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The radical idea of a world without jobs

theguardian.com

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Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#161

Post by bjourne »

jdietrich wrote: post #142
fergie wrote: post #11

"Work is badly distributed. People have too much, or too little, or both in the same month. And away from our unpredictable, all-consuming workplaces, vital human activities are increasingly neglected. Workers lack the time or energy to raise children attentively, or to look after elderly relations. “The crisis of work is also a crisis of home,” ... This neglect will only get worse as the population grows and ages."…

There's only one problem with that - it's not true. The author cites no sources for his claim and every source I've found contradicts him. The average number of hours actually worked has slightly declined in the US and significantly declined in Europe over the past few decades. In the broader historical arc, there has been a huge increase in leisure; the average working week throughout the 19th century was well in ex…

Though we work more than farmers did 150 years ago:

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

This was especially true in the Northern European countries where snow and lack of daylight would make it virtually impossible to work during the winter.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#162

Post by nickthemagicman »

patmorgan23 wrote: post #143
nickthemagicman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not extrapolating. Thats just the top 8 people...Take the sum of the rest of the the global 1% or even 10% and do your math... OH nm, the math has already been done. 280 trillion in global wealth / 6 billion people = 46k per person And the top 10% has 86% percent of it, and the inequality is just growing exponentially. I'm not advocating that wealth should be equally distributed OR that capitalism is all bad..…

Unregulated capitalism is not what's causing the massive inequality we see today. It's the financial and monetary policies. I'm not saying we shouldn't have regulations but the ones we have are centralizing wealth into the biggest corporations. If you look this modern massive growth of inequality doesn't really start until the 1970's after we whet off the gold standard and theirs an uptick in inequality every time th…

Do you have examples of these 'financial and monetary policies' you're referring to?

What I see is that Wal-Mart makes a ton of money and their employees have to be on food stamps and still work 80 hour weeks while the owners reap all of the profit.

To me this is simply unregulated capitalism which nowdays has become thinly masked slavery.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#163

Post by [deleted] »

TuringTest wrote: post #81

In a world without jobs, there would still be projects. It's a fallacy the idea that people will not create things if they're not compelled by the risk of starving to death. The problem preventing a jobless society is the reverse: what happens to you if your personal projects are not valued by society enough to pay you for them, and therefore you can't sustain yourself from them? Someone without the skills to create…

[deleted]

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#164

Post by NiklasMort »

slfnflctd wrote: post #158
NiklasMort wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have children you can't complain if you have to work more. It is a decision, kids cost money, everybody knows that. Same goes for location to live in, what you eat, if you want a car...my point is : you don't NEED much. Most people could live comfortable with less work, the problem is people WANT too much and that is exacerbated by this throw-away society. What most don't get is: the world owes you nothing, yo…

I agree that a huge amount of the suffering in the world, possibly most of it, can be traced back to bad decisions on the part of someone who should have known better. A lot of this definitely comes down to those 'wants'. Right now I have a household budget problem because someone wanted a new luxury item, it's terrible. All the same, let's not forget there are huge numbers of people in terrible situations they did n…

Yes I agree, there are people with bad luck but I was not talking about those, I meant more in general. I am not saying one should not help, the topic was about work anyway, my point was simply that if people step back with their wants they'd have to work less. I just hear too often someone lament about how he/she has no money but then they have all kinds of luxury items... car, especially if someone lives in a big city, is nothing but a money burning machine and if they say "but I want one" well then they gotta pay for that with their time and nerves at work

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#165

Post by peterwwillis »

There is literally no argument given in this sprawling diatribe for who is going to provide for society.

Unless there is some new slave class that's going to do our work for us, your can't have productive society without someone working.

There are simply too many humans and not enough resources for everyone to homestead or farm, and even then, people have to work for themselves, and it would end up in more work.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#166

Post by sincerely »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #79
adrianN wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaningful work doesn't grow on trees.

Anything can be meaningful. You might not think making sushi for 60 years is meaningful, but a guy named Jiro does. Even if you have to have an "interesting" job, most people aren't but a few years of schooling out. Hell, we're in tech where you're a few years of study and practice from being world class and/or making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah, you've got to work at it, but that's really meaningful work.

Honestly, retail or food services is probably more meaningful than the sort of "bullshit jobs" [1] that people are complaining about here.

[1]:https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#167

Post by andrepd »

ciocan42 wrote: post #130
nickthemagicman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that 8 people in the world have as much wealth as 3.6 BILLION people. That inequality is STAGGERING. Where do you think the problem lies?

I think this view of inequality is misleading. It put emphasis that the top richest should be not rich, or they are not good people. It's a defeating viewpoint that blames other for not having success. When in fact top 10% richest helped much more people along the way than all average combined. And the consequence is being rich. Instead of complaining about inequality (aka making the rich poorer), better to think abo…

> top 10% richest helped much more people along the way than all average combined

That's complete bullshit. That's maybe how you wish things were. But it's not. I'm in the top 10%, and I've done nothing for it other than having been born in a wealthy country to middle-class parents, with my every need attended to by society. Had I been born somewhere else, I certainly would not be successful as I am now. Instead of being a physicist, maybe I would be boxing cheap plastic gadgets in a factory in Asia. I was born into the top rung on the current global economic arrangement, instead of on the bottom.

To put it this way: if hard work led to wealth every woman in Africa would be a millionaire.

In fact the top 10% keep the statu quo as it is because it benefits them. It benefits them that global economy is arranged in such a way that they are in the center, reaping the benefits of it, and keeping the "periphery" down and in their place, feeding them and their high standard of living. This means everything from stacking "democratic" governments with plutocratic cronies, to simply being a middle-class voter interested in maintaining things just as they are.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#168

Post by andrepd »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #116
ojbrien wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the use of this statistic really frustrating, if you're say an average westerner with $10,000 of debt and $2,000 savings - your net wealth is -$8,000. If on the other hand you sift through garbage somewhere in Africa and earn 50c per day your net wealth is ~$0. By this metric the garbage site worker is wealthier than the Westerner fresh from university.

Perhaps the first derivative of net wealth is a better metric?

I think the point is that there are things that aren't captured by looking at wealth alone. Having a college degree, being inserted in a society that ensures peace, safety and well-being, all that has value.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#169

Post by 52-6F-62 »

NoGravitas wrote: post #155
cdoxsey wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that help a poor worker in Bangladesh? In many of these countries people voluntarily choose to work in these factories. They're terrible places to work, but apparently its still better than working in the fields. A more effective strategy might be something like: https://www.ijm.org/who-we-are . They work within these countries to protect workers from the worst human rights abuses. (ie child sex trafficking…

You should read about [Enclosure][1]. Most people, historically, given the choice between traditional subsistence farming, and industrial labor, chose subsistence farming. So governments and property owners took away the option of subsistence farming. This was a 16th-19th century process in Britain, but is an ongoing process in poorer countries now. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

This is pretty well what happened to my family pre-mid-1800's (not sure exactly when). The Highland Clearances resulted in them leaving Ayrshire to work in Broxburn/Uphall near Edinburgh which at the time were essentially towns owned by shale mining companies. They remained there at least 100 years until one member defiantly decided to move to Canada (mid 1900s).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#170

Post by lmm »

throwanem wrote: post #90
nickthemagicman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that 8 people in the world have as much wealth as 3.6 BILLION people. That inequality is STAGGERING. Where do you think the problem lies?

Well, using figures from http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/ , if we take the top eight, sum their fortunes (conveniently expressed in billions), and divide by 3.6, we find that a maximally equitable redistribution would allocate, to each of the lucky recipients, the princely sum of $165.38 US. So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we…

> So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people.

Um, why? Because you're one of the lucky few to whom $165 is not a significant sum of money?

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