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What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

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Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#191

Post by visarga »

belovedeagle wrote: post #72
Practicality wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"everybody it [is] fully satisfied with what they have and there's nothing more that they'd buy if they had more money." That's the idea. Let's for the moment, just assume that AI and robots and some other technologies are ridiculously productive sometime in the future and we solve all sorts of problems and have the resources to provide everyone with everything they want. At that point it's not a question of giving e…

> whether or not we decide to distribute our plentiful resources You can already decide to do this today, and the government will even reward you for doing so. What you're really talking about is redistributing others' resources .

> redistributing others' resources

Automation is getting cheaper by the year, and more open. People will be able to benefit directly from automation after the transit period, and won't need UBI forever. At some point it's going to be free to cover the needs, especially if we can use raw materials that are in abundance in nature. After the first self replicating factory is going to be made, any country or region could bootstrap itself out of poverty.

Self replication is closer than AGI, it's just a matter of digitizing the industrial process and developing accessible materials. Human society, the ecosystem and the cell are self replicating factories too. We need to compile a factory in itself, to bootstrap the whole material process. Just like a DNA molecule is replicating all it needs to survive and reproduce, such a factory would be able to make "babies".

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#192

Post by nico_h »

crdoconnor wrote: post #32
henrikschroder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you're saying there's no way to reach post-labour before post-scarcity? Hmm, that's interesting, I hope it's not true.

I'm saying that austerity is being disguised as near-post-scarcity. Jobs are hard to come by in the US at the same time that infrastructure is crumbling. That's a lack of jobs not a lack of necessary work.

It's a lack of political will to enforce the deal between the state and corporation (edit: and citizens). Governments grant tax cuts to corporations (edit: and citizens), even thought it hurts the very infrastructure and society that enabled corporations to extract the money from the environment.

The current taxation systems nowhere pays for all the externalities. If a company made a dollar in a country, a fair share of it should get back to the state for providing the environment that made it possible. Education, security, infrastructure.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#193

Post by agumonkey »

justneedto wrote: post #164
tristor wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be accurate, Sony did it first with their Xperia Z line.

My Nokia 3310 survived the cloth washer twice. Fifteen years ago. It's battery also lasted for several weeks. This line of reasoning is amusingly similar to NIH-syndrome.

Isn't that just luck ? more space between case and electronics, less sensitive components ?

I was about to say the board was probably empty, but turns out it's not that simple http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-shGknjKjPWE/TzJGOwQLVcI/AAAAAAAAAE...

Old phones weren't really resistant; but less sensitive. My Samsung Wave 723 took a plunge once, water got inside but almost didn't harm it (almost; something SMTc wasn't properly functioning after 1h of use). Kinda like ThinkPads, they can leak water outside a bit, but they're not water tight sealed.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#194

Post by throwaway1974 »

carsongross wrote: post #2

The essay suffers from Ted-talk disease: lots of grand gestures and bromides, not as much rigorous thinking. The underlying problem is an important one, however. A little-discussed solution to this problem is one I would like to see tried, distributism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism A book I am currently reading (and enjoying) on it is: https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-Distributist...

2016 when old ideas get new names

distributism > communism

altright > fascism

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#195

Post by lomnakkus »

cperciva wrote: post #59
thesagan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Begging the question; economics is not a physical science where you can run A/B tests on an economy and find results. It's a social study, mostly. As someone who studied it for years , institutionally and on my own, I can tell you that economists do not agree on any basic laws except that people have a long list of wants and that not all of them can be satisfied. Many economists are questioning their 101s lately. Loo…

"Trade and exploiting comparative advantages yields greater utility" is about as hard a law as any.

Caveat: The interests must align[1]. (See: Principal Agent Problem.)

[1] Which they, in actual fact, very seldom do.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#196

Post by psyc »

cperciva wrote: post #37
lucideer wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking, I agree with the overall content of your post. However your first and last sentences really emphasise for me the real problem: oversimplifying and stratifying the discussion. "Nonsense" is an extreme overstatement, there are nuances to both arguments. "This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely wha…

"This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely what's needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been treated as absolutes, which they're not. This makes as much sense as saying "You say that my magical spacecraft won't work due to the laws of physics, but physics is exactly the problem: We can't…

To me, your analogy actually helps the parent comment's argument.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#197

Post by zcoyle »

Practicality wrote: post #20
nhaehnle wrote: post #13

The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy. No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the essay very capably outlines. But full employment may be necessary anyway , because having the sense of being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone can get this sense of being needed/useful v…

Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to get rid of the automated trash collectors because of jobs . Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills their desire to be helpful without a completely unnec…

Just curious - how did the automated trash collection work?

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#198

Post by tomp »

BurningFrog wrote: post #125
thesagan wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Begging the question; economics is not a physical science where you can run A/B tests on an economy and find results. It's a social study, mostly. As someone who studied it for years , institutionally and on my own, I can tell you that economists do not agree on any basic laws except that people have a long list of wants and that not all of them can be satisfied. Many economists are questioning their 101s lately. Loo…

> economics is not a physical science where you can run A/B tests on an economy and find results The is broadly true of Macro Economics. This might even be impossible as a science, since the object of study (world economy and markets) is aware of its findings, and adapts around them. Micro Economics, or "Price Theory" as it maybe should be called, is OTOH a very powerful science that gives deep and counter intuitive…

Are you sure about microeconomics? AFAIK, only recently have economists started to use behavioral economics (psychology & game theory) to logically explain empirical behaviours that were previously thought of as irrational. It doesn't really seem to be a solved problem.

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#199

Post by [deleted] »

nico_h wrote: post #153
rdtsc wrote: post #82

> Most jobs aren’t created by private, corporate investment, so raising taxes on corporate income won’t affect employment. But won't raising taxes on corporate income drive corporation to other jurisdiction? So employment in that company then won't just slowly trail off, but will look like a cliff, dropping to 0. So isn't that idea ignoring the fact that companies don't have to stick into one place and so we arbitrar…

This are the idea I have been struggling with: 1) how do you get people to accept the existence of basic income without perceiving the beneficiaries as moochers. 2) what do people on basic do? Right now your example of people visiting the elderly is in some place paid work but can also be performed by volunteer. However volunteers should be vetted. My guess is that when everybody is on basic, you can earn "social cre…

[deleted]

Re: What if jobs are not the solution but the problem?

#200

Post by grenoire »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #180
chadcmulligan wrote: post #136

Maybe a better approach is how can we spend the surplus labour? There are lots of things I see need doing looking around my neighbourhood - public parks need cleaning up, old houses could be torn down and make some nice new ones, old roads could be fixed. Probably stacks of other things. Maybe some creative accounting will enable us to do these things? I know national parks near me have great paths that were built in…

I resent the idea that my surplus labour is anyone's but mine to spend. Certainly you could create infinite amounts of "paid" makework but in the end it amounts to keeping a system going for its own sake, and wasting people's potential by allocating them "dig a hole and fill it in" jobs when they could be being creative.

This is not the same as resolving the Great Depression. The goal is to create jobs that do work that is not getting done; not creating faux-jobs to feed people.
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