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That's not necessarily true. There is something to be said for hand crafted goods. A machine can make me a TV dinner, but it's not the same as what mom used t

by _mlbt 3y ago

That's not necessarily true. There is something to be said for hand crafted goods. A machine can make me a TV dinner, but it's not the same as what mom used to make. Besides food, furniture, art, leather goods, hand blown glass, and custom made suits also come to mind as things that are possible to be made by machines, but are nicer when humans make them. We are also at the point where autonomous AI-powered drones can conduct warfare. I'm not quite sure that completely removing humans from war is a good thing either.

Legend2440 3y ago
You are welcome to buy hand-crafted goods if you want to. You can still buy handmade pottery even though perfectly serviceable factory pottery is widely available. But it should be up to the consumer; the artisan shouldn't be able to ban machine-made goods to protect their livelihood.
- ok_dad 3y ago
  Where do you base your argument that the consumer should be the one to choose? For many generations, you didn’t have a dozen choices for what bowl to buy, you just bought the bowls available. Why today do we defer to the consumer, whose only role is to give money to use something another has made? Why aren’t we caring more about the workers and artisans who rely on their product sales to survive? Instead we allow large capital holders to build methods to undercut the artisans and in the process they usually make a worse product and ruin the environment somehow. I think we have this backwards.
  - Legend2440 3y ago
    Because we are all the consumer. The point of doing work is to be able to consume other people's work. The total amount of things that can be done is desperately finite, but the amount that could be done is infinite. If a worker is making pottery by hand, they aren't doing something more valuable with their time.
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      The point of work is to survive a bit longer not to consume cheap crap.
  - sobellian 3y ago
    Production is not valuable in itself unless someone consumes it. As YC would say, "Make something people want." Why would we encourage society to make things no one wants?
    - ok_dad 3y ago
      Make less stuff
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

by _mlbt 3y ago

Legend2440 3y ago

You are welcome to buy hand-crafted goods if you want to. You can still buy handmade pottery even though perfectly serviceable factory pottery is widely available. But it should be up to the consumer; the artisan shouldn't be able to ban machine-made goods to protect their livelihood.

ok_dad 3y ago
Where do you base your argument that the consumer should be the one to choose? For many generations, you didn’t have a dozen choices for what bowl to buy, you just bought the bowls available. Why today do we defer to the consumer, whose only role is to give money to use something another has made? Why aren’t we caring more about the workers and artisans who rely on their product sales to survive? Instead we allow large capital holders to build methods to undercut the artisans and in the process they usually make a worse product and ruin the environment somehow. I think we have this backwards.
- Legend2440 3y ago
  Because we are all the consumer. The point of doing work is to be able to consume other people's work. The total amount of things that can be done is desperately finite, but the amount that could be done is infinite. If a worker is making pottery by hand, they aren't doing something more valuable with their time.
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    The point of work is to survive a bit longer not to consume cheap crap.
- sobellian 3y ago
  Production is not valuable in itself unless someone consumes it. As YC would say, "Make something people want." Why would we encourage society to make things no one wants?
  - ok_dad 3y ago
    Make less stuff
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]