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Why is a job a good thing??? I don't need a job. I need income. The two don't have to be necessarily connected. If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace hu

Why is a job a good thing??? I don't need a job. I need income. The two don't have to be necessarily connected. If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace humans, that's a good thing - it frees us up to pursue more interesting pursuits. Now, all of this wealth that will be generated, if it's concentrated in the hands of the top 0.5%, then yes, we're screwed. But some form of basic guaranteed income would go a long way to make sure we're not turned into serfs. I love programming. But if I could focus on the projects I wanted to write instead of what I'm forced to write, why is that horrible?

Spooky23 12y ago
People need a purpose. Work gives people that purpose.
- polymatter 12y ago
  Work does not imply job. Jobs are where people are financially rewarded for work. Work that is not financially rewarded still exists. See topic: Hobbies, Charities, Volunteering.
s73v3r 12y ago
"If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace humans, that's a good thing - it frees us up to pursue more interesting pursuits." Like participating in dystopian future death games for the amusement of the upper class because we don't have any food?
- PopsiclePete 12y ago
  We could call them.....the Hunger Games!
mc32 12y ago
The problem I see with this is that's your attitude towards free time now because you are used to the notion of work. Whether it be purely for an exchange of money or for personal enrichment (non monetary) In a society where work is not the norm, people may not seek out to be productive, but rather passive consumers of things and services. A nice docile population used to some modicum of comfort but with little desire.
plongeur 12y ago
> Why is a job a good thing??? Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Which is why your government will make sure, that you do either have to or want to work. But for the majority only not-automatable work will be left. Those might be jobs that create status for the top 0.5% - they will essentially become servants - to put it mildly. > to make sure we're not turned into serfs A robot slave won't be as interesting as a human slave, makes sense, right?
- zzalpha 12y ago
  Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Funny, the world seemed to operate just fine before the industrial revolution created the modern 9-5 work week. There's literally no evidence at all for what you're claiming here. High unemployment that leads to poverty creates instability. High unemployment where people's needs are met, though... that's pretty new territory. I'm not aware of any precedent that allows us to predict the outcome.
  - plongeur 12y ago
    Since the industrial revolution people work less and less ... until the 19th century for most people life mostly was about working. That's why people's last name was inferred from their profession b/c they were even identified with their jobs.
yetanotheracc 12y ago
We need our jobs. The rich may play with their robots however much they want, but I will not have my job take away from me. Basic income or what not, it is unemployment. You may want to spend your life sleeping 15 hours a day, binge watching TV rest of the time, but I choose to be gainfully employed. Do not take that choice away.
- imgabe 12y ago
  Here's a fun fact: You can do productive things even if nobody threatens to take away your livelihood if you don't! Maybe you need someone looking over your shoulder to tell you what to do all the time. Many of us don't. I'm sure we can get a robot to periodically check in on you and yell at you if you aren't doing something productive.
- PopsiclePete 12y ago
  I won't spend my time watching TV. I have at least 3 solo projects I could be working on. One of them could be the next-biggest-thing since Facebook, in theory. Small chance, but either way, I'm not sleeping 15 hrs a day. Are you telling me that the only way you to do anything productive in your life is a constant axe hanging over your head? If your wife tells you to empty the dishwasher, does she have to threaten you with divorce at the same time?
- s73v3r 12y ago
  Because that's totally the only thing to be able to do. There's no pursuing of personal interests, no other hobbies that one can engage in. It's just nothing but watching tv and oversleeping.
- wazoox 12y ago
  You realize that "being employed" very explicitly means "being used for some purpose", i.e. is a only a slight enhancement over "being mercilessly exploited". I'm not employed (I work for myself) and I won't stand being employed ever again.
- sdenton4 12y ago
  Having spent a looong time as a grad student and postdoc, I can assure you that people can work quite hard without the threat of job loss hanging over their heads. There's an argument to be made that the job structure provides direction to someone's work, but there's also a lot to be said for allowing more room for creativity, and freedom of collaboration that you don't get in the current structure.
api 12y ago
You are right, but given present political realities the jobless are more likely to be marginalized in ghettos, imprisoned for slave labor, or left to starve.
- soperj 12y ago
  In the USA yes, I don't know why you all seem to hate each other so much.
  - api 12y ago
    A half century of propaganda convinced Americans that common interests do not exist and that any form of cooperative social contract equals Leninist communism. Because you know,if we help each other pretty soon all independent business activity will be illegal and we'll have Gulags.
proksoup 12y ago
Does everyone get to have as many children as they like? Does everyone get an equal share of the food and land? How do we decide who lives and who dies without capitalism .... Or do we assume we will have (practically) infinite resources sometime soon?
- Frondo 12y ago
  We already produce enough food per day on the planet, such that if everyone had an equal share, we'd all become morbidly obese very quickly. In the US, we already have so much wealth and productivity that we're well past the "who lives and who dies?" question...except that what we make and own is so deeply imbalanced that yes, people do die for lack of medical care, heat, cooling, and so on. So...my thinking is, capitalism already isn't doing a very good job at deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. because it suggests that not everyone lives).
  - soperj 12y ago
    I can't reply to your replier, so replying here. Population growth is already taken care of in any modernized country. We're only getting to replacement level by immigration.
  - proksoup 12y ago
    "everyone lives" will only work if we continue to produce enough food and if the population growth does not exceed that food supply. You say capitalism is wrong because it does not allow "everyone lives". Why is "everyone lives" an option? If everyone lived we would run out of space ... We are not past that question in the U.S. Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?
    - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
      >Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth? By making people rich enough that they stop having so many damned babies because they can soundly expect the first one or two to survive infancy, and because they don't need seven children for farm labor.
doc_holliday 12y ago
It would certainly raise a lot of questions as to what it means to be human and what is fulfillment. I know a fair few people that are just lost as to what to do when they do not have work. It seems bizarre to me in a way how many people are just simply lost without the confines of a job and being told how to occupy their day. I hope those people would rediscover what truly fulfills them.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  Back in the day, people had hobbies. Collecting butterflies, studying physics, cataloging all the fungi on earth etc. Maybe today it would be more like visiting all the places Survivor filmed, or collecting a model of every sword in any Conan movie.
AndrewKemendo 12y ago
Work, in the form of a job, is the basis for our economy. If you provide work to someone with capital then you get capital in return. Critically, basic necessities are part of this economy, so food, water, shelter etc... are traded in the same markets as t-shirts, toys and printer paper. What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy. The mechanism that this works through attempts to retain the structure of the "market economy" and in general terms would set the basic wage at the market basket rate for necessities. Previous experiments on this have been either limited in duration or scope and would be argued could not be extrapolated to an entire national or world economy. I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world. My guess is that workers will be displaced faster than our systems can catch up.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy. I don't think of it that way. I think of it more as establishing common ownership of the social foundation on which the entire market depends, charging rents on them, and distributing the rents to the owners (i.e., all members of society equally). > I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world. I think "post scarcity" is a bad term -- its not a post scarcity world, and if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources. Its just a world in which the nature of the market opportunities is such that the problems with our current manner of managing distribution of resources become even more pronounced.
  - AndrewKemendo 12y ago
    establishing common ownership of the social foundation That is exactly as I said, decoupling certain aspects from the market. In effect you are socializing some portion of the market. I don't mean that as an epithet either, just a defining term. I also don't disagree that something like it should happen. if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources. Ah, actually that's not true at all and is a foundation of this debate. If an individual had a machine that created infinite bread for free the person, under the current market, could restrict access and distribution all they like. I think in practice this (not the bread thing) is what will happen with certain goods where marginal costs go to zero.

Spooky23 12y ago

People need a purpose. Work gives people that purpose.

polymatter 12y ago
Work does not imply job. Jobs are where people are financially rewarded for work. Work that is not financially rewarded still exists. See topic: Hobbies, Charities, Volunteering.

s73v3r 12y ago

"If robots doing all manual/farm labor replace humans, that's a good thing - it frees us up to pursue more interesting pursuits." Like participating in dystopian future death games for the amusement of the upper class because we don't have any food?

PopsiclePete 12y ago
We could call them.....the Hunger Games!

mc32 12y ago

The problem I see with this is that's your attitude towards free time now because you are used to the notion of work. Whether it be purely for an exchange of money or for personal enrichment (non monetary) In a society where work is not the norm, people may not seek out to be productive, but rather passive consumers of things and services. A nice docile population used to some modicum of comfort but with little desire.

plongeur 12y ago

> Why is a job a good thing??? Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Which is why your government will make sure, that you do either have to or want to work. But for the majority only not-automatable work will be left. Those might be jobs that create status for the top 0.5% - they will essentially become servants - to put it mildly. > to make sure we're not turned into serfs A robot slave won't be as interesting as a human slave, makes sense, right?

zzalpha 12y ago
Most people depend on a job to structure their life. No jobs and a lot of free time would destabilize society. Funny, the world seemed to operate just fine before the industrial revolution created the modern 9-5 work week. There's literally no evidence at all for what you're claiming here. High unemployment that leads to poverty creates instability. High unemployment where people's needs are met, though... that's pretty new territory. I'm not aware of any precedent that allows us to predict the outcome.
- plongeur 12y ago
  Since the industrial revolution people work less and less ... until the 19th century for most people life mostly was about working. That's why people's last name was inferred from their profession b/c they were even identified with their jobs.

yetanotheracc 12y ago

We need our jobs. The rich may play with their robots however much they want, but I will not have my job take away from me. Basic income or what not, it is unemployment. You may want to spend your life sleeping 15 hours a day, binge watching TV rest of the time, but I choose to be gainfully employed. Do not take that choice away.

imgabe 12y ago
Here's a fun fact: You can do productive things even if nobody threatens to take away your livelihood if you don't! Maybe you need someone looking over your shoulder to tell you what to do all the time. Many of us don't. I'm sure we can get a robot to periodically check in on you and yell at you if you aren't doing something productive.
PopsiclePete 12y ago
I won't spend my time watching TV. I have at least 3 solo projects I could be working on. One of them could be the next-biggest-thing since Facebook, in theory. Small chance, but either way, I'm not sleeping 15 hrs a day. Are you telling me that the only way you to do anything productive in your life is a constant axe hanging over your head? If your wife tells you to empty the dishwasher, does she have to threaten you with divorce at the same time?
s73v3r 12y ago
Because that's totally the only thing to be able to do. There's no pursuing of personal interests, no other hobbies that one can engage in. It's just nothing but watching tv and oversleeping.
wazoox 12y ago
You realize that "being employed" very explicitly means "being used for some purpose", i.e. is a only a slight enhancement over "being mercilessly exploited". I'm not employed (I work for myself) and I won't stand being employed ever again.
sdenton4 12y ago
Having spent a looong time as a grad student and postdoc, I can assure you that people can work quite hard without the threat of job loss hanging over their heads. There's an argument to be made that the job structure provides direction to someone's work, but there's also a lot to be said for allowing more room for creativity, and freedom of collaboration that you don't get in the current structure.

api 12y ago

You are right, but given present political realities the jobless are more likely to be marginalized in ghettos, imprisoned for slave labor, or left to starve.

soperj 12y ago
In the USA yes, I don't know why you all seem to hate each other so much.
- api 12y ago
  A half century of propaganda convinced Americans that common interests do not exist and that any form of cooperative social contract equals Leninist communism. Because you know,if we help each other pretty soon all independent business activity will be illegal and we'll have Gulags.

proksoup 12y ago

Does everyone get to have as many children as they like? Does everyone get an equal share of the food and land? How do we decide who lives and who dies without capitalism .... Or do we assume we will have (practically) infinite resources sometime soon?

Frondo 12y ago
We already produce enough food per day on the planet, such that if everyone had an equal share, we'd all become morbidly obese very quickly. In the US, we already have so much wealth and productivity that we're well past the "who lives and who dies?" question...except that what we make and own is so deeply imbalanced that yes, people do die for lack of medical care, heat, cooling, and so on. So...my thinking is, capitalism already isn't doing a very good job at deciding who lives and who dies (i.e. because it suggests that not everyone lives).
- soperj 12y ago
  I can't reply to your replier, so replying here. Population growth is already taken care of in any modernized country. We're only getting to replacement level by immigration.
- proksoup 12y ago
  "everyone lives" will only work if we continue to produce enough food and if the population growth does not exceed that food supply. You say capitalism is wrong because it does not allow "everyone lives". Why is "everyone lives" an option? If everyone lived we would run out of space ... We are not past that question in the U.S. Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth?
  - eli_gottlieb 12y ago
    >Unchecked population growth is not sustainable. How do we check that growth? By making people rich enough that they stop having so many damned babies because they can soundly expect the first one or two to survive infancy, and because they don't need seven children for farm labor.

doc_holliday 12y ago

It would certainly raise a lot of questions as to what it means to be human and what is fulfillment. I know a fair few people that are just lost as to what to do when they do not have work. It seems bizarre to me in a way how many people are just simply lost without the confines of a job and being told how to occupy their day. I hope those people would rediscover what truly fulfills them.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
Back in the day, people had hobbies. Collecting butterflies, studying physics, cataloging all the fungi on earth etc. Maybe today it would be more like visiting all the places Survivor filmed, or collecting a model of every sword in any Conan movie.

AndrewKemendo 12y ago

Work, in the form of a job, is the basis for our economy. If you provide work to someone with capital then you get capital in return. Critically, basic necessities are part of this economy, so food, water, shelter etc... are traded in the same markets as t-shirts, toys and printer paper. What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy. The mechanism that this works through attempts to retain the structure of the "market economy" and in general terms would set the basic wage at the market basket rate for necessities. Previous experiments on this have been either limited in duration or scope and would be argued could not be extrapolated to an entire national or world economy. I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world. My guess is that workers will be displaced faster than our systems can catch up.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> What basic income proposes at it's root is attempting to decouple basic necessities from the larger market economy. I don't think of it that way. I think of it more as establishing common ownership of the social foundation on which the entire market depends, charging rents on them, and distributing the rents to the owners (i.e., all members of society equally). > I think however that fundamentally we will need to change our moral attitudes broadly to actually embrace the "post scarcity" world. I think "post scarcity" is a bad term -- its not a post scarcity world, and if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources. Its just a world in which the nature of the market opportunities is such that the problems with our current manner of managing distribution of resources become even more pronounced.
- AndrewKemendo 12y ago
  establishing common ownership of the social foundation That is exactly as I said, decoupling certain aspects from the market. In effect you are socializing some portion of the market. I don't mean that as an epithet either, just a defining term. I also don't disagree that something like it should happen. if it was, we wouldn't need to worry so much about how we distribute resources. Ah, actually that's not true at all and is a foundation of this debate. If an individual had a machine that created infinite bread for free the person, under the current market, could restrict access and distribution all they like. I think in practice this (not the bread thing) is what will happen with certain goods where marginal costs go to zero.