How about everybody works a 20-to-30-hour week instead of a 40±hour week? If that becomes the new norm, then everybody has a job, everything gets done, and we can spend the rest of the week consuming, as it were, and stimulating the demand side of the economy.
As they have always done - move on to the tasks they were never able to get to before. At no point does some say, “Gee! I guess we’re all done and can go home now!” Instead it’s more like, “Great! That’s done! Now we can tackle what I’ve always wanted to do all along!”
Another problem: not all interactional work is valued. I have a degree in professional communications, which covers stuff like tech writing, documentation, and information design. These are crucial skills that help bridge the gap between new technology and the user. But the people who do it are notably underpaid/overworked even in good times - because their expertise is “soft” and not quantifiable.
The movement to automation has been running full tilt since the dawn of the industrial revolution and getting faster as it goes. We’d all be poor and unemployed by now if your conclusions were correct. Instead, employment levels fluctuate over time, usually for reasons unrelated to automation, and per capita wealth generally increases.
I know it was a WAG, but I think I’m going to have to see a cite before I believe that. The problem with robots and computers to me is that, at this point, they are largely incapable of coming up with original ideas. What’s more, I seriously doubt they could grasp philosophy or psychology. But even if they did, what the hell, no reason we can’t work with them, and enjoy still more free time.
Most of us are poor and unemployed. Look out the window.
No. The family lived on a moderately self sufficient farm. The lord who held the land in fief more or less ‘rented’ the land to the peasant for a certain number of days corvee labor, and a percentage of the product of the land in plants and animals. In return for this land, and theoretical protection from the soldiers of other lords and outlaws, the lord got labor for his projects and plants and animals for his table. And before you start nit picking and getting nasty, yes the system did have abuses, every system has what the people in the system see as abuse. However, apparently jus primis nocte did not seem to actually exist in the sense of the lord getting to boff every girl prior to her wedding. It was actually a fee simple in coin or kind to allow the marriage to proceed. [it was apparently a way to keep track of land and belonging rights, sort of a property tax.]
Look at it this way. Let’s say tomorrow it became illegal to use automatic traffic signals. And so at every junction, the state, or private companies, would have to pay a guy to stand there with red and green flags to coordinate traffic.
That would create lots of jobs! Do you think it would help the american economy though? Having to pay lots of people for something that was virtually free before?
Indeed having to tie up labour doing something not very useful?
The fact is automation is a net good. It allows mankind to achieve more with the same resources (or achieve the same goals with less resources).
The fact that unemployment is high (though unless you live in Somalia, most are not unemployed) is because many people are either not trained or trained in the equivalent of controlling traffic with flags.
Generally this is an issue for governments, but it doesn’t help that individuals often want to resist change, rather than accept that what they used to do is no longer useful (and they should train for something else).
Isn’t the whole antagonism vs mutual assistance part of that paper done by the mathematician that was the basis of Beautiful Mind?
In a perfect world we would all live in arcologies that integrate industry, stores, schools, cultural opportunities and residences. We would have our basic needs supplied for, and some form of job [it could be go to school, go to university, show up at the temp office daily and go where needed, or have a permanent job because it takes a certain amount of education to do like medical imaging tech or doctor or IT support] though the job may only be for 1 day a week [man hours required divided amongst the available bodies] and you get your assigned ‘income’ [everybody gets paid the exact same amount] and you may spend your off work hours slacking off watching football, or you can volunteer to read to old folks and the blind, or some such ‘beneficial social behavior’ and get ‘service credits’ that can get you access to better benefits like a larger game system or whatnot, or if you are into gaming, you could make in game benefits like i pay my eve online account by industry in game.
That would get everybody the basic living and an opportunity to get something better than the neighbor if you want to exert yourself.
Any effort to deal with this will require a much larger role for the government. Unfortunately, during the late 1960s and the 1970s most Americans lost confidence in the government, and never got it back.
What we could do is greatly shorten the work week, while greatly raising taxes on the rather small minority who have benefited by these changes.
I’m interested in the above contention (from the article quoted by the OP). If such a contention were made on the Dope, I’d say… “Cite?”
Have you read WALDEN TWO, by any chance?
In the nation in which I live, the unemployment over the last two decades has averaged 7%. Per capita GDP is 41K. Gini index 30.5.
There is poverty and unemployment here, but at nothing like in your area. I’m sorry you live in such an unfortunate place, though, so please accept my condolences. Perhaps you could move.
No, just the original Walden. I suppose that it is much simpler to live in a shack and still schlep home to family for laundry and dinner while writing about the bucolic pleasures of simple life.
See, the gimmick in WALDEN TWO is that a small and self-sufficient community goes for the simple life by dividing up the minimum necessary work and assigning credits, such that (a) everyone puts in a mere four-hour day to keep the whole thing up and running, and so (b) it’s no problem if you want to spend your spare time reading philosophy or taking guitar lessons or putting on a play, just so long as you put in enough hours on the farm – or washing the windows or reading to kids or whatever – before going for that walk in the woods or settling in for a chess match with your neighbor or heading back home to pen the next chapter of your novel.
Of course this entire premise is nonsense in a world of six billion people. All of the products people use, the food they eat, the vehicles they use to transport themselves, the energy they use, the clothes they wear and everything else in their daily lives is the product of a complex global network. Someone has to do those jobs. And given the billions of poor people around the world, it seems like there are a lot more jobs that need doing.
The entire premise of the article in the OP appears to based on the ramblings someone who has no idea how stuff actually works. 50 years ago they predicted that the work week would only be 4 hours long.
I see city full of people who mostly seem to be working on something.