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The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy. No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines. But full

The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy. No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines. But full employment may be necessary anyway, because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful via employment.

Practicality 10y ago
Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs. Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.
- zcoyle 10y ago
  Just curious - how did the automated trash collection work?
  - Practicality 10y ago
    There was still a driver, but all the bins and cans were ID tagged and had weight sensors installed. This was earlier technology (a lot of cities have similar things now), but it was basically a locking hydraulic lift that coupled with an interface on the cans. That picked the cans up over the truck and inverted them. So it just dumped things into the truck. So there were no workers, just a driver. Because of the jobs issue, they went back to having two men that pick up the cans by hand. But because everyone had the new cans with all the extra hardware now the work was harder. It was the worst of both worlds until they issued everyone new regular trash cans a few years later.
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  Imagine if your town took the savings from the automated trash collection and just gave them directly to the people who had to do those jobs manually. It costs the town exactly the same amount of money, and frees up those people to do whatever they want with their time. Instead, they made the system more inefficient on purpose, so that people had to perform an unnecessary manual task in order to get money.
dclowd9901 10y ago
The falseness is around working a shit job as a means to realizing purpose. Why can't we realize purpose through exploring life on our own terms?
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  People have a hard time getting over the concept that "purpose in life" must be given by an authority figure rather than being inherent in the way we're built as social and moral organisms.
  - dclowd9901 10y ago
    That's a social construct that requires social reconditioning. Indeed, if everyone around me was pursuing their own interests free of concern, I might cast aspersions away from them and toward my own lot, asking what the hell I was doing wasting my life away in a crummy job when I just want to work on cars all day. It's going to take probably 100 years to get there, but frankly we have no choice. It's either get with the program or buy into some form of population control.
  - nhaehnle 10y ago
    Your response is kind of frustrating because I feel we're on the same side of this, but you're just not getting it. It's like you have a knee-jerk reaction about what a job is, and there's a blindspot where you don't envision what it could be. When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures. But they are getting this sense from their work. Heck, even in standard office jobs, I doubt that too many people get their sense of being needed and useful from their bosses or other authority figures (if they get it at all - you don't have to tell me about bullshit jobs). They get this sense from coworkers, clients, or other aspects of the work itself. That's certainly my personal experience. We're social beings, not obedient worker drones. And I don't know how to put that in a way that gets the point across, but I think a lot of techy types are actually quite arrogant and selfish when they dismiss full employment and think that a UBI would solve all problems. I get it, most of us would happily work on random open source projects or whatever if we had sufficient UBI, and a lot of that work would be useful to many people. But we should be aware of how rare that is and how lucky that makes us. Most people don't have that drive or that opportunity, but would still benefit from a social framework in which they are nudged towards doing useful things that they can take pride in and get rewards for (both monetary and psychological). It's like going to the gym: most people don't have the drive, but would ultimately benefit from the offer and a bit of nudging. Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?
egh5oon 10y ago
> having the sense of being needed and being useful Often, it can be the opposite. Many people would describe their daily tasks as useless or marginally useful for humanity, while finding meaning in unpaid volunteering.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  Right. So why not draw the conclusion that we should provide a framework in which people can get paid for that volunteering instead?

Practicality 10y ago

Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs. Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling job.

zcoyle 10y ago
Just curious - how did the automated trash collection work?
- Practicality 10y ago
  There was still a driver, but all the bins and cans were ID tagged and had weight sensors installed. This was earlier technology (a lot of cities have similar things now), but it was basically a locking hydraulic lift that coupled with an interface on the cans. That picked the cans up over the truck and inverted them. So it just dumped things into the truck. So there were no workers, just a driver. Because of the jobs issue, they went back to having two men that pick up the cans by hand. But because everyone had the new cans with all the extra hardware now the work was harder. It was the worst of both worlds until they issued everyone new regular trash cans a few years later.
nathan_f77 10y ago
Imagine if your town took the savings from the automated trash collection and just gave them directly to the people who had to do those jobs manually. It costs the town exactly the same amount of money, and frees up those people to do whatever they want with their time. Instead, they made the system more inefficient on purpose, so that people had to perform an unnecessary manual task in order to get money.

dclowd9901 10y ago

The falseness is around working a shit job as a means to realizing purpose. Why can't we realize purpose through exploring life on our own terms?

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
People have a hard time getting over the concept that "purpose in life" must be given by an authority figure rather than being inherent in the way we're built as social and moral organisms.
- dclowd9901 10y ago
  That's a social construct that requires social reconditioning. Indeed, if everyone around me was pursuing their own interests free of concern, I might cast aspersions away from them and toward my own lot, asking what the hell I was doing wasting my life away in a crummy job when I just want to work on cars all day. It's going to take probably 100 years to get there, but frankly we have no choice. It's either get with the program or buy into some form of population control.
- nhaehnle 10y ago
  Your response is kind of frustrating because I feel we're on the same side of this, but you're just not getting it. It's like you have a knee-jerk reaction about what a job is, and there's a blindspot where you don't envision what it could be. When a plumber gets satisfaction from a good day's work of fixing piping in people's houses, do they get their purpose in life / sense of being needed and useful (note: not the same thing!) from an authority figure? Hell no, unless you think clients are authority figures. But they are getting this sense from their work. Heck, even in standard office jobs, I doubt that too many people get their sense of being needed and useful from their bosses or other authority figures (if they get it at all - you don't have to tell me about bullshit jobs). They get this sense from coworkers, clients, or other aspects of the work itself. That's certainly my personal experience. We're social beings, not obedient worker drones. And I don't know how to put that in a way that gets the point across, but I think a lot of techy types are actually quite arrogant and selfish when they dismiss full employment and think that a UBI would solve all problems. I get it, most of us would happily work on random open source projects or whatever if we had sufficient UBI, and a lot of that work would be useful to many people. But we should be aware of how rare that is and how lucky that makes us. Most people don't have that drive or that opportunity, but would still benefit from a social framework in which they are nudged towards doing useful things that they can take pride in and get rewards for (both monetary and psychological). It's like going to the gym: most people don't have the drive, but would ultimately benefit from the offer and a bit of nudging. Full employment can offer such a social framework (if done right, of course), while a UBI can't (no matter how it is implemented). Who are you to deny this to other people just because they're different from you?

egh5oon 10y ago

> having the sense of being needed and being useful Often, it can be the opposite. Many people would describe their daily tasks as useless or marginally useful for humanity, while finding meaning in unpaid volunteering.

nhaehnle 10y ago
Right. So why not draw the conclusion that we should provide a framework in which people can get paid for that volunteering instead?