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A nation of slaves

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Re: A nation of slaves

#101

Post by mkr-hn »

NorthGuy1 wrote: post #96
bausson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basic income mean huge changes: For example, salary may still be partially driven by necessary education / experience, but physical, tiresome or stressfull works would requireask for way higher salaries (because you get up at 4AM to collect garbage when you have no other choice, or when you think it really is worth it, and those jobs would still be necessary) The same way, some companies will have huge problems filli…

Have you seen the improvements to garbage collection? A giant mechanical arm grabs a specially designed trash bin and tips it into the open top. The garbage man doesn't even need to get close to the bin. Hell, he barely has to get out of the heated truck (in northern Canada). The abundance of cheap labour just delays the implementation of "leisure-efficient" technology. Here's a video of the truck in action: http://w…

The local trash company (Winder, Georgia) switched to these recently. As much as I like new tech, I wonder about the two guys who used to run off to each side of the road to grab cans. Did they find new jobs?

Re: A nation of slaves

#102

Post by bqe »

angersock wrote: post #95
raldi wrote: post #84

This article is predicated on the idea that, because we're more efficient today than 1930, we should be able to work less and live the same lifestyle. Well, in fact, we can. But you can't ignore those last three words: you have to live the same lifestyle as a typical 1930s person. * No internet. * No TV. * No air conditioning. * No cell phone. * No car. * Bunk beds for your kids. * One bathroom for the whole house. *…

What? That's quite silly. On the internet/TV for example, you are failing to take into account the spread of tech and efficiency. We can have factories produce TVs automatically, and internet infrastructure doesn't require a huge number of people to keep it running--and most of them, I wager, would be happy to keep doing what they're doing, because it's fun . As for fancy restaurants or organic groceries...that's jus…

Internet infrastructure actually does require a somewhat large number of people and it is quite fragile.

I never would have though a fiber cut (which seems to happen almost weekly) would have such a large impact, but it does. I figured BGP would reroute around that and to some extent it does, but there's still a lot of manual route handling.

Re: A nation of slaves

#103

Post by jdimov »

ekianjo wrote: post #94
nostromo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for de…

Your history is just as flawed as your understanding of work, value and progress (in other words, you've been brainwashed). "Hard work" has always been a domain reserved exclusively for the slaves. The "virtue" of hard work is just a shallow manipulation tactic devised by those in power. None of this has changed today. What IS changing, however, is that as knowledge becomes more readily available, fewer and fewer people are willing to buy into this crap. And that's good. Now, you may begin to worry about who is going to do all the work that slaves are doing today so you may continue to live comfortably. The correct answer, of course, is: machines.

(And btw., no, we're not where we are because of your grandparents' hard work. If your grandparents had anything to do with humanity's progress, it was ONLY through insight, not through hard work.)

Re: A nation of slaves

#104

Post by mwcampbell »

ekianjo wrote: post #94
nostromo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for de…

I think you misunderstood the GP. In the cases you described, hard work is clearly valuable. The problem is that there's a lot of emphasis on hard work for its own sake, not hard work as a means to producing something valuable.

Re: A nation of slaves

#105

Post by epaladin »

Ygg2 wrote: post #23
tomp wrote: post #16

> Why should we not divert some of our growth into growing our leisure time, rather than growing our physical wealth? Because not everyone was created equal. Some professions are completely worthless (e.g. ad creators) and add nothing net to the society. Others, e.g. doctors, are so valuable, and so few people can do them, that they simply can't afford to work less (educating more doctors so that they can work fewer…

We're on a road to that. I've read about robot surgeons. Very few mistakes, perfectly clean. Problem is what do we do with spare doctors? Research?

Right now surgery robots like the Da Vinci aren't automated. They have to be controlled by someone at the moment.

Re: A nation of slaves

#106

Post by bluntly_said »

fidotron wrote: post #38

This looks like a lot of words to disguise the fact it's neo-luddism. With technological progress worker roles are eliminated, but the idea is that the market has demand for new currently non-existent things and as the progress enables those things to come into existence creating new jobs as it goes. The much larger problem is people are genuinely getting conditioned to receiving a lot for nothing, and this has disto…

I see the Neo-luddism argument thrown out a lot when discussions pop up around basic income.

It's bullshit. Basic Income does not in any way support or suggest opposition to technology. In general, technology has made life better for everyone. It's not an issue that basic income is trying to solve.

The problem is that technology within a capitalist system allows automation to concentrate wealth. It's very easy for the owner of the machines to become increasingly wealthy, and very hard for anyone else to get a foot in the door.

The answer to this problem is not to get rid of the machines. This is not neo-luddism. The answer is to change social policy to spread the benefit of the automation to a wider group. That's what basic income tries to solve.

Re: A nation of slaves

#107

Post by Dewie »

raldi wrote: post #84

This article is predicated on the idea that, because we're more efficient today than 1930, we should be able to work less and live the same lifestyle. Well, in fact, we can. But you can't ignore those last three words: you have to live the same lifestyle as a typical 1930s person. * No internet. * No TV. * No air conditioning. * No cell phone. * No car. * Bunk beds for your kids. * One bathroom for the whole house. *…

Isn't a lot of that productivity exactly because of all those technologies (and more)? Then how does it make sense to stop using all of those things in order to work less? The Internet helps a knowledge worker to be productive (also enables some procrastination, but oh well). Is canceling your Internet subscription and consulting your 20 volume, 10 year old encyclopedia a benefit? Same goes for cell phones and cars.

And when you have all those things, also using them at home makes sense.

Re: A nation of slaves

#108

Post by mcormier »

semanticist wrote: post #10
mcormier wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for clarifying. Too often North Americans state "it's like this in Europe", without researching what the actual facts are like. I have Uncles who are still quoting facts that are 30 years old and may never have been accurate to begin with ;)

For the record, Stross is not North American: he lives in Scotland.

Yeah, I haven't read this article yet. I got whisked away on an article referenced at the beginning of this one and my world view imploded.

http://libcom.org/library/phenomenon-bullshit-jobs-david-gra...

Re: A nation of slaves

#109

Post by ctdonath »

beat wrote: post #34
tomp wrote: post #16

> Why should we not divert some of our growth into growing our leisure time, rather than growing our physical wealth? Because not everyone was created equal. Some professions are completely worthless (e.g. ad creators) and add nothing net to the society. Others, e.g. doctors, are so valuable, and so few people can do them, that they simply can't afford to work less (educating more doctors so that they can work fewer…

As Bob Black pointed out in The Abolition of Work , if a job is worth doing, someone would do it, whether or not they got paid to do it. Charlie Stross made that point in his essay - he'd continue to be a writer even if he didn't need to write for a living. The same is true of doctors. And farmers. And firemen.

I contend a core persistent failing of FOSS is proof that premise is not true. There is somewhere around 5% of any project which must be done, but which nobody wants to do because it's hard/dirty work which produces little (but not zero or negative) benefit, is not interesting, few if any will appreciate (or even notice) it, but without which there will be a persistent stumbling block.

Sure, writers & doctors & farmers & firemen might do their stereotypical work for free because that's just what they do. But what about street cleaners & trash haulers? janitors for public housing? high-risk divers for floating oil rigs? Are you going to regularly clean, for free, elevators that low-end public-housing occupants piss in daily? pick up trash on the street, dumped there faster than you can clean up by bored teens who know they'll never have to do anything because their GBI cards will always get them food & pay the rent, and who are amused by your frustration at their persistent destructiveness?

Re: A nation of slaves

#110

Post by pessimizer »

ekianjo wrote: post #94
nostromo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An additional negative aspect of this mentality is that effort, rather than value, is praised. Working hard should never be a goal. It should be a means to a goal.

Well if your grandparents hadn't worked their asses off, you would live in a very different world right now. It's easy to say now that you are in a comfortable place where you can afford everything for almost nothing, but it was a very different world back then. Let's not forget that. And even now, you can afford things because people in China and other countries are working their asses off to make cheap stuff for de…

But there's little to no positive connection between who does the hard work and who gets rewarded for it.

Nobody in China nor other country is working their ass off to make cheap stuff for developed countries. They're working their asses off to feed themselves and their families. The effort: very high. The value: not so much for them.

I get what you're saying, but covering the effort in valor and moral superiority as opposed to the value realized from that effort just seems to be a way to separate the worker from the fruits of their labor.

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