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It's a social challenge that we still haven't worked out how to meet. Prior to the industrial revolution there were small rural communities, hamlets, villages,
by pacaro 10y ago
It's a social challenge that we still haven't worked out how to meet. Prior to the industrial revolution there were small rural communities, hamlets, villages, and towns, in places which grew up to be coal towns. But when the single economic driver disappears we don't know how to scale these communities back down.
I've always moved to where the work is, and I see the much same in my family tree all the way back to the industrial revolution (including mining engineers and mining machinery makers on my fathers side, who don't seem to have spent more than 10-20 years in any one coal field). But I know that many people are much more rooted in place. Forcing people to move isn't palatable in the U.K., but waiting for communities to disintegrate and people to move out on there own seems equally cruel
- untog 10y agoIt also speaks to the need for purpose. One of the things not discussed enough in conversation about universal basic income and the like is that jobs give people a sense of purpose as well as money. It's "coal not dole" because no one wants to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing, no matter how great that might sound on the surface.
- chowells 10y agoI would love to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing. I recently took 18 months of work to just drift around the country visiting friends and family. No side projects. No goals. No way to succeed or fail. It was wonderful. I'd be very happy to be paid to do it. I don't see how anyone can be unhappy like that.
- simonh 10y agoThere are plenty of very wealthy people with enough money to never have to work again at a relatively young age, who continue working well into their 70s. It just depends if you love what you do. My grandfather was a master butcher, he got a part time job at a butcher's shop after he retired purely as something to do because he loved it.
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoIs it "because he loved it" or is it because his identity is so tied up in being a butcher, doing useful work, that he can't cope with no longer identifying in that way? For my retired father it's very much the latter, I feel, he works for free doing similar work to what he did before retirement.
- shitgoose 10y agowell, it is better to identify with what you have been doing all your life, than identify with couch, beer and TV.
- chillydawg 10y agoI'd go mad. I fall into the camp of wealthy enough to do nothing, but too driven to do nothing. People are just different and any UBI policy needs to address these differences. TBH, I suspect driven people will generally just sort themselves out anyway. I certainly would.
- brianwawok 10y agoMe too. I think we both would just work. You still make money. We can buy teslas or something fancy.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI wouldn't say it's not discussed - in fact, it's probably the single most common argument people bring up against UBI. I personally disagree with it and I don't feel it. Sense of purpose from contributing something useful to society? Yes. Sense of purpose for doing random pointless shit I don't like for a master I don't like, so the master gives me currency I need to not starve? Not really, more like modern slavery. I realize that some people find purpose in what I just described as modern slavery; I know such people personally. I respect that, even if it smells like Stockholm syndrome to me. Still, the future is either UBI or endless invention of utterly nonsense jobs (dig a hole, fill it up, dig a hole, fill it up...) just to keep people employed. The coal story illustrates the point perfectly. I'm grateful for centuries of miners and engineers (and their supporting families), who together ushered us to an era of ever more advanced technology. But today, their job is done. In XXI century, using coal for energy is wrong for many reasons, and those jobs need to disappear - keeping coal would be irresponsible for a society. That's why we need the "dole". Because some jobs no longer make sense, and if people (and communities) need to retrain, "find new purpose", then it's dole or die.
- bartread 10y agoHmmm... I hate to say it, but spoken like someone who's never been out of work against their will for any length of time. I realise you're trying to make an argument in defence of the welfare state but you sound like you're suggesting that people should just accept their own obsolescence and be grateful for government handouts. Most people would have a tough time swallowing that and I can't say I'd blame them.
- cbhl 10y agoI guess the thing I don't understand is, if we gave e.g. coal miners UBI, wouldn't that enable them to continue mining coal for fun? We could just get rid of the using it for energy part.
- beaconstudios 10y agothe self-esteem value in work isn't necessarily just in the doing. It's knowing you're providing a service to society (and more importantly, your family and local community), that you're working as part of a team who support each other, the social aspects of shared experiences and probably many other reasons I can't think of right now. I can't imagine mining coal to be independently fun in the way that programming or design can be.
- jhgjklj 10y agoHumans are not minions looking for master
- pbhjpbhj 10y agoNot all humans, many seem to want to have someone to tell them what to do.
- pg314 10y ago> no one wants to drift aimlessly while being given money for doing nothing, no matter how great that might sound on the surface. That is not true. Plenty of people are happy to retire. And quite a few people who have the means choose not to work.
- tim333 10y agoThe upset with the british miners would have been much less damaging if as the financial fortunes of the mines declined they had allowed wages to fall and numbers working to reduce, so people could drift into other work. Instead the unions fought tooth and nail to keep pay and employment high until it suddenly collapsed dropping a huge number of people onto the labour market at once.
- zwischenzug 10y agoThe graph here is interesting in that regard: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15445418 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-15445418 The manpower dropped steadily until 1970, when the numbers failed to drop further. Presumably Thatcher 'unblocked' the unionization that prevented the continuation of this steady decline between 74-80