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The radical idea of a world without jobs

theguardian.com

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Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#251

Post by Casseres »

Grimm665 wrote: post #179
lbotos wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been calling amazon prime a "hiding of the poor" to my friends and family. Hide the laborers in a far off insanely demanding warehouse, you just get the goods. (I don't have prime, I don't use prime, and I don't want this to be our future.)

> Hide the laborers in a far off insanely demanding warehouse, you just get the goods. Anecdotal, but I have visited a few of the Amazon warehouses in the Seattle area. I was surprised by the amount of effort Amazon went to to emphasize safety, work-life balance, healthy activities, and good work habits. There were free vending machines for PPE everywhere, and during the lunch hour each day, managers led workers in 2…

> There were free vending machines for PPE

Employers are required by law to provide PPE for free.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#252

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

throwanem wrote: post #90
nickthemagicman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that 8 people in the world have as much wealth as 3.6 BILLION people. That inequality is STAGGERING. Where do you think the problem lies?

Well, using figures from http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/ , if we take the top eight, sum their fortunes (conveniently expressed in billions), and divide by 3.6, we find that a maximally equitable redistribution would allocate, to each of the lucky recipients, the princely sum of $165.38 US. So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we…

A somewhat more interesting calculation would be what you get if you divide the total rental value of their capital assets.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#253

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

nickthemagicman wrote: post #100
throwanem wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, using figures from http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-world/ , if we take the top eight, sum their fortunes (conveniently expressed in billions), and divide by 3.6, we find that a maximally equitable redistribution would allocate, to each of the lucky recipients, the princely sum of $165.38 US. So, I'm going to guess the problem may lie somewhere other than with eight really rich people. But we…

You're not extrapolating. Thats just the top 8 people...Take the sum of the rest of the the global 1% or even 10% and do your math... OH nm, the math has already been done. 280 trillion in global wealth / 6 billion people = 46k per person And the top 10% has 86% percent of it, and the inequality is just growing exponentially. I'm not advocating that wealth should be equally distributed OR that capitalism is all bad..…

But income redistribution only adress the symptom. The capital assets driving the inequality would still be firmly in their control. You must put a price on ownership it self to really make a difference.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#254

Post by monaghanboy »

mseebach wrote: post #221
Clubber wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most people middle class and up work way more than they strictly need to for simple wellbeing. Sort of. For the week, I would agree, for a lifetime, not so sure about that. I mean what happens when you are unable to work? That could come sooner or later, but when it does come, you will need a chunk of change to get you through the rest of your life. Also, at the other end of life, children can't work until 16, so so…

The trick is to abstain from all luxuries in life (thus, the "strictly need" qualifier). Of course, we don't really want to do without the luxuries, so we work to earn their cost -- and we also don't want to do without them in old age/during sickness, and so we even more to have savings. But a roof over your head and beans in your bowl, including savings for a few decades of this without working, isn't really hard to…

As a small example, I met someone at the gym the other day who told me living in the South Bay without a car would suck. I was surprised; I've never learned how to drive, nor have I owned a car, and I consider this a blessing. I bike 25 minutes to work, 20 minutes to the gym, and less to most other places I need to go. And I'm healthier for it.

I never became acclimated to owning a car, and every time I consider buying one, I just can't justify the value add. I don't even mean that financially it wouldn't net out (it certainly wouldn't), but the cognitive overhead of having to manage yet another thing doesn't really appeal to me. And then there's the thought of passively sitting in a box for about an hour a day in lieu of being out in the open air, which sounds awful.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#255

Post by carlmr »

clarry wrote: post #109
carlmr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And even where Asian products are popular (e.g. big home appliances), European alternatives do exist. I can think of Miele. That's the only one that's propely German still. Bosch/Siemens are both very much Asian on the inside. They do some assembly in Germany as far as I know. Can't think of any other European brands in this space.

How about Electrolux (AEG, Rosenlew, etc.), Liebherr, Gorenje/Asko/Upo, Festivo, Smeg, Hotpoint? If you want to avoid Asian products, we can buy American too.. e.g. Whirlpool.

They are all European brands, but they don't produce in Europe, at most there's some assembly or they outright buy from Chinese companies and rebrand.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#256

Post by Keisha22 »

Back in 2016 we had one major drawback. Hubby lost his job, I had an accident that made me quit my job as well. We collected thousands of money from our Home Equity line of credit (HELOC) account which works sort of like a credit card to raise our son through college. This caused our credit scores to drop drastically, the bank almost terminated our line of credit and at that point I almost regretted my existence in life. I am using this opportunity to say a BIG THANK YOU to my sister and her BFF she introduced to us as a credit score hacker and counselor. He cleared our HELOC debt of $142,000 and raised our scores to 765 and 758. My special thanks goes to this genius hacker, we purchased our second home last week for our son. As we have promised to give him more clients if he should successfully fix our problems. We are living testimonies and confident of this miracle worker to handle all jobs, I will implore everyone facing challenges with credit scores, credit report,bankruptcy,mortgage issues to reach him on pyramideye(.)hack@outlook(.)com

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#257

Post by textor »

bigmanwalter wrote: post #189
textor wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding banal, I believe it's worth checking to see if you have a severe depression. Because that's how depression feels. There are people out there who derive great pleasure from writing uninspired code. Not only doesn't work need to be the main source of meaning in your live (in addition to providing income), its perceived value is heavily dependent on your psychological and physiologial condition.…

I think those who "derive great pleasure from writing uninspired code" are mostly enjoying their well paying job. Very few people actively enjoy laboring for others. That's why they need to pay you to do it. I enjoy building my own projects, but I have never found work stimulating unless I maneuvered myself into a position where I could learn something new. Unfortunately once you learn that new thing, and then refact…

Well I know people who are perfectly fine with hinting bugs while laboring for another, who find some obscure pleasure in repetitive work that is normally considered boring. It's not incomprehensible. But yes, they are rewarded handsomely. It's a rate trait, after all.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#258

Post by imron »

JulianMorrison wrote: post #250
imron wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Capitalism, as a system, is awful at allocating this work that people love to the people who love it. It's significantly better at it than the alternatives. Even UBI. Sure UBI sounds great in principle, you'll be given enough to live on and you can spend your time doing whatever takes your fancy, but in large-scale practice I don't see it working. Making the majority of the population dependent on the government fo…

One, they're not dependent on the government. Only on a society organized to redistribute wealth so as to prevent scarcity, in the broadest sense of the term. Could be anarchic or contributory in a different social climate. Two, the idea is not that people will goof off all day. Some yeah. Most, no. Most people will find work they like doing and do it. What does go away, however, is the fear of failure, unemployment…

One, there is no practical way to roll this out across an entire society without government involvement. Businesses and wealthy benefactors can make it work for small trials, but large scale society level in a western democracy? It will need government involvement, and even if you try to do it without them, they will stick their nose in it anyway whether you like it or not.

Two, ideas and reality are very different things. The idea of communism is that everyone is provided for and people give what they can and only take what they need. Sounds great, very altruistic. In reality, it's been a nightmare everywhere it has ever been implemented at a societal level because the idea fails to take in to account human nature. UBI proponents overlook or understate this factor too.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#259

Post by ddnb »

SherlockeHolmes wrote: post #227
ddnb wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't those, once complete automation is achieved, be automated?

you are being restricted by - I am making assumptions here - a lack of creativity and a desire to be sarcastic. We may also differ in our interpretation of what "engineering" is. There are numerous jobs already in existence that are likely a thousand years away from being able to reach automation. However, should economy proceed normally after achieving full automation of what is possible within this century - my sta…

This is my thought: once true AI is achieved, everything we know can be automated, because true AI will be able to do all things humans can do. I believe true AI will be achieved this century. These claims are my personal thoughts and due to the unpredictable nature inventions occurn these thoughts are not based on any research.

Re: The radical idea of a world without jobs

#260

Post by SherlockeHolmes »

ddnb wrote: post #259
SherlockeHolmes wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are being restricted by - I am making assumptions here - a lack of creativity and a desire to be sarcastic. We may also differ in our interpretation of what "engineering" is. There are numerous jobs already in existence that are likely a thousand years away from being able to reach automation. However, should economy proceed normally after achieving full automation of what is possible within this century - my sta…

This is my thought: once true AI is achieved, everything we know can be automated, because true AI will be able to do all things humans can do. I believe true AI will be achieved this century. These claims are my personal thoughts and due to the unpredictable nature inventions occurn these thoughts are not based on any research.

that is quite a pessimistic view on human capability (justified in current context because of shitbags) while equally bullish on human-developed AI capabilities. Sure, machine learning — blah — self-improving machines — blah - but I say, improving within bounds but cannot provide mathematical proof of the necessity of existence of such bounds blah.

machines have us beat on speed. however, let us not be blinded by this singularly awesome edge machines provide.

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