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> The economic fallout is correctible, but fixing the loss of faith in the foundation of our economy, that diligent work will be rewarded with comfort and stabi

> The economic fallout is correctible, but fixing the loss of faith in the foundation of our economy, that diligent work will be rewarded with comfort and stability, will be harder. I think this is an archaic, pre-21st century mindset. Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work. In the modern world, we should work because we love or enjoy it, because we want to contribute to society, and because it brings meaning to our lives and the lives of other people. We should not work, on the other hand, to be "rewarded" in a zero-sum game competing with others, to the detriment of the rest of the planet. We really need to change the way we think about this. The most productive workers aren’t people working for a reward, they are those who love their work and are happy with the comfort and stability they already have. It’s 2022 going on 2023. The idea that we should work based on scarcity rather than abundance is completely out of date and no longer supported by the evidence. This is the kind of have and have not mindset that needs to disappear. Nobody should have to work to obtain comfort and stability.

lossolo 4y ago
For this you first need robotic + AI revolution, without this it's impossible. You need to replace significant part of the workforce with robots. Every human needs different resources/products to live, these resources have complicated supply chains in which you have a lot of people that do not enjoy their work but needs resources to keep their family afloat, that's why this products are available on the market. How many ppl like doing working in coal mines? How many like working in factories for 12 hours doing the same thing over and over again? I think what you wrote is a goal for our society but we need minimum of many decades of technological advances to even start really thinking about implementing this. We are not there yet.
PixyMisa 4y ago
> Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work. Advanced societies can and should guarantee food and shelter to all people regardless of work. They can't guarantee comfort and stability at all. > The most productive workers aren’t people working for a reward The most productive workers are the ones working under crisis conditions. Not happiest. Most productive. > Nobody should have to work to obtain comfort and stability. Should not? Maybe. They do anyway, because that's just reality.
- nradov 4y ago
  I'm happy to subsidize food and shelter for people who can't work, or who are in school, or who can't find any job despite legitimately looking. But as for adults who are physically capable of working but choose not to, forget it. They can starve to death as far as I'm concerned.
  - josephcsible 4y ago
    Coincidentally, part of the Second Reading at today's Catholic Mass basically makes that exact point too: "In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10)
  - PixyMisa 4y ago
    I can certainly understand that sentiment, but I personally wouldn't go that far. Choose not to work? Here's your bread, here's your cardboard box. Next!
lazide 4y ago
There are a whole lot of 'should's' in there, without a whole lot of reason WHY all the people involved would want to do that, when they could do other things instead? If everyone could work together effectively, and no one would stab each other in the back, scam each other, lie to look better, or just screw up, etc. then hey, maybe. But then we would already be in a better place? If you figure that people will occasionally do ALL of those things if it benefits them (and sometimes when it doesn't), then what you're describing is the most incredibly rich target I can possibly imagine. Cheers!
- nradov 4y ago
  We don't want everyone to work together effectively. Excessive cooperation at large scale leads to stagnation. In order to drive innovation we need competition (and even a little backstabbing).
ip26 4y ago
Nobody digs a ditch or works in a meat packing plant for the meaning it brings to their lives. I’m not some consummate capitalist, but there is a tremendous amount of necessary yet unrewarding work that still has to be done by human hands, and I’ve never seen a believable pitch for how that happens in these “post-work” pitches.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  Nobody digs a ditch because they enjoy it, but plenty of people operate heavy equipment because they enjoy it. Nobody trims meat in a packing plant because they enjoy it, but plenty of people design and operate robotic equipment because they enjoy it. We could end all that if we wanted to, it just wouldn't be as beneficial to the capital class. We have the tools to do the hard and dangerous work without destroying human lives, those of us who benefit the most from the status quo just lack the inclination.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Those tools mostly do not exist. Maybe someday, but not today. It's obvious you haven't spent much time doing heavy manual labor or construction work. There is a huge market opportunity to automate hard and dangerous work. If you build good tools, you'll make a fortune and do some good.
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
      In fact it just so happens that I have literally done both the jobs in your example in my youth, before I decided to stop doing jobs like that and go back to school. And they both have automated equivalents that are used today.
  - PixyMisa 4y ago
    So why don't you do it?
    - idiotsecant 4y ago
ericmcer 4y ago
This view is crazy to me, at a time where the government just massively mismanaged almost every aspect of a pandemic, decimating the economy in the process, you want them to control every aspect of your life, to the point where they are responsible for providing food and shelter for you while you do art. Surely they can’t mess that up in any way.
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  It isn't crazy, it's idiotic. There's a delusional trap people fall into and can't see or think themselves out of it. Most of these people, that I have met, aren't even productive at 'art' or their jobs, whatever they may be. It's always "if only"... then they would do all the things they claim
- gopher_space 4y ago
  Starve the Beast starts to break down when you get into the details.
  - atdrummond 4y ago
    The comment you’re replying to didn’t say anything about government spending or budget - they were speaking to the role of government in our lives, which can be very much orthogonal to how much said government costs to run.
bluepizza 4y ago
> Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work. Modern societies are not yet at the stage of infinite resources. A change of mindset to this direction is very much part of "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times" cycle. It's very, very clear that we are at the tail end of good times, and this reversal will hurt a lot of people who assumed that work is not necessary.
- idiotsecant 4y ago
  >It's very, very clear that we are at the tail end of good times This is literally what people have been saying in every generation since the beginning of time. They've made whole religions out of it.
  - bluepizza 4y ago
    That's because it has happened several times. Societies collapse regularly.
- ahtihn 4y ago
  > "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times" cycle. This cycle doesn't exist. The idea that it exists serves political ideologies like fascism.
mancerayder 4y ago
A utopian ideal that was discussed for centuries. The Marxian version of the ideal also was predicated on technology, and also business cycles. It said, as technology brings increased productivity, and the replacement of labor with it, it would lead to these recessionary cycles caused by excess production. It's only a matter of time now before we realized these modes of production need to be replaced by something centralized, where the laws (the logic) of the free market lead to the destruction of the free market. And then the 1960's Marxists: we would repurpose these machines to fulfill our needs that require labor, and we would now have the free time to frolic, fornicate and make art. A New Man would be created, one not an outgrowth of the competitive free market environment. Sure. We've had some time to let this play out and it's quite obviously heading in the opposite direction. We might have drones and magic devices where we can talk to each other face to face in real time, but we're all over-stressed, over-worked, over-monitored and as competitive as ever. I don't see us laying in fields in the Sun and making art. Although I might've seen something like that in a sponsored ad on Instagram.
kortilla 4y ago
>Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work This is an archaic mindset as old as the Industrial Revolution itself. The problem is that we’re still nowhere near the level of automation and productivity required for it to provide a quality of life we consider “good”.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
We're a few centuries from The Culture post-scarcity utopia (at least).
- PixyMisa 4y ago
  Read Look to Windward, where Banks shows that there is no such thing as "post-scarcity". (Also it's a great book.)
closeparen 4y ago
>We should not work, on the other hand, to be "rewarded" in a zero-sum game competing with others, to the detriment of the rest of the planet. Not only is productive enterprise positive sum, its positive-sum nature is responsible for all the comfort and stability we have. >The most productive workers aren’t people working for a reward, they are those who love their work and are happy with the comfort and stability they already have. I have taken to thinking of this line of argument as "the group project economy." We're all getting the same grade, and we know the nerd is going to do the work; he can't help himself. So just leave him to it and we'll be fine. I have to admit they're not wrong! It works! At least in the short term. But I find it pretty astounding that serious people think we should make this the basis of our whole economy.
listenallyall 4y ago
When you find someone who loves cleaning hotel rooms, or working a drive-thru window, or rotating tires, please let us all know. Be sure to ask if they are happy with "the comfort and stability they already have."

lossolo 4y ago

For this you first need robotic + AI revolution, without this it's impossible. You need to replace significant part of the workforce with robots. Every human needs different resources/products to live, these resources have complicated supply chains in which you have a lot of people that do not enjoy their work but needs resources to keep their family afloat, that's why this products are available on the market. How many ppl like doing working in coal mines? How many like working in factories for 12 hours doing the same thing over and over again? I think what you wrote is a goal for our society but we need minimum of many decades of technological advances to even start really thinking about implementing this. We are not there yet.

PixyMisa 4y ago

> Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work. Advanced societies can and should guarantee food and shelter to all people regardless of work. They can't guarantee comfort and stability at all. > The most productive workers aren’t people working for a reward The most productive workers are the ones working under crisis conditions. Not happiest. Most productive. > Nobody should have to work to obtain comfort and stability. Should not? Maybe. They do anyway, because that's just reality.

nradov 4y ago
I'm happy to subsidize food and shelter for people who can't work, or who are in school, or who can't find any job despite legitimately looking. But as for adults who are physically capable of working but choose not to, forget it. They can starve to death as far as I'm concerned.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  Coincidentally, part of the Second Reading at today's Catholic Mass basically makes that exact point too: "In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat." (2 Thessalonians 3:10)
- PixyMisa 4y ago
  I can certainly understand that sentiment, but I personally wouldn't go that far. Choose not to work? Here's your bread, here's your cardboard box. Next!

lazide 4y ago

There are a whole lot of 'should's' in there, without a whole lot of reason WHY all the people involved would want to do that, when they could do other things instead? If everyone could work together effectively, and no one would stab each other in the back, scam each other, lie to look better, or just screw up, etc. then hey, maybe. But then we would already be in a better place? If you figure that people will occasionally do ALL of those things if it benefits them (and sometimes when it doesn't), then what you're describing is the most incredibly rich target I can possibly imagine. Cheers!

nradov 4y ago
We don't want everyone to work together effectively. Excessive cooperation at large scale leads to stagnation. In order to drive innovation we need competition (and even a little backstabbing).

ip26 4y ago

Nobody digs a ditch or works in a meat packing plant for the meaning it brings to their lives. I’m not some consummate capitalist, but there is a tremendous amount of necessary yet unrewarding work that still has to be done by human hands, and I’ve never seen a believable pitch for how that happens in these “post-work” pitches.

idiotsecant 4y ago
Nobody digs a ditch because they enjoy it, but plenty of people operate heavy equipment because they enjoy it. Nobody trims meat in a packing plant because they enjoy it, but plenty of people design and operate robotic equipment because they enjoy it. We could end all that if we wanted to, it just wouldn't be as beneficial to the capital class. We have the tools to do the hard and dangerous work without destroying human lives, those of us who benefit the most from the status quo just lack the inclination.
- nradov 4y ago
  Those tools mostly do not exist. Maybe someday, but not today. It's obvious you haven't spent much time doing heavy manual labor or construction work. There is a huge market opportunity to automate hard and dangerous work. If you build good tools, you'll make a fortune and do some good.
  - idiotsecant 4y ago
    In fact it just so happens that I have literally done both the jobs in your example in my youth, before I decided to stop doing jobs like that and go back to school. And they both have automated equivalents that are used today.
- PixyMisa 4y ago
  So why don't you do it?
  - idiotsecant 4y ago

ericmcer 4y ago

This view is crazy to me, at a time where the government just massively mismanaged almost every aspect of a pandemic, decimating the economy in the process, you want them to control every aspect of your life, to the point where they are responsible for providing food and shelter for you while you do art. Surely they can’t mess that up in any way.

upsidesinclude 4y ago
It isn't crazy, it's idiotic. There's a delusional trap people fall into and can't see or think themselves out of it. Most of these people, that I have met, aren't even productive at 'art' or their jobs, whatever they may be. It's always "if only"... then they would do all the things they claim
gopher_space 4y ago
Starve the Beast starts to break down when you get into the details.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  The comment you’re replying to didn’t say anything about government spending or budget - they were speaking to the role of government in our lives, which can be very much orthogonal to how much said government costs to run.

bluepizza 4y ago

> Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work. Modern societies are not yet at the stage of infinite resources. A change of mindset to this direction is very much part of "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times" cycle. It's very, very clear that we are at the tail end of good times, and this reversal will hurt a lot of people who assumed that work is not necessary.

idiotsecant 4y ago
>It's very, very clear that we are at the tail end of good times This is literally what people have been saying in every generation since the beginning of time. They've made whole religions out of it.
- bluepizza 4y ago
  That's because it has happened several times. Societies collapse regularly.
ahtihn 4y ago
> "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times" cycle. This cycle doesn't exist. The idea that it exists serves political ideologies like fascism.

mancerayder 4y ago

A utopian ideal that was discussed for centuries. The Marxian version of the ideal also was predicated on technology, and also business cycles. It said, as technology brings increased productivity, and the replacement of labor with it, it would lead to these recessionary cycles caused by excess production. It's only a matter of time now before we realized these modes of production need to be replaced by something centralized, where the laws (the logic) of the free market lead to the destruction of the free market. And then the 1960's Marxists: we would repurpose these machines to fulfill our needs that require labor, and we would now have the free time to frolic, fornicate and make art. A New Man would be created, one not an outgrowth of the competitive free market environment. Sure. We've had some time to let this play out and it's quite obviously heading in the opposite direction. We might have drones and magic devices where we can talk to each other face to face in real time, but we're all over-stressed, over-worked, over-monitored and as competitive as ever. I don't see us laying in fields in the Sun and making art. Although I might've seen something like that in a sponsored ad on Instagram.

kortilla 4y ago

>Advanced, industrial, technological societies should be able to guarantee comfort and stability for all people regardless of work This is an archaic mindset as old as the Industrial Revolution itself. The problem is that we’re still nowhere near the level of automation and productivity required for it to provide a quality of life we consider “good”.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago

We're a few centuries from The Culture post-scarcity utopia (at least).

PixyMisa 4y ago
Read Look to Windward, where Banks shows that there is no such thing as "post-scarcity". (Also it's a great book.)

closeparen 4y ago

>We should not work, on the other hand, to be "rewarded" in a zero-sum game competing with others, to the detriment of the rest of the planet. Not only is productive enterprise positive sum, its positive-sum nature is responsible for all the comfort and stability we have. >The most productive workers aren’t people working for a reward, they are those who love their work and are happy with the comfort and stability they already have. I have taken to thinking of this line of argument as "the group project economy." We're all getting the same grade, and we know the nerd is going to do the work; he can't help himself. So just leave him to it and we'll be fine. I have to admit they're not wrong! It works! At least in the short term. But I find it pretty astounding that serious people think we should make this the basis of our whole economy.

listenallyall 4y ago

When you find someone who loves cleaning hotel rooms, or working a drive-thru window, or rotating tires, please let us all know. Be sure to ask if they are happy with "the comfort and stability they already have."