4 ms·
> how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks? What if your work didn't have to suck? What if you could actually work, create
by joelrunyon 13y ago
> how does it handle the race to the bottom after everyone realizes work sucks?
What if your work didn't have to suck? What if you could actually work, create something useful and enjoy it?
I don't understand why people think this is such an impossible concept.
- hobs 13y agoIts not an impossible concept, but most people's workplaces suck to varying degrees. Unless you are a highly valued "knowledge worker" you will find that you life has a large component of drudgery.
- gruseom 13y agoTo me that is an argument in favor of basic income: it would force workplaces to suck less, since they'd have competition at the bottom end.
- kaoD 13y agoMost people would rather work in whatever they want than working for a wage for someone else's benefit. Even if they find their job rewarding, being told what and when to do something is not as rewarding as... not being. Also: what about highly unrewarding jobs?
- hedning 13y agoWell, if no one would work the unrewarding jobs, and they were needed. The wages for these jobs would go up. As Bertrand Russell said there's two types of jobs. "The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid". Reversing this might not be the worst thing in the world.
- dllthomas 13y agoAnd/or they'll be automated (or at least sufficiently automated).
- dllthomas 13y agoUnrewarding jobs would pay more, in some combination of money, perks, social status... To the degree the last held true, they'd become more rewarding. To the degree the first held true, there would be increased pressure to automate.
- glomph 13y agoUnrewarding jobs in an ideal world would pay more.
- waps 13y agoLet's think this through ... how much would they pay more ? Well, for most unrewarding jobs I think you'll find that labor costs dominate. So any wage rise needs to be reflected in the cost of those services ... which results in a need for more money (since cost rises in basic goods will disproportionally affect poor people, resulting in the need for further basic income rises) So it's obvious there is a feedback loop here. Basic income -> price hikes -> more basic income -> more price hikes ... The question is what multiplier we have between the steps. If that number is << 1 (much smaller than one) ... then no problem. If it's anywhere near 1, basic income will result in total devastation of the economy. There are jobs that would be affected more than others. Elderly care, for example, is a very dirty, very unrewarding job. With basic income it'll become completely impossible to pay for. So that looks to me a very basic tradeoff : you can have one of these : elderly And that is a consequence that's very unlikely to be appreciated by either rich or poor.
- randallsquared 13y agoSo you're suggesting that a Basic Income would drive increasing automation in virtuous cycle as labor costs rapidly rise to more than the cost of designing and building the automation?
- wyager 13y agoBecause we don't have the technology to get rid of shitty jobs yet. We can't make that technology come faster by eliminating incentives to perform shitty jobs.
- MBlume 13y agoWe totally can make it come faster. If we institute basic income tomorrow, you seriously don't think we'll have mostly-automated McDonald's next year?
- olefoo 13y agos/mostly-automated/eliminated the need for/ If you're in a world where you don't _have_to_ work for a living; you can take your time meeting your basic sustenance needs with real food. Fast food is actually a bad deal, and most of the people eating it are doing so because they are under time-pressure of one sort or another.
- jotm 13y agoIt's sort of like self-checkout - people don't like it, but if there are no humans, they'll (try to) use it.