
Start with universal basic income and a 15-hour work week - edward
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/universal-basic-income-utopia
======
forgotpwtomain
I don't see any supporting evidence in this article which suggests that people
working 15 hours are _happier_ than those working say 35 hours. It's also hard
for me to imagine that 15 hours is enough to sustain a level of productive
output requiring intellectual work and extensive knowledge of a subject matter
- unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level
just to sustain rudimentary skill, let alone develop it.

> A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they
> have a job that doesn’t even need to exist.

I'm not going to deliberate on the prevalence of bullshit jobs and their
impact on quality of life (which seems to be where the article takes it's main
pitch), but given that - I rather disagree that _not working_ is the solution
that obviously follows.

~~~
aninhumer
>unused skills rust and 15 hours seems like some kind of bare minimum level
just to sustain rudimentary skill

Eh I think skills are stickier than that. FWIW, I spent about 6 months doing
almost no programming, but I didn't feel particularly unproductive when I
started again.

Besides which, there's no reason people can't be continuing developing their
skills in the remaining hours anyway. The 15 hours is just how much time you
have to spend doing what you're told. And you can likely learn much more
efficiently if you work with that intent instead of acquiring skills
incidentally as your job requires.

~~~
stuaxo
Exactly, when it frees up time you can be productive doing your own things.

Having 2 days off a week, really is only enough time to do chores, not enough
to spend on your own skills or do anything productive for yourself.

As a contractor, I tend to take 1-3 months off between contracts + it seems to
help, not hinder. I'm much fresher when I go into the next contract.

~~~
aaron-lebo
For many people "doing their own things" is gonna be playing more Counter-
Strike.

Of course, that's their right, but whether you can make a sustainable economy
out of subsidizing that is another question...a question that is much more
pressing than "wouldn't that be better?" and one the article doesn't even
attempt to answer, probably because it is largely impossible and anything like
it is speculation akin to religion.

~~~
ryandrake
Who cares?

For other people, that extra time and the safety net may enable them to start
a business or do charity work or run for their local school board. I'd argue
it's worth it for society to subsidize 1,000 people playing Counter-Strike for
every one person who could be empowered to start the next Google.

~~~
aaron-lebo
We should all care if the discussion is about whether it is sustainable
policy.

It's not a normative argument, it's a is this even possible? Isn't that a
necessary question?

~~~
ryandrake
If it's impossible, it's only politics and the puritanical "a living must be
earned" mentality holding it back. More than enough value is generated in the
USA to pay for some form of Basic Income--value that is _currently_
distributed comically unevenly. All it takes is political will.

~~~
mcbruiser
wealth and value is created, not distributed. I'm sick and tired of hearing
from communists about taking money away from hard working people and giving to
those less deserving.

------
mbroncano
Software developer, 20 years experience, expat for 10 years in four different
countries, mostly working for start-up companies.

Without taking everything to the extreme of comparing 100 vs. 15 hours a week,
and of course out of my own experience, it seems that companies with 'lenient'
schedules (say regular 4-6 hours work days) tend to deliver better products
(as in quality, customer acceptance, even financially) but also portrait
better working environments, suffering far less employee turnover, resulting
in an overall win-win.

Arguably it might be rather a consequence than a cause of having good,
empathetic management, final success etc., but the point stands: with all the
caveats, longer working hours have early diminishing returns, my own
experience as both employee and contractor dismisses the whole 'you lose
skills working three days a week' idea, and the secondary outcomes of it
(better products, happier customers, less turnover, etc.) are indeed worth the
investment.

Edit: grammar

~~~
maxxxxx
The problem is that the only easy to measure number is the number of hours
worked. In the end you can't really measure output or quality so management
will resort to the only concrete number they have. My output is highest when I
work around 4-5 hours a day with occasional 24 hours marathons when things
really flow. But I can see how this would make managers nervous because they
can't really tell if I am just lazy or working at peak performance.

~~~
noxToken
> _with occasional 24 hours marathons when things really flow_

How on earth can you do that?

A few weeks ago, I was in the office for 9 hours. I went home, goofed off of a
little bit, then picked it back up for another 6 hours. I had been crushing it
that day, and I was motivated enough to continue. In the wee hours of the
morning, I was practically useless.

I was hunting a bug that I had introduced with a small change. I reduced my
statements to simple variables, created a truth table, then filled in the
table to find equivalent statements. I was arguing with that damn truth table
for half an hour. I lost of course. A truth table is a concept that can't be
wrong. In fact, my conditional had been correct all along. It was a mapping
that I had introduced elsewhere that was causing the conditional to evaluate
differently.

~~~
maxxxxx
"How on earth can you do that?"

I don't do this every week or month but sometimes you struggle with something
for weeks or months and then suddenly everything clicks and it just flows.

------
rodionos
I'm trying to reconcile how these utopian ideas should work in globally
competitive industries where companies need to win revenue and customers on a
daily basis.

I can see this working in protected environments but how is this going to work
out for companies in industries where only the paranoid survive.

------
almonj
All of these articles about how "we" should adopt the "x hours a week" working
schedule assume that we are all cattle looking for instructions from out
master (the state) to dictate to us how we should behave. Some people want to
work more, some less. This is just more creeping authoritarianism, getting
people used to the idea that your time and energy aren't YOURS but something
owned by bureaucrats. I can already work any hours I want and I live the
consequences with respect to how much money I make. This isn't about "free"
time or solving inequality, its about getting guys with guns to steal money
out of "compassion". It's a scam and it will never work.

~~~
sitkack
How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It
sure wasn't the state. Your statement comes off like a humble brag about how
much money you make.

UBI is about society as a whole, not you specifically.

~~~
aninhumer
>How did we arrive at the current solution of a 5 days 40 hrs work week. It
sure wasn't the state.

Uh, yes it was? The modern 40 hour working week is a direct result of
legislation:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act)

------
danbruc
_A recent poll among Brits revealed that as many as 37 per cent think they
have a job that doesn’t even need to exist._

What is the incentive for companies to throw a third of their labor costs out
of the window? I surely agree that it at least seems to be the case that some
people are doing work that seems to serve no purpose besides getting the
worker a paycheck. But it can not be 37% bad, can it?

Companies should be eager to get rid of those jobs, lower prices, increase
market share and capture some sweet additional profits. Why don't they? Is
corruption within companies so prevalent and working so well? Or are bullshit
jobs simply more of a myth, there are some but most only look useless but are
actually not?

~~~
panic
There's a difference between jobs that yield profit for a company and jobs
that need to exist. Say you're a life insurance salesperson for a company that
sells life insurance to young, healthy people who don't actually need it. The
company is making money from your labor, but the job itself doesn't need to
exist.

~~~
toomuchtodo
You need life insurance if you have dependents (partner, children) regardless
of age.

------
DickingAround
Another article that confuses majority opinion with facts. Sure, 37% of people
might think their job needs to exist but why do we think they would know? It
presumes they can design an economy top down that doesn't need it. But it
evolved and was designed by the people that _own_ those companies. How many
company execs would say they're just employing 37% of people for the no
reason? And are there any economists out there foolish enough to think they
could top-down design an economy that could cut out those jobs? As long as
those jobs exist, we have no choice but to assume they include needed work.

~~~
Kadin
I've worked some bullshit jobs from time to time. It's pretty easy to tell
that you could disappear and nothing would effectively change. But at the same
time, it's also generally pretty easy to justify your existence if you need
the paycheck, too.

The existence of most of those jobs relies on the risk intolerance of
executives. They don't know for certain which people in their organization are
basically bullshitting and could be fired tomorrow, and they're not willing to
take the risk of firing the wrong person and screwing the entire
company/team/organization. So they let things go, as long as they're making
money (or, really, as long as their neck isn't personally in a noose for _not_
making money). Periodically, companies will try to determine which employees
can really be cut when money is tight, but it's surprisingly hard to determine
even from one or two management levels above a particular employee whether
they are really adding value or just creating the appearance of it.

All you really need to do as an employee in a "bullshit job" is create just
enough doubt as to whether or not you're somehow important, on some level or
in some situation, so that nobody is willing to take the risk of firing you.
That's it.

I'm glad I don't have one of those jobs right now, but if push came to shove
and it was between collecting a paycheck for a bullshit job or getting my
house foreclosed on, I'd do it again. As I suspect most people would, and
probably will depending on how many of the "everything will get automated"
predictions come true. In a workplace with a lot of opaque automation, it
wouldn't be especially hard to create the appearance of adding value just by
_not screwing anything up_ , and/or occasionally screwing something up on
purpose only to "fix" it and demonstrate value (or give an implied threat of
what might happen if you were fired).

------
padobson
It seems like the big question that YC is trying to answer, but few articles
like this seem to touch on, is what will a person's economic output look like
when they have tons of free time?

I think if you asked enough people about the things they aspire to, the things
they dream about, the things that drive their ambitions, almost all of their
responses would include something at least related to increased income.

So it seems to me that society-wide goals should include decreasing our
collective risk aversion. If you can do that with 15hr/week jobs and basic
income, then it's worth trying.

------
justaman
I don't know if a universal "BASIC" income is something that will make people
happy if that person can only afford the -basics-. There was a study done a
few years ago that claimed happiness increased in tandem with salary up until
~$80,000(depends on where you live). Then anything above $80k saw a negligible
increase in happiness. This article states that many people feel that their
job is pointless and doesnt really contribute any great benefit to society.
These people are therefore working only for the money, which, the article
claims they may not need otherwise.

I think many people who already work menial jobs that are threatened by
automation lack a certain drive for self-improvment that would need to be a
required aspect of their lives if they otherwise have an extra 25-30 hours a
week. Would these menial workers improve other aspects of their lives or
simply watch more Netflix? I think anti-depressant use in a 15-hour\UBI world
will increase.

~~~
stuaxo
Doing low paid work, for many hours will make it hard to be motivated.

When you are tired and scraping by it's hard to find the energy for things
like self improvement. When your concentrating on getting food on the table +
getting enough sleep.

The times I've had the most time for self improvement have been when there's
been a combination of time off + money.

I've found, after a job finishes (e.g. company folds), or just between
contracts, you need a while to decompress.

But then after a while you get a lot more energy for stuff.

WRT programming projects - it takes mental effort, I can't do a huge amount of
it outside of hours when I'm working 5 days a week.

When I take a break for a month or two I have energy for any project I like.

------
berkay
I feel most of the discussions on this topic miss the fact that the most
critical challenge is not what will happen when machines will be able to do
all the work, rather it's whether we'll survive the transition. Even a small
increase in unemployment can cause significant social unrest, all kinds of
dangerous politics, trigger wars, etc.

~~~
ythn
Not this apocalyptic rhetoric again. This is reminiscent of Steven Hawking
warning us that we might not survive the transition to artificial
superintelligences (ASI). The problem is that ASIs are fictional.

Is there significant evidence that automation is stripping us of jobs at an
unsustainable rate (i.e. we are losing jobs faster than new jobs are being
created)? I am optimistic that there will be work enough to do for everyone,
even with mass automation.

~~~
sitkack
Optimism isn't science and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that
gets to happen only once.

~~~
ythn
> Optimism isn't science

Pessimism isn't science either.

> and at the scale of the problem it is a mistake that gets to happen only
> once.

The problem doesn't even exist yet. It's a potential problem. We are
speculating on potential solutions to a potential problem. There are an
infinite number of potential problems. I think it's a waste to start solving
them until it becomes abundantly clear there is a problem.

I don't see science happening at any level here.

------
hectorperez
Interesting list of who does and who does not support universal basic income
[https://goo.gl/VxKSdN](https://goo.gl/VxKSdN)

------
jrlocke
My archaeology professor: "Paleolithic peoples 'worked' roughly 15 hours a
week, are we really so advanced now?"

~~~
maxerickson
I had a surgery 20 years ago that probably saved my life (I say probably
because I never tried surviving without it).

I'm pretty down with all the complications we've layered over the paleolithic
lifestyle.

~~~
jrlocke
I'm a t1 diabetic; I of course share your feelings on progress. That said, I'm
unconvinced that technological progress is necessarily dependent on long work
weeks (to start, most people working long weeks are totally uninvolved with
this sort of innovation).

~~~
maxerickson
Sure, but at least over medium to long periods of recent history there is a
pretty direct relationship between work and economic productivity
(productivity which is required to have the resources to do things like
training doctors and building hospitals).

It's also not true that labor is uninvolved with technology. If people are
busy with the hum drum details of survival they have less time to try new
ideas and the like.

------
the-dude
On the one hand, I feel positive about UBI. On the other hand I doubt if it
would have worked for me: I have been building my 'smallest hardware startup
in NL' over the last 3+ years.

There were two summers which were really bad: some days it was unclear where
the next hot meal would come from.

I wonder if I had pulled through if there would have been UBI.

~~~
aninhumer
I'm confused. It sounds like you're saying the "really bad" part was not
knowing where your food was coming from. But UBI would make that a non-issue,
so how would that have made setting up the startup harder?

~~~
the-dude
Sure, I see that part too.

But would I have been as motivated?

------
didibus
For me, it's simple, I'd love to work less, or even not have to work at all,
and just be able to spend my time doing what I want and love. It's pure
selfishness, but I'd move to whichever country makes this possible and
sustainable for its citizens.

------
ThomPete
15 work week only make sense in those jobs where you can actually measure
that. In most modern jobs you can't as they are project based.

I am a proponent of UBI as I believe it's the only sane way to deal with the
coming wave of unemployment in a number of categories.

------
anovikov
15 work week is not possible, because nearly every job that requires any
degree of thinking requires immersion. That's why programmers work 70 hour
weeks - not because they hurry too much, or their employers can't afford
hiring more people - but because it means being most productive when you live
your work.

~~~
LyndsySimon
> That's why programmers work 70 hour weeks

Huh?

I've worked my share of 70-hour weeks, but none of them have been as a
developer. In my experience productivity tends to go negative after a certain
point.

~~~
logfromblammo
I can do something mindlessly repetitive for 12 hours in a row with no
problem, but if I need to apply judgment, expertise, or rational thought, I
usually can go no more than 5 or 6 hours before my brain needs a rest. The
focus starts to flag after 4, and the rate of decline increases after that.

I assume by default that anyone programming for 70 hours a week is producing
good code for 25 hours of it, marginal code for 20, bad code for 15, and
godawful WTF garbage for 10.

If the schedule is to work from 7 AM to noon, lunch for an hour, nap for an
hour, and work from 2 PM to 7 PM, for each of the 7 days per week, that might
actually get 50 hours of good code and 20 of decent code... until that person
burns out hard after three months.

70 hour work weeks for knowledge workers is a very obvious sign of dangerously
incompetent management. The only conceivable reason for it is to institute it
as a temporary measure to meet a deadline when _someone is actually going to
die if you miss it_. And then, you have to throttle the hours _way back_
afterward to prevent resentment and burnout.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
One of the rules of extreme programming is "never work overtime longer than
one week in a row". Mental fatigue is a real thing; if you try to program
while you have it, you'd be better off taking a nap.

------
HalfwayToDice
Basic Income is Utopianism. It's appeal is a populist reaction to the
uncertain times we live in. No different from rightwing populism such as
Trump.

