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What do we do when automation reaches most jobs? Create artificial jobs to keep people busy? Now that I think about it, that seems to be what we have been doi

What do we do when automation reaches most jobs? Create artificial jobs to keep people busy? Now that I think about it, that seems to be what we have been doing for some 30-40 years now. By artificial jobs, I mean jobs that if they disappeared, life would go on pretty much the same. This was in fact quite visible during all the lock-downs. Many many people no longer worked and all the essential and many non-essential things where still produced.

sokoloff 5y ago
Probably the same thing we did when agriculture went from 70% of the workforce to under 1.5%. People will adapt to fill new demands. If it comes to pass at some future time that machines can do all the work and everyone can live a Garden of Eden existence, goods and services will be so cheap due to their natural abundance, that UBI might be feasible but food and essentials might be almost not worth the trouble of metering. We’re really, really far from that being a reality or concern, IMO.
- miltondts 5y ago
  But why are we forcing people to work for the essentials when the essentials (water, food, shelter) require a tiny fraction of the population and resources? Is this the kind of society that we want to live in? Where trough automation and first mover advantage we allow people to be ridiculously rich while the rest of the population struggles to get by?
  - lorepieri 5y ago
    I agree with this 100%. The most effective UBI is providing water, food, shelter and all the other essentials + some cash for extra, where the cash part can be small. As the time goes on and our society gets richer, we would include more things into the essentials (holidays, a personal vehicle, etc.)
rootusrootus 5y ago
I imagine this is an uncomfortable thought for many people on HN. How many folks are essentially creating CRUD apps of dubious value all day long and lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? IMO modern society can easily support the needs (and wants, for that matter) of ourselves with just a fraction of the workers we have. So we create busywork for the rest so they feel useful and can participate in the economy. Maybe welfare should be reorganized like today's big corporations and the gov't can become the employer of last resort. It's not like we haven't basically done that in the past.
- chii 5y ago
  > lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? high compensation doesn't require that it is valuable to society - only that it's valuable to the person paying the compensation! And whether the person paying (aka, an employer) is getting value for money is irrelevant. If they are not getting value for money, they will eventually bankrupt. The invisible hand and all that. > easily support the needs ... with just a fraction of the workers we have so you would usurp the labour of those fraction of workers, so that the rest can live off it, work-free? Why would those fraction of workers agree to such exploitation? What's in it for them?
- imtringued 5y ago
  >How many folks are essentially creating CRUD apps of dubious value all day long and lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? Well, I thought about it, my employer wants a CRUD app but is it really necessary? Is there no other way to do it? I mean, if they had to pay Silicon Valley wages it would not be very easy to justify paying that much, so it boils down to why the employer wants the CRUD app, not how much you are being paid. Well, the first potential reason would be that it is 100% superfluous and the employer is just following a CRUD app trend and doesn't want to miss out. I somehow doubt that this is the case but things are never black and white. In this case the wage is arbitrarily high or low. The second potential reason is that the CRUD app is replacing an alternative, presumably the problem the CRUD app is solving has to be solved and if it is not done via a CRUD app it would be done manually by office workers. The CRUD app therefore saves my employer the cost of hiring more data entry people for example. I find this to be likely. I can crank out 3 CRUD apps per year. Assuming all three CRUD apps combined increase productivity enough to cut one data entry job (technically they were never hired in the first place) and the app is good for 3 years that means I can charge up to 3 years of salary for one year of work. The benefit to society is that people don't have to waste their life on trivial problems. The third potential reason is that the CRUD app is the only way to solve the problem, essentially the CRUD app lets us solve a problem that is otherwise impossible to solve. In this case compensation depends entirely on how much income solving the problem brings in and thus my wage is bounded by that income. In this case the wage could be arbitrary as well but it would be tied to solving a problem. I consider this a significant driver of wages in Silicon Valley but the CRUD apps I am writing are not in this category. The benefit to society is that the problem has been solved at all.

sokoloff 5y ago

Probably the same thing we did when agriculture went from 70% of the workforce to under 1.5%. People will adapt to fill new demands. If it comes to pass at some future time that machines can do all the work and everyone can live a Garden of Eden existence, goods and services will be so cheap due to their natural abundance, that UBI might be feasible but food and essentials might be almost not worth the trouble of metering. We’re really, really far from that being a reality or concern, IMO.

miltondts 5y ago
But why are we forcing people to work for the essentials when the essentials (water, food, shelter) require a tiny fraction of the population and resources? Is this the kind of society that we want to live in? Where trough automation and first mover advantage we allow people to be ridiculously rich while the rest of the population struggles to get by?
- lorepieri 5y ago
  I agree with this 100%. The most effective UBI is providing water, food, shelter and all the other essentials + some cash for extra, where the cash part can be small. As the time goes on and our society gets richer, we would include more things into the essentials (holidays, a personal vehicle, etc.)

rootusrootus 5y ago

I imagine this is an uncomfortable thought for many people on HN. How many folks are essentially creating CRUD apps of dubious value all day long and lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? IMO modern society can easily support the needs (and wants, for that matter) of ourselves with just a fraction of the workers we have. So we create busywork for the rest so they feel useful and can participate in the economy. Maybe welfare should be reorganized like today's big corporations and the gov't can become the employer of last resort. It's not like we haven't basically done that in the past.

chii 5y ago
> lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? high compensation doesn't require that it is valuable to society - only that it's valuable to the person paying the compensation! And whether the person paying (aka, an employer) is getting value for money is irrelevant. If they are not getting value for money, they will eventually bankrupt. The invisible hand and all that. > easily support the needs ... with just a fraction of the workers we have so you would usurp the labour of those fraction of workers, so that the rest can live off it, work-free? Why would those fraction of workers agree to such exploitation? What's in it for them?
imtringued 5y ago
>How many folks are essentially creating CRUD apps of dubious value all day long and lying to themselves that what they provide is of great value to society simply because it is compensated well? Well, I thought about it, my employer wants a CRUD app but is it really necessary? Is there no other way to do it? I mean, if they had to pay Silicon Valley wages it would not be very easy to justify paying that much, so it boils down to why the employer wants the CRUD app, not how much you are being paid. Well, the first potential reason would be that it is 100% superfluous and the employer is just following a CRUD app trend and doesn't want to miss out. I somehow doubt that this is the case but things are never black and white. In this case the wage is arbitrarily high or low. The second potential reason is that the CRUD app is replacing an alternative, presumably the problem the CRUD app is solving has to be solved and if it is not done via a CRUD app it would be done manually by office workers. The CRUD app therefore saves my employer the cost of hiring more data entry people for example. I find this to be likely. I can crank out 3 CRUD apps per year. Assuming all three CRUD apps combined increase productivity enough to cut one data entry job (technically they were never hired in the first place) and the app is good for 3 years that means I can charge up to 3 years of salary for one year of work. The benefit to society is that people don't have to waste their life on trivial problems. The third potential reason is that the CRUD app is the only way to solve the problem, essentially the CRUD app lets us solve a problem that is otherwise impossible to solve. In this case compensation depends entirely on how much income solving the problem brings in and thus my wage is bounded by that income. In this case the wage could be arbitrary as well but it would be tied to solving a problem. I consider this a significant driver of wages in Silicon Valley but the CRUD apps I am writing are not in this category. The benefit to society is that the problem has been solved at all.