Thoughts on Our Possible Future Without Work (theguardian.com) 197
There's a new book called A World Without Work by economics scholar/former government policy adviser Daniel Susskind. The Guardian succinctly summarizes its prognostications for the future:
It used to be argued that workers who lost their low-skilled jobs should retrain for more challenging roles, but what happens when the robots, or drones, or driverless cars, come for those as well? Predictions vary but up to half of jobs are at least partially vulnerable to AI, from truck-driving, retail and warehouse work to medicine, law and accountancy. That's why the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers confessed in 2013 that he used to think "the Luddites were wrong, and the believers in technology and technological progress were right. I'm not so completely certain now." That same year, the economist and Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky wrote that fears of technological unemployment were not so much wrong as premature: "Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs." Yet Skidelsky, like Keynes, saw this as an opportunity. If the doomsayers are to be finally proven right, then why not the utopians, too...?
The work ethic, [Susskind] says, is a modern religion that purports to be the only source of meaning and purpose. "What do you do for a living?" is for many people the first question they ask when meeting a stranger, and there is no entity more beloved of politicians than the "hard-working family". Yet faced with precarious, unfulfilling jobs and stagnant wages, many are losing faith in the gospel of work. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of UK workers said their jobs made no meaningful contribution. Susskind wonders in the final pages "whether the academics and commentators who write fearfully about a world with less work are just mistakenly projecting the personal enjoyment they take from their jobs on to the experience of everyone else".
That deserves to be more than an afterthought. The challenge of a world without work isn't just economic but political and psychological... [I]s relying on work to provide self-worth and social status an inevitable human truth or the relatively recent product of a puritan work ethic? Keynes regretted that the possibility of an "age of leisure and abundance" was freighted with dread: "For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy." The state, Susskind concedes with ambivalence, will need to smooth the transition. Moving beyond the "Age of Labour" will require something like a universal basic income (he prefers a more selective conditional basic income), funded by taxes on capital to share the proceeds of technological prosperity. The available work will also need to be more evenly distributed. After decades of a 40-hour week, the recent Labour manifesto, influenced by Skidelsky, promised 32 hours by 2030. And that's the relatively easy part.
Moving society's centre of gravity away from waged labour will require visionary "leisure policies" on every level, from urban planning to education, and a revolution in thinking. "We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life," Susskind writes, implying that this is above his pay grade.
The review concludes that "if AI really does to employment what previous technologies did not, radical change can't be postponed indefinitely.
"It may well be utopia or bust."
It used to be argued that workers who lost their low-skilled jobs should retrain for more challenging roles, but what happens when the robots, or drones, or driverless cars, come for those as well? Predictions vary but up to half of jobs are at least partially vulnerable to AI, from truck-driving, retail and warehouse work to medicine, law and accountancy. That's why the former US treasury secretary Larry Summers confessed in 2013 that he used to think "the Luddites were wrong, and the believers in technology and technological progress were right. I'm not so completely certain now." That same year, the economist and Keynes biographer Robert Skidelsky wrote that fears of technological unemployment were not so much wrong as premature: "Sooner or later, we will run out of jobs." Yet Skidelsky, like Keynes, saw this as an opportunity. If the doomsayers are to be finally proven right, then why not the utopians, too...?
The work ethic, [Susskind] says, is a modern religion that purports to be the only source of meaning and purpose. "What do you do for a living?" is for many people the first question they ask when meeting a stranger, and there is no entity more beloved of politicians than the "hard-working family". Yet faced with precarious, unfulfilling jobs and stagnant wages, many are losing faith in the gospel of work. In a 2015 YouGov survey, 37% of UK workers said their jobs made no meaningful contribution. Susskind wonders in the final pages "whether the academics and commentators who write fearfully about a world with less work are just mistakenly projecting the personal enjoyment they take from their jobs on to the experience of everyone else".
That deserves to be more than an afterthought. The challenge of a world without work isn't just economic but political and psychological... [I]s relying on work to provide self-worth and social status an inevitable human truth or the relatively recent product of a puritan work ethic? Keynes regretted that the possibility of an "age of leisure and abundance" was freighted with dread: "For we have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy." The state, Susskind concedes with ambivalence, will need to smooth the transition. Moving beyond the "Age of Labour" will require something like a universal basic income (he prefers a more selective conditional basic income), funded by taxes on capital to share the proceeds of technological prosperity. The available work will also need to be more evenly distributed. After decades of a 40-hour week, the recent Labour manifesto, influenced by Skidelsky, promised 32 hours by 2030. And that's the relatively easy part.
Moving society's centre of gravity away from waged labour will require visionary "leisure policies" on every level, from urban planning to education, and a revolution in thinking. "We will be forced to consider what it really means to live a meaningful life," Susskind writes, implying that this is above his pay grade.
The review concludes that "if AI really does to employment what previous technologies did not, radical change can't be postponed indefinitely.
"It may well be utopia or bust."
Lol easy guess (Score:5, Insightful)
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The one set of jobs that won't be replaced by robotics/AI will be the political class. Not because they can't be replaced, but because they wont allow it to happen to them. I wonder who the One Percent's will be?
Couch potatoes of the world, unite! (Score:4, Interesting)
The one set of jobs that won't be replaced by robotics/AI will be the political class. Not because they can't be replaced, but because they wont allow it to happen to them. I wonder who the One Percent's will be?
Can't decide if that deserves a funny mod or insightful. As insights go, it's rather narrowly targeted.
I actually reached my conclusions on this topic a few years ago. I could restate, but these days I feel like Slashdot is barely worth the link. Short summary is that most work in advanced countries is not essential, where essential basically means food, clothing, and shelter. Yes, the essential work still has to be done, but most of us are involved involved in the categories of investment or recreation. Investment stuff is speculation on the future, though it can be assessed by the growth rate, but we should figure out ways to keep the recreation people involved, too. That's both on the production side and the consumption sides of recreation.
http://eco-epistemology.blogsp... [blogspot.com]
Therefore I conclude that Yang is looking in the right direction and seeing the real problems. I'm not fully satisfied with his proposed solutions, but at least he's trying to address the actual issues we need to deal with. In particular, I think the VAT proposals should involve 3 tax levels. Lowest for essential stuff, highest for recreation stuff, and an intermediate rate for investment spending. The metric of success is growth at a reasonable level, and one natural approach would be to tweak the last two tax rates as needed.
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Sorry. Capitalism is like the lottery. Anyone can win.
But not everyone.
Re:Lol easy guess (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask me, the bum collecting littered cans and bottles in the park contributes more to society than Mark Zuckerberg could even if he croaked right now.
The value of a person to society is hardly expressed by what price tag we attach to them.
Reminds me of (Score:3)
E.M. Foster's The Machine Stops
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Kurt Vonnegut - Player Piano
Most people can't self direct. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Most people can't self direct. (Score:5, Funny)
And thus the Re-Captcha was born.
You have a source for that? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's plenty to do in a post work society. Read, watch TV, play video games, screw, do art, etc, etc.
The phrase "Idle Hands Are The Devil's Playthings" is part of the religion the author is talking about. It's a lie thought up by the ruling class to excuse long work hours for low pay.
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Also, Funny how that's not a problem for the 1%.
It is a problem for the 1%. Trust fund babies who never learned to manage wealth and then spend it in the high-roller suites in Vegas. etc. You don't hear about it because nobody has sympathy for them.
You hear about it all the time (Score:5, Informative)
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They're just fine (Score:5, Informative)
Being a member of the ruling class is a total package.
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He just told you: the devil.
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If you leave them to their own devices, they're gonna cause trouble. Some kind of online busywork will probably be necessary to hold civilization together.
You mean like watching movies and shopping?
http://eco-epistemology.blogsp... [blogspot.com]
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Bread and circuses
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I think your [mcswell's] comment is a diversion from an era when most people had no leisure for circuses because they were too busy seeking bread, unless they were slaves or serfs and busy producing bread for other people. Times have changed.
My underlying point, which is directed towards AmazingRuss, is that many people do not want to self direct even if they could. Most estimates I've read say that about a third actually prefer to follow directions without thinking too much. I don't see anything morally wr
We will need universal basic income (Score:2, Insightful)
We will also need to contemplate what our purpose as humans is, when it no longer is to have a job in the productive economy.
We will need to replace the conventional work ethic, and lear
DAT RAYCISS!!!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
Where's the JIDF to down-mod a n!gga when you need them?
Re:We will need universal basic income (Score:5, Interesting)
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Star Trek lets replicators and near zero cost energy carry non-workers, and do so in resplendant finery. Everyone can choose for dinner the best fillet mignon with cream sauce ever made, or thr most cotton candy-like prime rib.
We are no where near that. Indeed unemployment is at record lows, even as people have complained about the automation problem for decades.
Re:We will need universal basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We will need universal basic income (Score:5, Interesting)
Unemployment is at record lows for two reasons: First, we create hole digging jobs along with hole filling jobs. And second, we pay salaries that nobody can exist on but allow us to declare these people essentially living on food stamps as "working". That's basically it.
We have already reached the point where we have useless jobs that we can only finance because we underpay the people doing them. And we also won't automate them because first, they don't exactly need to be done and second, robots would cost more than people.
Other way around (Score:3)
Right now it seems like we value work for work's own sake
I think it is the other way around. We value work now because we have to work in order to afford a roof over our heads and food in our stomachs. In the future, it is very likely that automation will be able to provide the necessities of life for us for very little effort. At that point, if Star Trek is right, we will stop measuring worth by the size of our bank accounts and instead measure it by how much each of us does to enrich society i.e. we will work simply because that work enriches both ours and oth
Re:Other way around (Score:5, Insightful)
I think what people tend to forget is that work for work's sake is not a thing of the future. It's here now.
Free software is already operating under that model. And we see the idea infecting other information-based industries, such as royalty free music, open-source hardware, open access scientific journals and sites such as Wikipedia. That's because we do have a Star Trek-style replicator for information called the internet, and the "do it for the sense of accomplishment and purpose" is a strong motivator for a lot of people.
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I think the benefit of a universal basic income is that it will allow people to continue having jobs in a productive economy while allowing others to take risks and pursue hobbies that may or may not turn out to be profitable.
But two things need to accompany a UBI for this to work: free healthcare and free education. Work is a purpose that is imposed on us by our social structure. Unshackle the worker from the necessity of work and he will find his own purpose (which will often be work of his own choosing).
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I think the benefit of a universal basic income is that it will allow people to continue having jobs in a productive economy while allowing others to take risks and pursue hobbies that may or may not turn out to be profitable.
UBI will allow people to live without having a job. This will not promote them into a productive role in society. Instead it will push them into a state of apathy. Why work when I can go fishing or play video games.
Healthcare, Education etc... are services. As such, they can never be truly free. They must be paid for by either those who are receiving the services or by the tax payers who are productive in society. As more technology replaces jobs, the more people will require UBI. At some point there
Re:We will need universal basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
because the only alternative is a vast underclass subsisting on the edges in a black market economy.
People who rely solely on UBI will probably always be an underclass. I don't think there's a way around that.
Re:We will need universal basic income (Score:5, Insightful)
Would you rather an underclass existing in near-poverty and wasting their lives watching TV for lack of anything better to do, or an underclass existing in abject poverty forced to turn to crime to survive?
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Most people don't care for class or "being rich". They actually just want to live. They're happy if they can just waste their life away lying in their living room, vegging away in front of the TV. There isn't much you can do with these people. Their motivation is survival. As long as they can get that, they're happy.
And frankly, I'd prefer to keep them happy and on the couch rather than having them find an alternative way to money that involves my life ending earlier.
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...the only alternative is a vast underclass subsisting on the edges in a black market economy...
There's an old reply to this, now repackaged and popping up in some of the places I visit:
Global Warming, Terrorism, Immigrants At The Border, Technology and Dismal Economic Cycles Bringing Inevitable Joblessness, Poverty, The Rise In Crime, and The Welfare State, all of which are a result of one thing: Overpopulation. And there is only one solution.
Not that I'm into such things. Just sayin'
---
"Technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration of freedom." - Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto
There is a point of diminishing returns (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporate America is dependent on a steady flow of cash trickling up from the murky depths.
Should they displace a significant number of these monetary resources they will screw themselves right out of business.
Then what will they do? They won't be able to go to the government for "relief" as the government will also loose it's source of revenue.
Unfortunately there's another scenario (Score:5, Interesting)
The small percent that still have viable income, or that own and profit from the automated economy, just sell to each other. After all, while there are fewer and fewer of them, they are getting richer and richer and can be charged more and more for luxury goods and services.
Just look around the world at the number of "sh*thole countries" (not my term) that have 10 % of the population enjoying an upper-class first world lifestyle in the midst of 90% of the population in slums.
In those countries, what maintains "stability" is ruthless security forces. Those places are also the sources of terrorism though, of course.
Maybe the automation just means more of our countries descend to this state of affairs.
"The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson
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In those countries, what maintains "stability" is ruthless security forces.
We are already working on automating that function [slashdot.org]. In the meantime, we are making 'stability' easier to impose [thehill.com]
Did the King need peasants to buy his products? (Score:4)
Worse, in the past you knew who's heads to cut off. They figured that out, and keep their heads down and live far and away from you with private armies between them and you. A violent revolution won't work. Best case scenario you get a change of Masters, like China did.
The time to stop this is now. Now's the time to decide from a 1000 years of dark ages or a Star Trek style utopia. The key thing is that we need to elevate humanity so that everybody, even people you don't like, is owed a good life simply by being human. The Intrinsic Value of Humanity is the only bedrock you can rest a just civilization on.
Re:There is a point of diminishing returns (Score:5, Funny)
Then what will they do? They won't be able to go to the government for "relief" as the government will also loose it's source of revenue.
Perhaps they can go into proofreading ... but I'm just playing fast and loose with an idea there ...
No work means nothing to offer (Score:2, Interesting)
Why do so many long for a world in which you provide nothing for your fellow man and accomplish nothing for anyone, not even for yourself?
At least go for less work or better work instead of none. Being completely useless to everyone isn't something to aspire to, nor is it a kindness to offer that status to someone who would otherwise help others.
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I don't think that's necessarily the case. We're talking about a situation where we aren't tethered to work for survival. While there a lot of people who would just spend their time watching TV or playing video games, I think it would also allow a lot of creative people to flourish and dedicate their time to meaningful hobbies. A lot of those hobbies could then turn into profitable ventures.
They key to a universal basic income being successful is that the market economy still exists. People who want more, w
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While this can't happen to absolutely every human-to-human role, and will happen to a vast majority of such roles.
Would it even be satisfying to reject the technology like the luddites, and keep doing things more directly for each other, if we know that some other way could be doing it
Re:No work means nothing to offer (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do so many long for a world in which you provide nothing for your fellow man and accomplish nothing for anyone, not even for yourself?
I think you have that backwards, I do lots of things I find meaningful and fun I just don't get paid for them - that's basically all my hobbies, interests and personal life. Slaving away for a paycheck is a necessary evil and distraction from what I want in life, if I won the lottery then I'd quit - no offense to my workplace or coworkers, they're nice and all but I wouldn't be there if I didn't need the money. Now UBI isn't winning the lottery, I'd still need to work to get money for more than the basics. But I could take an extended hiatus without worrying that my income would drop to nothing and stay there. I'd have enough to put a roof over my head, clothes on my back and food on the table no matter what.
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I think you have that backwards, I do lots of things I find meaningful and fun I just don't get paid for them - that's basically all my hobbies, interests and personal life. Slaving away for a paycheck is a necessary evil and distraction from what I want in life, if I won the lottery then I'd quit - no offense to my workplace or coworkers, they're nice and all but I wouldn't be there if I didn't need the money.
That’s an argument for less work or better work, not for none. A lot of rich people who don't need to work still do. Helping others and building something offers them something they value more than additional self indulgence.
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Thatâ(TM)s an argument for less work or better work, not for none. A lot of rich people who don't need to work still do. Helping others and building something offers them something they value more than additional self indulgence.
The argument against UBI is that the moment people got the chance they'd sit down on their bum ass and do nothing the rest of their life. Arguments that people would still do productive things for other reasons like helping others and the joy of building is in UBI's favor. Is your point that not enough would do that? Because otherwise you're describing UBI as intended, many still work because they choose to and to get non-basic amenities but nobody needs to.
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The argument against UBI is that it costs far, far, far too much for anyone to realistically implement and it's grossly unfair to the people paying for it.
Plenty of stories of idle rich people who don't work dying of drug overdoses too.
Re: No work means nothing to offer (Score:2)
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A lot of people see work as not beneficial to society, not useful to other people.
If people don't find your work beneficial then why are they paying for it? Obviously someone values it. I’d suggest not listening to negative voices, being realistic, and looking at the big picture. Or find another job. We have 3.5% unemployment in the US, so now is a good time.
Re: No work means nothing to offer (Score:2)
I don't live in the US. Also my job is ok. As a programmer you do get to see your work do something for the end user, usually positive. I wouldn't say it's a great social benefit, but not zero or negative.
However, I agree that for many in dull office jobs that want to move, now is a good a time as any to find something
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There are many jobs that pay but have no, or even negative, social benefits. And I'm sure that can wear some people down, it would me.
I disagree with "many". That’s why I suggested to stop listening to negative people and try to see the big picture. If you listen to negative people, then yeah, things are bad. If you don't, then suddenly things are okay.
There's no "social benefits" heaven for devout believers in "social benefits" to aspire to. So why engage in negative judging, especially when it makes you feel bad about your job? Seems self-destructive and of no practical value to anyone.
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Gospel of work? It's in the O.T., dude (Score:2)
The value of work is not in the Gospels -- it is in the Old Testament "wisdom literature" said to have versions throughout the Ancient Near East.
An example is Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth) as popularized by Pete Seeger's song made famous by The Byrds.
From https://www.thefreelibrary.com... [thefreelibrary.com]
"One conspicuous recurring "shift" in the book concerns the value of human toil and work. So, for example, 1:2-2:23 catalogues the "meaninglessness" of varied expressions of human activity, including human labor. This lame
Nah - there's another option. (Score:5, Interesting)
Pointless wheel turning to pretend like work is some virtue of itself that mankind would be lost without.
As if no other thing in reality had value - and that performing useless tasks for tokens was the be-all and end-all of the social contract.
As if the things we cared about as people held no importance compared to manufacturing a metaphorical endless hell for ourselves to live in instead, because that's the only 'practical' virtue to hold.
Because it would be too dangerous to seek any other kind of value, right?
Seriously though - today's obsession with being rich is a lot like people in the earlier part of the previous millennium about being royalty. They took over countries so that they might be recognized as new royalty, built trade empires to buy into it, or just made up their own little aristocracies - because that was the magical obsession with endless social stories behind it.
Today - the equivalent of that is the goal of being a rich bastard.
Folks are so obsessed with being a rich bastard, that they'll crush every other ideal they see, because it doesn't faithfully promote their rich bastard obsession sufficiently.
But that obsession won't last forever. We're better off than actual royalty in practical terms, making being royalty more empty formality than universal benefit - which is what killed off that obsession.
Being rich is the same kind of thing - at some point, there just won't be any worthwhile universal benefit to it that can't be cobbled together by normal folks. The obsession is already mostly empty, and is partially gone in a lot of modern cultures.
Once that obsession falls apart as taking "the only important motivation" slot in your society, you can get things like universal healthcare, post-scarcity economics - all the basic Aasimov/Star Trek cultural stuff.
But for now, we've literally got the likes of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in world leadership positions - we're still basically worshiping the illusion of wealth as the only practical approach to power.
That won't be forever though - unless all we really do want is that treadmill hell as our only important ideal.
Ryan Fenton
Serfs no long required? (Score:2)
The wealthy will be disappointed when the masses are no longer required to facilitate all their wealthy desires; technology will replace that necessity. So why have peasants anymore? They are not worth the risk and have little benefit to keep around. Greed and envy will still be some motivation to war between the wealthy elite but it's not really strong enough for the effort (except a few perhaps.)
POWER is the addiction most of them form and for that they NEED serfs under their boot and desire them to lick
Andrew Yang wrote a similar book in 2018! (Score:2, Interesting)
And Andrew Yang is the most intelligent of all the presidential candidates, BTW:
Yang the Conqueror - - 573 B.C.E. [We'll skip this dude, too savage!]
_____________________________________________________________
Olive Yang - - notorious female warlord of Southeast Asia, circa 1950s and 1960s.
_____________________________________________________________
Wesley
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That's a fine set of Yangs you have there.
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Yes, but I'm wondering whether he has any Ying.
There will always be work (Score:4, Insightful)
Until every school has an adequate supply of teachers, every road and bridge is fully maintained, every last piece of trash is picked up, every building properly maintained, every single power plant converted to renewable energy, etc., then there is still work which requires human labor.
The crux of the issue is that the jobs which are being automated away are generally more pleasant than the jobs which remain. Delivering boxes for Amazon isn't as physically demanding as say, paving roads all day in the blazing hot sun.
A post-work society (Which Star Trek wasn't*, despite what some people mistakenly believe) can only function fairly when nobody is required to work. In all likelihood, we'll never develop automation which can replace every job. The moral question is then raised, should able-bodied people be a burden upon those who do have jobs?
* The society depicted in Star Trek still relied significantly on human labor for government, defense, construction, medical, etc.
Star Trek (Score:2)
PURPOSE = WORK is a religion that continued into Star Trek.
People wanted to work; they clearly had the tech to no have to do anything and there were multiple plot lines where an advanced society went retro to be more happy. It's not like they couldn't have thought up replacements for nearly everything; hell, even the ship's subservient computer could instantly generate highly capable solutions to things... given some episodes, you'd think they'd just ask the computer to solve each problem or create a simula
Re:There will always be work (Score:5, Insightful)
can only function fairly when nobody is required to work
This is ridiculous. As long as there are enough incentives for enough people to take those jobs, then people will work. It's completely fair to have a society where person A doesn't work but has all of his basic needs taken care of while person B works and has access to luxuries that person A does not. Nobody would be compelled to work, but the work requirements would be fairly met.
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while person B works and has access to luxuries that person A does not
One of the loudest cries of the left wing is against inequality. A society where B has access to more than A does is intolerable. Also known as the bucket of crabs [wikipedia.org] mentality.
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One of the loudest cries of the left wing is against inequality. A society where B has access to more than A does is intolerable. Also known as the bucket of crabs [wikipedia.org] mentality.
You seem to assume that "left wing" means a communist destruction of the market.
I'm not describing a situation where B has access to more than A does. I'm describing a situation where B chooses to do work to obtain more things and A does not. The problem with our current system is that not everyone has access to the same opportunities. Free health care, free education, universal basic income, a high inheritance tax on large estates, and a progressive tax that limits wealth—those types of things can cr
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Demands for "equality" don't even work that way now. What makes you think that's how it will be implemented?
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We're dealing with a lot of hypotheticals so I don't want to completely discount your argument, but I do think there's a weakness. First of all, plumbing is easy. Going by your supply and demand argument, if you get a universal basic income that you can live comfortably off of, but you can fix some pipes every once and a while to afford something really nice, then you'll probably do some plumbing. The point of the universal basic income is that everyone gets it. Perhaps you make a cutoff at millionaires or
Not without work! Without FORCED work! (Score:2)
Nor without wealth. But with automation creating it. And hopefully, without leeches stealing it from us and calling themselves "emplyoers".
You may be free to use your brain for something actually worthwhile, fun, challenging and world-improving, even if it is just your world.
(I find making machines that fix those machines fun. And machines that do that for themselves. That's what I'll do at first.)
It is only portraied as a nightmare scenario in the media, because for the *leeches*, it is.
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California would argue that if you don't want to, you don't have to work right now. They won't even make people clean up their own literal shit. Expect much, much more of that if there is no work whatsoever.
Now they shit on the sidewalk because they know someone
Unlink employment from health insurance in the usa (Score:2)
Unlink employment from health insurance in the usa or may just people useing an fake ID at the ER for there health needs.
The ER is pretty useless for most things (Score:2)
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under the trump plan pre ex will come back.
better workers rights / stopping 1099 abuse start (Score:3)
better workers rights / stopping 1099 abuse starting points.
Maybe some kind of extreme OT cap even for salary workers.
War (Score:2)
Continuous War (or in the case of the United States which has had this for the last hundred years, Police Actions) is the solution. As more and more "jobs" get automated the supply of cannon fodder increases and the best disposal method for cannon fodder is a jolly good bang up old fashioned War ... It is also relatively cheap compared to other available compensatory systems. The transition from "remote controlled" cannon fodder (ie, drones) to living cannon fodder will occur when the use of living canno
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not seeing that, soldiers are expensive and fragile, kill bots are becoming cheap. they'll be able to fight 24 x 7
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Soldiers have gotten more expensive over time. War is harder now - more sophisticated combined-arms tactics, more elaborate equipment, all leading to higher training and equipping costs. You can't just send someone on a three-month boot camp, stick a rifle in their hands and ship them to the front line any more.
Involuntary (Score:2)
I'm not sure what form this will take, but I am not sure a UBI is even constitutional in the US. Current wealth transfer programs are all you pay in (social security) or disability or temporary (unemployment and welfare).
This is flat out forcing those who choose to work to pay for those who choose not to. Yet neither slavory not involuntary servitude shall exist in the United States except where the person shall have been duly convicted of a crime.
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Speling
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What is work? (Score:4)
The real difference between work and leisure is just whether you have to do it, or whether you do it by choice. Some people are paid to play sports as a job. Some people are paid to play music as a job. Anything you do for fun, chances are someone out there is getting paid to do the same thing as a job. Also, chances are the people doing it for fun enjoy it more and get more fulfillment out of it than the people doing it as a job.
I don't worry about how we'll find meaning in a post-work world. We'll keep doing the same things we were already doing, but only the ones we like, and only as much of them as we like.
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The problem is that even the things that we like doing will ultimately be useless because the machines will be better at those too. What's the point of creating art, poetry, open source software etc. if no one will ever use it because they know human made means crap? What if everything humans are good at, even the stuff we do for socializing with other humans, can be replaced?
Only complete hedonists might survive in such a world.
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You could say the same thing today. What's the point of me creating art when I know professionals can do it so much better? But I love doing it anyway. Why should I grow a garden when I can buy whatever vegetables I want at the grocery? Why should I play sports when I know even good amateurs are much better than me? The things we find most fulfilling are rarely things we need to do. The act of doing them is what matters, not whether they produce some economically valuable product.
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One of the main reasons we find those things fulfilling is because they act as a supplement to the things we need to do. If you sit at a desk all day then doing sports or manual labour helps you stay healthy. If you do paperwork all day then playing a game helps distracting you and stimulating other parts of your brain.
But building all your life on amusement? I cannot imagine that. I was unemployed for a year once and I spend most of it doing "fun stuff". I got really really depressed in the end because I f
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Wait until machines can read your mind and implement your vision without you lifting a finger
I think I'm going to be waiting a very long time for that one! By then the problem will have gone away. The computer will read my mind and give me a schedule of activities perfectly selected to optimize my happiness. It'll be great.
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I want to get paid to read and post on /.. :P
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I would qualify as someone doing for his job what he'd also do for fun. I am a security researcher. And I enjoy hunting down security holes in computer systems, digging through technology to sniff out flaws, dismantle hardware to find weaknesses in its design. That's fun. That's exciting. And it's my job.
And I would quit tomorrow if I didn't have to pay bills.
Because my job, like every job, even jobs that align with your interests, include things I do NOT want to do. I do NOT enjoy writing reports. I do NOT
Social media (Score:2)
A world truly without work... (Score:2)
This AI, by the way, will have been kicked off and directed by that guy you used to (or do) work with whom you detest because he has no control over his insults, dubious behaviors and inability to see other people as something more than a cog and believes that it would be of benefit to eliminate some subset of humanity he deems lower in self-appointed status than
Crap jobs (Score:2)
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I think the only way you could make it work is to give people that choose the crap jobs certain incentives, maybe your bumped up the list for more larger/luxurious housing or living in a more sought after location, or maybe you make dirty jobs mandatory for all young people for 2-4 years after graduation with options to sign on for more years like a conscription in the military (the "janitor force"), turning it into a draft would be a bad idea, it needs to be all or none to keep it fair.
As long as dirty job
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There's another factor to. Those jobs are not attractive, so they pay decent. Now eliminate a heap of automatable jobs. All those unemployed, desperate workers will compete for those crap jobs, even if it means retraining - which will drive wages down.
Plenty of meaning without work. (Score:2)
My retirement plan that will go into effect in 20 years from now involves me traning 90 minutes a day at least,so that I may be fit and healthy in a society that has a geezer ratio of two to one. Other than that I live a minimalist lifestyle which means I have more free textbooks on my cheap ass tablet than I could possibly study and can play XBOX until I get hazy in the brain. Xbox being the ultra 200 euro budget version of a ultra high end gaming pc from 7 years ago which means my comrades still dropping
An award-winning economist... (Score:2)
... whoe doesn't even know where prosperity comes from? From the publisher: "[T]he demand for the work of humans is likely to wither away. Yet Susskind reminds us that this technological progress will solve one of mankind's oldest problems - how to make the economic pie large enough for everyone to live on." In fact, and this has already been happening in large parts of the first world already for three or four decades and is the reason for so many governments struggling more and more to fund their countrie
Retirement (Score:2)
This topic is one I worry about...for my children. Me, I hope to retire in a year or so, in which case any work I do will be because I want to do it, not because I have to (and I'll be my own boss). But in my case, as a Christian, I have other things to rely on besides my work to give me meaning and purpose; I assume other people who follow a religion may feel that way as well.
There is another side of this coin: we've seen parts of the country where work has to some extent disappeared--I'm thinking about
How to fairly distribute purchasing power? (Score:3)
Who decides how to distribute purchasing power?
* Historically, the feudal lords took from their peasants under, essentially, the threat of force.
* For a while, in Britain and the US at least, the value you created for society determined the amount of purchasing power - currency - you received.
* Today, that still exists, but then a significant amount of money comes from milking the government and/or central bank teat.
The phenomenon we're seeing is the "consolidation of the production of value". It happened with the industrial revolution, when one farmer with a tractor could create 10 bushels of wheat instead of one. The marginal farmers were forced into something different while the successful ones became larger. Today, instead of 100 people required to operate a department store, it only requires 10, due to technology. As this phenomenon continues, what happens to surplus workers?
The organizations holding the service-providing machinery will naturally accrue a lot of currency, as they will provide the services that everyone still wants. They are the capital owners. Government will collect taxes from them, which they will distribute to those who service the government. Deficits can be made up by printing money until some unknown-as-yet limit is reached.
Purchasing power will be distributed by those who excel at supplicating/intimidating politicians. The scarcity of money will still need to be maintained. So I'm guessing some sort of combination capitalist-socialist model. Government contractors will get bigger and bigger. Financial sector companies (which receive currency directly from central banks) will get bigger and bigger. Their power will rival that of politicians.
This is I think is the unforeseen piece - hugely powerful companies rivaling the GDP of countries and their ability to influence politicians. Eisenhower talked about one of those sectors - the military industrial complex. Today however, healthcare + pharma is a huge sector; the FIRE sector is a huge sector. Seeing how they contribute can be found here. [opensecrets.org] The system we are morphing into will only amplify that power.
The economy is a competition for resources. I want to charge the most I can for my goods and services and the customer wants to pay the least he can. In a post-work world, access to currency will still be restricted. People will still want to obtain as much as possible.
I'm guessing something like social security, well before retirement age, will be used. People will still need currency - a mutually valued, divisible "thing". Everyone has a need for food, clothes, shelter, and stimulation (mental and/or physical) or some sort. With machinery doing much of the menial work, unless you excel at providing goods and services to the government or the central bank or a company which services those entities, you can expect to survive, probably comfortably - the power structure doesn't want populism - but will not be able to accrue excess purchasing power.
Post-scarcity society (Score:3)
I like to contemplate the post-scarcity society that Ian Banks wrote about with his Culture books.
All your basics were provided; a roof over your head (nothing fancy), nutritious food, basic clothing, free medical care. The impression I got from the books was not that you were given a UBI, but rather that, if you needed an apartment, one would be found for you. You wouldn't have much choice, but it would be clean and functional.
What activities are you motivated to engage in in a society like that? Would everyone just become couch potatoes? The gist I got was that you engage in a job/occupation/profession because the alternative is mindless boredom. In other words, it's not money you seek but the potential opportunities of new experiences, new ideas, new people. Mental/emotional stimulation. Some people just like the satisfaction of a job well done. Or the boost of feeling needed.
Which is kinda like the question of: what are you going to do when you retire? What do you do when you don't *have* to do anything? And why?
You ultimately have to sit down and have a good talk with yourself to lay bear what you *really* want.
No, we won't live in a 'world without work' (Score:2)
Therr will always be work (Score:2)
People will just need to learn to code.
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