas of the developed world, there've been further reductions since, which may be a continuation of the same social movement adapting to changes in the production capacity, which would perhaps illustrate a socially-mediated course for the trend you suggest, but that hasn't been universal.)
  - lisivka 10y ago
    Before IR, nobody had watches to count hours. Working days were irregular, i.e. worker must work as long, as sun is in the sky, from child age till death. I myself helping my father from 10am till 10pm when harvesting wheat, and I am not surprised when my parents are saying that they worked much more than me when then were young, for much less.

lisivka 10y ago

Historically, working hours are decreased with increase of productivity. 10-16 hours working days 6 days a week was common just few centuries ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Historically, working hours are decreased with increase of productivity. 10-16 hours working days 6 days a week was common just few centuries ago. Those long days arose in consequence of the industrial revolution (both because the things which enabled them were products of the industrial revolution, and because they were adopted to maximize the return of the capital investments in factories in industrialization), working hours were shorter previously. Its true that they later came down as a result of social movements spurred by the conditions those long hours produced, but its not clear that those were net shorter hours from productivity or just a reversion of the increase. (In some areas of the developed world, there've been further reductions since, which may be a continuation of the same social movement adapting to changes in the production capacity, which would perhaps illustrate a socially-mediated course for the trend you suggest, but that hasn't been universal.)
- lisivka 10y ago
  Before IR, nobody had watches to count hours. Working days were irregular, i.e. worker must work as long, as sun is in the sky, from child age till death. I myself helping my father from 10am till 10pm when harvesting wheat, and I am not surprised when my parents are saying that they worked much more than me when then were young, for much less.