6 ms·

Generously assuming you're not being obtuse, the person you're replying to clearly meant "work" as "stuff people have to do", rather than "stuff that needs to b

Generously assuming you're not being obtuse, the person you're replying to clearly meant "work" as "stuff people have to do", rather than "stuff that needs to be done".

satvikpendem 2y ago
Even with that definition, yes, work still always increases. People have to do things today that 10,000 years ago they never would have had to do. It is a long way until we can automate away every facet of work that needs to be done by humans, which is also what I was alluding to in my earlier comment.
- consteval 2y ago
  The relative value does not increase at the same rate, however. And that's a big issue. Getting people food to eat is very important. Getting people slightly better software, not so much. The further we push up and up the less importance the jobs become. Knowledge work is great, but it's necessarily less valuable from a humanity perspective than laborious work. Of course this flaw isn't solved in a capitalist system, so we just ignore it. We just lie and pay knowledge workers more, because their work takes more human effort/investment, even if the product is less valuable. So we have a mismatch, where money value does not match real world value, and it's only getting worse. It's a bubble - eventually it will have to pop.
  - satvikpendem 2y ago
    > The relative value does not increase at the same rate, however. And that's a big issue. Where is the proof of this? How can you say that this is true? > The further we push up and up the less importance the jobs become. Knowledge work is great, but it's necessarily less valuable from a humanity perspective than laborious work. I reject this conclusion wholeheartedly. After food production and other such ventures, there really is only knowledge work. That you dismiss it so easily does not mean that it is not important. Indeed, the "slightly better software" of today can impact billions, billions who were not alive during the agricultural age. Even by that metric, yes, what we create today impacts many multitudes greater than us. We pay knowledge workers more because of this fact, which is matched in a capitalist system, which, need I remind you, is the single greatest contributor to the increasing of living standards in the world, something that is unmatched by any other system. You may have issues with it, but the facts are as they are.
    - consteval 2y ago
      "Knowledge work" is a spectrum that goes higher and higher. There's low level knowledge work, maybe a secretary, all the way up to scientists. > capitalist system, which, need I remind you, is the single greatest contributor to the increasing of living standards in the world I reject this conclusion. The single greatest contributor is technology, which advances with or without capitalism. We can tell because the USSR had increasing standards of living too, because they too had technological advancements. In some areas, more advanced than the west. It's merely a coincidence that capitalism was the vessel. Any somewhat reasonable economic system will do. Certainly, the areas today with the highest quality of life are qusai-socialist - and the capitalist nations, like the US, are left to the bottom of the barrel of the developed world. In spite of her massive wealth. The simple reality is that inventions become less and less valuable as time goes on. The problems become smaller and smaller, less and less important, because we necessarily solved the biggest ones first. A new medicine is remarkable yes, but nothing in the face of aseptic technique. A new phone is neat sure, but nothing in the face of the original global network, the telephony network. Jumping from A to B is much greater than D to F and so on, because innovations build on the previous. It's a pyramid of humanity. If you take out the lowest levels though, it crumbles. Without sanitation, food service, agriculture, you cannot have innovation. Ultimately everyone like you or I could die and that would be a blip. If every agriculturalist dies, then humanity is no more. To me, that is indicative of value - value in terms of service to humanity. This problem will grow with time because not everyone can be knowledge workers. Not everyone can get a college degree just to be paid 20 bucks an hour. Our jobs are going to higher and higher levels of abstraction, but they're leaving people behind. We've solved it as much as we can. We educate everyone now; we provide college assistance too. Suddenly most people can read and write, and we took it 1,000 steps further than that. But people as a whole are limited. When the average person can no longer work the average job, the economy will collapse in on itself. Sure, we can automate and then provide new jobs. We don't know what to do if people cannot work those new jobs. Everything is based on people, like you and me, buying. If we cannot buy, if the average laborer cannot buy, nothing else matters. And it comes down like a house of cards.
      - satvikpendem 2y ago

Generously assuming you're not being obtuse, the person you're replying to clearly meant "work" as "stuff people have to do", rather than "stuff that needs to be done".

satvikpendem 2y ago

Even with that definition, yes, work still always increases. People have to do things today that 10,000 years ago they never would have had to do. It is a long way until we can automate away every facet of work that needs to be done by humans, which is also what I was alluding to in my earlier comment.

consteval 2y ago
The relative value does not increase at the same rate, however. And that's a big issue. Getting people food to eat is very important. Getting people slightly better software, not so much. The further we push up and up the less importance the jobs become. Knowledge work is great, but it's necessarily less valuable from a humanity perspective than laborious work. Of course this flaw isn't solved in a capitalist system, so we just ignore it. We just lie and pay knowledge workers more, because their work takes more human effort/investment, even if the product is less valuable. So we have a mismatch, where money value does not match real world value, and it's only getting worse. It's a bubble - eventually it will have to pop.
- satvikpendem 2y ago
  > The relative value does not increase at the same rate, however. And that's a big issue. Where is the proof of this? How can you say that this is true? > The further we push up and up the less importance the jobs become. Knowledge work is great, but it's necessarily less valuable from a humanity perspective than laborious work. I reject this conclusion wholeheartedly. After food production and other such ventures, there really is only knowledge work. That you dismiss it so easily does not mean that it is not important. Indeed, the "slightly better software" of today can impact billions, billions who were not alive during the agricultural age. Even by that metric, yes, what we create today impacts many multitudes greater than us. We pay knowledge workers more because of this fact, which is matched in a capitalist system, which, need I remind you, is the single greatest contributor to the increasing of living standards in the world, something that is unmatched by any other system. You may have issues with it, but the facts are as they are.
  - consteval 2y ago
    "Knowledge work" is a spectrum that goes higher and higher. There's low level knowledge work, maybe a secretary, all the way up to scientists. > capitalist system, which, need I remind you, is the single greatest contributor to the increasing of living standards in the world I reject this conclusion. The single greatest contributor is technology, which advances with or without capitalism. We can tell because the USSR had increasing standards of living too, because they too had technological advancements. In some areas, more advanced than the west. It's merely a coincidence that capitalism was the vessel. Any somewhat reasonable economic system will do. Certainly, the areas today with the highest quality of life are qusai-socialist - and the capitalist nations, like the US, are left to the bottom of the barrel of the developed world. In spite of her massive wealth. The simple reality is that inventions become less and less valuable as time goes on. The problems become smaller and smaller, less and less important, because we necessarily solved the biggest ones first. A new medicine is remarkable yes, but nothing in the face of aseptic technique. A new phone is neat sure, but nothing in the face of the original global network, the telephony network. Jumping from A to B is much greater than D to F and so on, because innovations build on the previous. It's a pyramid of humanity. If you take out the lowest levels though, it crumbles. Without sanitation, food service, agriculture, you cannot have innovation. Ultimately everyone like you or I could die and that would be a blip. If every agriculturalist dies, then humanity is no more. To me, that is indicative of value - value in terms of service to humanity. This problem will grow with time because not everyone can be knowledge workers. Not everyone can get a college degree just to be paid 20 bucks an hour. Our jobs are going to higher and higher levels of abstraction, but they're leaving people behind. We've solved it as much as we can. We educate everyone now; we provide college assistance too. Suddenly most people can read and write, and we took it 1,000 steps further than that. But people as a whole are limited. When the average person can no longer work the average job, the economy will collapse in on itself. Sure, we can automate and then provide new jobs. We don't know what to do if people cannot work those new jobs. Everything is based on people, like you and me, buying. If we cannot buy, if the average laborer cannot buy, nothing else matters. And it comes down like a house of cards.
    - satvikpendem 2y ago