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The reason you don’t have more time for music is not technological, it’s social. We have enough technology to offer a basic life for everyone for free, but we h

The reason you don’t have more time for music is not technological, it’s social. We have enough technology to offer a basic life for everyone for free, but we have not agreed that doing so is worthwhile.

magic_hamster 1y ago
Who is "we"? The entire human race? Expecting all humans across different cultures and languages to come together and figure out basic income for 9 billion people is absurd. This kind of cooperation never happened and probably never will. People are completely unable to cooperate at the massive scale this requires, let alone solve far smaller challenges like mitigating outbreaks or making an effort to avert climate change. "We" is not a thing.
- falcor84 1y ago
  It's difficult, but not impossible. "We" decided to offer everyone a covid vaccine and achieved that.
  - shakna 1y ago
    And as a result of "we" being divided, we have the resurgence of many vaccine preventable diseases, because that achievement was flat out rejected by part of humanity.
    - falcor84 1y ago
      I wonder what part of that was actual rejection of the vaccines vs a rejection of collective action itself as an idea.
      - krapp 1y ago
        The rejection itself was a collective action. It wasn't passive, anti-vaxxers did work spreading propaganda, protesting and undermining vaccination efforts. They made it a part of their identity and culture. If it was a rejection of anything, it was of any assumption of good faith on the part of either government or scientific institutions. Why that happened, as quickly and thoroughly and as polarized along clear partisan lines as it was, is a mystery.
        Jensson 1y ago
        > If it was a rejection of anything, it was of any assumption of good faith on the part of either government or scientific institutions. Why that happened, as quickly and thoroughly and as polarized along clear partisan lines as it was, is a mystery. It isn't a mystery, it was the bullshit and lies that happened the first month of covid in USA, many people then stopped listening even when the bullshit and lies stopped. I remember the cases in New York exploding and the local democrat told people to continue as normal since its nothing to worry about, and that masks doesn't prevent spread so don't go buy masks, that was how it all started. They say they had to tell those lies to save resources for those who needs it, but that made people stop trusting them and that counts for so much more. I hope they learned their lesson, but likely they didn't as they never said "Sorry we lied to you, we shouldn't have done that".
        krapp 1y ago
        Except if you understand they were being misleading, and you understand why, you also understand Covid was a real problem and that there were serious infrastructure and logistics problems that had to be dealt with. You get angry with the government for fumbling the effort, but you still get vaccinated. That doesn't justify believing Fauci and Biden cooked up Covid in a lab or that the vaccines were spiked with microchips or that masks give you brain cancer or half the stuff antivaxxers actually wound up claiming. People literally formed resistance organizations and were warning of a global fascist takeover, we were entering an eternal police state in which the unvaccinated would become a slave underclass and if you didn't have your vaccine card you would get shot dead in the street. All of it went far beyond simple mistrust in the government's PR.
        bediger4000 1y ago
        You forgot the flip side of the predictions: that the vaccinated would end up bleeding out in the streets. I believe there were a large number of such predictions, which should have already happened. I think this only strengthens your observation that anti-vaxxing went far beyond simple mistrust.
- tarcon 1y ago
  The first step towards this is a UN resolution.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    That's an interesting take. Is there any historical precedent for an international change that started with a UN resolution? Because my cynical take is that UN resolutions are typically either ineffective, or made post-hoc.
- awongh 1y ago
  We as in, it's not a social cooperation thing, many people's individual moral ethics make it so they themselves would be uncomfortable with the idea of not working to earn a living. Currently, society as a whole generally believes that it's each individual person's prerogative to find paying work and most people don't really examine this belief. There's nothing to cooperate on yet.
  - magic_hamster 1y ago
    I think the idea of a society where work is optional and people having their needs met by the society they live in is actually well explored. It's a Utopia. The problem is human nature is competitive and just being provided with everything you need to live, even being given ample time to create art and enjoy life, is not enough for many people. Utopian ideas all look great on paper but when meeting reality you cannot build Utopia around greed and elitism and you can't abolish them either.
haswell 1y ago
I think there’s an even bigger issue than this. Many people would not know how to live under such a system. By this, I mean that I strongly believe people would become severely depressed or insanely stir crazy. I’ve been on an extended sabbatical after 20 years in tech. The first year was magical. “I could do this forever” I told myself, and actually considered it. The second year was more complicated. I could feel myself drifting away from myself. The structure of work and the rewards of working on big projects were now fully missing, and I could feel this growing emptiness that needed to be filled. For health reasons, I entered the 3rd year, and by that point I needed more major psychological intervention. I’d become severely depressed and while I knew that getting back to work might help, I was now in a position where going back to work sounded impossible. I’m not claiming that my experience is universal. But I’ve started to find more accounts that are similar to mine. I’m also not saying it’s impossible to replace work as a form of necessary challenge and satisfaction. But the societal structures do not exist to fill the void. For better or worse, we’ve been a species that relies on “work” in some form to live. I use quotes because clearly this has looked different ways over time. Hunter/gatherers certainly had a different set of tasks than the modern city dweller. But ultimately I’m not convinced that we’re equipped to live satisfying lives without some form of striving for survival. In a post-work era, I think a lot of us will go some kind of crazy or experience depression. I don’t think most people are aware of how awful things can feel after enough time away from work has stacked up. It reminds me of that feeling when going on vacation somewhere nice. “I could just live here forever”. But the reality is that the thing that makes the vacation feel incredible is the contrast from normal life. Remove the contrast, and things become pretty flat. Edited to change “most” to “many” in the 2nd paragraph because that better reflects my belief.
- giraffe_lady 1y ago
  This is what they keep telling us. My hunch is that people will find plenty of "work" to do in their families, their communities, in creative pursuits. Let's find out.
  - haswell 1y ago
    My point is that I was firmly in the “I want to retire early” category, found myself with the means to do so, and that this wasn’t theoretical for me. But the thing I imagined is not the reality that I found. I realize “they” have other motives for convincing people such a future is a problem. But that doesn’t remove what I truly believe would be a hellish reality for many. I’m all for pushing society in a less work-centric direction and think current work culture is toxic. That’s a big part of the reason I burned out and went on sabbatical. But I’m also pretty worried about what a sudden shift without careful planning may bring about. I know I certainly didn’t have the habits/skills in place to navigate it in a healthy way.
skybrian 1y ago
The idea that we no longer need labor is preposterous. Where are the machines to take care of children or the sick, or to build and maintain housing? What kind of science fiction world do you think you live in?
- jrmg 1y ago
  They’re not suggesting no-one has to work. They’re suggesting that no-one has to live without necessities like food, shelter or medical insecurity.
  - otabdeveloper4 1y ago
    "For free" implies no forced labor or time commitment. So yes, they're suggesting no-one has to work.
- fullshark 1y ago
  The idea that those jobs can only be done by desperate individuals so society needs desperate individuals is your logic here. I am not sure I can even counter it, I lack the imagination to see an alternative.
  - mensetmanusman 1y ago
    Helping people is not desperate work. It’s meaningful.
    - fullshark 1y ago
      Sure, but one shift as a nurse in a hospital will open your eyes to just how difficult a job that can be, and not one many people would do unless "forced" to.
      - skybrian 1y ago
        I’m not sure what your scare quotes mean, but nurses don’t work for free and traveling nurses in particular make good money. “Forced labor” originally meant things like slave labor, but some people have it backwards. I think anyone will agree that being able to walk away is important for negotiations. How much you’re paid has little to do with that. Having alternative job offers or the savings to do without a job for a while is more important.
otabdeveloper4 1y ago
> We have enough technology to offer a basic life for everyone for free Not literally "everyone". Someone still has to make the food you eat and the house you sleep in.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  That's what automation is for. And there will always be people who want a much more expensive lifestyle than a "basic life".
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    That's the point, there's no automated solution to my laundry but apparently there is now an automated solution for my musical passions.
BobaFloutist 1y ago
If everyone has a basic life for free, how do we decide who still has to harvest crops?

magic_hamster 1y ago

Who is "we"? The entire human race? Expecting all humans across different cultures and languages to come together and figure out basic income for 9 billion people is absurd. This kind of cooperation never happened and probably never will. People are completely unable to cooperate at the massive scale this requires, let alone solve far smaller challenges like mitigating outbreaks or making an effort to avert climate change. "We" is not a thing.

falcor84 1y ago
It's difficult, but not impossible. "We" decided to offer everyone a covid vaccine and achieved that.
- shakna 1y ago
  And as a result of "we" being divided, we have the resurgence of many vaccine preventable diseases, because that achievement was flat out rejected by part of humanity.
  - falcor84 1y ago
    I wonder what part of that was actual rejection of the vaccines vs a rejection of collective action itself as an idea.
    - krapp 1y ago
      The rejection itself was a collective action. It wasn't passive, anti-vaxxers did work spreading propaganda, protesting and undermining vaccination efforts. They made it a part of their identity and culture. If it was a rejection of anything, it was of any assumption of good faith on the part of either government or scientific institutions. Why that happened, as quickly and thoroughly and as polarized along clear partisan lines as it was, is a mystery.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        > If it was a rejection of anything, it was of any assumption of good faith on the part of either government or scientific institutions. Why that happened, as quickly and thoroughly and as polarized along clear partisan lines as it was, is a mystery. It isn't a mystery, it was the bullshit and lies that happened the first month of covid in USA, many people then stopped listening even when the bullshit and lies stopped. I remember the cases in New York exploding and the local democrat told people to continue as normal since its nothing to worry about, and that masks doesn't prevent spread so don't go buy masks, that was how it all started. They say they had to tell those lies to save resources for those who needs it, but that made people stop trusting them and that counts for so much more. I hope they learned their lesson, but likely they didn't as they never said "Sorry we lied to you, we shouldn't have done that".
        krapp 1y ago
        Except if you understand they were being misleading, and you understand why, you also understand Covid was a real problem and that there were serious infrastructure and logistics problems that had to be dealt with. You get angry with the government for fumbling the effort, but you still get vaccinated. That doesn't justify believing Fauci and Biden cooked up Covid in a lab or that the vaccines were spiked with microchips or that masks give you brain cancer or half the stuff antivaxxers actually wound up claiming. People literally formed resistance organizations and were warning of a global fascist takeover, we were entering an eternal police state in which the unvaccinated would become a slave underclass and if you didn't have your vaccine card you would get shot dead in the street. All of it went far beyond simple mistrust in the government's PR.
        bediger4000 1y ago
        You forgot the flip side of the predictions: that the vaccinated would end up bleeding out in the streets. I believe there were a large number of such predictions, which should have already happened. I think this only strengthens your observation that anti-vaxxing went far beyond simple mistrust.
tarcon 1y ago
The first step towards this is a UN resolution.
- falcor84 1y ago
  That's an interesting take. Is there any historical precedent for an international change that started with a UN resolution? Because my cynical take is that UN resolutions are typically either ineffective, or made post-hoc.
awongh 1y ago
We as in, it's not a social cooperation thing, many people's individual moral ethics make it so they themselves would be uncomfortable with the idea of not working to earn a living. Currently, society as a whole generally believes that it's each individual person's prerogative to find paying work and most people don't really examine this belief. There's nothing to cooperate on yet.
- magic_hamster 1y ago
  I think the idea of a society where work is optional and people having their needs met by the society they live in is actually well explored. It's a Utopia. The problem is human nature is competitive and just being provided with everything you need to live, even being given ample time to create art and enjoy life, is not enough for many people. Utopian ideas all look great on paper but when meeting reality you cannot build Utopia around greed and elitism and you can't abolish them either.

haswell 1y ago

I think there’s an even bigger issue than this. Many people would not know how to live under such a system. By this, I mean that I strongly believe people would become severely depressed or insanely stir crazy. I’ve been on an extended sabbatical after 20 years in tech. The first year was magical. “I could do this forever” I told myself, and actually considered it. The second year was more complicated. I could feel myself drifting away from myself. The structure of work and the rewards of working on big projects were now fully missing, and I could feel this growing emptiness that needed to be filled. For health reasons, I entered the 3rd year, and by that point I needed more major psychological intervention. I’d become severely depressed and while I knew that getting back to work might help, I was now in a position where going back to work sounded impossible. I’m not claiming that my experience is universal. But I’ve started to find more accounts that are similar to mine. I’m also not saying it’s impossible to replace work as a form of necessary challenge and satisfaction. But the societal structures do not exist to fill the void. For better or worse, we’ve been a species that relies on “work” in some form to live. I use quotes because clearly this has looked different ways over time. Hunter/gatherers certainly had a different set of tasks than the modern city dweller. But ultimately I’m not convinced that we’re equipped to live satisfying lives without some form of striving for survival. In a post-work era, I think a lot of us will go some kind of crazy or experience depression. I don’t think most people are aware of how awful things can feel after enough time away from work has stacked up. It reminds me of that feeling when going on vacation somewhere nice. “I could just live here forever”. But the reality is that the thing that makes the vacation feel incredible is the contrast from normal life. Remove the contrast, and things become pretty flat. Edited to change “most” to “many” in the 2nd paragraph because that better reflects my belief.

giraffe_lady 1y ago
This is what they keep telling us. My hunch is that people will find plenty of "work" to do in their families, their communities, in creative pursuits. Let's find out.
- haswell 1y ago
  My point is that I was firmly in the “I want to retire early” category, found myself with the means to do so, and that this wasn’t theoretical for me. But the thing I imagined is not the reality that I found. I realize “they” have other motives for convincing people such a future is a problem. But that doesn’t remove what I truly believe would be a hellish reality for many. I’m all for pushing society in a less work-centric direction and think current work culture is toxic. That’s a big part of the reason I burned out and went on sabbatical. But I’m also pretty worried about what a sudden shift without careful planning may bring about. I know I certainly didn’t have the habits/skills in place to navigate it in a healthy way.

skybrian 1y ago

The idea that we no longer need labor is preposterous. Where are the machines to take care of children or the sick, or to build and maintain housing? What kind of science fiction world do you think you live in?

jrmg 1y ago
They’re not suggesting no-one has to work. They’re suggesting that no-one has to live without necessities like food, shelter or medical insecurity.
- otabdeveloper4 1y ago
  "For free" implies no forced labor or time commitment. So yes, they're suggesting no-one has to work.
fullshark 1y ago
The idea that those jobs can only be done by desperate individuals so society needs desperate individuals is your logic here. I am not sure I can even counter it, I lack the imagination to see an alternative.
- mensetmanusman 1y ago
  Helping people is not desperate work. It’s meaningful.
  - fullshark 1y ago
    Sure, but one shift as a nurse in a hospital will open your eyes to just how difficult a job that can be, and not one many people would do unless "forced" to.
    - skybrian 1y ago
      I’m not sure what your scare quotes mean, but nurses don’t work for free and traveling nurses in particular make good money. “Forced labor” originally meant things like slave labor, but some people have it backwards. I think anyone will agree that being able to walk away is important for negotiations. How much you’re paid has little to do with that. Having alternative job offers or the savings to do without a job for a while is more important.

otabdeveloper4 1y ago

> We have enough technology to offer a basic life for everyone for free Not literally "everyone". Someone still has to make the food you eat and the house you sleep in.

amanaplanacanal 1y ago
That's what automation is for. And there will always be people who want a much more expensive lifestyle than a "basic life".
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  That's the point, there's no automated solution to my laundry but apparently there is now an automated solution for my musical passions.

BobaFloutist 1y ago

If everyone has a basic life for free, how do we decide who still has to harvest crops?