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Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a

Technological progress has always been inherently deflationary. Remember, the vast majority of the world's people used to work directly in food production as a matter of necessity. Technology has allowed most of us to get off the farm, and pursue other activities. Whereas a day's work once bought a day's food and not much more, a human worker (using the machines that serve him) is now able to produce a huge surplus of wealth. This means that there's time for leisure, and that our leisure can be much more enjoyable than our grandparents'. The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do. A dystopian version of the future this could lead to is recounted in 'Manna,' by Marshall Brain: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm For my part, I'm hopeful. I believe that our current plight is the same sort of growing pains we've experienced in the past. The invention of the automobile made it tough to find work shoeing horses, for instance, or manufacturing buggy whips. Just because we don't need to spend our time making stuff any more doesn't mean we won't be able to find other ways to occupy our time.

zohebv 16y ago
While technological progress can be deflationary I have to strongly disagree that work is disappearing. I don't think we are ever going to run out of work. In fact, more "primitive" societies had far lesser work to do - "studies show that hunter-gatherers need only work about twenty hours a week in order to survive and may devote the rest of their time to leisure", though there are criticisms about the measurement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society Compare this to our modern technology driven society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States Also - "The Kapauku people of Papua think it is bad luck to work two consecutive days. The !Kung Bushmen work just two-and-a-half days per week, rarely more than six hours per day.[30] The work week in Samoa is approximately 30 hours,[31] and though average annual Samoan cash income is relatively low, by some measures, the Samoan standard of living is quite good."
- billswift 16y ago
  If you want to talk about "survival", you can easily survive comfortably, much more comfortably than hunter-gatherers, today on even less work. Buying lots of junk and traveling are not needed for comfortable survival, if you want them, buy them, but don't confuse them with even comfortable survival.
  - zohebv 16y ago
    No, we are not talking about "survival". If an alien were to observe that of the 3 tribes one spent 50 hrs working, the other 30 hrs and 20 hrs respectively, he will conclude that it is the tribes working 50 hrs that have a tough time surviving. The other tribes weren't hanging on for dear life, otherwise they would have worked much harder. They have plenty to eat and hence plenty of leisure time. Also, I dispute that buying lots of junk is unnecessary for a decent life in industrialized societies. We are socially competitive animals and if someone were to just focus on "survival", he would end up being a social outcast pretty soon and his mating prospects would have shrunk considerably. Being lazy and having low-income is a pejorative description in industrialized tribes. But Western society has such huge income gaps that no matter where you are in the income spectrum, it looks like there are thousands of people above you living the good life, right up until Bill Gates. In contrast, in a hunter-gatherer society, the most accomplished guy might be the chief and the competitive pressure on each tribal is much lower. Hence, the possibility of a 20 hour work week. TLDR, I dispute that technological advances will reduce work. As long as there are huge income gaps, we will have people relentlessly working long hours every day to obtain a better position in society. It is an instinct built into our genes.
    - nostrademons 16y ago
      Grandparent's point is that you haven't held everything constant. Hunter-gatherer types don't have a home. If you are willing to go homeless, you can live for $15-20/day in most cities. That's less than 20-30 hours of work/week in most places. Hunter-gatherer bands also have a total mating pool measured in the half dozens. If you restrict yourself to fellow homeless people, you're likely to meet a similar number of women, all of whom have roughly the same social standing. The problem is not that there are no mates available, it's that there are no mates that you want available. Your point that people tend to measure themselves relative to people around them is true but orthogonal. If you hold living standards constant, you can achieve them with a lot less work today than you could at hunter-gatherer tech levels. It's only because living standards are not constant that people have a tough time earning a living.
olalonde 16y ago
> or manufacturing buggy whips This reminded me of Other People's Money speech by Danny DeVito: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c
calvinfroedge 16y ago
I think people will HAVE to work, for some very hard years, on achieving sustainability. Only then will we truly be on autopilot, and will humanity be able to focus its time on other things. Until then, all we're doing is tricking ourselves into thinking life will keep getting easier. Major conflict over resources is coming...
- danenania 16y ago
  While it's true that we have a lot of work to do, conflict is unpleasant and expensive and people on the whole have a strong interest in avoiding it. Unfortunately, war mongers tend to spend other people's money, so they don't bear the costs; we need to stop supplying them and/or make them pay. If we can manage this, I think our adaptability and ability to cooperate can win out.
calvinfroedge 16y ago
And thanks for the link, btw = )
dublinclontarf 16y ago
>The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do. I'm sorry but this is just wrong. There is no end to human want and desire. As long as there is this want there will be plenty of stuff for people to do.
- moultano 16y ago
  If the people who have wants aren't the same people who have money, it doesn't matter whether their wants are endless or not.
VladRussian 16y ago
>The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do. There is a lot to do for humans. Just look at the problems in any area of science. Not all people are qualified to work there though. This is why instead of whining about disappearing of menial labor jobs, we should be working toward [what would be at least a start] making K16 a basic level of education instead of K12. A thousand year ago reading and writing would made one a basically educated person (for the rest of his/her 30 year long life). In 19th century K8 was enough (and the average lifespan ~45), in 20th for the most of the part - K12 (and the average lifespan is ~70 at the end of the century). The body of knowledge is growing, we live longer, so it is natural to learn more and apply the more advanced knowledge and skills for longer period of the active adult productive life.
- rimantas 16y ago
  Average lifespan was very scewed because of high children mortality. If you survivied first few years chabces were pretty good that you'd live longer than average life expectancy told.
- nostrademons 16y ago
  I'd fix K-12 before we make K-16 the default. You could easily learn fit the amount of material in a K-16 education into 12 years if those 12 years weren't just a matter of putting in time without any real focus on learning the material. Let's improve quality of education before increasing quantity.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    >You could easily learn fit the amount of material in a K-16 education into 12 years >Let's improve quality of education before increasing quantity. nice sound bites. Complete rubbish. The whole amount of K-12 material is comparable in size with amount of material consumed in just one, max 2, years of college. But it doesn't work in the opposite way. I graduated from a top math and physics high school where students were selected from half of the country. The amount of additional material what we were able to consume during the high school pales in comparison with amount of material we consumed later at the University. The brains is still not there at this age. Hormones already are :)
nowarninglabel 16y ago
I'd side note that estimates are still 1 billion people work in agriculture (ref: grain.org/world bank) and many more are in the transportation, processing, and selling of said agricultural products. The vast majority of these people still only earn enough or little more than enough for a day's food (not a huge surplus of wealth). Furthermore, lack of capital (lack of machines as you will) is still prevalent in many industrialized countries, even in the U.S. Disclaimer: I work for Kiva now, so my perspective is skewed to focus on this group of the world.

zohebv 16y ago

While technological progress can be deflationary I have to strongly disagree that work is disappearing. I don't think we are ever going to run out of work. In fact, more "primitive" societies had far lesser work to do - "studies show that hunter-gatherers need only work about twenty hours a week in order to survive and may devote the rest of their time to leisure", though there are criticisms about the measurement. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society Compare this to our modern technology driven society. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#United_States Also - "The Kapauku people of Papua think it is bad luck to work two consecutive days. The !Kung Bushmen work just two-and-a-half days per week, rarely more than six hours per day.[30] The work week in Samoa is approximately 30 hours,[31] and though average annual Samoan cash income is relatively low, by some measures, the Samoan standard of living is quite good."

billswift 16y ago
If you want to talk about "survival", you can easily survive comfortably, much more comfortably than hunter-gatherers, today on even less work. Buying lots of junk and traveling are not needed for comfortable survival, if you want them, buy them, but don't confuse them with even comfortable survival.
- zohebv 16y ago
  No, we are not talking about "survival". If an alien were to observe that of the 3 tribes one spent 50 hrs working, the other 30 hrs and 20 hrs respectively, he will conclude that it is the tribes working 50 hrs that have a tough time surviving. The other tribes weren't hanging on for dear life, otherwise they would have worked much harder. They have plenty to eat and hence plenty of leisure time. Also, I dispute that buying lots of junk is unnecessary for a decent life in industrialized societies. We are socially competitive animals and if someone were to just focus on "survival", he would end up being a social outcast pretty soon and his mating prospects would have shrunk considerably. Being lazy and having low-income is a pejorative description in industrialized tribes. But Western society has such huge income gaps that no matter where you are in the income spectrum, it looks like there are thousands of people above you living the good life, right up until Bill Gates. In contrast, in a hunter-gatherer society, the most accomplished guy might be the chief and the competitive pressure on each tribal is much lower. Hence, the possibility of a 20 hour work week. TLDR, I dispute that technological advances will reduce work. As long as there are huge income gaps, we will have people relentlessly working long hours every day to obtain a better position in society. It is an instinct built into our genes.
  - nostrademons 16y ago
    Grandparent's point is that you haven't held everything constant. Hunter-gatherer types don't have a home. If you are willing to go homeless, you can live for $15-20/day in most cities. That's less than 20-30 hours of work/week in most places. Hunter-gatherer bands also have a total mating pool measured in the half dozens. If you restrict yourself to fellow homeless people, you're likely to meet a similar number of women, all of whom have roughly the same social standing. The problem is not that there are no mates available, it's that there are no mates that you want available. Your point that people tend to measure themselves relative to people around them is true but orthogonal. If you hold living standards constant, you can achieve them with a lot less work today than you could at hunter-gatherer tech levels. It's only because living standards are not constant that people have a tough time earning a living.

olalonde 16y ago

> or manufacturing buggy whips This reminded me of Other People's Money speech by Danny DeVito: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfL7STmWZ1c

calvinfroedge 16y ago

I think people will HAVE to work, for some very hard years, on achieving sustainability. Only then will we truly be on autopilot, and will humanity be able to focus its time on other things. Until then, all we're doing is tricking ourselves into thinking life will keep getting easier. Major conflict over resources is coming...

danenania 16y ago
While it's true that we have a lot of work to do, conflict is unpleasant and expensive and people on the whole have a strong interest in avoiding it. Unfortunately, war mongers tend to spend other people's money, so they don't bear the costs; we need to stop supplying them and/or make them pay. If we can manage this, I think our adaptability and ability to cooperate can win out.

calvinfroedge 16y ago

And thanks for the link, btw = )

dublinclontarf 16y ago

>The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do. I'm sorry but this is just wrong. There is no end to human want and desire. As long as there is this want there will be plenty of stuff for people to do.

moultano 16y ago
If the people who have wants aren't the same people who have money, it doesn't matter whether their wants are endless or not.

VladRussian 16y ago

>The tragedy of this seems to be that we're running out of stuff for people to do. There is a lot to do for humans. Just look at the problems in any area of science. Not all people are qualified to work there though. This is why instead of whining about disappearing of menial labor jobs, we should be working toward [what would be at least a start] making K16 a basic level of education instead of K12. A thousand year ago reading and writing would made one a basically educated person (for the rest of his/her 30 year long life). In 19th century K8 was enough (and the average lifespan ~45), in 20th for the most of the part - K12 (and the average lifespan is ~70 at the end of the century). The body of knowledge is growing, we live longer, so it is natural to learn more and apply the more advanced knowledge and skills for longer period of the active adult productive life.

rimantas 16y ago
Average lifespan was very scewed because of high children mortality. If you survivied first few years chabces were pretty good that you'd live longer than average life expectancy told.
nostrademons 16y ago
I'd fix K-12 before we make K-16 the default. You could easily learn fit the amount of material in a K-16 education into 12 years if those 12 years weren't just a matter of putting in time without any real focus on learning the material. Let's improve quality of education before increasing quantity.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  >You could easily learn fit the amount of material in a K-16 education into 12 years >Let's improve quality of education before increasing quantity. nice sound bites. Complete rubbish. The whole amount of K-12 material is comparable in size with amount of material consumed in just one, max 2, years of college. But it doesn't work in the opposite way. I graduated from a top math and physics high school where students were selected from half of the country. The amount of additional material what we were able to consume during the high school pales in comparison with amount of material we consumed later at the University. The brains is still not there at this age. Hormones already are :)

nowarninglabel 16y ago

I'd side note that estimates are still 1 billion people work in agriculture (ref: grain.org/world bank) and many more are in the transportation, processing, and selling of said agricultural products. The vast majority of these people still only earn enough or little more than enough for a day's food (not a huge surplus of wealth). Furthermore, lack of capital (lack of machines as you will) is still prevalent in many industrialized countries, even in the U.S. Disclaimer: I work for Kiva now, so my perspective is skewed to focus on this group of the world.