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Hasn't the promise of technology always been the automation of labor to free us up to enjoy lives of leisure? Instead it seems we are hyper-concentrated on spee

Hasn't the promise of technology always been the automation of labor to free us up to enjoy lives of leisure? Instead it seems we are hyper-concentrated on speeding up the treadmill of productivity. The invention that comes right after the "next" button is a tool to analyze your nexts-per-hour trends.

xyzelement 4y ago
We have easier and safer jobs than anyone in history, and the highest quality of material life. If you wanted to live the quality of life of a regularl worker in 1900 you can probably do it driving Uber 2 hours a day. We work more hours because we want the improving lifestyle
- SamBam 4y ago
  Where can you rent on ~$50 a day, and still have money left over for food and car payments (necessary for that job), let alone things that a regular worker could afford in 1900?
  - phonescreen_man 4y ago
    Pretty much most of northern England, outside London a lot of people get by on 18k a year salaries
  - IanCal 4y ago
    You may be heavily overestimating lifestyles in 1900. Here's a very interesting book written in the early 1900s looking at families with a father in solid employment, ~~renting for~~ (edit - living on) about 1 pound a week in London. They're poor, but not the poorest - not in the workhouses. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.html#CHAPTER_IV https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.ht... Regardless of precise lines, I recommend reading this as an actual look (mixture of descriptive prose and figures & stats) at life for people of the time.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      I also recommend Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier for a report on workers in northern England in the 1930s and their living conditions (and the second part on why Socialism isn't being embraced in the UK, but that's a different topic). I'm pretty sure that's also easy to achieve today.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    A regular worker hasn't seen a car in 1900 and lived in a tenament with 4 generations crammed into a room. You can afford that on 50 a day if you wanted to live that way. That's my point, we don't want to live that way so we work more.
    - SamBam 4y ago
      You literally said "work as an Uber driver," which is why I said car payments. They're necessary for the job. If you want to keep it in 1900's-speak, I could say "afford the payments on the overalls you need at the factory," but the idea would be ridiculous because the factory would provide the overalls.
      - xyzelement 4y ago
        Oh gotcha lol ok. Change that to "drive THREE hours Uber using someone else's car and give them a third of the pay for the use of the car" if that helps you connect to the idea better
- twobitshifter 4y ago
  The world is full of bullshit jobs and bullshit tasks that are unproductive. The next button sending that email for you will balloon the growing pile of bullshit, but look like productivity to passive analysis. So yes our lifestyles have improved, but our work on bullshit is not responsible for those improvements.
  - jrwoodruff 4y ago
    Now I'm just picturing AI generating and sending emails so another AI can craft and send a response back.
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    I keep hearing this but I never had a bs job, don't know anyone who's hired for one (also it doesn't make sense.) What is your job that you do?
    - twobitshifter 4y ago
      You should read the book on this if you’re really interested but here’s a review. https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth/bullshit-jobs-dgraeber-summary https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth/bullshit-jobs... I work in consulting so a large part of my job is acting as a box ticker or task master to use Graeber’s definition.
    - JoelMcCracken 4y ago
      I recently worked for a company that I ultimately realized by the time I was leaving that the whole thing was a BS job. I was doing real, good work, but the entire org was so dysfunctional that the project was doomed to failure. And I'm not entirely sure that ultimately this wasn't known somehow from the top; idk, I really feel like the CIO who was running it had some significant problems, she did a lot of magical thinking/was delusional.
      - rnk 4y ago
        Wow, this exactly describes my work in a dysfunctional startup. We set impossible time goals and don't make them. We are making progress on our software project. The goal of this is a faster something, but our only demonstrated and tested scenarios were extremely optimized by us. I don't see us actually being useful in general cases. In such a situation, I am just trying to hang on until my options vest and then move on.
- navane 4y ago
  1900 is not the era I would choose. It's peak wealth disparity. How about the 15th century?
  - xyzelement 4y ago
    Ok lol 15th century it is... What was the typical job? What was life expectancy? How warm was a typical home in the winter? How many books did an average person see (much less, read) in the lives? What was travel like? Also wealth disparity is a stupid metric. If you and I are homeless under the bridge, it does me no good that we are equal. If I have a house and you have an even nicer house, I am fine. (though I'd rather have the nicer house)
    - jjj123 4y ago
      Wealth disparity is important, because it also means power disparity. I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true. I don’t think things are worse now than ever before, but that doesn’t excuse the concentration of power we have today.
      - xyzelement 4y ago
        // If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true. What does that mean? 500 years ago, did one have ability to speak to like-minded people globally? Could they travel as they wish? Could they pick their religion? Could they choose where to live? Could they pick a wife from another culture? Could they read about any topic they want? Did they have a shot at starting a business and having it grow into real wealth? If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason
        mftrhu 4y ago
        > If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason That's not at all what GP was saying - I quote, with emphasis added: > I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true.
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Swizec 4y ago
> speeding up the treadmill of productivity Productivity is for people with no leverage. As an HN reader, you can likely escape that trap. Maybe not right away, but as a directional goal almost definitely.
devnullbrain 4y ago
What does leisure look like to you? To me it's highly technological and expensive. Computing, transport, comfort, energy, food. The things I do for leisure now are sometimes only possible because of the rich society I live in - a product of high productivity.
- riebschlager 4y ago
  It's an important question. Leisure to me is to be freed of the obligations of productivity. I think framing it as "what do you DO for leisure" transforms leisure into consumption. I don't agree that high productivity is the price of leisure. If that were the case, when do we get to cash that check? We've achieved record levels of productivity, so when do we get record levels of leisure? I'm writing this as an American workaholic. So I'm in it as much as anybody. I'm just getting old and starting to ask a lot of questions. :)
  - bhhaskin 4y ago
    We don't get to cash that check, the next generation does. Just like how we cashed it from our parents, and our parents cashed it from their parents. We have far more leisure time than our parents did, and way more than our grandparents. Our kids will have far more leisure time than us.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      And haven't we already partially cashed it? We have so much free time on our hands, we need Netflix and countless other things to fill it. #NotAll, of course, but if the average can spend 3 hours per day watching TV & Netflix, and an additional 2.5 hours on social media, then they must have that time.
      - falcolas 4y ago
        My mother and father also both had the ability to spend 6+ hours a day watching TV or doing other hobbies in their working years. They're currently in their 80's, and my dad did blue-collar work as a telephone lineman. Having leisure time isn't new to our generation (any of them).
agumonkey 4y ago
That's a regular comment that's been written for many years already. But there's another aspect.. it might not be a simple graph, where zero work and 100% leisure is great. Maybe we need both but of better quality and balance.
- contravariant 4y ago
  There is this ideal that say society should aim to become productive enough that everyone can do what they enjoy, give what they can miss, and take what they need. Though this ideal is not as popular nowadays.
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    I really thing this idea of joy / leisure is a bit of a smoke screen though, people are not great at knowing what they need. I firmly believe that we vibe and bounce our feelings against society which gives us balance, it's just that most of the time society is in the wrong paradigm (consumerism + bs jobs)
leobg 4y ago
„Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.“ —Paul Valery (as quoted by Walter Benjamin in “The Storyteller”)
wilg 4y ago
There's no reason you couldn't use this "next button" idea to get work done quickly and then go hang out.
- protonbob 4y ago
  The reason that this won't work in the end is that they will reduce headcount once they understand the technology and then we'll be hanging out permanently. Factory workers didn't get extra time in the break room when robots were implemented to speed up the assembly line. They got replaced permanently.
  - wilg 4y ago
    That's potentially a good thing in the long run. People can do either higher-skill work and/or we'll reorganize society to account for less people working.
    - rnk 4y ago
      I think that's a little naive. We could do it now in the US but we don't. In countries like the US I expect widespread poverty after more jobs evaporate, because the wealthy won't want to just support those people, even if we can as a country. We won't need all those hourly workers to do basic things. But what will all those people who don't have a "real job" that does something a robot/ai can't perform do? The US will have chaos and maybe even actual fighting before the federal legislature approves UBI.
      - wilg 4y ago
        That is possible, but I feel like usually we take the middle-of-the-road approach later than we should. So it won't be an optimal transition but it will be OK. I'd advocate for figuring it out sooner and more generously though!

xyzelement 4y ago

We have easier and safer jobs than anyone in history, and the highest quality of material life. If you wanted to live the quality of life of a regularl worker in 1900 you can probably do it driving Uber 2 hours a day. We work more hours because we want the improving lifestyle

SamBam 4y ago
Where can you rent on ~$50 a day, and still have money left over for food and car payments (necessary for that job), let alone things that a regular worker could afford in 1900?
- phonescreen_man 4y ago
  Pretty much most of northern England, outside London a lot of people get by on 18k a year salaries
- IanCal 4y ago
  You may be heavily overestimating lifestyles in 1900. Here's a very interesting book written in the early 1900s looking at families with a father in solid employment, ~~renting for~~ (edit - living on) about 1 pound a week in London. They're poor, but not the poorest - not in the workhouses. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.html#CHAPTER_IV https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/58691/pg58691-images.ht... Regardless of precise lines, I recommend reading this as an actual look (mixture of descriptive prose and figures & stats) at life for people of the time.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    I also recommend Orwell's The Road To Wigan Pier for a report on workers in northern England in the 1930s and their living conditions (and the second part on why Socialism isn't being embraced in the UK, but that's a different topic). I'm pretty sure that's also easy to achieve today.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  A regular worker hasn't seen a car in 1900 and lived in a tenament with 4 generations crammed into a room. You can afford that on 50 a day if you wanted to live that way. That's my point, we don't want to live that way so we work more.
  - SamBam 4y ago
    You literally said "work as an Uber driver," which is why I said car payments. They're necessary for the job. If you want to keep it in 1900's-speak, I could say "afford the payments on the overalls you need at the factory," but the idea would be ridiculous because the factory would provide the overalls.
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      Oh gotcha lol ok. Change that to "drive THREE hours Uber using someone else's car and give them a third of the pay for the use of the car" if that helps you connect to the idea better
twobitshifter 4y ago
The world is full of bullshit jobs and bullshit tasks that are unproductive. The next button sending that email for you will balloon the growing pile of bullshit, but look like productivity to passive analysis. So yes our lifestyles have improved, but our work on bullshit is not responsible for those improvements.
- jrwoodruff 4y ago
  Now I'm just picturing AI generating and sending emails so another AI can craft and send a response back.
- xyzelement 4y ago
  I keep hearing this but I never had a bs job, don't know anyone who's hired for one (also it doesn't make sense.) What is your job that you do?
  - twobitshifter 4y ago
    You should read the book on this if you’re really interested but here’s a review. https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth/bullshit-jobs-dgraeber-summary https://www.mudamasters.com/en/personal-growth/bullshit-jobs... I work in consulting so a large part of my job is acting as a box ticker or task master to use Graeber’s definition.
  - JoelMcCracken 4y ago
    I recently worked for a company that I ultimately realized by the time I was leaving that the whole thing was a BS job. I was doing real, good work, but the entire org was so dysfunctional that the project was doomed to failure. And I'm not entirely sure that ultimately this wasn't known somehow from the top; idk, I really feel like the CIO who was running it had some significant problems, she did a lot of magical thinking/was delusional.
    - rnk 4y ago
      Wow, this exactly describes my work in a dysfunctional startup. We set impossible time goals and don't make them. We are making progress on our software project. The goal of this is a faster something, but our only demonstrated and tested scenarios were extremely optimized by us. I don't see us actually being useful in general cases. In such a situation, I am just trying to hang on until my options vest and then move on.
navane 4y ago
1900 is not the era I would choose. It's peak wealth disparity. How about the 15th century?
- xyzelement 4y ago
  Ok lol 15th century it is... What was the typical job? What was life expectancy? How warm was a typical home in the winter? How many books did an average person see (much less, read) in the lives? What was travel like? Also wealth disparity is a stupid metric. If you and I are homeless under the bridge, it does me no good that we are equal. If I have a house and you have an even nicer house, I am fine. (though I'd rather have the nicer house)
  - jjj123 4y ago
    Wealth disparity is important, because it also means power disparity. I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true. I don’t think things are worse now than ever before, but that doesn’t excuse the concentration of power we have today.
    - xyzelement 4y ago
      // If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true. What does that mean? 500 years ago, did one have ability to speak to like-minded people globally? Could they travel as they wish? Could they pick their religion? Could they choose where to live? Could they pick a wife from another culture? Could they read about any topic they want? Did they have a shot at starting a business and having it grow into real wealth? If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason
      - mftrhu 4y ago
        > If you think you are more powerless than a serf 500 years ago because Bezos has more money then you, then you are the one who gave away your power for no reason That's not at all what GP was saying - I quote, with emphasis added: > I hear people who are pro-capitalism say “the poorest people in the US have it better than kings did 500 years ago”, which is only true if you’re considering the stuff those people have. If you’re considering the ability to self-actualize it’s not at all true.
deleted 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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Swizec 4y ago

> speeding up the treadmill of productivity Productivity is for people with no leverage. As an HN reader, you can likely escape that trap. Maybe not right away, but as a directional goal almost definitely.

devnullbrain 4y ago

What does leisure look like to you? To me it's highly technological and expensive. Computing, transport, comfort, energy, food. The things I do for leisure now are sometimes only possible because of the rich society I live in - a product of high productivity.

riebschlager 4y ago
It's an important question. Leisure to me is to be freed of the obligations of productivity. I think framing it as "what do you DO for leisure" transforms leisure into consumption. I don't agree that high productivity is the price of leisure. If that were the case, when do we get to cash that check? We've achieved record levels of productivity, so when do we get record levels of leisure? I'm writing this as an American workaholic. So I'm in it as much as anybody. I'm just getting old and starting to ask a lot of questions. :)
- bhhaskin 4y ago
  We don't get to cash that check, the next generation does. Just like how we cashed it from our parents, and our parents cashed it from their parents. We have far more leisure time than our parents did, and way more than our grandparents. Our kids will have far more leisure time than us.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    And haven't we already partially cashed it? We have so much free time on our hands, we need Netflix and countless other things to fill it. #NotAll, of course, but if the average can spend 3 hours per day watching TV & Netflix, and an additional 2.5 hours on social media, then they must have that time.
    - falcolas 4y ago
      My mother and father also both had the ability to spend 6+ hours a day watching TV or doing other hobbies in their working years. They're currently in their 80's, and my dad did blue-collar work as a telephone lineman. Having leisure time isn't new to our generation (any of them).

agumonkey 4y ago

That's a regular comment that's been written for many years already. But there's another aspect.. it might not be a simple graph, where zero work and 100% leisure is great. Maybe we need both but of better quality and balance.

contravariant 4y ago
There is this ideal that say society should aim to become productive enough that everyone can do what they enjoy, give what they can miss, and take what they need. Though this ideal is not as popular nowadays.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I really thing this idea of joy / leisure is a bit of a smoke screen though, people are not great at knowing what they need. I firmly believe that we vibe and bounce our feelings against society which gives us balance, it's just that most of the time society is in the wrong paradigm (consumerism + bs jobs)

leobg 4y ago

„Modern man no longer works at what cannot be abbreviated.“ —Paul Valery (as quoted by Walter Benjamin in “The Storyteller”)

wilg 4y ago

There's no reason you couldn't use this "next button" idea to get work done quickly and then go hang out.

protonbob 4y ago
The reason that this won't work in the end is that they will reduce headcount once they understand the technology and then we'll be hanging out permanently. Factory workers didn't get extra time in the break room when robots were implemented to speed up the assembly line. They got replaced permanently.
- wilg 4y ago
  That's potentially a good thing in the long run. People can do either higher-skill work and/or we'll reorganize society to account for less people working.
  - rnk 4y ago
    I think that's a little naive. We could do it now in the US but we don't. In countries like the US I expect widespread poverty after more jobs evaporate, because the wealthy won't want to just support those people, even if we can as a country. We won't need all those hourly workers to do basic things. But what will all those people who don't have a "real job" that does something a robot/ai can't perform do? The US will have chaos and maybe even actual fighting before the federal legislature approves UBI.
    - wilg 4y ago
      That is possible, but I feel like usually we take the middle-of-the-road approach later than we should. So it won't be an optimal transition but it will be OK. I'd advocate for figuring it out sooner and more generously though!