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> There's nothing stimulating or fulfilling about these jobs. It's first world human misery. Tell that to the workers who actually depend on those jobs to live

> There's nothing stimulating or fulfilling about these jobs. It's first world human misery. Tell that to the workers who actually depend on those jobs to live. It's easy to get rid of "unnecessary" jobs when they're not your job.

artursapek 10y ago
This is the stigma I'm talking about. My argument is that humanity in general needs to ascend and let machines take care of the dirty work. It's not a law of the universe that there must be people who depend on shitty jobs to live. But I'm one of the crazies who believes that in an ideal world, there would be no 9-5 norm and it would be possible for people to spend most of their time with their family and taking care of their own physical and mental health, rather than sacrificing their waking hours to keep the unemployment rate down. These people are already acting as fleshy machines.
- rolodato 10y ago
  I'd like to live in the same world you describe. I work 9-5 and of course, I'd rather be doing whatever I please instead of going to work. But longing for the destruction of these jobs without a realistic alternative (e.g. basic income is still a pipe dream) is too near-sighted.
  - artursapek 10y ago
    Sorry, I never meant to imply that I hope we do it hastily and without an alternative. It's an economic challenge for the ages, all I'm saying is it's worth taking on.
  - _nalply 10y ago
    Strictly looking at everyone's selfish interests we will head to destruction of jobs which can be automated because it's the companies that decide which people to employ. If a law is passed that people must be employed, automation will happen elsewhere and companies from abroad will be more successful. In other words, it's inevitable.
  - LordDragonfang 10y ago
    Problem is, there isn't a lot of pressure on the political forces to implement any sort of basic income, since there's still a high enough demand for meaningless human labor that it's easier to keep focussing on giving a job. Automation is potentially going to finally push us over the edge where trying to find menial jobs for every worker is no longer a tenable solution. With the current political climate, we won't ever get past it being a "pipe dream" without that being a the case, or at least it being a tangible threat in the near future.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      >Problem is, there isn't a lot of pressure on the political forces to implement any sort of basic income You mean a completely unproven system that most economists believe cannot possibly be funded without increasing spending to unheard of levels and no you don't save enough by cutting the "inefficiencies of the current system" and has a good chance to quickly die due to inflation? Can we please stop bringing up UBI as a silver bullet to all problems in every automation article?
      - logfromblammo 10y ago
        Especially since you can't solve supply-side problems by manipulating demand. Universal Basic Income cannot meet the minimum survival needs of the population as long as it does nothing more than transfer money. The vision most people have when thinking about UBI cannot be realized without some form of command economy separated from the profit-motivated consumer-goods pipeline. If all you do is give poor people cash, their landlords raise rents, their grocers raise prices, and their bus lines raise fares. Any UBI that I'd actually expect to work is nowhere near as simple as just cutting checks.
      - akiselev 10y ago
        > You mean a completely unproven system that most economists believe cannot possibly be funded without increasing spending to unheard of levels and no you don't save enough by cutting the "inefficiencies of the current system" and has a good chance to quickly die due to inflation? I could have sworn I've heard that somewhere... oh wait, it's the same tired argument used against every progressive policy since the New Deal. You'll have to forgive UBI supporters for not taking economists seriously given their track record over the last century, during which the developed world increased spending to "unheard of" levels about a dozen times. The US income tax, which required a Constitutional amendment, is only 104 years old after all. > Can we please stop bringing up UBI as a silver bullet to all problems in every automation article? I don't see anyone seriously claiming that UBI is a silver bullet, just that it's the only bullet we have left against our future robotic overlords.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    > I'd rather be doing whatever I please instead of going to work Not the same thing, the argument here is for more meaningful jobs, not just fewer bad jobs. If there was less expectation of getting a bad job, there would be more support for getting good jobs.
- Qwertious 10y ago
  The problem is, we can't ascend until we fix the underlying "if you're out of a job then you starve" problem - put UBI infrastructure in place, and then we can let the machines do the dirty work.
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    That's a pro not a con. If everyone was guaranteed food/shelter etc there'd be an epidemic of people who did nothing with their lives - there already are a lot of people who do nothing while working a shitty job. Basic needs are motivation for doing things, but problematic too - they can also be demotivating. The problem is that mobility & opportunity is costlier than food & shelter & small luxuries. As such, if you give people enough resources to do something with their life, they can just use it for basic needs & sls and do nothing else; why risk a comfy, if depressing, lifestyle on opportunity? It's a difficult problem, how to ensure people always have opportunities available, while 'punishing' lack of ambition. Maybe the nuance here is the government becoming more aware of the impact of psychological factors, but this hasn't turned out well in the past...
    - and0 10y ago
      Why do you care if other people are happy being unambitious? Most people aren't horribly ambitious. How are 7 billion people all supposed to change the world?
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Ambitious doesn't mean trying to be president. It means doing more than eat, sleep, play xbox. Most people do more than that.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  To me the problem here is the transition from Western capitalism to the [socialist] nirvana you describe. It requires the rich and powerful to give up their lofty positions .
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    Not clearly socialist to me, But why do the rich and powerful need to give up wealth?
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Because otherwise the dirty peasants will invent rationales for dragging them out into the streets and murdering them. It isn't always easy to predict when it will happen, but horrifying, deplorable violence seems to be the only way for the lower classes to effectively reduce wealth inequality. Some people are getting nervous enough to buy land in New Zealand or condo space in hardened apocalypse-survival bunkers. They know whose heads will roll if the guillotines ever get reassembled. They don't actually want to voluntarily give up their wealth, because they know how their peers treat those that don't have it, and because being constantly surrounded by luxuries is addictively awesome. So we're frequently stuck in the situation where the poor think they're poor because the rich are too rich, and the rich don't care about what the poor think, because they're too busy kite-surfing in warm turquoise waters, buying recreational estates in Kauai, pitching giant museums to major cities, and generally living the good life. The rich don't actually need to give up their wealth, but they might want to consider paying closer attention to the zeitgeist, and backing off on meddling too obviously in the lives of others at the appropriate times. Just like you might closely monitor the weather on your giant yacht, and make for port whenever a storm is brewing, you monitor the political climate and shelter your wealth when necessary.
      - Chris2048 10y ago
        Sounds like you should keeps your wealth and buy uzi-armed guards. Giving it away to peasants will allow them to buy uzis.

artursapek 10y ago

This is the stigma I'm talking about. My argument is that humanity in general needs to ascend and let machines take care of the dirty work. It's not a law of the universe that there must be people who depend on shitty jobs to live. But I'm one of the crazies who believes that in an ideal world, there would be no 9-5 norm and it would be possible for people to spend most of their time with their family and taking care of their own physical and mental health, rather than sacrificing their waking hours to keep the unemployment rate down. These people are already acting as fleshy machines.

rolodato 10y ago
I'd like to live in the same world you describe. I work 9-5 and of course, I'd rather be doing whatever I please instead of going to work. But longing for the destruction of these jobs without a realistic alternative (e.g. basic income is still a pipe dream) is too near-sighted.
- artursapek 10y ago
  Sorry, I never meant to imply that I hope we do it hastily and without an alternative. It's an economic challenge for the ages, all I'm saying is it's worth taking on.
- _nalply 10y ago
  Strictly looking at everyone's selfish interests we will head to destruction of jobs which can be automated because it's the companies that decide which people to employ. If a law is passed that people must be employed, automation will happen elsewhere and companies from abroad will be more successful. In other words, it's inevitable.
- LordDragonfang 10y ago
  Problem is, there isn't a lot of pressure on the political forces to implement any sort of basic income, since there's still a high enough demand for meaningless human labor that it's easier to keep focussing on giving a job. Automation is potentially going to finally push us over the edge where trying to find menial jobs for every worker is no longer a tenable solution. With the current political climate, we won't ever get past it being a "pipe dream" without that being a the case, or at least it being a tangible threat in the near future.
  - mixedCase 10y ago
    >Problem is, there isn't a lot of pressure on the political forces to implement any sort of basic income You mean a completely unproven system that most economists believe cannot possibly be funded without increasing spending to unheard of levels and no you don't save enough by cutting the "inefficiencies of the current system" and has a good chance to quickly die due to inflation? Can we please stop bringing up UBI as a silver bullet to all problems in every automation article?
    - logfromblammo 10y ago
      Especially since you can't solve supply-side problems by manipulating demand. Universal Basic Income cannot meet the minimum survival needs of the population as long as it does nothing more than transfer money. The vision most people have when thinking about UBI cannot be realized without some form of command economy separated from the profit-motivated consumer-goods pipeline. If all you do is give poor people cash, their landlords raise rents, their grocers raise prices, and their bus lines raise fares. Any UBI that I'd actually expect to work is nowhere near as simple as just cutting checks.
    - akiselev 10y ago
      > You mean a completely unproven system that most economists believe cannot possibly be funded without increasing spending to unheard of levels and no you don't save enough by cutting the "inefficiencies of the current system" and has a good chance to quickly die due to inflation? I could have sworn I've heard that somewhere... oh wait, it's the same tired argument used against every progressive policy since the New Deal. You'll have to forgive UBI supporters for not taking economists seriously given their track record over the last century, during which the developed world increased spending to "unheard of" levels about a dozen times. The US income tax, which required a Constitutional amendment, is only 104 years old after all. > Can we please stop bringing up UBI as a silver bullet to all problems in every automation article? I don't see anyone seriously claiming that UBI is a silver bullet, just that it's the only bullet we have left against our future robotic overlords.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > I'd rather be doing whatever I please instead of going to work Not the same thing, the argument here is for more meaningful jobs, not just fewer bad jobs. If there was less expectation of getting a bad job, there would be more support for getting good jobs.
Qwertious 10y ago
The problem is, we can't ascend until we fix the underlying "if you're out of a job then you starve" problem - put UBI infrastructure in place, and then we can let the machines do the dirty work.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  That's a pro not a con. If everyone was guaranteed food/shelter etc there'd be an epidemic of people who did nothing with their lives - there already are a lot of people who do nothing while working a shitty job. Basic needs are motivation for doing things, but problematic too - they can also be demotivating. The problem is that mobility & opportunity is costlier than food & shelter & small luxuries. As such, if you give people enough resources to do something with their life, they can just use it for basic needs & sls and do nothing else; why risk a comfy, if depressing, lifestyle on opportunity? It's a difficult problem, how to ensure people always have opportunities available, while 'punishing' lack of ambition. Maybe the nuance here is the government becoming more aware of the impact of psychological factors, but this hasn't turned out well in the past...
  - and0 10y ago
    Why do you care if other people are happy being unambitious? Most people aren't horribly ambitious. How are 7 billion people all supposed to change the world?
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Ambitious doesn't mean trying to be president. It means doing more than eat, sleep, play xbox. Most people do more than that.
pbhjpbhj 10y ago
To me the problem here is the transition from Western capitalism to the [socialist] nirvana you describe. It requires the rich and powerful to give up their lofty positions .
- Chris2048 10y ago
  Not clearly socialist to me, But why do the rich and powerful need to give up wealth?
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    Because otherwise the dirty peasants will invent rationales for dragging them out into the streets and murdering them. It isn't always easy to predict when it will happen, but horrifying, deplorable violence seems to be the only way for the lower classes to effectively reduce wealth inequality. Some people are getting nervous enough to buy land in New Zealand or condo space in hardened apocalypse-survival bunkers. They know whose heads will roll if the guillotines ever get reassembled. They don't actually want to voluntarily give up their wealth, because they know how their peers treat those that don't have it, and because being constantly surrounded by luxuries is addictively awesome. So we're frequently stuck in the situation where the poor think they're poor because the rich are too rich, and the rich don't care about what the poor think, because they're too busy kite-surfing in warm turquoise waters, buying recreational estates in Kauai, pitching giant museums to major cities, and generally living the good life. The rich don't actually need to give up their wealth, but they might want to consider paying closer attention to the zeitgeist, and backing off on meddling too obviously in the lives of others at the appropriate times. Just like you might closely monitor the weather on your giant yacht, and make for port whenever a storm is brewing, you monitor the political climate and shelter your wealth when necessary.
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      Sounds like you should keeps your wealth and buy uzi-armed guards. Giving it away to peasants will allow them to buy uzis.