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That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy

• its_ethan 2y ago
  I think there's something very true about your idea here. I don't know that there's really any study or data that would back it up, but if a large amount of people don't have the structure and expectations that employment provides, things would deteriorate quickly. Obviously there's a spectrum here, and mindless jobs that pay as little as legally allowed aren't exactly providing fulfillment that people need. In any individual case, of course it makes sense to say "why should I/they have to do this? they should be able to chase passions or find other opportunity" but when you talk about that being "granted" to large chunks of the population (happening at essentially the same time).. I don't see it working out super well in the short or long term.
• ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. I like that definition.
• marcosdumay 2y ago
  > As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that aggregated desire, if it's not being met anymore by jobs that employ many workers today. I'm sorry. You are claiming that the poor will buy job-alternatives from the market once they don't have a job to sustain themselves? You seem to be missing a slight power imbalance.
  • Teever 2y ago
    If you could get your hands on a humanoid robot that was capable of repairing itself and with enough time and resources the ability to do full self replication by building up the necessary infrastructure to produce it's raw parts, what is the first thing you would do with it? I'll tell you what I'd do with it. I'd ask that genie for more wishes and have it start making copies.
    • waynesonfire 2y ago
      It'll be too expensive, you wont have access to affortable resources.
      • Teever 2y ago
        You expect the cost of a self replicating object to remain out of reach of the average person? Why don't you think it would follow the same cost curve as integrated circuits?
        • sangnoir 2y ago
          > You expect the cost of a self replicating object to remain out of reach of the average person? Yes. What's the cost of relocating software, or a movie, or an audio file? Very close to 0 (a few cents at most), and yet observe how much our current system prices each of those items. Capitalism, as practiced today, maximizes profits, not competition, I don't see that changing any time soon
          • comex 2y ago
            And yet none of those items are out of reach of the average person. On the contrary, they’re usually pretty cheap. Precisely because replication costs nothing, the strategy that maximizes profit is to maximize the number of copies sold rather than the amount earned per copy. You can see similar effects in hardware too, since even without self-replication there are already massive economies of scale. How much does it cost to get access to the output of most advanced chip fabrication technology on the planet? The answer is whatever the price of the latest flagship smartphone is.
• linearrust 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
  You naively ignore the power of mentally ill people in our society. The social contract should be continuously improved to weaker their power and marginalize their obsessions but the corporate workplace is a rotting carcass for these dysfunctionally productive people to twist to their ends. They fight losses to their power over others more than anything else. It’s terrifying to watch the banality and casualness that people engage in these antisocial behaviors with.
• ruined 2y ago
  the economy is a mode of organizing aggregated needs and desires, but it has never been total, and it is only capable of accounting for needs and desires that can be expressed financially. the past couple centuries have seen a great advancement in application of the economic mode to greater areas of life. there are both clear and nominal benefits and downsides. its advance doesn't necessarily mean it's satisfying equivalent needs and desires, nor that it is more effective or objectively preferable. it's well-documented that often it has advanced by threats, dispossession, and violence. and it's certainly possible that could continue, or that it might lose ground on some externality, or sustain hegemony by those same tools.
• throwway120385 2y ago
  It's also a pretty strong argument that the means of production should be taken from the upper class and shared when and if we get to the point where production is limitless.
• petra 2y ago
  Many jobs don't really offer being valued to those working them.