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Going off on a tangent here: There's a sci-fi novel I want to write some time... You know how some countries have mandatory military service? Well, what if a
by VikingCoder 5y ago
Going off on a tangent here:
There's a sci-fi novel I want to write some time...
You know how some countries have mandatory military service?
Well, what if all of the "Essential" jobs, all had mandatory service?
I want to do my own cherry-picking, selecting the "Essential" jobs, and especially those that are toilsome but that you can do with not a lot of training, and then do the math to see how many hours each able-bodied person in a country would need to do each job, in order to satisfy all of the needs of everyone in that society (able-bodied, or not.)
And then build up a story around some people who are finishing their Essential Jobs, and are deciding whether to Retire into living off the dole, or whether to transition into some Skilled labor to live in more luxury.
And then there's the fact that automation is making it so that less and less actual manual effort is required for the Essential jobs. So, does the society start categorizing new jobs as Essential, or do people end up with more discretionary time?
I feel like this would have made a pretty okay Star Trek culture to encounter...
- Hemospectrum 5y agoYou could approach this idea from the opposite direction: Put all essential jobs under military jurisdiction. There's real-world precedent illustrating some of the ways this would (and wouldn't) work.
- someguydave 5y ago>Put all essential jobs under military jurisdiction. Under that scenario the relative fairness of paying for jobs to be done would be replaced with the relative unfairness of being friends with the right people in the "plumber corps" to fix your toliet.
- xboxnolifes 5y agoIf there is some sort of national mandatory essential service, that will happen regardless of what organization it falls under if it is ran poorly.
- someguydave 5y agoyes, it will happen in all cases where government bureaucrats decide who gets what resource
- cool_dude85 5y ago>There's a sci-fi novel I want to write some time... >You know how some countries have mandatory military service? >Well, what if all of the "Essential" jobs, all had mandatory service? Corvee labor, aka a sci-fi novel about a concept in existence since Ancient Egypt.
- vl 5y agoHave you read Heinlein's Starship Troopers? While not exactly your setup, it explores what happens in a society like this.
- OnionBlender 5y agoThe Expanse briefly mentions this in one of the books. Earth has universal "basic" income but if people want to go to university they have to do 2 years of working less desirable jobs to show they can handle working. I heard that Starship Troopers book had something like what you described but I haven't read it.
- ghaff 5y agoIn Starship Troopers, as I recall, you had to serve for some period in order to be a citizen/vote. I don't remember if this was necessarily military service (although that is certainly what the book highlighted).
- chillacy 5y agoNit: Basic in the expanse is not actually basic income, it's more like basic services: https://twitter.com/jamessacorey/status/902940152007462912 https://twitter.com/jamessacorey/status/902940152007462912 (Tweet from the author)
- kiliantics 5y agoCheck out "The Dispossessed" by Ursula Le Guin
- aaron695 5y ago
- JoakimOA 5y agoAdding another sci-fi book recommendation that explores these themes; in The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi there is a moving city on Mars where citizens that run out of time, their currency allowing them to live in the city, have their consciousness transferred to machine servants that maintain the city. Being a servant for a number of years earns them enough time to return to their bodies and the city.