
The radical idea of a world without jobs - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jan/19/post-work-the-radical-idea-of-a-world-without-jobs
======
fergie
"Work is badly distributed. People have too much, or too little, or both in
the same month. And away from our unpredictable, all-consuming workplaces,
vital human activities are increasingly neglected. Workers lack the time or
energy to raise children attentively, or to look after elderly relations. “The
crisis of work is also a crisis of home,” ... This neglect will only get worse
as the population grows and ages."

This is the real message of the article. Its not about giving everybody a
robot butler, its about reorganising society to allow us to do all of the
things that need to be done. We don't need to have lots of people working long
poorly paid shifts at Wallmart, but we do need people to look after the young
and the elderly. At the moment we have a tendency to look at working class
people who dont work as morally lacking, when often they have quite a lot of
useful (non-paid) things to be getting on with. We need to change the way we
think about what makes somebody a useful member of society

~~~
swalsh
These conversations I feel always seem shallow to me. Automation is definitely
helping to free us from a lot of work.. but the world we live in today feels
like a preview of what an automated world feels like. In reality, our material
lifestyle is still supported by a very large number of people working away in
countries most Americans can't find on a map for extremely low wages.

If we're going to talk about "reorganizing society", it should factor in EVERY
person in the world. Not just the lucky 10% in first world countries.

~~~
nickthemagicman
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?

~~~
throwanem
Well, using figures from [http://time.com/money/4746795/richest-people-in-the-
world/](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 don't really need to do the math on this one, do
we? It doesn't even pass the sniff test - "these eight people are LITERALLY
THE WORST" is just far too uncomplicated a proposition to accurately reflect
the reality of a human world which, though many things, is never simple.

~~~
nickthemagicman
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..however, that in-equality is STAGGERING....unregulated
capitalism with no income redistribution is a one way ticket to a third world
PLANET.

[https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-
and...](https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and-
expertise/global-wealth-report-2017-201711.html)

~~~
patmorgan23
Unregulated capitalism is not what's causing the massive inequality we see
today. It's the financial and monetary policies. I'm not saying we shouldn't
have regulations but the ones we have are centralizing wealth into the biggest
corporations. If you look this modern massive growth of inequality doesn't
really start until the 1970's after we whet off the gold standard and theirs
an uptick in inequality every time the fed decides it needs to pump a bunch of
money into the economy.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Do you have examples of these 'financial and monetary policies' you're
referring to?

What I see is that Wal-Mart makes a ton of money and their employees have to
be on food stamps and still work 80 hour weeks while the owners reap all of
the profit.

To me this is simply unregulated capitalism which nowdays has become thinly
masked slavery.

~~~
oreo81
Walmart employees don't work 80 hours a week...that's absurd, most can barely
handle a 4 hour shift. All in all people get what they're worth, want to earn
more money? Bring more valuable talents to the table.

~~~
nickthemagicman
False.

------
time_invarient
I’m stuck in a dead end job right now. I will never be granted a shred of
decision making capacity or autonomy.

It is a waiting game. Waiting for more assignments. Waiting until 5PM. Waiting
for my paycheck. Waiting to get fired. Waiting to retire. Waiting to die.

( _n_ * (Commute. Sit. Wait. Commute. Eat. Sleep.)) Die. Where _n_ == the days
I have left in this world.

The things I work on feel like absurd, meaningless boondoggles with no head
and no tail. So here I am spinning my wheels as I hurtle toward a grave.

That I know this is my reality forces me to deeply question the society I
participate in. If I am so bound, restricted, constrained in my actions and
daily routines, why not just cut to the chase as die already. The repetitive
script for how my invarient pattern of living shall progress is obvious. Do I
really need to live through it 10,000 more times?

~~~
aaron-lebo
What makes you stuck? You sound like you've accepted your fate. If you want to
change things, just do it.

If your reality is so bad that you want to die, then how is taking action to
potentially change things worse? A big part of this discussion is people want
meaningful work and a meaningful life, but they want other people to give it
to them. Why is that expected?

~~~
adrianN
Meaningful work doesn't grow on trees.

~~~
aaron-lebo
Anything can be meaningful. You might not think making sushi for 60 years is
meaningful, but a guy named Jiro does.

Even if you have to have an "interesting" job, most people aren't but a few
years of schooling out. Hell, we're in tech where you're a few years of study
and practice from being world class and/or making hundreds of thousands of
dollars.

Yeah, you've got to work at it, but that's really meaningful work.

~~~
sincerely
Honestly, retail or food services is probably more meaningful than the sort of
"bullshit jobs" [1] that people are complaining about here.

[1]:[https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-
jobs](https://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs)

------
TuringTest
In a world without jobs, there would still be projects. It's a fallacy the
idea that people will not create things if they're not compelled by the risk
of starving to death.

The problem preventing a jobless society is the reverse: what happens to you
if your personal projects are not valued by society enough to pay you for
them, and therefore you can't sustain yourself from them?

Someone without the skills to create marketable projects can decide to work
towards projects created by others, and be compensated for it; that's what a
"job" is.

For a jobless society, you should be able to pursue your own projects without
starving in case that they do not sell. These projects may involve pursuing
leisure, starting charitable deeds, or taking care of your family, all without
the direct beneficiaries paying for it. For this to happen, we should:

1) find a way to provide a basic livelihood for everyone in that situation
(Basic Income is the most talked about); and

2) value people pursuing their own projects, more than we value people being
the most productive* they can possibly be.

*(where "productive" is defined as "building stuff that people will pay for". This is the most common understanding of productivity, but I find it somewhat circular).

In essence, in order to exist, a jobless society should value you being happy
more than it values you accelerating the velocity of commercial capital. This
doesn't require radically new economic theories; but it requires an adjustment
of the parameters by which we measure "efficiency" in what we consider an
"efficient economy".

~~~
PaperclipPun
I don't necessarily see it as a fallacy. Not because people are compelled by
risk of starving to death but because why would they create when an AI or a
machine can do it better? What would be the point? I tend to agree with
Orwell:

"No human being ever wants to do anything in a more cumbrous way than is
necessary. Hence the absurdity of that picture of Utopians saving their souls
with fretwork. In a world where every-thing could be done by machinery,
everything would be done by machinery. Deliberately to revert to primitive
methods to use archaic took, to put silly little difficulties in your own way,
would be a piece of dilettantism, of pretty-pretty arty and craftiness. It
would be like solemnly sitting down to eat your dinner with stone
implements."[0]

If a society is jobless thanks to automation, I see this as the inevitable
fate.

And as for a society that values my happiness; I don't see being happy as a
worthwhile goal for an individual to aim for. To be happy and content for a
long period of time is, in my eyes, akin to being dead in the water.

[0]: In "The Road to Wigan Pier" by George Orwell (I think it's chapter 12?)

------
gumby
It is interesting that the article’s discussion of the history of work begins
with Marx, as the modern conception of work lies in the industrial revolution,
of which he was a crucial byproduct. His entire Weltanschauung _presumed_ that
organized work was the default activity of humans, and with that as a given,
proceeded from there. Modern economics, including neoliberal economics, uses
his vocabulary by default, making discussions of alternatives, in a weirdly
Whorfian way, hard to have.

This article also correctly places the roots of the conception of work as the
core of human identity as side effects of Europe’s Protestant movement.
Amazingly, given that this is the Guardian, they failed to invoke the lazy
trope of “colonialism” for the spread of this culture worldwide — for in this
case it is accurate. The British empire, in particular, once it became run by
the government, spread this model to the “lazy natives” as part of a cultural
package. (It is no coincidence that the standard worldwide business attire —
as with military uniforms — is based on 19th century British aristocratic
fashion).

The final piece of course is the cultural reform required for UBI. Just as our
conception of work is modern, our conception of money as a reserve of wealth
is modern. Even back when Augustus personally paid off he national debt, the
conceptions of money and power were backwards to where they are today
(“Plutocrat” is another Industrial Age idea). Money was a way to show off your
power, not a way to acquire it.

But money also serves a more much more important function as a signalling
mechanism (a change in price indicates that there is more demand for T-shirts
and less for TV sets) — one of the many fatal flaws in communism was a failure
to understand this, and the current obsession with banking in the western
economies demonstrates a related misunderstanding. When we have a robotic
economy with a marginal cost of production close to zero, why should “wealth”
reflect a bank balance? What would be the point of accumulating one?

~~~
gaius
_The final piece of course is the cultural reform required for UBI._

What will you spend your UBI on if the goods and services are not being
produced, because no one is being paid to do them?

~~~
gumby
Let’s the robots do them. If I want a person to play me music i can find
someone who’ll do it at mynclearinprice, or play the music myself. Or be happy
with the robot produced music (which can hardly be worse than the focus group
produced pop music of today)

~~~
gaius
_Let’s the robots do them._

Or the unicorns? I mean, as long as we are just handwaving this stuff.

~~~
gumby
My employer is working on robots with semantic understanding. Can’t help you
on the unicorn front, sorry. You’ll have to do that on your own.

------
NiklasMort
Unpopular opinion: It is easy to work less or nearly work nothing and still
get by fine (in the context of the modern western world!), the issue is more
that people spend their money in bad ways and make bad long term decisions. If
you live reasonable and don't spend money on things you don't need you also
don't need to work so much...And I often heard from people now "I don't even
know why I work so much, I don't need the money". I am sure most people would
prefer to work less if the system would allow it.

~~~
aalleavitch
You've lived a charmingly sheltered life if you believe the majority of people
live in that situation. The social support and education that allow people to
easily survive while hardly working are not evenly distributed throughout
society.

~~~
NiklasMort
I live in the most corrupt and poorest country of all Western Society, I come
from a poor family, my whole life was fighting, I have been starving, I have
been freezing (couldn't afford heating, sleeping bag in winter). I don't blame
anyone, I don't expect anything from society. I spend years acquiring skills,
knowledge and experience and now it pays off. The whole knowledge of the world
is available online to anyone, if someone can't make something out of that
then they have to try harder.

------
konschubert
In general, I think this world will benefit from more radical humanistic
ideas, even if they aren't ever realized.

Let's not leave the radical alternatives to the racists and nationalists.

------
tw1010
I don't see how a jobless steady state is compatible with the zero-sum game
that is the natural desire, in all of us, for power and sex.

~~~
110011
Yes that is in essence all that needs to be said. Work is just one
manifestation of competition between individuals driving us to outdo others.

Of course if we weren't occupied by work all day then we'll find something
else to compete in and "stress" ourselves about. And don't we already do this
to some extent through innumerable athletic/mental feats like climbing
mountains, and other ways that are essentially displays of wealth like a
vacation in Haiti and so on. This is a simplification, one can successfully
argue that many of these activities have "inherent" benefit besides signaling
but that aspect is usually not spoken of at all so I emphasize it more here.

So the stressors of everyday life (whether they come from work or other means
of competition) are an inescapable fact of human life. Too bad if you don't
like it.

------
NoGravitas
UBI is really only a stopgap to preserve the scaffolding of the existing
system (and its inequality). What we really need is Fully Automated Luxury
Communism.

~~~
gusfoo
> What we really need is Fully Automated Luxury Communism.

This Time It's Different, honest.

~~~
chillwaves
Every time it is different. How does this post contribute at all? Are you
really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing advances of
technology? It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion to
post a pithy "lol communism suxx" response.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
The original communist claim was, essentially, that we could build paradise if
only the workers/people owned the tools. That... didn't work out.

Now the claim seems to be that it will work if only the people own the
automated factories. That's close enough to the same claim for "this time it's
different" to be a valid description of the claim.

> Are you really saying things stay the same despite the HUGE, game-changing
> advances of technology?

Agriculture was a huge, game-changing advance of technology. So was
industrialization. We've seen them before. So claiming that _this_ huge
advance will make work obsolete requires a bit more than "but look, there's a
huge advance!"

> It's like you just dismiss all the information and discussion...

I've seen lots of discussion, but not much information. Rhetoric, but not
information.

I mean, yes, factories are becoming more automated. That's true. It's not
leading to a world where nobody needs to work, though. (Current US
unemployment is below 4%. That's not looking like evidence for a world where
nobody needs to work.)

~~~
chillwaves
> Current US unemployment is below 4%.

What does this even mean? It's a very specific metric, not sure it is backing
up your argument in the way you think. There are a lot of discouraged or under
employed workers who would disagree that things are not changing in a
fundamental way.

------
Helmet
Am I the only one who likes work? And I don’t mean my job, just work in
general.

~~~
JulianMorrison
No, everyone likes work. We call it "hobbies" when its not formally productive
and "vocations" when it is. Capitalism, as a system, is awful at allocating
this work that people love to the people who love it. They either can't at
all, or they are forced to fit it around wasted time, or they have to gamble
on trying to build it up from nothing, and often losing their stake and their
beloved work.

~~~
Helmet
If everyone did what they wanted to do all of the time, the world would simply
cease to function.

~~~
soundwave106
The utopia vision as I understand it behind UBI is that automation takes care
of most / all of the work people don't want to do.

I think the biggest challenge to this utopia vision (assuming automation gets
to this point) is more that, frankly, labor is not wealth. Land is land for
instance regardless of what is automated or not. Rent seeking for various
things is rather common, most of which automation will not touch. I can
envision strong resistance to any sort of UBI scheme from this group (some of
this group frankly seem to not even care for our current safety nets now).

Before we go through a true "post work" phase, we'll probably go through a
phase where service oriented jobs are the norm -- this is also harder to
automate away completely, although probably not near impossible like tackling
assets and rent-seeking. The main problem here is that this side of the
workforce is currently rather undervalued IMHO. So if one wants improvements
in the world of work, I personally think putting more efforts here would be
better vs. banking on UBI.

------
chasely
In regards to UBI, I was disturbed by a comment that Jaron Lanier made in the
latest Ezra Klein Show [1] (starting at minute 55).

He said that some "known" Silicon Valley folks have expressed that the recent
opioid epidemic is a positive because these addicts aren't needed will fall
out of the workforce, thereby making the transition to the "world without
jobs" easier.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-
intervie...](https://www.vox.com/2018/1/16/16897738/jaron-lanier-interview)

------
pygy_
Work is power.

The obsolescence of humans in the workforce means that we are gradually being
stripped of the power to put a roof over our heads and bread in our plates
while capital becomes independent.

At this point, feeding non-productive humans still benefit the economy (by
preventing riots and allowing the productive individuals to contribute), but
if the vast majority of humanity does not participate in the economy anymore,
I don't see why the market would keep on feeding it. And at that point we
would be so dependent on automation that we'd all starve to death.

~~~
pygy_
Seeing the score jump up and down, this seems controversial, I'll expand a
bit:

Our economy is a dissipative structure, not unlike fire, nuclear chain
reactions and living organisms. It consumes energy (dissipates it, actually,
increasing total entropy) in order to perpetuate itself.

Its real currency isn't money, but energy. Money and finance are tools to set
its goals and direct its actions.

Fundamentally, supply is energy/matter/recipes to transform either.

Demand stems from survival instinct and reflexes. Humans demand material
security, the market provides it in exchange for labor. The economy demands to
be kept running through our work and keeps us mostly safe in exchange.

Those instincts/reflexes were acquired by anything alive thanks to evolution.

Currently, companies are subject to heavy selection pressure. They've been
morphing at an impressive pace thanks to technological progress, becoming ever
more efficient thanks to automation. Only the most efficient stay afloat. At
some point, feeding humans will not be the most efficient way to keep
themselves up and running, and when that occurs, we will be too dependent to
survivie without them.

The primary and secondary sectors are becoming autonomous fast (autonomous
tractors, trucks and mining equipment), and so is the industry. The tertiary
sector is only useful as long as humans themselves are useful to the first two
sectors.

------
amelius
I want a world where it is more clear what we should work on. Most startups
come up with solutions looking for a problem. Yet if people or companies
formulated their problems more directly, we wouldn't have to guess at them. As
a consequence, work would be more meaningful and more effective.

~~~
svantana
What people want, say they want, and how they act are separate things. For
example, no one has ever said "I want to spend hundreds of dollars on a
pointless mobile game", yet that is what a lot of people end up doing.
Conversely, people have plenty of problems that they are not willing to spend
(enough) money on solving, at least not until it is socially common to do so.

However, I think you're on to something here -- something like a reversed
kickstarter; anyone could post something they would want to have and how much
they would spend on it, more people could join the campaign and creators could
get to work on solving it. Probably people already tried it, but off the top
of my head I can think of about 10 reasons why it won't work...

~~~
wastedhours
In a weird way, how a lot of corporate tenders work. Like a "social RFP" if
you will.

------
tboyd47
The idea of post-work is interesting, but the future in my mind looks more
like "pre-work." By that I mean a generalized return to the way economies
functioned before the Industrial Revolution, rather than a transcendence into
some vague new way of life that's radically different than anything
experienced before.

With my limited understanding of history, I understand that jobs still existed
before industry. Extreme wealth inequality existed as well. The difference is
that most wealth is inherited, except for artisans and administrators, who
concentrate mainly in cities, and traveling merchants. And the concept of a
job being something that defines who you are and carries your entire family
from poverty into affluence will probably die out. It's already dying to an
extent.

------
ffwacom
Comes down to urban planning, the west is depressing because you move from box
to box in your mobile box. If the systems were less efficient we would rely on
each other more and perhaps feel useful, a third world city is a great place
to live, mentally.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
A former Turkish colleague who moved from Turkey to Germany told me the same.
The material side of things is covered well in Germany. And because of this,
because basically everyone has all their needs covered by the system, people
do not need to rely on each other – and they don’t. The vast majority has the
means to help themselves and never have to ask anyone else for help.

My colleague felt alone, even though he lived with his girlfriend. I think our
material abundance fosters isolation. There is no reason go to your neighbor
and knock on their door. You live isolated in your home, you move anonymously
through traffic, you work in a closed environment, you go home, and the cycle
repeats. There is little room for accidentally making friends or even just
having conversations.

------
sirmoveon
The world will never be without jobs; work will just become detached from
financial productivity and wellbeing

~~~
mseebach
It already it. Most people middle class and up work way more than they
strictly need to for simple wellbeing. It's just that our standards and
expectation for wellbeing shifts, and shifts quickly.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd say "are in the workplace way more" ...

>"Now, the workday is ripe for another disruption. Research suggests that in
an eight-hour day, the average worker is only productive for two hours and 53
minutes." [https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-
aver...](https://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-
worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html) //

Other studies show the most productive workers take long breaks (~25% of
working time).

~~~
Simon_says
I feel that's more a symptom of people doing work they loathe. When there's
intrinsic motivation for doing work, people are productive for the
overwhelming majority of the time spent working, and breaks magically
evaporate.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
The trouble is when you start doing something for money it always seems to
drain any intrinsic motivation you had.

~~~
phil21
Not at all. I think too many technologists (including myself these days) sit
behind far too many layers of abstractions.

Coding a quick Perl script to solve a real world problem on a factory floor
and watching a dozen machinists start grinning and get way more productive is
something I've been paid to do, and I never got unmotivated by. One of those
jobs where you simply stay until the job is done, and don't feel put out in
the least you got home at 11pm.

It's when you're slogging away 12 factors removed on some crap you know is
utterly meaningless to anyone - even if it's in tooling you like - that's when
I get severe motivational problems. I'd rather work as a cashier at a gas
station where at least I can see the effect I have on society with my labor.

------
peterwwillis
There is literally no argument given in this sprawling diatribe for _who is
going to provide for society_.

Unless there is some new slave class that's going to do our work for us, your
can't have productive society without _someone_ working.

There are simply too many humans and not enough resources for everyone to
homestead or farm, and even then, people have to work for themselves, and it
would end up in _more work_.

~~~
chillwaves
The tools are providing and will provide. They do not provide 100% of the
labor, but their share is increasing.

Re: your second point, homesteading or farming on the individual level makes
no sense, that is why farming is specialized and scaled up. Why would this no
longer bte the case?

------
crdoconnor
>And finally, beyond all these dysfunctions, loom the most-discussed, most
existential threats to work as we know it: automation, and the state of the
environment. Some recent estimates suggest that between a third and a half of
all jobs could be taken over by artificial intelligence in the next two
decades.

I've yet to read any research without crippling flaws that suggests this kind
of prediction isn't rooted in fantasy.

To take one example, look at
[https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Fut...](https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf)
section on call centers and imagine that Comcast applies ML to the next call
you make with them. How well would that work?

------
nukeop
Forceful reorganization of society inevitably turns into bloodshed in 100% of
cases, and that rarely improves standards of living. The human civilization is
in a state of constant chaos and nobody can tell or influence where it will be
taken next. Accidental discoveries and pointless inventions have shaped our
culture, and with it our minds and way of life with nobody being able to
predict or control them. It's like a childhood fantasy - when I'm the king
I'll make you all...

Society cannot be ruled in a top-down manner, period.

~~~
aalleavitch
Reorganization of society need not be implemented in a top-down manner.
Encouraging small changes in the activities of individuals can gradually sum
to major changes over time. We have the brainpower to enact a project of this
type, not every revolution has to be at gunpoint.

------
jacobush
An viewpoint I want to raise; what about representation? Traditionally, those
who work and make money have been in some way represented in the state and the
general fabric of life. Those who don't, are generally don't, or rather,
someone else represents for them.

I'd all for a universal paycheck, if it weren't for that nagging suspicion
that it won't work out like in Star Trek. That the powers that be will decide
something altogether unpleasant for the non-working majority.

------
vbuwivbiu
If work were disconnected from the profit motive then the quality of work
would dramatically rise. The need to make money entails mediocrity and holds
us back. Those with a love of their work aren't motivated by money and their
love always leads to great works.

------
nestorherre
This is a good first -radical- approach, although I'm sure that the way to go
is a world without money (or any exchange currency for that matter).

Instead,a world where you "work" in anything you really like (without having
to worry about getting paid or not), where everything is virtually "free" and
achievable, as long as you mantain an active "working" status. Think of it as
a 1 - working, 0 - not working. If you are in 1 status, you can acquire
anything you need (and even want) in modic proportions.

More to elaborate later on.

------
jnordwick
Some choice quotes that will show you this great society these people are
thinking of. Notice it is mostly a rehashing of socialism, communism, and
anarchism, and most post-workists are radical leftist hoping to to make
another push into society:

> In 1884, the socialist William Morris proposed that in “beautiful” factories
> of the future, surrounded by gardens for relaxation, employees should work
> only “four hours a day”.

> that life with much less work, or no work at all, would be calmer, more
> equal, more communal, more pleasurable, more thoughtful, more politically
> engaged

> Graeber has a point: “I do think there is a fear of freedom – a fear among
> the powerful that people might find something better to do than create
> profits for capitalism.”

> Graeber argues that in a less labour-intensive society, our capacity for
> things other than work could be built up again. “People will come up with
> stuff to do if you give them enough time. I lived in a village in Madagascar
> once. There was this intricate sociability. People would hang around in
> cafes, gossiping, having affairs, using magic. It was a very complex drama –
> the kind that can only develop when you have enough time. They certainly
> weren’t bored!”

(Or just supporters are absolutely nuts like this one.)

> “The postwar years, when people worked less and it was easier to be on the
> dole, produced beat poetry, avant garde theatre, 50-minute drum solos, and
> all Britain’s great pop music – art forms that take time to produce and
> consume.”

> “You get your UBI payment from the government. Then you get a form from your
> local council telling you about things going on in your area: a five-a-side
> football tournament, say, or community activism – Big Society stuff,
> almost.”

> One common proposal is for a new type of public building, usually envisaged
> as a well-equipped combination of library, leisure centre and artists’
> studios. “It could have social and care spaces, equipment for programming,
> for making videos and music, record decks,”

> “Instead of having jobs, we’re going to do craft, to make our own clothes.
> It’s quite an exclusionary vision: to do those things, you need to be able-
> bodied.”

> With people having more time, and probably less money, private life could
> also become more communal, she suggests, with families sharing kitchens,
> domestic appliances, and larger facilities. “There have been examples of
> this before,” she says, “like ‘Red Vienna’ in the early 20th century, when
> the [social democratic] city government built housing estates with communal
> laundries, workshops, and shared living spaces that were quite luxurious.”
> Post-work is about the future, but it is also bursting with the past’s lost
> possibilities.

Telling people they will have less money and resources - they will have start
sharing housing, but they'll like having less.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> _Some choice quotes that will show you this great society these people are
> thinking of._

Are those quotes supposed to fill me with disgust or something? Most of them
sound quite nice.

~~~
jnordwick
Yes. Drum solos, affairs, and magic should make you question your sanity.

------
imron
What do people do if they are not working?

You better have something for them to do, because (and I say this in a non-
religious way) idle hands are the devil's playthings.

------
jaldhar
This glorious utopia will last for all of five minutes until the last
surviving SJW decides robots need rights.

And honestly, would xir be wrong? If we ever get to the point where robots can
fully take over most human jobs even intellectual ones, we will have had to
reach a level of artificial intelligence where even many not so radical
religions and philosophies will wonder whether we are exploiting them.

When Tesla delved and Google span, who was then the gentleman?

~~~
indigochill
This gets into how you identify a human (I'm saying for the sake of simplicity
that humans are the only things eligible for rights, and ignoring animal
rights and such) Is there something inherently human about humans? How about
coma patients whose functions are limited? Is there some necessary set of
functions a thing must have to qualify as a human? That seems to get into
dangerous territory for some handicapped people.

The reason this matters is it's conceivable that an AI in a robotic frame
could emulate practically all the behaviors we associate with a human
(including behavior to display artifacts humans interpret as emotions, like
smiling or crying). At that point, is such a thing a human? Or is it merely a
fully-realized model of one? Does it make a difference?

This is the subject of tons of speculative science fiction. From a strictly
computer science perspective, though, you can easily define a "square" class
that fully implements all the behaviors of the geometric concept of a square.
That doesn't make instances of it a square, though. They're merely digital
models of squares. This is also the significance of the famous "There is no
spoon" scene in The Matrix, when Neo has a realization that everything in the
Matrix is a model which he can reach into and alter the properties of.
Therefore, there's a strong argument to be made that from an objective
perspective, even an AI that perfectly mimics human behavior is just a perfect
model and not a human. However, humans being emotional creatures the objective
argument will almost certainly not matter in that scenario.

This also has implications for the science fiction concept of "copied
personalities", which Black Mirror loves playing with. If you make a digital
copy of someone's mind, do they still have rights? I'd argue no for the above
reasons, but again, there's an emotional angle which will usually override the
scientific angle.

~~~
rileyphone
You've pretty much described the Chinese room argument. That aside, we have
the power to limit such coming robots to be 'dumb' in a sense, where they are
only capable of doing the tasks given to them. Let's hope we can manage that.

