691–700 of 823 posts
Maynard Keynes posited a future 15 hour work week in 1930 based on the productivity gains after WW1, nearly 100 years ago now. http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
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> All of those things also resulted in the massive increase in the quality of life for everyone. Yes, everyone has a modern smartphone now. Cool, thanks. But last time I checked, can't pay my rent with a smartphone when I'm out of a job. > Nobody will suggest we ban cars and go back to horse and buggies so cowboys can have jobs. Maybe not that, but have you looked at sustainable farming movements? In farming, there i…
Everything you say is correct but it comes with a massive decrease in quality of life for the average person. Food will be 5x the cost, with less variety. Nobody wants to till the land anymore. Just like people 100 years ago didn't want to be hunters. Are you willing to part with your smartphone and computer? I would bet not.
Yes, no-till farming has demonstrated excellent results
Also, a reference to population trends might be interesting. Nobody is wrong (I've spent my spring preparing fields) but could be close but actual data would be good. Meanwhile farms have been failing at increased rates.
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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 i…
Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. Is this true? There are a lot of low-productivity and zombie companies trudging through year after year.
Some companies are in highly competitive spaces while others have found a quiet, profitable niche.
And companies do have to compete for talent. If you want A-level players on your team, you're going to have to pay them more and/or provide benefits that surpass the competition.
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I am okay with Alzheimer's not being cured if it means we are not bending over backwards to welcome a billionaire overlord class. I don't think Altman or Amodei give a fuck about Alzheimer's unless a cure gives them a reason to obtain more investments. You could say that is the system working, but as a member of said system, it feels pretty shit.
> I am okay with Alzheimer's not being cured if it means we are not bending over backwards to welcome a billionaire overlord class What a cold perspective. Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
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UBI without many other anti-capitalist reforms is just a subsidy paid directly to your landlord.
We don't want anti-capitalist reforms. Perhaps reforms like those we use in Denmark would make sense? We're ranked higher than the U.S. in ease of business. We love capitalism here. But we also have high taxes, universal healthcare, and great social safety nets. It allows us to lean into the great parts of capitalism while also protecting those for whom capitalism isn't working so well. It's a great compromise withou…
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…
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In some European countries, you can actually go on welfare and never work again. It takes some tricks because the state doesn’t like it; and maybe you‘ll want to do some undeclared side jobs for 15h a week and you’ll be comfortable. I don’t know how such people can live with themselves. But apparently, if you’re immune to the second factor, it is possible, nowadays, to work 15h or less, without any wealth, and lead a…
Oh sure, you get free stuff indefinitely if you abuse the system. You sound like that tiktok post about the "infinite free money glitch" that is check fraud.
Another example is privatisation in the UK: scrap all investment, load the company with debt, leave the consumer and govt to sort out the mess.
So the rich do it too, just on a much grander scale.
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> Computers and the Internet ushered in huge productivity gains. “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” — Robert Solow * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa... Connectivity/the Internet gave a bit of a boost during the 1990s, but the numbers pearked around 2004: * https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/…
We wouldn’t expect productivity to keep growing from one innovation. Growth requires new innovations every year. So in the absence of innovations productivity would stop increasing.
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I was looking for facts to disprove your point, but it seems we actually work more than our ancestors. Medieval folks and hunter-gatherers had plenty of time off. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that we started extending our workweek. Here's a nice summary of how the workweek looked like, from the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rf0lb/comme...
> it seems we actually work more than our ancestors. Only if you count the hours worked for the local lord and forget about all other mandatory work like: - growing your own food - cooking/prepping said food (44 hours per week) - maintenance - spinning, weaving and sewing clothes https://acoup.blog/2025/09/05/collections-life-work-death-an... https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-an...
In one instance you keep the value you are creating, in the other it goes to your employer.
Given the choice between the two I would much prefer to work for myself, as a matter of dignity.
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It’s been like that for a while, economic gains went to a small fraction of people, before software developers were among those that were on the winning side, now they’re on the losing side. Think about how much the US economy is growing right now and who really profits from that growth. My guess is that 90 % of the growth goes to 10 % of people, with AI maybe 99 % might go to the 1 %. Or who do you think will gain f…
> And the funny thing is we developers did this to ourselves, by doing free open source work for the greater good, which now feeds AI models that are replacing many of us. Open source is not to blame here. AI companies used the code, in some cases against the license, to train their models. Nobody is actually getting replaced - it's just that layoffs are in vogue now. If there was productivity to gain here, it would…
Could you point to some factual basis for that claim, or is this a feeling disguised as an opinion disguised as a factual statement?