Earlier quoted context omitted.
This depends a lot on what country you live in and whether or not you have children.
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…
The radical idea of a world without jobs
231–240 of 260 posts
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 c…
You are correct that I do not need a car, but you are wrong to assume it is trivial to lose 2+ hours of free time each day as just another luxury.
Frankly, your position on needs vs wants seems like a convenient excuse to look down on other people who have different concepts of value.
There is very little, in the western world, that we NEED to survive. You do not need electricity, for example, but no reasonable person would call it a luxury -- point being it is more subjective than you imply. Would also help your argument if you realize your perspective is extremely privileged.
Some people have kids who did not want them, and yes it was a mistake but not as much a decision as something that happened -- they may not have the monetary, intellectual or moral foundation to handle an unwanted pregnancy. So this woman, maybe a single mother, now has a child and is struggling to pay her bills, a paycheck (or car repair, or medical expense) from being evicted.
Your speech would not be relevant to a person in such a situation and there are many many many such people.
People who eat out 5-10 times a week don't get to complain about being broke, but how is that a new insight? To me it trivializes the real struggles of the working poor.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#233UBI is really only a stopgap to preserve the scaffolding of the existing system (and its inequality). What we really need is Fully Automated Luxury Communism.
> What we really need is Fully Automated Luxury Communism. This Time It's Different, honest.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#234There 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: your second point, homesteading or farming on the individual level makes no sense, that is why farming is specialized and scaled up. Why would this no longer bte the case?
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're contemplating leaving this world, that would be considered a crisis in most places. Look up crisis hotlines in your area and please get help...
I'm as confident that the person you are responding to is aware of this service as I am that it will not help them.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Because if this people gave away this money, the effect on the very poor might be noticeable for some months but not sustainable. In no time they would be very poor again and the ones that gave the money away would be unable to give more. Paul Graham has an essay about this error, how people thinks that there's a fixed amount of money. Once you understand that wealth is created and how, you can't talk like that with…
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/we...
> a $150 cash grant to poor women in the northern part of [Uganda] doubled their earnings within a year, while one-off $382 transfers to 16- to 35-year-olds were associated with 40-percent higher earnings four years later.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What we really need is Fully Automated Luxury Communism. This Time It's Different, honest.
Every time it is different. How does this post contribute at all? Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing advances of technology? It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion to post a pithy "lol communism suxx" response.
Now the claim seems to be that it will work if only the people own the automated factories. That's close enough to the same claim for "this time it's different" to be a valid description of the claim.
> Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing advances of technology?
Agriculture was a huge, game-changing advance of technology. So was industrialization. We've seen them before. So claiming that this huge advance will make work obsolete requires a bit more than "but look, there's a huge advance!"
> It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion...
I've seen lots of discussion, but not much information. Rhetoric, but not information.
I mean, yes, factories are becoming more automated. That's true. It's not leading to a world where nobody needs to work, though. (Current US unemployment is below 4%. That's not looking like evidence for a world where nobody needs to work.)
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every time it is different. How does this post contribute at all? Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing advances of technology? It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion to post a pithy "lol communism suxx" response.
The original communist claim was, essentially, that we could build paradise if only the workers/people owned the tools. That... didn't work out. Now the claim seems to be that it will work if only the people own the automated factories. That's close enough to the same claim for "this time it's different" to be a valid description of the claim. > Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changi…
What does this even mean? It's a very specific metric, not sure it is backing up your argument in the way you think. There are a lot of discouraged or under employed workers who would disagree that things are not changing in a fundamental way.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#239Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm as confident that the person you are responding to is aware of this service as I am that it will not help them.
I don't know how you can possibly know that. They're there for a reason. This is that reason.
Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs
#240In 1845, Karl Marx wrote that in a communist society workers would be freed from the monotony of a single draining job to “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner” Starve in the morning, starve in the afternoon, starve in the evening, self-criticise instead of dinner. FTFY.
Even if we do build fully-automated and autonomous means to grow/build/create everything we need, identity in this era is still overwhelmingly rooted in our jobs. I am a Developer, she is a farmer, he is a doctor. If all the jobs go to robots, what are we? Ask any jobless person for whom no job exists how they feel about life.
If I wasn't required to have a job? If I could live a full life without one? I wouldn't mind on bit.