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That's all very well for those lucky enough to be employed. In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose

by rlpb 2y ago

That's all very well for those lucky enough to be employed. In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? Eventually, that's going to be nearly everyone.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? A lot of work that's absolutely needed for our survival is still paid dogshit: think construction, cleaning, waste disposal, agriculture, fruit picking, etc. Even in developed countries with human rights, most of this work is done by what are basically modern slave workers usually from abroad on dinghy visas. Those are the jobs getting the least amount of automation. Robotics is insanely far away from reaching the speed, dexterity, cognition, perception, adaptability and cost for that to be automated at the same rock bottom prices as human slaves.
skhunted 2y ago
Currently we live in a society in which a few people have more wealth than tens of millions. The distribution of resources in the world is grossly unfair and there needs to be an evening out of this distribution. Let's first have a more equal society and then tackle the problem of underemployment.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  > Let's first have a more equal society and then tackle the problem of underemployment. In other words let's never tackle the problem of underemployment? A good way to ensure that something never gets done is to require a very hard thing to be done before it.
  - skhunted 2y ago
    Your statement assumes a conclusion that has not been established and indeed that conclusion is wrong in my opinion. We can tax wealth and tax money transfers out of the country and do a host of other things to equalize things. We can establish labor standards that mandate a certain level of living for workers. We can also require a high level of labor standards for imported goods. As an extreme example of how easy it can be to better equalize the distribution of wealth, and not one that I'm advocating for, the Soviets did a great job of ensuring that economic inequality was low. Of course this was obtained by ensuring that everyone was equally poor.

by rlpb 2y ago

Rinzler89 2y ago

>In a future where an increasing amount of necessary work is done by machines, what about those whose labor is not needed? A lot of work that's absolutely needed for our survival is still paid dogshit: think construction, cleaning, waste disposal, agriculture, fruit picking, etc. Even in developed countries with human rights, most of this work is done by what are basically modern slave workers usually from abroad on dinghy visas. Those are the jobs getting the least amount of automation. Robotics is insanely far away from reaching the speed, dexterity, cognition, perception, adaptability and cost for that to be automated at the same rock bottom prices as human slaves.

skhunted 2y ago

Currently we live in a society in which a few people have more wealth than tens of millions. The distribution of resources in the world is grossly unfair and there needs to be an evening out of this distribution. Let's first have a more equal society and then tackle the problem of underemployment.

bryanlarsen 2y ago
> Let's first have a more equal society and then tackle the problem of underemployment. In other words let's never tackle the problem of underemployment? A good way to ensure that something never gets done is to require a very hard thing to be done before it.
- skhunted 2y ago
  Your statement assumes a conclusion that has not been established and indeed that conclusion is wrong in my opinion. We can tax wealth and tax money transfers out of the country and do a host of other things to equalize things. We can establish labor standards that mandate a certain level of living for workers. We can also require a high level of labor standards for imported goods. As an extreme example of how easy it can be to better equalize the distribution of wealth, and not one that I'm advocating for, the Soviets did a great job of ensuring that economic inequality was low. Of course this was obtained by ensuring that everyone was equally poor.