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A world without work

theatlantic.com

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Re: A world without work

#181

Post by shkkmo »

daodedickinson wrote: post #85
oliveira12345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and…

Look, I think the robots are gonna take over, but you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever. The value of the denomination of the "minimum income" will fall immediately, lowering that supposed minimum…

>you have to be REALLY ignorant to not realize that there are far too many jobs we need humans to do, going on right now, for us to subsidize even the highly technically skilled to go off and follow their whims without any sort of economic integration whatsoever.

Really?

First off, any basic income that is provided is not going to come close to what a 'highly technically skilled' individual makes.

Secondly, if those individuals do find some activity or undertaking valuable enough to trade the relative income for, it probably has unrecognized value. I would bet they these individuals will acquire expertise, develop new knowledge, and create new things that will be highly benificial to society.

This is very similar we what do with grants to scientists conducting general research. Following your logic, we have too many important problems to bother wasting scientists time on anything that isn't an immediate problem.

Thirdly, there is no way that these individuals would be operating 'without any sort of economic integration whatsoever'. They would still be consuming in our society and their non-consumptive actions would still have economic effects.

That said, I don't think we are at the point we can realistically provide a basic income capable of supporting a reasonable standard of living. I do think we can start providing a basic supplementary income and I think that if paired with reductions in the minimum wage, it could be very successful at stimulating economic growth during the next downturn or slow down.

Re: A world without work

#182

Post by abandonliberty »

gluggymug wrote: post #139
abandonliberty wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite enlightened and Buddhist, and certainly helps to cope with the unpleasant reality of work. We are still trading our time and lives for money working on things that don't resonate with our values. When fighting for survival we never questioned whether our actions fit with our values; there were no vegan cavemen. We are fortunate, but struggle with this new understanding.

If your job is completely misaligned with your values, I think making a job change is a good idea. Don't do something that isn't you. Maybe it's my particularly uninteresting values but no job resonates that much. Even if it did, you eventually have to retire. Then you are going to really be depressed. Better to not be so attached to the job and be retired happily. Or in my case get fired happily! Free money and any…

The science is quite clear that sitting is incredibly bad for our health; yet many of us are sacrificing both our time and health to do something we don't want to.

Seems like a bad deal

Re: A world without work

#183

Post by 4ydx »

rayiner wrote: post #110
nicholas73 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt the same way at your age and in many ways still do at 32. 29 wasn't that long ago, and it wasn't biological maturing that happened. I became a father and now have a tenth of the free time I had before. The perspective that changed is twofold: first is that a job does provide life (your kid's), and second is that life is LONG. If you don't get rich by 30, you can get rich by 40 and still have a long time to do…

Having kids is a great way to give yourself some perspective and curb existential angst.

How many males actually want to have kids? I sometimes wonder if I am an outlier because I really have no desire to have a child.

Re: A world without work

#184

Post by nothing »

When I was a kid, I instinctively felt (did not have any kind of intellectual ability at that age) that I was in a trap. I can NOW supply language to my instincts. That instinct gradually grew into a concept - or a non-concept - and at 35 while still not sure what IT was - started saving, saving and more saving. In a country with high interest rates - that helped. I finally quit in 2010 at 50 - exactly 50. I spent the last 5 years doing absolutely no work for money. I never felt that I was missing out on anything at all. And I am sure I will never ever have to ask for help outside my family - unless of course any one of us is struck by an expensive disease. But then what that mostly would mean is physical pain. So we are now getting mentally ready for pain. Preparing to endure unendurable physical pain, which I personally have never experienced before. I do not feel like I am prostituting myself. That takes a lot of misery out of my system. I never ever switch on the TV, but spend a lot of time reading random stuff off the net.

Re: A world without work

#185

Post by seanp2k2 »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #88
methodover wrote: post #55

I really enjoyed reading this article. I've been thinking quite a bit about work recently. I'm just about to turn 29, and by all accounts I'm fairly successful: I graduated college with a worthless liberal arts degree just as the Great Recession was beginning. After an unsuccessful attempt at copywriting for a couple years, I managed to learn programming. A few years after that and I'm the leader of the engineering t…

You are in the top 0.0001% of history as far as what you have. Hell, anyone on this site is. Most people in the past or right now would kill to have what you are describing. Yeah, you are working for money, so use that to your advantage. What is it that you really want or want to do? Start putting money aside so you can spend time doing that at a later date. Use your free time and when possible work time to work on s…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_relative_privation

I don't disagree with your point, but I don't think selling most of the daylight hours of your youth is great either.

Re: A world without work

#186

Post by seanp2k2 »

tolmasky wrote: post #117
oliveira12345 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Basic income would pay for basic needs, and let people devote "free time" to more personally-satisfacting-activities: open-source programming, studiyng new interesting fields, etc... The mere fact that in today's professional career there is little oportunity for a 40-50years to work on a completely-new-unexperienced-field is an clear example. There is a point in time after which a job converts from ilusion-and…

Basic income will probably result in even more antagonism towards immigrants. As Milton Friedman said, "It's just obvious you can't have free immigration and a welfare state". I feel immigration to the US is too restrictive as it is, let alone what it would become if it meant giving everyone a paycheck. You basically have these options: 1. Restrict immigration (perhaps you are OK with this, I am not. I feel immigrati…

+1 on not restricting immigration; if you've ever worked in Silicon Valley, you know how much of the work here gets done by immigrants.

>"If you think Americans are xenophobic now, just wait to see their attitudes if basic income ever passes." I unfortunately agree with this.

Re: A world without work

#187

Post by hamoid »

dbtc wrote: post #154
hamoid wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If life feels awful, what makes you continue on the same path? I was feeling like that a few years ago. I stopped, thought about what was wrong, and took a different path. Now I'm making much less money, I'm not working in things I don't believe in and I interact with people I like. Much better than before.

If you don't mind sharing some details, I'd love to hear what you switched from and to!

I did web and app development. Years of PHP + MySql + CSS + JavaScript. At some point it felt overwhelming to choose a PHP framework and I switched to ActionScript, which I enjoyed a lot. I worked in a startup, got paid well, but noticed their only plan was to sell and retire. They did not care about their impact on the world or their employees, nor about doing things properly. I quit and worked in an FOSS Android project with a positive impact on people.

Then I could not do than anymore. I started finding databases, forms and interfaces unbearable. First I thought I did not like coding anymore. Then I realized it was not coding, but doing it alone, and focusing on things so detached from color, movement, space and sound.

I decided to focus on art and creativity. To teach creative coding, and play with code. Create beautiful interactive things without thinking so much about the performance, about the usability, about the correctness. Basically experimenting and playing as I had done as a kid. Apparently there's some demand for teaching, generative art and design, and helping other creative people with their projects.

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