11 ms·

"Work is badly distributed. People have too much, or too little, or both in the same month. And away from our unpredictable, all-consuming workplaces, vital hum

by fergie 9y ago

"Work is badly distributed. People have too much, or too little, or both in the same month. And away from our unpredictable, all-consuming workplaces, vital human activities are increasingly neglected. Workers lack the time or energy to raise children attentively, or to look after elderly relations. “The crisis of work is also a crisis of home,” ... This neglect will only get worse as the population grows and ages." This is the real message of the article. Its not about giving everybody a robot butler, its about reorganising society to allow us to do all of the things that need to be done. We don't need to have lots of people working long poorly paid shifts at Wallmart, but we do need people to look after the young and the elderly. At the moment we have a tendency to look at working class people who dont work as morally lacking, when often they have quite a lot of useful (non-paid) things to be getting on with. We need to change the way we think about what makes somebody a useful member of society

aalleavitch 9y ago
Our success at combating strict gender roles that kept women out of the workplace hasn't been matched with a social embrace of stay-at-home dads or other family members who don't work in order to focus on helping care for their loved ones. Unfortunately, instead we've ended up with a society where everyone is just expected to work all the time. There needs to be less stigma against people without jobs. We need to stop assuming that everything of value is always done for a profit.
- Radim 9y ago
  Do you mean to say "for a short-term, monetary profit"? Because there are other types of profit, more subjective ones, like feeling good, emotional well-being, long-term sustainability etc, which are more elusive by definition but nevertheless super important. Because if you're really talking about a lack "profit" in the very general (aka inviting a straight loss), then the question simply becomes: Who will pay for this loss, and why?
  - aalleavitch 9y ago
    I think you answered this question yourself: some forms of value are subjective. Some vitally important benefits to the people around you don't show up on a balance sheet. People will gladly pay to be a patron of the arts, or just to make someone they like happy, and it doesn't have to involve a quantifiable return on investment.
    - Radim 9y ago
      I get your point, you're using the word "profit" in its narrowest accounting sense.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  I guess the market adjusts, in areas with constrained housing supply the prices rise to the level affordable by working couples, in other areas peoples material expectations rise. In the end we have moved from women not being able to join the workforce to women not being able to not join the workforce. It doesn't seem an obvious improvement to me, although I should mention I'm not a woman.
swalsh 9y ago
These conversations I feel always seem shallow to me. Automation is definitely helping to free us from a lot of work.. but the world we live in today feels like a preview of what an automated world feels like. In reality, our material lifestyle is still supported by a very large number of people working away in countries most Americans can't find on a map for extremely low wages. If we're going to talk about "reorganizing society", it should factor in EVERY person in the world. Not just the lucky 10% in first world countries.
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  I agree, but I think we absolutely need to be thinking right now about how society is going to be functioning three or four decades from now. The rate of technological advancement hasn't slowed down, and depending on how closely you're following developments in a lot of these countries we traditionally think of as poor or underdeveloped you might find yourself surprised at how quickly they're starting to catch up.
- clarry 9y ago
  > Automation is definitely helping to free us from a lot of work.. but the world we live in today feels like a preview of what an automated world feels like. In reality, our material lifestyle is still supported by a very large number of people working away in countries most Americans can't find on a map for extremely low wages. I don't know about you but the homes, roads, cars, plumbing, healthcare, energy, food, and most other things vital to our lifestyle do not come from China or Taiwan. And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist. I feel like people in the tech sphere can't look or see beyond smartphones, laptops, and other tech gadgets.
  - carlmr 9y ago
    >And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist. I can think of Miele. That's the only one that's propely German still. Bosch/Siemens are both very much Asian on the inside. They do some assembly in Germany as far as I know. Can't think of any other European brands in this space.
JulianMorrison 9y ago
Exactly. Right now, we aren't doing work. We are doing makework, because society won't give us the tickets to eat and have shelter without it. My work is all the things I ought to be doing, but have to fit around the daily makework. Less of it gets done than I'd like.
madengr 9y ago
Like in Asimovs books, we’ll probably have decay without work (with robots automating it all). Humans will just do busy work.
hycaria 9y ago
I disagree. I work a full week at one job + 2 nights per week. Feel that I do a lot of unpaid stuff (ie taking care of the household, cooking, ...) but still endlessly hear about how other people "don't have the time". The useful non paid things that people actually do are greatly overestimated imo, because more often than not it will end up in the "don't have time for it" even though they could manage to find time for it if they really wanted to. Just a matter of priorities. I'm far from perfect, and I don't do sports (which I also consider an useful non paid thing) for an example. Yet I wish I did, and I totally could if I had some discipline there. But it's not having more time, or less work, that would change it. It's hard and everyone is lazy and tired, and there are so many easy ways out of the present moment, but the majority really doesn't push themselves much.
- psyc 9y ago
  I agree with you. Growing up, I never heard the end of it. How housework was a full-time job. My mother chanted "men's work is from sun to sun, women's work is never done" like a nursery rhyme, or a prayer. When I moved out, I discovered that working 40 hrs was pretty hard, but housework was a joke. Right now I probably spend around 10-12 hrs per week, max, on housework. And the overwhelming majority of that is just preparing food, which I could spend less time on if I didn't cook. And housework is easy, repetitive, and requires no thought. I mean, I can do laundry unconsciously while writing code in my head. So since I moved out 22 years ago, my hypothesis has been that people who think housework is a full-time job are actually probably suffering from severe depression and/or anxiety.
  - tc7 9y ago
    Curious, do you have kids/family in the house? There may be a difference in the mental/physical load of "managing a household" vs "doing housework".
    - hycaria 9y ago
      They can participate, way more than what we usually see (my own upbringing was too lax on this in my opinion). I wonder why parents don't make their kids part of the household.
jdietrich 9y ago
There's only one problem with that - it's not true. The author cites no sources for his claim and every source I've found contradicts him. The average number of hours actually worked has slightly declined in the US and significantly declined in Europe over the past few decades. In the broader historical arc, there has been a huge increase in leisure; the average working week throughout the 19th century was well in excess of 60 hours. Although most working parents report feeling rushed, the majority say that they spend the right amount of time with their children and that parenting responsibilities do not interfere with their career advancement. College-educated whites are, by some margin, the group most likely to report difficulties in balancing work and parental responsibilities. We might feel like we're increasingly stretched by the demands of work and home, but that perception simply isn't supported by any data I've been able to find. I'm not saying that we've perfected work-life balance, but the overarching trend is substantially positive. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/timeseries/ybuy/lms https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ320/orazem/addendums/declining%20hours%20worked.pdf http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ320/orazem/addendum... http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/11/2015-11-04_working-parents_FINAL.pdf http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/201...
- bjourne 9y ago
  Though we work more than farmers did 150 years ago: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... This was especially true in the Northern European countries where snow and lack of daylight would make it virtually impossible to work during the winter.
  - lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    I feel like attempting to compare modern quality of life to 19th century farmers is a fool's errand. Maybe we're working through the winter, but, as a whole it's very unlikely to kill us so I'm inclined to take that trade.
snarf21 9y ago
I agree with you that as automation takes all the jobs, child and elder care will be the work everyone shifts to. I think we should be doing more of this now. Better elder care would help keep people on their right meds and could greatly reduce healthcare costs. Better child "care" could be lots of things but will lead to healthier, smarter, more inquisitive children that will become self supporting and out of bad paths saving society more there as well. I think one thing that people miss slightly is that some of this is our own fault. Everyone is heavy on the chase (me incl.) of things. We want full meals in a box at our door without the annoyance of doing any work for it. Some of our need for extra work and both adults working comes from our demand that we have a huge house and two new cars and two huge vacations and everyone has an iPhone X and on and on. You have to either work more or spend less and we've generally chosen work more. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that but we need to accept the consequences.
banderman 9y ago
A standard 35 hour work week could help with this.

by fergie 9y ago

aalleavitch 9y ago

Our success at combating strict gender roles that kept women out of the workplace hasn't been matched with a social embrace of stay-at-home dads or other family members who don't work in order to focus on helping care for their loved ones. Unfortunately, instead we've ended up with a society where everyone is just expected to work all the time. There needs to be less stigma against people without jobs. We need to stop assuming that everything of value is always done for a profit.

Radim 9y ago
Do you mean to say "for a short-term, monetary profit"? Because there are other types of profit, more subjective ones, like feeling good, emotional well-being, long-term sustainability etc, which are more elusive by definition but nevertheless super important. Because if you're really talking about a lack "profit" in the very general (aka inviting a straight loss), then the question simply becomes: Who will pay for this loss, and why?
- aalleavitch 9y ago
  I think you answered this question yourself: some forms of value are subjective. Some vitally important benefits to the people around you don't show up on a balance sheet. People will gladly pay to be a patron of the arts, or just to make someone they like happy, and it doesn't have to involve a quantifiable return on investment.
  - Radim 9y ago
    I get your point, you're using the word "profit" in its narrowest accounting sense.
tonyedgecombe 9y ago
I guess the market adjusts, in areas with constrained housing supply the prices rise to the level affordable by working couples, in other areas peoples material expectations rise. In the end we have moved from women not being able to join the workforce to women not being able to not join the workforce. It doesn't seem an obvious improvement to me, although I should mention I'm not a woman.

swalsh 9y ago

These conversations I feel always seem shallow to me. Automation is definitely helping to free us from a lot of work.. but the world we live in today feels like a preview of what an automated world feels like. In reality, our material lifestyle is still supported by a very large number of people working away in countries most Americans can't find on a map for extremely low wages. If we're going to talk about "reorganizing society", it should factor in EVERY person in the world. Not just the lucky 10% in first world countries.

aalleavitch 9y ago
I agree, but I think we absolutely need to be thinking right now about how society is going to be functioning three or four decades from now. The rate of technological advancement hasn't slowed down, and depending on how closely you're following developments in a lot of these countries we traditionally think of as poor or underdeveloped you might find yourself surprised at how quickly they're starting to catch up.
clarry 9y ago
> Automation is definitely helping to free us from a lot of work.. but the world we live in today feels like a preview of what an automated world feels like. In reality, our material lifestyle is still supported by a very large number of people working away in countries most Americans can't find on a map for extremely low wages. I don't know about you but the homes, roads, cars, plumbing, healthcare, energy, food, and most other things vital to our lifestyle do not come from China or Taiwan. And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist. I feel like people in the tech sphere can't look or see beyond smartphones, laptops, and other tech gadgets.
- carlmr 9y ago
  >And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist. I can think of Miele. That's the only one that's propely German still. Bosch/Siemens are both very much Asian on the inside. They do some assembly in Germany as far as I know. Can't think of any other European brands in this space.

JulianMorrison 9y ago

Exactly. Right now, we aren't doing work. We are doing makework, because society won't give us the tickets to eat and have shelter without it. My work is all the things I ought to be doing, but have to fit around the daily makework. Less of it gets done than I'd like.

madengr 9y ago

Like in Asimovs books, we’ll probably have decay without work (with robots automating it all). Humans will just do busy work.

hycaria 9y ago

I disagree. I work a full week at one job + 2 nights per week. Feel that I do a lot of unpaid stuff (ie taking care of the household, cooking, ...) but still endlessly hear about how other people "don't have the time". The useful non paid things that people actually do are greatly overestimated imo, because more often than not it will end up in the "don't have time for it" even though they could manage to find time for it if they really wanted to. Just a matter of priorities. I'm far from perfect, and I don't do sports (which I also consider an useful non paid thing) for an example. Yet I wish I did, and I totally could if I had some discipline there. But it's not having more time, or less work, that would change it. It's hard and everyone is lazy and tired, and there are so many easy ways out of the present moment, but the majority really doesn't push themselves much.

psyc 9y ago
I agree with you. Growing up, I never heard the end of it. How housework was a full-time job. My mother chanted "men's work is from sun to sun, women's work is never done" like a nursery rhyme, or a prayer. When I moved out, I discovered that working 40 hrs was pretty hard, but housework was a joke. Right now I probably spend around 10-12 hrs per week, max, on housework. And the overwhelming majority of that is just preparing food, which I could spend less time on if I didn't cook. And housework is easy, repetitive, and requires no thought. I mean, I can do laundry unconsciously while writing code in my head. So since I moved out 22 years ago, my hypothesis has been that people who think housework is a full-time job are actually probably suffering from severe depression and/or anxiety.
- tc7 9y ago
  Curious, do you have kids/family in the house? There may be a difference in the mental/physical load of "managing a household" vs "doing housework".
  - hycaria 9y ago
    They can participate, way more than what we usually see (my own upbringing was too lax on this in my opinion). I wonder why parents don't make their kids part of the household.

jdietrich 9y ago

There's only one problem with that - it's not true. The author cites no sources for his claim and every source I've found contradicts him. The average number of hours actually worked has slightly declined in the US and significantly declined in Europe over the past few decades. In the broader historical arc, there has been a huge increase in leisure; the average working week throughout the 19th century was well in excess of 60 hours. Although most working parents report feeling rushed, the majority say that they spend the right amount of time with their children and that parenting responsibilities do not interfere with their career advancement. College-educated whites are, by some margin, the group most likely to report difficulties in balancing work and parental responsibilities. We might feel like we're increasingly stretched by the demands of work and home, but that perception simply isn't supported by any data I've been able to find. I'm not saying that we've perfected work-life balance, but the overarching trend is substantially positive. https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/timeseries/ybuy/lms https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor... http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ320/orazem/addendums/declining%20hours%20worked.pdf http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/classes/econ320/orazem/addendum... http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ http://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/ http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/11/2015-11-04_working-parents_FINAL.pdf http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/201...

bjourne 9y ago
Though we work more than farmers did 150 years ago: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_workweek.html http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w... This was especially true in the Northern European countries where snow and lack of daylight would make it virtually impossible to work during the winter.
- lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
  I feel like attempting to compare modern quality of life to 19th century farmers is a fool's errand. Maybe we're working through the winter, but, as a whole it's very unlikely to kill us so I'm inclined to take that trade.

snarf21 9y ago

I agree with you that as automation takes all the jobs, child and elder care will be the work everyone shifts to. I think we should be doing more of this now. Better elder care would help keep people on their right meds and could greatly reduce healthcare costs. Better child "care" could be lots of things but will lead to healthier, smarter, more inquisitive children that will become self supporting and out of bad paths saving society more there as well. I think one thing that people miss slightly is that some of this is our own fault. Everyone is heavy on the chase (me incl.) of things. We want full meals in a box at our door without the annoyance of doing any work for it. Some of our need for extra work and both adults working comes from our demand that we have a huge house and two new cars and two huge vacations and everyone has an iPhone X and on and on. You have to either work more or spend less and we've generally chosen work more. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that but we need to accept the consequences.

banderman 9y ago

A standard 35 hour work week could help with this.