When your labor force makes gains in productivity you can choose to do one of two things: 1. Reduce working hours 2. Grow the economy Guess which option was last picked in 1868 and never again despite massive gains in productivity?
Are we really so sure that reducing working hours can't, itself, lead to improved economic health? Such as by increasing distribution of income flows, and increasing time available for economic consumption? One of the greatest tricks of the modern era in the US has been to convince everyone that making the slice of pie bigger for the richest people is necessary to grow the economy.
My dad was a stock broker in the late 1970s and remembers when most of trading was 100% manual and firms actually had "runners" who would take stock certificates back and forth between trading firms. He has this great quote about when computers came out: "We were told 'computers will save you so much time on work tasks that you won't even know what to do with your free time'. I spent the next 30 years working the sam…
Human had all the industrialization and stuff, yet we work 5 days / week now.
People waited around a lot before, and since the baseline speed for everything was slower, no one had an edge. Now everything is fast and instantaneous and that’s available to everyone. It’s part of the reason why our lives are so stressful now. I remember my parents working and their work had significantly less stress on a day-to-day basis. Everything was at a nice relaxed human pace. They would be responsible for one excel sheet’s worth of work per week, which we can now do in an hour or two.
People work 5 days a week because of protracted violent strikes by unions and socialist revolutionaries forcing governments to recognize labor rights. Prior to that the norm was working 7 days a week, sunup to sundown, with only Christmas off, from adolescence until you died.
You're right. We need to bring back protracted violent strikes by unions and socialists!
You know the ones bringing most of the violence were the state and private goons hired by capitalists, right?
This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
Computers and the Internet ushered in huge productivity gains. Despite many people losing their jobs as a result, it's tough to argue society isn't better off. I think that's the key difference with AI, though. It's not like I'm losing my job, but at least I have a robot at home that cleans the house and does my laundry. People are having their livelihoods threatened while their utility bills go up because of datacen…
I think it's impossible to argue we are better off. This comment is so detached from reality it's almost offensive. Education is unaffordable, health care is unaffordable, homes are unaffordable, the rich have gotten massively richer, the middle class has been gutted, suicides are up, birth rates are down... I could go on and on. It's gotten better for the 1% but the rest of us are being boiled like frogs. To the point where we've (you've) literally forgotten we used to be able to raise a family on a single income. But I guess we have video games and door dash, so sure, we're better off.
Different countries are going to distribute the benefits of automation in different ways. Northern European states will pursue shortened work weeks and lavish social services. China will reinvest the productivity gains into its industrial capacity. The United States will have five trillionaires.
This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off. As experienced by companies, the market is more competitive than ever. Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The only way to get this outcome is to coordinate at a level higher than individual market participants.
In other words, get your government to implement UBI - tax all companies (or if AI really takes off, just compute) and redistribute to the people.
This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…
The reality is that most people are paid for their time, not for their output. I think most contracts for salaried employees are along the lines of "work n hours a week". If you want to get paid for output, you can't be a salaried employee.
When you work for a startup, or a zero-to-one project, it's hard to say you're even paid for your output. You're paid for probabilistic/expected future value output.
Computers and the Internet ushered in huge productivity gains. Despite many people losing their jobs as a result, it's tough to argue society isn't better off. I think that's the key difference with AI, though. It's not like I'm losing my job, but at least I have a robot at home that cleans the house and does my laundry. People are having their livelihoods threatened while their utility bills go up because of datacen…
Is society better off? Honest question, you used to be able to support a family of four with a single 9-5.
My great grandfather supported a family of 7 making brooms. He didn’t own the broom factory. He was an employee, and was paid by the broom. My great grandmother stayed at home to raise 5 children. There was even enough to lend to the local grocery store, apparently. This was at the turn of the 20th century in Canada.
Is society better off? Honest question, you used to be able to support a family of four with a single 9-5.
More household work was done in this era, before grocery stores sold prepared food, before washing machines. And more people lived in less square footage, with grandparents living in the home, less privacy and autonomy. I don't know if we've made the right trade, but it's not the case that a single worker's income was paying for the kind of lifestyle a family of four now has.
How is this relevant? The houses built in the 60s aren't affordable either. Look at median income and median home prices. You're telling on yourself. Average families aren't buying prepared food and they have a washing machine from the 90s they bought on craigslist. There's a 90% chance if you are on this site, you are not average. You are a part of the haves and you need to consider that you are living a very different life from the average American, which all this productivity should be helping but fucking clearly isn't.