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Anyone who has spent any time in a poor community knows that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. We will only hit real make-work jobs when we c

Anyone who has spent any time in a poor community knows that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. We will only hit real make-work jobs when we can no longer answer the question "how would I solve this problem, if only I had access to a lot more workers?"

imagist 10y ago
That's not the question businesses are asking. They're asking, how can I solve this problem as cheaply/efficiently as possible? And the answer is increasingly not human labor. There is work to be done in poor communities in the sense that there is need, but there isn't much work to be done in the sense that not many people are offering jobs (because not many can pay). Anyone who has spent time in a rich community knows that there's plenty of surplus that could be shared. It's not a problem of lack of resources, it's a problem of distribution. The problem with redistribution, we're told, is that the current distribution is based on merit: those who provide the most value are given the most value. Joe is a billionaire because he's provided billions of dollars of value to the world, while Bob is starving because he doesn't provide any value. If we take from Joe to feed Bob, then Joe won't have any incentive to provide value, so he'll stop, and society will collapse. However, I don't think that's true. Joe doesn't provide more value than Bob necessarily--he just is better at manipulating the abstractions we've created around value. We don't live in a meritocracy. But the lie of meritocracy isn't a complete lie. People do often provide more value if they receive more value. Honest actors do exist and provide value, and while most don't get to be Rich Joe, most don't become Homeless Bob either. However, with technology, these honesty actors are no longer needed, and the lie of meritocracy becomes even more bald faced. In a future where robots do all the work, are we to believe that someone provides value simply because records show that they own the robots? Transemployment is just an attempt to maintain the current distribution of resources: ostensibly the transemployed would work for someone, and that someone would determine how much they are paid. And of course that person would be paid more. I think that a better solution is to drop the pretense that the distribution of resources is meritocratic, and as technology makes it even less meritocratic, we should look at ensuring that the benefits of technology are distributed more evenly. Creating fake jobs to maintain a tiered distribution of resources is only going to make things worse.

imagist 10y ago

That's not the question businesses are asking. They're asking, how can I solve this problem as cheaply/efficiently as possible? And the answer is increasingly not human labor. There is work to be done in poor communities in the sense that there is need, but there isn't much work to be done in the sense that not many people are offering jobs (because not many can pay). Anyone who has spent time in a rich community knows that there's plenty of surplus that could be shared. It's not a problem of lack of resources, it's a problem of distribution. The problem with redistribution, we're told, is that the current distribution is based on merit: those who provide the most value are given the most value. Joe is a billionaire because he's provided billions of dollars of value to the world, while Bob is starving because he doesn't provide any value. If we take from Joe to feed Bob, then Joe won't have any incentive to provide value, so he'll stop, and society will collapse. However, I don't think that's true. Joe doesn't provide more value than Bob necessarily--he just is better at manipulating the abstractions we've created around value. We don't live in a meritocracy. But the lie of meritocracy isn't a complete lie. People do often provide more value if they receive more value. Honest actors do exist and provide value, and while most don't get to be Rich Joe, most don't become Homeless Bob either. However, with technology, these honesty actors are no longer needed, and the lie of meritocracy becomes even more bald faced. In a future where robots do all the work, are we to believe that someone provides value simply because records show that they own the robots? Transemployment is just an attempt to maintain the current distribution of resources: ostensibly the transemployed would work for someone, and that someone would determine how much they are paid. And of course that person would be paid more. I think that a better solution is to drop the pretense that the distribution of resources is meritocratic, and as technology makes it even less meritocratic, we should look at ensuring that the benefits of technology are distributed more evenly. Creating fake jobs to maintain a tiered distribution of resources is only going to make things worse.