11 ms·

I had a summer job picking raspberries on the Isle of Man. It was hard, boring, work. I left after only a few weeks, and got my first programming job (the islan

• Theizestooke 7y ago
  redistribution of wealth.
  • htmk 7y ago
    What about doing it without aggression?
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • tialaramex 7y ago
      Redistributing wealth isn't any more inherently aggressive than any other change. If people object violently to being asked to share the bounties of our industrial economy, that's no different from if they objected violently to being asked to put up with their sister marrying a woman, or to stop smoking in the restaurant.
      • geomark 7y ago
        Isn't it the people insisting on taking a share who are the ones employing violence? If the people being asked to share say no then armed men show up.
        • verall 7y ago
          I mean, no armed men come take your taxes (anymore). The threat is ultimately there if you withhold otherwise but it's the same if you smoke in a mcdondalds then refuse to leave. Or if you squat on someone else's land.
          • Notorious_BLT 7y ago
            If you're sent to prison if you continue to not pay taxes, then yes, the system is still using force.
    • lawlessone 7y ago
      Taxes aren't aggression
      • TheCraiggers 7y ago
        What happens if you don't pay? The consequences are aggression, and the fact that threat is hanging over you makes taxes a form of aggression. Coercing is a form of aggression.
        • timdiggerm 7y ago
          This is true for any enforcement of laws though?
          • delecti 7y ago
            That statement is precisely one of the tenets of anarchy. I think the philosophy as a whole has issues, but it's hard to argue with that premise.
            • TheCraiggers 7y ago
              I wasn't aware of that; I don't consider myself an anarchist really. I just think it's more like what Heinlein wrote, that violence is the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived. I'm not sure I like it but I do think it's rather true. Almost everything can be traced back to some form of this. Note the 'almost'. I'm sure some outliers exist but that's not what we're talking about.
        • nabnob 7y ago
          Letting someone starve is aggression. If you have to work for minimum wage because the alternative is homelessness, isn't that also a form of coercion?
        • fucking_tragedy 7y ago
          > What happens if you don't pay? You get charged interest. Then, you might have your wages garnished. If that isn't sufficient, your bank accounts might get frozen. If that still isn't sufficient, liens.
    • jsnider3 7y ago
      Uber shows that it's possible to redistribute wealth from venture capitalists to customers without aggression.
      • JetSpiegel 7y ago
        Kalanick, the modern Lenin.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • munificent 7y ago
      Every time we try that, the people who have concrentrated all the wealth say, "No thanks" and keep it all.
  • philbarr 7y ago
    Would one way to redistribute wealth to ensure that everybody partakes in the wealth that is created? So you're always earning a stake in what you're doing. In practice this would mean that all jobs would pay RSUs of some kind. If you rent then you are getting some of the equity of the house as well, so that when it is sold you benefit and not just the landlord. The idea is basically that everyone should benefit from capitalism, not the just the lucky few with all the capital.
    • njepa 7y ago
      It isn't an uncommon thought. Unfortunately this isn't very popular, partly because it is actual socialism (which is even less popular than social systems). In general I think it is also too late to introduce such a system. You have to get ahead of the curve before people realize what they have got, sort of like in Norway with the oil fund. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_funds
      • philbarr 7y ago
        Socialism is redistribution of wealth by the state. This is redistribution of wealth by capitalism?
      • NeedMoreTea 7y ago
        Sounds more like a cooperative than socialism to me, which has been very successful in the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative
• Quarrelsome 7y ago
  farmers struggle to get people to take on those jobs in the UK. This is a talking point about Brexit. Farmers need citizens from Eastern Europe to do the work, UK politicians claim they should employ locals, locals refuse to do the jobs, citizens claim they "should just pay more", farmers claim their margins don't allow for greater wages for the work. I believe we lost a bunch of last years crop to this issue and maybe this years. The drop in the pound since 2016 hasn't helped either. Maybe we shouldn't be growing the stuff if the economics don't permit it. This is where the robots may help.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    This job is actually very hard work, and would be called "skilled" if we allowed the use of that term for skills outside formal education. You need fitness and endurance, and skill to do it quickly. Trying to conscript random unemployed people to it doesn't work nearly as well. See the point about productivity going down under "austerity". https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/brexit-and-the-workforce/why-are-so-few-brits-prepared-to-pick-fruit/554452.article https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/brexit-and-the-workforce/why-are... : pretty sensible article on the subject, pointing out ways in which employers could improve their local hiring.
    • yeahitslikethat 7y ago
      It's not skilled work. anyone who can work can pick raspberries. The skill you are discussing is to pick them fast enough for profitability. Thats true of any job.
      • JetSpiegel 7y ago
        > It's not skilled work. anyone who can work can pick raspberries. And yet, that is literally not the case. Resisting boredom and maintain focus in grueling conditions are a skill.
• 14 7y ago
  Can you imagine going down to the river with a washboard and your laundry? No way we have robot washing machines. It would be ridiculous to wash our clothes in the river. Humans will have the same sentiment about many jobs that robots eventually take over. Why stand in front of hot grease cooking fries when a robot can do it? Simply so we can transfer some wealth from one person to another for doing something mindless? But also who will buy the fries if no one has jobs to make any money? Perhaps we will see deflation and the cost of things will be less and perhaps with less work available we can all strive for a 4 hour day. But ultimately I feel we are slowly approaching a post scarcity society. We need to change our views on capitalism if you ask me. Yes people deserve to make money but I think we can shift some services always from always trying to make a buck off someone.
  • Loughla 7y ago
    >slowly approaching a post scarcity society. Two things. Neither of these is meant to be hateful. 1. Which is more likely: That society as a whole will evolve into a benevolent post-scarcity society providing basic necessities for everyone in it, or that our new-age feudal lord-owners of everything will use automation to drive costs down far enough so that everyone can juuuuust afford to live? 2. Doesn't post-scarcity require energy inputs from a non-depleting resource?
    • benj111 7y ago
      I live in Europe so I expect the state to look after me in old age, when I'm ill, unemployed, etc. I'm not sure its such a leap to extend that further. Now I'm not sure if in the current political climate its the most likely, but certainly possible. To answer your point 2. Solar and wind should keep us going for a few millenia?
    • rhacker 7y ago
      I don't see the system changing without a war. It's not just already old people that adopt conservative or capitalism, it's people that get older. For every mega billionaire pledging to give away half their wealth, there are hundreds of thousands of millionaires that will try to prevent change and lock the system in with as much power as they can wield. I have a feeling the future is more likely going to be a Bruce Willis or Will Smith movie.
• stronglikedan 7y ago
  How do we replace the crappy low-skilled, low-paying jobs that we're automating, but that also allow people to stay alive while they sort themselves out? Take education more seriously and make it more accessible. I don't know how to do that, but I feel it needs doin'.
  • marcus_holmes 7y ago
    there's a lot of very educated people doing those crappy, low-skilled, low-paying jobs
• neilwilson 7y ago
  You implement a Job Guarantee. The ability to sell your labour to the central bank at the living wage, who then allocates it to local democracy to use as local democracy sees fit working for the public good. After all the 'interest rate targeting' function of the central bank, and the unelected wonks that run it, is supposed to guarantee full employment. If it isn't doing so, then those who screwed up should obviously pay the price of their failure. That it acts as a powerful targeted automatic stabiliser injecting liquidity temporally and spatially on demand into local economies in a manner bank lending could never hope to match is just an added bonus.
  • nickles 7y ago
    For anyone unfamiliar, a job guarantee is a proposal of Modern Monetary Theory. Although the validity of MMT has neither been established nor disproven explicitly, it relies on, among other things, the ability of a nation to print its own currency, collect taxes in its own currency, and issue debt exclusively in its own currency. It is therefore not applicable in all nations. > The ability to sell your labour to the central bank at the living wage, who then allocates it to local democracy to use as local democracy sees fit working for the public good. How would a central bank determine allocations to various municipalities? This step necessarily requires discretion on the part of the central bank. Such a policy would distort the labor market, crowding out private sector employment and potentially producing malinvestment. It would also increase the power of the central bank, which is not necessarily desirable if the unelected nature of central bankers is a concern. > the 'interest rate targeting' function of the central bank... is supposed to guarantee full employment The Federal Reserve bank has a dual mandate of stable, low inflation and low unemployment. Central banks in many other countries are mandated only to maintain stable, low inflation. > That it acts as a powerful targeted automatic stabiliser There are other automatic stabilizers that can be implemented independent of the central bank. In the United States, for example, tax incentives for employer provided health insurance have a procyclical effect, as decreased employment during recession causing reduced healthcare expenditures. > bank lending could never hope to match Global lending has been distorted since 2008 due to the Federal Reserve's interest on excess reserves policy. The combination of increased reserve requirements, increased bank reserves due to the fed's enlarged balance sheet, and the availability of a risk free return on reserves has reduced the overall quantity of loans relative to prior trends. Even small, local banks, who would otherwise like to make loans and are subject to less stringent reserve requirements, have increased the reserves on hand due to the breakdown of the federal funds market caused by IOER. It's hard to definitively state that bank lending is less effective than other policy when it's been hampered by central bank policy for a decade.
• munificent 7y ago
  This is, I think, one of the most profound questions of this century. We will have to decide, as a society, what to do about the fact that robots are cutting off the bottom couple of rungs on the ladder and yet there are still humans down there who need to climb up. I think the way you frame the question points to one answer: ensure that people are able to stay alive even if unemployed. We have enough wealth, at least in first-world countries, to give everyone a basic level of housing, food, and healthcare. We could engineer society such that money isn't required to attain the first two levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. This doesn't necessarily mean some hypothesized feared Communist/Socialist welfare state where everyone lives on the dole and no one works. Working would still be required for a good, fulfilling life. But the safety net would catch you before you get so destitute that you die.
  • rhacker 7y ago
    "We have enough wealth" The current system has wealth. If we changed to that system, all definitions would be less of what they are now, so you'd have to bake in the idea that more people are now building cheap housing in random places, and that grocery stores are given food non-stop to feed those people, and that doctors will want to live near them. It doesn't account for the droves of people that may stop working because we don't _think_ like the people that work for Chipotle that no longer want to do so. We're all fucking programmers (well a lot of us are).
• SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  How long until we can automate the crappiness out of coding for a company?
  • granshaw 7y ago
    Be careful what you wish for...
• gautamdivgi 7y ago
  >> How do we replace the crappy low-skilled, low-paying jobs that we're automating, but that also allow people to stay alive while they sort themselves out? Universal basic income?
  • notaki 7y ago
    Seems like anything else is just a roundabout way with additional layers of beaurocracy of doing universal basic income.