A world without work • Hacker News Board

Re: A world without work

#11

Post by benaiah » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:22 PM UTC

waxymonkeyfrog wrote: post #10

falcolas wrote: post #4

Some interesting points - I would have the following questions for the author (I didn't see them answered) How many of the ills observed in non-working adults are due (at least in part) to the culture of "your value is based on the job you hold"? How many people sit around watching TV because that's what they can afford to do, or because their peers are unavailable at the same times? How many teens revert to crime be…

Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece. 1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a…

2. I know this is anecdotal, but when I was unemployed I often didn't socialize because I simply couldn't afford the luxury. Many social activities are fairly expensive, depending on your area, friends, and preferences.

Re: A world without work

#12

Post by nkozyra » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:28 PM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #8

What if the new capital is creativity? The new model for "work" is OSS? Replace money with creativity in the definitions of capitalism. Material possessions are socially discounted; creating new designs, new originals the new currency to excel. If so, the first classes we now cut in schools: advanced mathematics, chorus, art, music, etc. are the areas we need to emphasize the most.

Creativity may be good for human satisfaction and happiness, but it, too, will likely fall to automation.

More and more I'm convinced that computational creativity will be able to better and more finely translate resonant emotion into consumable art than humans.

Re: A world without work

#13

Post by rezistik » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #8

What if the new capital is creativity? The new model for "work" is OSS? Replace money with creativity in the definitions of capitalism. Material possessions are socially discounted; creating new designs, new originals the new currency to excel. If so, the first classes we now cut in schools: advanced mathematics, chorus, art, music, etc. are the areas we need to emphasize the most.

In high school I read a book about this idea, "The Creative Economy", solidified my decision to go into a creative and knowledge based industry.

Re: A world without work

#14

Post by s73v3r » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #8

What if the new capital is creativity? The new model for "work" is OSS? Replace money with creativity in the definitions of capitalism. Material possessions are socially discounted; creating new designs, new originals the new currency to excel. If so, the first classes we now cut in schools: advanced mathematics, chorus, art, music, etc. are the areas we need to emphasize the most.

Are you trying to suggest that I could pay my rent with a song?

Re: A world without work

#15

Post by falcolas » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:29 PM UTC

benaiah wrote: post #11

waxymonkeyfrog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece. 1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a…

2. I know this is anecdotal, but when I was unemployed I often didn't socialize because I simply couldn't afford the luxury. Many social activities are fairly expensive, depending on your area, friends, and preferences.

Yeah, this came to mind as well. A night at the pub can easily run even a conservative drinker $20+, doing this every night (even when working) would be hard. And those costs appear in other activites as well - renting a field/equipment to play ball, renting a bowling lane, green fees for golf, tickets for events...

Re: A world without work

#16

Post by VLM » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

Cultural observations: Lots of people currently believe in the idea of go to school, get degree, get great job, and work hard, get ahead or at least don't get downsized. Today we laugh at people in my grandfather's generation who had weird employment ideas like lifetime employment at one firm, college isn't necessary, and no women allowed (well, we laugh at dinosaurs like that outside silicon valley where its still prevalent, etc).

Cultural analysis and conclusion: Generation AJSKGJ, or whatever the marketing people will call tomorrows kids, are highly likely to laugh at our ideas like the previously mentioned "school/degree/job" or "work hard get reward or at least not punished" axis of evil.

We have other weird cultural hangups that'll likely look weird in the future, its hard for us to understand how nationalistic foreign cultures (nazis, communists, etc) in the early 20th century were all into promoting the nation ahead of their citizens, yet today we see corporations as the only important members of our culture and we're mere resources to be thrown away at their whim, this is likely to look equally weird in the future. Or how about endlessly describing boring old corruption as holy capitalism, thats going to look totally weird to people in the future.

Re: A world without work

#17

Post by zzalpha » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:31 PM UTC

I find it presumptuous that the authors lay depression and so forth at the feet of unemployment and not the obvious: poverty.

If folks could live, unemployed, receiving mincome that supported a reasonable quality of life, is there a reason to believe these various effects would still be a major issue?

Re: A world without work

#18

Post by notahacker » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:36 PM UTC

Einstalbert wrote: post #2

I've had friends lose jobs in Amazon warehouses over their aggressive research and development of an all-machine packaging line. They do work now that requires the precision of a human hand and eye, but that job may also go the way of the assembly line. His only hope is that custom carpentry's demand by rich celebrities wanting the "premium" afforded by the work of a Human over the static of a machine. When I look ba…

A world without work was a pretty common vision in the 1960s. And the 1860s

But humanity has a remarkable capacity to invent new outlets to fill our waking hours as we redeploy resources used to make stuff to make other stuff or sell stuff. We didn't have (or foresee!) social media managers or video game designers in the 1960s. And software doesn't just make our production efforts scale, it makes our consumption scale. You can fit far more lifestyle apps on your phone than chairs around your table, and a couple of decades back few people would have foreseen mobile phone apps as a category of product that needed people to make, still less an industry reportedly topping up the paycheques of a million Europeans.

I'm not seeing the developed world's desire for more stuff reach satiation point, and if anything desire to subsidise unemployment is trending in the opposite direction.

Re: A world without work

#19

Post by waxymonkeyfrog » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:38 PM UTC

benaiah wrote: post #11

waxymonkeyfrog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Falcolas, this is Derek Thompson, the author of the piece. 1. The quick answer is that we don't know how much of the misery of not working is from the financial shortfall of unemployment, vs the failure to meet a cultural expectation to work, vs some inherent need to feel productive, because it's just very hard to tease out the difference in reliable studies. How, eg, would you test this for prime-age adults at a…

2. I know this is anecdotal, but when I was unemployed I often didn't socialize because I simply couldn't afford the luxury. Many social activities are fairly expensive, depending on your area, friends, and preferences.

Great point. This gets at the impossible endogeneity of the subject. Are the jobless miserable because they're poor, lonely, bored, or distraught? Well, perhaps they are lonely and bored because they can't afford to socialize. And perhaps they're distraught because they're failing to live up to a cultural expectation that, with more wealth and more redistribution, wouldn't exist. Etc etc.

One last thing, apropos of nothing except my stream-of-consciousness typing and the feeling that somebody might bring it up here, is that some people have pointed out to me on Twitter that I should have studied students or retired people, who both seem pretty happy and don't work. I don't accept the comparison. Students essentially have a job with school and a camaraderie on campus that the unemployed have lost when they lose the water cooler. (It is, perhaps, important to note that people choose to go to school in order to find a job, and what happens to college attendance if the expectation of full-time work takes a hit?) Retirees, for their part, do seem happy overall, but those with comfortable retirements are living on savings that they earned through work and they have the pride of having worked to earn their retirement. This is one of the hardest things about imagining the demise of a full-time workforce: Where else could this sort of pride come from?

Re: A world without work

#20

Post by markyc » Tue, Jun 23, 2015, 8:39 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #15

benaiah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. I know this is anecdotal, but when I was unemployed I often didn't socialize because I simply couldn't afford the luxury. Many social activities are fairly expensive, depending on your area, friends, and preferences.

Yeah, this came to mind as well. A night at the pub can easily run even a conservative drinker $20+, doing this every night (even when working) would be hard. And those costs appear in other activites as well - renting a field/equipment to play ball, renting a bowling lane, green fees for golf, tickets for events...

hiking, biking/rollerscating, enjoying a picnic, having friends over for card/board games, having a lan party are also valid and cheap/free alternatives :)