6 ms·

Since the beginning of humanity people have been slaves to the necessity of survival.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.
- aidenn0 12y ago
  > Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. This has been predicted for at least the past 100 years it seems; I'm not holding my breath on it panning out in my lifetime, so I don't see how it should affect my short-term behavior.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty. Most likely, such a realization will occur, if at all, only after (1) we do see massive increase in poverty, and (2) the people subject to that massive increase in poverty violently demonstrate their displeasure with it, and even then the realization will be far from universal and a matter of lasting controversy. See, for a historical parallel, how we got from the industrial revolution and how long it took before there was significant effort to provide even basic protection for workers from exploitation. (And how frequently people still argue that some of the basic protections adopted are unnecessary and counterproductive imposition by government on the rights of corporations.)
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -- William Gibson This software/robotics/automation transition (a second "industrial revolution" if you want to call it that) is going to be terribly painful, but it need not be. We just need to reflect on what our values are as people.
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago
      > We just need to reflect on what our values are as people. That's the hard part. Automation is coming whether we like it or not, because is being forced into our throats by the combined mechanisms of our economy (or by The System, or Moloch, call it what you like). But "reflecting on our values" requires coordination of the whole society. Which is hard. We might coordinate eventually, when the going by gets too hard, just like people eventually fixed the industrial revolution - but it took riots and revolutions and communism spreading over half of the planet to get there. If we want to do this before blood gets spilled, we need to find a way to coordinate sooner. I'm still not sure how we can approach that.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > We just need to reflect on what our values are as people. Maybe, but this seems to assume that there aren't a sufficiently large quantity of the already well off whose "values as people" aren't centered around protecting their own short-term relative position in society. I think the history of humanity and what it takes to get change that distributes some of the benefits of progress rather than concentrating in the already-best-off suggest that this assumption may be unjustified.
- Anderkent 12y ago
  And the way you'd work on implementing that change, would be, wait for it... Make a ton of money, and sponsor relevant research / lobbying efforts. You definitely won't make it happen by being a fisherman.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    I agree.
- jedmeyers 12y ago
  I would like to ask if you have any hard data or studies that prove your first point, or you just feel that this is indeed the case? The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people and groups of people, like governments and corporations. Everyone is "allowed" to live and thrive if you have the means to do it. And being in poverty now has much more benefits to it than being relatively rich 200 years ago.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - mikeash 12y ago
    Your last sentence got me thinking about the differences, and it's interesting. In terms of poor now versus rich a couple of centuries ago, I think it comes down to creature comforts versus power. A poor person today can summon a symphony on command. They can view plays at will. They can travel to the next city in hours. If they're financially smart, they could even take a vacation on another continent every few years. Yet, they probably don't have very good food. Quantity is fine, but quality lacks. If they do have good food, they almost certainly have to cook it themselves. Servants, in general, are lacking. They have to buy their own clothes. They have to wash them, too, and while machinery makes that way easier than it was, it's still more work than letting a servant handle it. Furthermore, the lives of the modern poor are fundamentally uncertain by comparison. If they're working poor, they can be unemployed on a whim. Their landlord can raise rents beyond what they can pay. If they're on benefits (either employed, or supplementing income from work) then the political winds can easily change next election. By comparison, a rich person from 200 years ago almost certainly owns land (and, in many places, people) and can be fairly confident that they will remain there, if they choose to, for a long time. They almost certainly have political power as well, so barring a violent revolution they won't have too much trouble with the state. Medicine is one place this breaks down, since we've decided (in the richer countries) that the poor should still have access to the services of doctors, and those far exceed anything anyone could get 200 years ago. That would probably be the deciding factor for me, at least, if I had to choose between the two situations. It's also interesting to compare with a rich person today. If they're not ultra wealthy, they probably still have no servants, still wash their own clothes, may still cook their own food, still drive themselves around, etc. If they own substantial land, it's probably as a luxury rather than a productive asset. Many still work for someone else.
wildpeaks 12y ago
Notch selling is pretty much him going in Creative Mode in real life :)
calibraxis 12y ago
In modern times, it's unnecessarily being slaves to bosses, whose commands wageslaves obey all day. We were born in a goofy time.
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  We weren't born in a goofy time. We (the people who frequent this board) largely exist in an industry where in certain markets you have enough leverage to some of the worst elements of wage slavery. But 98% of people on this planet at this time aren't in the same position and even in our industry if you think you are I suspect you'd be surprised how far you can really push your freedom from your bosses will it before you find you've got problems.
- jedmeyers 12y ago
  So, no one had to obey bosses' commands in previous times?
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    Sure they did. So what? Just because we always had to do something, doesn't mean we should continue to do so. We always had to die from random stupid illnesses until one guy stumbled over penicillin and the other one figured out that it might be a good idea to wash hands before performing surgery. The whole concept of progress of mankind is the idea that we should strive to get rid of stupid shit that caused harm, misery and death since the day one.
    - jedmeyers 12y ago
      You are saying that we should not continue doing what we do not like, and then you proceed to say that "one guy" Alexander Fleming "stumbled over" penicillin. Are you planning to stumble upon a way to relieve people from the need to obey the bosses or you expect someone else to do it?
      - TeMPOraL 12y ago

Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty.

aidenn0 12y ago
> Yes, but for the first time ever, we've reached the theoretical capacity to change that. This has been predicted for at least the past 100 years it seems; I'm not holding my breath on it panning out in my lifetime, so I don't see how it should affect my short-term behavior.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> What's funny (for some definitions of fun), we will actually need to do that - given how our current economy pushes automation to replace humans everywhere, we can either accept that people should be allowed to live and thrive without having to earn for the living, or we'll see a massive increase of poverty. Most likely, such a realization will occur, if at all, only after (1) we do see massive increase in poverty, and (2) the people subject to that massive increase in poverty violently demonstrate their displeasure with it, and even then the realization will be far from universal and a matter of lasting controversy. See, for a historical parallel, how we got from the industrial revolution and how long it took before there was significant effort to provide even basic protection for workers from exploitation. (And how frequently people still argue that some of the basic protections adopted are unnecessary and counterproductive imposition by government on the rights of corporations.)
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -- William Gibson This software/robotics/automation transition (a second "industrial revolution" if you want to call it that) is going to be terribly painful, but it need not be. We just need to reflect on what our values are as people.
  - TeMPOraL 12y ago
    > We just need to reflect on what our values are as people. That's the hard part. Automation is coming whether we like it or not, because is being forced into our throats by the combined mechanisms of our economy (or by The System, or Moloch, call it what you like). But "reflecting on our values" requires coordination of the whole society. Which is hard. We might coordinate eventually, when the going by gets too hard, just like people eventually fixed the industrial revolution - but it took riots and revolutions and communism spreading over half of the planet to get there. If we want to do this before blood gets spilled, we need to find a way to coordinate sooner. I'm still not sure how we can approach that.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > We just need to reflect on what our values are as people. Maybe, but this seems to assume that there aren't a sufficiently large quantity of the already well off whose "values as people" aren't centered around protecting their own short-term relative position in society. I think the history of humanity and what it takes to get change that distributes some of the benefits of progress rather than concentrating in the already-best-off suggest that this assumption may be unjustified.
Anderkent 12y ago
And the way you'd work on implementing that change, would be, wait for it... Make a ton of money, and sponsor relevant research / lobbying efforts. You definitely won't make it happen by being a fisherman.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I agree.
jedmeyers 12y ago
I would like to ask if you have any hard data or studies that prove your first point, or you just feel that this is indeed the case? The reality is that there is no "we", there is no "economy" that pushes something - there are specific people and groups of people, like governments and corporations. Everyone is "allowed" to live and thrive if you have the means to do it. And being in poverty now has much more benefits to it than being relatively rich 200 years ago.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- mikeash 12y ago
  Your last sentence got me thinking about the differences, and it's interesting. In terms of poor now versus rich a couple of centuries ago, I think it comes down to creature comforts versus power. A poor person today can summon a symphony on command. They can view plays at will. They can travel to the next city in hours. If they're financially smart, they could even take a vacation on another continent every few years. Yet, they probably don't have very good food. Quantity is fine, but quality lacks. If they do have good food, they almost certainly have to cook it themselves. Servants, in general, are lacking. They have to buy their own clothes. They have to wash them, too, and while machinery makes that way easier than it was, it's still more work than letting a servant handle it. Furthermore, the lives of the modern poor are fundamentally uncertain by comparison. If they're working poor, they can be unemployed on a whim. Their landlord can raise rents beyond what they can pay. If they're on benefits (either employed, or supplementing income from work) then the political winds can easily change next election. By comparison, a rich person from 200 years ago almost certainly owns land (and, in many places, people) and can be fairly confident that they will remain there, if they choose to, for a long time. They almost certainly have political power as well, so barring a violent revolution they won't have too much trouble with the state. Medicine is one place this breaks down, since we've decided (in the richer countries) that the poor should still have access to the services of doctors, and those far exceed anything anyone could get 200 years ago. That would probably be the deciding factor for me, at least, if I had to choose between the two situations. It's also interesting to compare with a rich person today. If they're not ultra wealthy, they probably still have no servants, still wash their own clothes, may still cook their own food, still drive themselves around, etc. If they own substantial land, it's probably as a luxury rather than a productive asset. Many still work for someone else.

wildpeaks 12y ago

Notch selling is pretty much him going in Creative Mode in real life :)

calibraxis 12y ago

In modern times, it's unnecessarily being slaves to bosses, whose commands wageslaves obey all day. We were born in a goofy time.

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
We weren't born in a goofy time. We (the people who frequent this board) largely exist in an industry where in certain markets you have enough leverage to some of the worst elements of wage slavery. But 98% of people on this planet at this time aren't in the same position and even in our industry if you think you are I suspect you'd be surprised how far you can really push your freedom from your bosses will it before you find you've got problems.
jedmeyers 12y ago
So, no one had to obey bosses' commands in previous times?
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  Sure they did. So what? Just because we always had to do something, doesn't mean we should continue to do so. We always had to die from random stupid illnesses until one guy stumbled over penicillin and the other one figured out that it might be a good idea to wash hands before performing surgery. The whole concept of progress of mankind is the idea that we should strive to get rid of stupid shit that caused harm, misery and death since the day one.
  - jedmeyers 12y ago
    You are saying that we should not continue doing what we do not like, and then you proceed to say that "one guy" Alexander Fleming "stumbled over" penicillin. Are you planning to stumble upon a way to relieve people from the need to obey the bosses or you expect someone else to do it?
    - TeMPOraL 12y ago