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The Abolition of Work (2002)

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Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#221

Post by Iv »

chordalkeyboard wrote: post #113
Iv wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am trying to not delve into a 20 pages presentation, but I have gone though and through these themes for most of my professional life. The question whether we can really go to 100% of automation is moot if we can go to 99%. Either way it means that full employment is unnecessary and leads to the creation of bullshit jobs. > I think the solution is for more people to learn how to set up their own automation and to a…

> That's my sad conclusion as well. We could get to an automated society with far less pain and much faster if it was decided collectively though. I disagree. I think we have decided collectively to progress towards automation as fast as possible without unduly impacting people's quality of life. > Look at car automation: if a city wanted to make automated cars a reality in their streets, there are tons of accommodat…

> I disagree. I think we have decided collectively to progress towards automation as fast as possible without unduly impacting people's quality of life.

We have decided to move all our factories to China instead of automating them. We still have subway drivers despite having the tech to automate subway since the 1960s.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#222

Post by d1amonds »

rayiner wrote: post #106
Iv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For more than 20 years I have advocated and pursued the idea that society should abolish work. I am astonished that in 2020 most of our production is not automated. We have had the ability to automate most work for two decades. Food, clothes, furniture, electronic devices, all of these could be produced with close to zero human labor. Why don't we? After exploring a market (agriculture) in order to launch my own auto…

> We have had the ability to automate most work for two decades. Food, clothes, furniture, electronic devices, all of these could be produced with close to zero human labor. Why don't we? Because we actually can’t do those things?

We do a lot of things that we couldn't before. A lot of it produced loud laughter 100 years before.

If I understand it properly the author suggests we should find the time to play with these things. Who knows what might happen? It will no doubt be interesting.

Our indevidual performance is certainly mind blowing in a play settings. I see "players" do what seems impossible to me every day.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#223

Post by d1amonds »

I'm suspending my opinion until I'm able to consider this wild idea.

That said, imagine all the money and value documents in the world. Do these not entitle their holders to some share of our future labor and finite resources?

Its funny to argue against an end to work in favor of a system where everything is already sold 10 times over. Your kids will have to work to pay all this debt for a thousand generations.

It seems (also historically) we can run an outlandish system just fine. We will make it look as if it works even if it cant.

A big question to me is how much of an investment we are willing to make in a future we never get to see? How could we ever agree about that?

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#224

Post by toomuchtodo »

eloisius wrote: post #213
toomuchtodo wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology and automation. We’re arguing over how the productivity from those are distributed.

Fully automated space communism has yet to provide automated self-repairing roads, agriculture equipment, etc. so not sure why we’d argue about that yet. The best it was able to produce was famine and the starvation of millions last century.

Humans will still be needed for agriculture production, but if enough people aren’t fed yet we’re able to produce enough food, you use taxes and benefits (EBT, SNAP, higher minimum wages) to fix the allocation issue.

This isn’t rocket science.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#225

Post by charlesu »

pfalcon wrote: post #187
postingpals wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually can give everyone a phone since there are well over 8 billion in circulation.

By taking them from whoever owns them already? That's still popular petty street crime tactics in 3rd-world countries.

No, we can just give people used phones. We have such a surplus of some things that we can actually redistribute them in a non-zero sum way.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#226

Post by roenxi »

jancsika wrote: post #193
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Work makes a mockery of freedom Being embedded in a flimsy sack of meat controlled largely by deterministic chemicals makes a mockery of freedom. And yet here we are, embodied. Makes a mockery of fairness too. That paragraph is taking a stand against large organised bodies, without taking a sufficiently nuanced opinion on what 'freedom' means. If we take part in a larger body than ourselves, we lose a bit of oursel…

> It is impossible to gain freedom from that. Your sudden shift to such a low-level critique makes it impossible to, say, distinguish a c-corp from a coop (or even c-corps of different sizes, for that matter). Both are merely "impossible to gain freedom from" in your sense. It's like a submitter defending a spaghetti patchset by talking about the complexity of modern chipsets.

Paragraph says work makes a mockery of freedom - it doesn't distinguish between working for a coop or working for a c-corp either. Neither does the article as far as I can tell, although it is a bit complicated for me.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#227

Post by [deleted] »

Iv wrote: post #221
chordalkeyboard wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's my sad conclusion as well. We could get to an automated society with far less pain and much faster if it was decided collectively though. I disagree. I think we have decided collectively to progress towards automation as fast as possible without unduly impacting people's quality of life. > Look at car automation: if a city wanted to make automated cars a reality in their streets, there are tons of accommodat…

> I disagree. I think we have decided collectively to progress towards automation as fast as possible without unduly impacting people's quality of life. We have decided to move all our factories to China instead of automating them. We still have subway drivers despite having the tech to automate subway since the 1960s.

[deleted]

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#228

Post by konjin »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #220
konjin wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not aware 20 year olds could be pensioners.

I'm not sure how that's relevant.

You are using a welfare system available to under 20% of the population (in the best countries) to argue that the majority have access to a system that is well designed. This is moving the goalposts at best and outright intellectually dishonest at worst.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#229

Post by CuriouslyC »

pdonis wrote: post #82
Iv wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In rich countries, less than 1% of the population work on agriculture. We could have a society without starvation even if 99% of the population did not work. The fact that starvation is possible in a rich country is by design. It is not a necessary fact of the economy.

> We could have a society without starvation even if 99% of the population did not work. Only if nobody wanted anything else but food. Which is nonsense. People want lots of things besides food. And clothing, and shelter. And sanitation, and medical care, and... What you are calling "rich" countries are countries in which people have way, way more options--where their lives are a lot more than just bare subsistence.…

People want to feel empowered to choose. If there are so many options that choosing is hard, then it's just another source of stress. Research indicates that the ideal number of choices is four, with anywhere from three to seven being good.

In an ideal world, we would have artisans that could craft high quality bespoke items for a fair price, and a small selection of popular items that suit most people.

Re: The Abolition of Work (2002)

#230

Post by wallacoloo »

jariel wrote: post #46

Besides the fact that work, even the must rudimentary kind can be very fulfilling and rewarding in many ways ... The real problem is that play creates nothing . Play is just play. 'Creative output' is still 'work', just with a hint (maybe 1%) of creative input. Those with the most ostensibly aspirational jobs are grinding! Does anyone think Lady Gaga (or Bach), any tech development, any real research, making Star War…

> Does anyone think Lady Gaga (or Bach), any tech development, any real research, making Star Wars, putting on a Broadway Musical isn't 'work'?

> There is no way out. Life requires a modicum of effort, point blank.

If I understand the author, you’re conflating effort with your own definition of work. People do, regularly, pour 10,000 hours into their hobby like music or sports or art or writing. Yes, there’s some market for all of those things, but most people are introduced to those outside the context of that market. [Some] People are driven. We crave mastery. Directed effort can be incredibly rewarding for the mind and body, ever the more so when you truly get to focus it at your wim (play) instead of according to someone else’s wants (I.e. the market; work).

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