18 ms·

Tells you how far society would have to go to ever accept able bodied people not working for a living.

• Razengan 10y ago
  The root problem seems to be that we have made money (or rather, the ability to make some) an ends instead of a means. I don't know how all of the 8 billion people on this planet can be expected to meaningfully contribute to something (that can't be done better and more cheaply for everyone by automation) and "earn" their money, without seriously crippling technological advancement (e.g. the advent of self-driving vehicles, or robot lawyers/doctors.)
  • yummyfajitas 10y ago
    In many parts of the world we find work for most people. Robots haven't taken most of the jobs yet. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_our_jobs.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/robots_didnt_take_ou...
    • dkersten 10y ago
      But even many of these jobs could be (and eventually will be) automated. I find the very concept of having to "find work for people" to be flawed. Why should people be expected to work bullshit (often soul destroyingly meaningless) unnecessary busy-work jobs?
      • yummyfajitas 10y ago
        I dont expect people to do anything they don't want to do. In contrast, it is the people complaining about work (e.g. BI proponents) who expect me to work in support of those who refuse to do so. Also, cook, maid, trainer and paan wale - examples given in my blog post - are not bullshit jobs in any sense. They all directly contribute to the happiness of other human beings with no levels of indirection (unlike "good" jobs such as mine).
        • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
          That's the fallacy though. You aren't expected to do anything to work in support of BI. The whole point is, with increasing automation that all of us don't have to work much anymore to make basic necessities. Its an old way of thinking, that if anybody else has anything then I don't have it. The new world we're building is called 'post-scarcity' for a reason.
          • yummyfajitas 10y ago
            People want BI/welfare state/etc now, and we are in a world with a huge labor scarcity. Let's drop it now and take up the issue after we reach post scarcity, when it's so cheap to provide that no one cares about it.
            • JoeAltmaier 10y ago
              I don't know where that idea is coming from. There are a hundred million Americans under-employed and soon to be replaced with automation. This is an urgent issue. Already clothes and basic food is so cheap as to be almost free here (the store cost is a fad/fashion tax; clothing is made in factories at pennies a garment).
              • emiliobumachar 10y ago
                Ah, but people still want to be in fashion, don't they? If you take people's wants into account, as opposed to their needs according to abstract principles, we're not yet in a post-scarcity society.
                • leonhandreke 10y ago
                  Maybe many people would not develop the wish to buy fashionable clothes, a bigger car or a faster smartphone if there weren't adverts and people all around us suggesting that that's the right thing to do. I hope that humans aren't intrinsically consumerist, but I honestly don't know. Does anybody know if research has been don one this topic?
      • intrasight 10y ago
        I don't find it flawed at all. The Public Works Administration (PWA) during the depression put many able-bodied men (and women?) to work, and built many public facilities - including parks - that we all benefit from today. I don' think the men and women who participated in PWA considered it "soul destroyingly meaningless". But perhaps there was a different work ethic then.
      • someguydave 10y ago
        >work bullshit What's with the "bullshit jobs" thesis I see around HN these days? How is working as a cook for a software engineer less bullshit than writing software? At the end of the day the cook can point to something he has done, right? What exactly qualifies a job as "bullshit?"
        • dkersten 10y ago
          There are plenty of unnecessary jobs, especially in large companies (anecdotal, I have friends working in a local bank and from what I hear, they could easily replace half their workforce with one or two actually competent people -- and before anyone questions this, these are people who created a database table with 7000! columns) and government. A "bullshit" job is one created only for the purpose of creating a job. That is, its unnecessary or redundant and only exists because we've decided that people need jobs and we don't have enough "necessary" or "socially contributing" jobs. There are also lots of factory, agriculture, logistics, manual labour jobs that I believe will soon (next 10 to 20 years) be replaced by automation, be it robotics, self-driving vehicles or software. It also seems to me that the jobs that are in my opinion most likely to be automated are the ones that currently employ the largest amount of people.
        • lukasm 10y ago
          a job with negative value. You hire a worker to dig a hole and the second one to put the dirt back.
  • strken 10y ago
    Is money really an end for anyone? People seem to have more interesting terminal goals: to win, to live in a well-regarded area, to have financial security in tough times, to get paid "what they're worth", to own nice things, to travel, to get to the front of the pack, to retire early, etc. Those aren't necessarily very good goals, but they're more complicated and much harder to do away with than just lust for money.
    • Cyph0n 10y ago
      The majority of what you listed sounds to me like it would be motivated by a lust for money.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
    • Razengan 10y ago
      > to "win" ... to get to the "front of the pack" etc. and "making money" are all pretty much man-made measures of social success and self-worth, which would be meaningless in a post-scarcity society. I mean, in some cultures, "winning" included having a large number of wives and slaves. In today's world, someone with such achievements would be out of place and seen as archaic. What does it mean to "get to the front of the pack" when everybody can have [figuratively] everything and nobody needs to work? Instead, success would (hopefully) be defined by what you can create and discover, or how many people you can entertain.
      • 77pt77 10y ago
        > "making money" are all pretty much man-made measures of social success and self-worth, which would be meaningless in a post-scarcity society. It's actually at the very end just a proxy for mating value, like this article clearly explores.
      • the_gipsy 10y ago
        > Instead, success would (probably) be defined by what you can create and discover, or how many people you can entertain. That has actually already happened. Current marketing focuses strongly on enjoying non-expensive but creative lifestyle, instead of showing off wealth.
  • 77pt77 10y ago
    This means that on a societal level we will probably implement some kind of artificial scarcity or even make belief work. The later is in a way already happening just to keep unemployed people occupied: Have a look at Potemkin economy: http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/frances-potemkin-economy-fake-companies-fake-jobs-fake-propserity/ http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/frances-potemkin-econo... > Candelia is one of a number of so-called “Potemkin” companies operating in France. > Everything about these entities is imaginary from the customers, to the supply chain, to the banks, to the “wages” employees receive and while the idea used to be that the creation of a “parallel economic universe” would help to train the jobless and prepare them for real employment sometime in the future, these “occupations” are now serving simply as way for the out-of-work to suspend reality for eight hours a day Society fears a large unoccupied class. Whether that fear is warranted or not is a different thing.
    • IndianAstronaut 10y ago
      A better option would be to employ more people in the sciences. There is still a lot to be discovered and labs I have worked in have a range of work to be done from the low skilled cleaning glassware to high skilled design of experiments.
      • 77pt77 10y ago
        Most people are unable to contribute to human scientific development in any meaningful capacity. The exception might be repetitive tasks that are already being automated, like drug testing. I have no idea how all these trends are going to play out, at least during the transient regime we are currently experiencing.
    • extra88 10y ago
      While I've never seen a graying Chia Pet before, I would've preferred a link to the NYT article [0] on which that blog post was based. The blog post wasn't even by him, it was just republished from ZeroHedge where it was credited to "Tyler Durden." It's an interesting story, I had not heard of "practice firms" as a form of training for the unemployed. They don't really say how long people stay in the training program, I think one quoted person had been there for four months, which seems like a long time. "The success rate of the training centers is high. About 60 to 70 percent of those who go through France’s practice firms find jobs, often administrative positions, Mr. Troton said. But in a reflection of the shifting nature of the European workplace, most are low-paying and last for short stints, sometimes just three to six months." [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in-europe-fake-jobs-can-have-real-benefits.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/business/international/in...
  • eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    That reminds me of something someone once said... Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
    • bigmanwalter 10y ago
      So the story of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia..
      • aphextron 10y ago
        >So the story of Mickey Mouse in Fantasia.. Which, like essentially all Disney works, was based on existing folklore. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer's_Apprentice https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sorcerer's_Apprentice
        • mjevans 10y ago
          Yes, that's largely what Disney does, repackage existing folklore in a way that modern society wants to consume. At least the American culture is well aware of Fantasia and the brooms with buckets scene. Whatever earlier work? Only someone with specialist knowledge could tell you which work it had been derived from.
          • codingmyway 10y ago
            Yeah, and then stamping a never ending copyright on it.
• mariodiana 10y ago
  Able bodied men.
  • badosu 10y ago
    Relevant George Carlin - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc (5:10)
• mcguire 10y ago
  I assure you, anyone able bodied and not working who can afford not to live in their parents' basement is very acceptable.
  • 77pt77 10y ago
    I would respectfully disagree. Particularly for males. Single mothers are a different thing altogether and if they can take care of their children without working and alone then they are praised.
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• synicalx 10y ago
  If they're not a burden on the rest of society, then there's nothing wrong with that. I take issue with able-bodied people not working, and collecting welfare while contributing nothing - which is a problem worth billions of dollars in my country.