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Even smoking weed and playing video games doesn’t scale. Someone needs to grow the weed and make the video games. Someone has to feed and minimally clothe the w
by massysett 3y ago
Even smoking weed and playing video games doesn’t scale. Someone needs to grow the weed and make the video games. Someone has to feed and minimally clothe the weed-smoker. Someone must build and maintain the weed-smoker’s house.
Presumably the weed smoker might occasionally leave home. Someone must pave the road he drives on. Someone must build the weed-smoker’s car.
For all those people doing things for the weed-smoker, someone must manage them. They will work in multiple enterprises. Someone must work to sell things between those different enterprises. This might seem inefficient, but humans have not figured out a better way to do it.
And all that explains exactly why, despite what people prattle on and on about with there being useless jobs, people do in fact remain employed and even as wasteful as that employment sometimes is, there is no better alternative on a social scale. Because when it all comes down to it, people want the benefits that modern society provides. That requires that people work. The alternative is living as a solitary mountain man. Not many people try that—and that, lo and behold, takes even more work.
- andrepd 3y agoThat is not the point. If you can produce 4x as much with 1/4th the labour, then at the very least those labourers can work much much less than they do now. 15 hour work weeks are feasible TODAY, let alone after further labour-saving tech that the future will bring us.
- creato 3y agoWe basically just did an experiment at society scale on exactly this with COVID unemployment. What about that experiment suggested it was a success?
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoIt suggested that locking people in solitary confinement, even in the relative luxury of their own homes, is a torture to be avoided. It had little to do with, for or against, the idea that maybe making up worthless jobs to keep people busy being a good idea.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pseudalopex 3y agoHow was COVID unemployment an experiment in 15 hour work weeks?
- andrepd 3y agoThere is absolutely no connection between UBI and unemployment checks during an unprecedented pandemic. I feel this should be obvious.
- massysett 3y agoSure, I don’t doubt that if we wound living standards back by 50 years, we all could work a lot less.