I agree, for some segment of the population the current definition of "productive" is "meaningful". That's why it will be okay to let people do things they find meaningful.
If Priya had preferred to stay with her family, and there was no financial pressure, the situation would be unambiguously better. Her family may have encouraged her to go to study for family pride -- what if studying and living while studying were free for her and her family had no financial pressure for her to get a job and send money home? I struggle to see who benefits here. Maybe she would have preferred to stay home with her family, maybe she has siblings that she will miss, why would it be up to me at all? I don't get to define productive.
UBI (or whatever mechanism for providing basic needs) also doesn't mean there is no financial reward for employment. She could still go and study and earn money and send it home to a family that doesn't need it badly except now if the job is automated by GPT4 somehow no one suffers. No harm is done other than that she wasted her time studying this thing, but no one is going to suffer because of bad luck beyond wasted time.
There are a number of things that I do think people don't find meaning in doing. Many of these things can be increasingly automated like being a teller or working in a call center, but not all of which can be (for now), like repairing sidewalks. These are a set of things that aren't very fun to do which still need to be done, sure. Oddly the ones I can list off my fingers are not the ones that pay well, so something is certainly not working right on the incentives, sure. I agree that society should reward jobs less if they are meaningful and enjoyable than jobs that no one wants to do, but that's not really how capitalism works.
Plenty of people don't tend to do things even they would consider "productive" in their spare time, but how much of that is because they are under constant financial stress and have so little free time? I believe that if basic needs are met people will generally find more genuine sources of meaning, for them, whether or not I consider those things productive.
But my opinion isn't important here, that's the patronizing part.
I simply do not believe people will sit around and watch TV all day if they are in good health and aren't required to work all the time for security. Or if they do then that's their business, I'd rather try to inspire them to do other things than force them to by withholding food and shelter.
Let people be people and learn what makes their human life meaningful to them rather than trying to starve them into action that you consider productive.
I think that is unrealistic.
If everyone gets free money the optimal move as an individual is to speculate on assets because everyone else will be. The financial rewards from gambling will be higher than working with much, much less effort.
I don’t think many people will find meaning in that world.
If people followed the "optimal move" all the time, assuming you mean it in a financial sense, there wouldn't be any teachers or social workers or librarians.
If everyone gets the relief of knowing they are free to pursue what they like without risk of starving, I imagine it'd be way easier to find meaning in the world than it is now.
The financial reward of "gambling on assets" is already far higher than working with much, much less effort. Except that now only rich people get to do it safely.
Housing is an asset that must be "gambled" in order to live securely and control your residence. I agree that is horribly broken, but everyone deserves a chance to buy assets without my permission.
I also argue that currently poor people under less financial stress will be more able to avoid getting fleeced, and that arguably many are already better at it than plenty of people with inherited wealth.
As a concrete example, mortgage rates being higher for poor people than rich people is already abusive.
> These are a set of things that aren't very fun to do which still need to be done...[they] are not the ones that pay well
Because they're generally things that don't require extensive training/exceptional skills/abilities to do, hence there lots of possible candidates to take on such jobs.
I wonder what a world where there's billions of us with no job options other than the few remaining disgusting/dangerous jobs that automation can't yet handle will look like...
Here's how I do that thought experiment. Maybe your answer is different.
It will depend on who owns the machines that do the work.
It's not comfortable to think about, but I think it's silly to ignore completely. I've worried about it a lot and am at peace with it, for what it is worth.
If there's a strong safety net and regulations on corporations
No matter who owns the machines that produce things people need, people are able to live comfortably. In that scenario, the world looks like one where those undesirable jobs pay exceptionally well, gain increased respect, and improved working conditions until they're desirable -- because starvation and housing is no longer under immediate threat of being withheld. I don't hate that world, it seems frankly more fair. I think we can agree that more rational decisions are likely to be better, and that forcing people to make decisions that are only rational to them under threat of food and shelter is bad.
It's not like my friends and I in middle school loved doing engineering because we saw dollar signs. We did it because we had a knack for it and liked doing it with no ulterior motive. Forcing people who weren't interested in engineering to be engineers has honestly just never seemed like it worked that great. Give kids opportunities to discover that they find engineering fun instead... there are other means to get to a good place without the threat of food, health, and housing. Much of it education.
But maybe for me, meaningful means going and helping with my friends projects until I'm inspired to make some kind of art or work on a project to make a new idea. Who knows, being productive financially is just not necessarily always what will give me a meaningful life, and we only get one. Lots of things that are meaningful to me aren't productive financially.
If there's not a strong safety net
God help us all. If you don't own the increasingly small number of things that do an increasingly large fraction of all production you are way, way, way more screwed.
> Presumably you would take an antivaxxer to be dishonest by framing a vaccine mandate as "forcibly injecting me with chemicals against my will".
A mandated vaccine means that some people are going to get injected with a chemical against their will, yes. We can quibble over the tone, but it is correctly phrased.
> One important difference is that no one is forcing anyone to work, that is simply the natural state of existence.
If you're actively opposed to efforts to change, then that's a very different situation. The context of this conversation is an author saying they wish GPT didn't exist, because they see GPT automating work as a real possibility.
If someone is opposing an attempt to transition to a post-work society, that is not just being in touch with the natural order -- it is an attempt to keep the natural order as it is. So yeah, I would classify that as playing an active role in forcing people to work. Again, I think that's just an accurate description of the position you're espousing; you might not like the tone, but you are encouraging us not to do anything about that natural state.
> The point was that people who "just want to make an honest living" are generally not the self-actualizers.
I disagree with this entirely. Most "down-to-earth" people I know are more engaged in fulfilling activities outside of work than academics are and have stronger connections to their communities in my experience. I don't think there are any stats to back up the idea that working-class/blue-collar workers are less positioned than tech workers to find meaning outside of work.
I don't just think that it's vaguely insulting to characterize blue-collar workers as if they're somehow more prone to being unable to self-actualize, a process that has nothing to do with one's education level -- I think if anything it might be the opposite. Silicon Valley is rife with people talking about how their companies and achievements define them, and is rife with people asking workers to "put in the grind" and "push through" to make something amazing. And I have never heard a blue-collar worker tell me that their identity and value as a person is based on their job as a sanitation worker.
> But the trends against church-going and community participation are steady.
This is particularly weird to hear, because trends against community participation have a great deal to do with the fact that our society increasingly pressures people to replace those institutions with jobs. There is a strong push to have your friends be your work friends, to have your meaning be what you do in your job.
And the increased drive towards validating ones identity through one's job inherently encourages people to disregard other social institutions or non-economic relationships that don't fit into that framework.
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> For some reason its damn near impossible to have honest discussions these days.
This conversation has moved from:
> those from the (lets call it) "productive" class are absolutely convinced everyone is like them and if only given the opportunity they would be just as productive and fulfilled as they are. Some of us know better.
to
> What's so insidious about this thinking is that its framed as benevolence. But the mistake is thinking that your way is intrinsically more valuable and so it must be a disparagement to assume that not everyone can reach the intrinsic good that you have reached.
to
> You want to see what people get up to when they have endless free time, just see what idle young men get up to.
to finally
> I'm not ascribing any valence in my statements. I am being as neutral and non-judgmental as possible.
This is some revisionism.