5 ms·

At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. The big question is will the m

At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a species are going to answer it. [My hope regarding the labor is that it meaningless work can be replaced with research and development]

crdoconnor 10y ago
We'll have "enough" full time labor when everybody it fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money.* Until then, if there's not enough jobs, that's an artificially induced shortage (e.g. austerity). * Excepting natural resources - e.g. "more" beachfront property.
- Practicality 10y ago
  "everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money." That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want. At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?). Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)
  - crdoconnor 10y ago
    Right. This star trek utopia is a long way off.
  - belovedeagle 10y ago
    > whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources.
    - dvtv75 10y ago
      A non-zero number of businesses already do this. For example, where I presently work I don't get paid for overtime or public holidays in spite of the law requiring that I do. I complained, and I was told that if I don't like it I can quit. I said that I would be going to the regulatory body, and I was outright threatened with physical harm: "Bad things happen to people who do that."
      - bunburying 10y ago
        In accepting this position, are you not allowing others to be harmed? I'm assuming you're not uniquely being abused by the powers that be.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    - visarga 10y ago
      > redistributing others' resources Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty. Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".
    - kazagistar 10y ago
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  So you're saying there's no way to reach post-labour before post-scarcity? Hmm, that's interesting, I hope it's not true.
  - atemerev 10y ago
    How it could be not true? What is "fair" income in scarcity?
    - henrikschroder 10y ago
      I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care. But if you want more than basic, then you have to perform labour of some sort. Want to take the trip to Mars? Gotta work for it. Yes, there will be a difference between those who labour and those who don't, but I still think it would be a huge win if noone in society would ever struggle to put food on their table. There's a struggle between retired pensioners and everyone else in society about how much retired citizens should get, but there's still an understanding on both sides that past labour has some value, but that that value is less than present labour, so there's a balance. I hope the same would be true in a post-labour society. And, of course, the difference between the labourers and the not-labourers would be an incentive to reach post-scarcity where that difference is wiped out.
      - id 10y ago
        > I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care. This is already a reality in many countries. It would be very easy to also make it a reality in the US. The resources are there.
        atemerev 10y ago
        They are not. Even for the senior citizens — existing pension systems are on the verge of collapse already.
a3n 10y ago
> The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? In the United States it will be the class warfare/starving thing. You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. Many people believe that taking unemployment compensation is shameful. I think a lot of us will be fed in prisons. EDIT: In some places you have to pay to not be vertical. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-architecture-keeps-poverty-undeen-and-makes-us-more-hostile https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-ar... > Sculptor Fabian Brunsing brought a satirical eye to the issue by creating the “pay bench”, an art installation of a park bench that retracts its metal spikes for a limited time when the prospective sitter feeds it a coin. Chinese officials, completely missing the joke, thought that this was a great idea and installed similar benches in Yantai Park of the Shangdong province.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  >You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. So true. Even things like safety, cleanliness, education quality, etc. are things we must pay for here, in stark contrast to other countries in the world.
  - greedo 10y ago
    Someone is paying for it... TANSTAAFL
- nico_h 10y ago
  You mean made to work for insulting wages and subsistence in prison sweatshops. Prison population is a captive source of cheap labor, easily abused and exploited.
  - a3n 10y ago
    And they don't go home at night.
- sqldba 10y ago
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? We already have class warfare and mass hunger (the number of people who go partially hungry despite food-stamps and food banks is atrocious, let alone the number who would starve without such programs). The current answer from the lower classes has been the revival of organized labor among Fight for 15 and other movements. It's our job in the "higher" working class, having more education and leeway to operate, to throw out economic and political force behind both the social movements of the lower classes and behind "full unemployment" measures such as universal health-care and reduced working hours.
AmirS2 10y ago
> fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. and from the article > there’s not enough work to go around I disagree. There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done! Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the wholesale transformation of our transport and energy systems, and probably construction too. We should be putting massive numbers of people to work on solving and fixing this, and there's no point leaving people unemployed while there's still work that needs to be done. Whether we can organise society in time to achieve this is the real question. Once we've fixed the environment and created a truly sustainable civilization, then we can talk about labor that is surplus. Other work that will be in increasing demand is healthcare and elderly care (especially given the aging populations of most countries). I don't see robots replacing humans for this any time soon, and we are far from the point where we have enough health / personal care for everyone. Plenty more examples of work that's needed but not currently being done can be found with a bit of creative thought...
- pygy_ 10y ago
  The constant supply solar of energy (and finite supply of mineral energy sources) also means that we won't be able to grow the economy indefinitely and need to find a way to transition to a system that thrives at equilibrium.
  - beat 10y ago
    I'll leave that problem to my great-great-grandchildren. For now, I'm more concerned with pulling off the fossil-to-solar transition without breaking down in the process.
  - nhaehnle 10y ago
    The rate of CO2 emission per GDP is already decreasing thanks to technological advances. There's no fundamental reason why the same couldn't happen to the ratio of energy use per GDP. So finite supply of resources is not a problem per se, and certainly won't be within our lifetimes, which is what we need to deal with.
edblarney 10y ago
"At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. " This is not true. Total workforce participation grew radically through the last 100 years - esp. because the introduction of women into different jobs. Demographics aside, we have really quite high participation rates - even after 200 years of automation. Also - because of demographic changes, we're already at a stage of declining labour force participation (since 2000), and we already retire at '60-ish' and live another 30 years not doing a whole lot, but amassing massive healthcare bills. So - people more than ever need to be 'gainfully and productively employed' while they can, in order to offset the fact they'll be hanging out for quite long time not creating direct value.

crdoconnor 10y ago

We'll have "enough" full time labor when everybody it fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money.* Until then, if there's not enough jobs, that's an artificially induced shortage (e.g. austerity). * Excepting natural resources - e.g. "more" beachfront property.

Practicality 10y ago
"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money." That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want. At that point it's not a question of giving everyone jobs it's a question of whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources (and a question of, should we?). Of course, I don't think the time has arrived yet for all this to happen. But as mentioned earlier, I do think it is going to happen (if we don't have some horrible nuclear war or some other megadisaster that kills everyone first)
- crdoconnor 10y ago
  Right. This star trek utopia is a long way off.
- belovedeagle 10y ago
  > whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources.
  - dvtv75 10y ago
    A non-zero number of businesses already do this. For example, where I presently work I don't get paid for overtime or public holidays in spite of the law requiring that I do. I complained, and I was told that if I don't like it I can quit. I said that I would be going to the regulatory body, and I was outright threatened with physical harm: "Bad things happen to people who do that."
    - bunburying 10y ago
      In accepting this position, are you not allowing others to be harmed? I'm assuming you're not uniquely being abused by the powers that be.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - visarga 10y ago
    > redistributing others' resources Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty. Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".
  - kazagistar 10y ago
henrikschroder 10y ago
So you're saying there's no way to reach post-labour before post-scarcity? Hmm, that's interesting, I hope it's not true.
- atemerev 10y ago
  How it could be not true? What is "fair" income in scarcity?
  - henrikschroder 10y ago
    I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care. But if you want more than basic, then you have to perform labour of some sort. Want to take the trip to Mars? Gotta work for it. Yes, there will be a difference between those who labour and those who don't, but I still think it would be a huge win if noone in society would ever struggle to put food on their table. There's a struggle between retired pensioners and everyone else in society about how much retired citizens should get, but there's still an understanding on both sides that past labour has some value, but that that value is less than present labour, so there's a balance. I hope the same would be true in a post-labour society. And, of course, the difference between the labourers and the not-labourers would be an incentive to reach post-scarcity where that difference is wiped out.
    - id 10y ago
      > I can imagine a future where the basic standard of living for everyone is like what we give senior citizens today. Everyone is clothed, fed, has a roof over their heads, and has access to medical care. This is already a reality in many countries. It would be very easy to also make it a reality in the US. The resources are there.
      - atemerev 10y ago
        They are not. Even for the senior citizens — existing pension systems are on the verge of collapse already.

a3n 10y ago

> The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? In the United States it will be the class warfare/starving thing. You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. Many people believe that taking unemployment compensation is shameful. I think a lot of us will be fed in prisons. EDIT: In some places you have to pay to not be vertical. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-architecture-keeps-poverty-undeen-and-makes-us-more-hostile https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-ar... > Sculptor Fabian Brunsing brought a satirical eye to the issue by creating the “pay bench”, an art installation of a park bench that retracts its metal spikes for a limited time when the prospective sitter feeds it a coin. Chinese officials, completely missing the joke, thought that this was a great idea and installed similar benches in Yantai Park of the Shangdong province.

hkmurakami 10y ago
>You don't deserve anything here unless you pay for it. So true. Even things like safety, cleanliness, education quality, etc. are things we must pay for here, in stark contrast to other countries in the world.
- greedo 10y ago
  Someone is paying for it... TANSTAAFL
nico_h 10y ago
You mean made to work for insulting wages and subsistence in prison sweatshops. Prison population is a captive source of cheap labor, easily abused and exploited.
- a3n 10y ago
  And they don't go home at night.
sqldba 10y ago

eli_gottlieb 10y ago

>The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of serious class warfare/starving populations? We already have class warfare and mass hunger (the number of people who go partially hungry despite food-stamps and food banks is atrocious, let alone the number who would starve without such programs). The current answer from the lower classes has been the revival of organized labor among Fight for 15 and other movements. It's our job in the "higher" working class, having more education and leeway to operate, to throw out economic and political force behind both the social movements of the lower classes and behind "full unemployment" measures such as universal health-care and reduced working hours.

AmirS2 10y ago

> fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it. and from the article > there’s not enough work to go around I disagree. There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous amount of work that needs to be done! Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the wholesale transformation of our transport and energy systems, and probably construction too. We should be putting massive numbers of people to work on solving and fixing this, and there's no point leaving people unemployed while there's still work that needs to be done. Whether we can organise society in time to achieve this is the real question. Once we've fixed the environment and created a truly sustainable civilization, then we can talk about labor that is surplus. Other work that will be in increasing demand is healthcare and elderly care (especially given the aging populations of most countries). I don't see robots replacing humans for this any time soon, and we are far from the point where we have enough health / personal care for everyone. Plenty more examples of work that's needed but not currently being done can be found with a bit of creative thought...

pygy_ 10y ago
The constant supply solar of energy (and finite supply of mineral energy sources) also means that we won't be able to grow the economy indefinitely and need to find a way to transition to a system that thrives at equilibrium.
- beat 10y ago
  I'll leave that problem to my great-great-grandchildren. For now, I'm more concerned with pulling off the fossil-to-solar transition without breaking down in the process.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  The rate of CO2 emission per GDP is already decreasing thanks to technological advances. There's no fundamental reason why the same couldn't happen to the ratio of energy use per GDP. So finite supply of resources is not a problem per se, and certainly won't be within our lifetimes, which is what we need to deal with.

edblarney 10y ago

"At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. " This is not true. Total workforce participation grew radically through the last 100 years - esp. because the introduction of women into different jobs. Demographics aside, we have really quite high participation rates - even after 200 years of automation. Also - because of demographic changes, we're already at a stage of declining labour force participation (since 2000), and we already retire at '60-ish' and live another 30 years not doing a whole lot, but amassing massive healthcare bills. So - people more than ever need to be 'gainfully and productively employed' while they can, in order to offset the fact they'll be hanging out for quite long time not creating direct value.