
Will Automation Set Us Free? - huihuiilly
http://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/david-moscrop-will-automation-set-us-free
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jillesvangurp
Basically people think they work in order to provide for themselves. Our basic
needs are actually pretty modest. We need food, shelter, medical care and a
few other things. Providing these things is not super expensive. Even before
you factor in automation.

Farmers still exist but as a part of the working population, they are a tiny
percentage. The medical sector is comparatively huge but also not that large.
Automation is likely to cut employment in both sectors a lot. Likewise
construction work seems to require a lot of manual labor today but is
something that can probably be done by robots already.

However, what automation will do is complete the transition of most work being
entirely unrelated to those basic needs. That is already the case if you think
about it. I look at most government jobs as a form of UBI. We're basically
paying for people to do unnecessary work very slowly and inefficiently and
we're taxing everyone to do it. There is no logic in this other than UBI.
There's going to be a lot more of that. UBI as such seems to go against the
morality that dictates people have to work for a living. But mocking that by
making people do completely pointless things seems entirely acceptable.

If you automate most governments, they'd be a lot more efficient and you'd end
up with millions of unemployed bureaucrats. Here in Germany, where they are
perpetual paper fetishists, that would probably raise unemployment to double
digit percentages. These people do absolutely nothing that adds any value;
rather the opposite it seems. Bureaucracy is actually holding back economic
progress. It's gotten to the point where "digitization" is a big topic in the
current government; though they tend to end up waffling a lot when explaining
what that actually means.

~~~
jhayward
> _I look at most government jobs as a form of UBI. We 're basically paying
> for people to do unnecessary work very slowly and inefficiently and we're
> taxing everyone to do it. There is no logic in this other than UBI._

This is a vicious slander against an enormous number of hard-working,
underpaid, and extremely conscientious people who work in government. It's
nonsense and you should stop it.

There is always a need to improve any system or organization and government
agencies are no exception. We should constantly be learning how to make
government systems work better to achieve policy aims. Because they are
constrained to behave, for the most part, with moral and ethical concerns
foremost rather than sociopath motivations celebrated in private business,
they do operate under many constraints that can slow them down. But that's a
feature, not a bug.

The big-L Libertarian dogma that government is theft is complete nonsense and
should not be endorsed by any reasonable person.

~~~
jillesvangurp
I'm not a libertarian. If anything I'm an admirer of efficient governments in
e.g. Estonia, Finland, or Sweden. Especially Estonia seems to really put other
governments on the spot in terms of doing things swiftly, efficiently, and
pragmatically while not compromising on quality of governance. Estonia is a
well run country with an extensive social system. Most interaction with the
government is digital.

I live in a country (Germany) where the government refuses to automate such
jobs as handing out a paper with a number to people that come into the
building for the privilege of waiting for their turn of having another person
push a button to cause a piece of paper to roll out of a printer such that
they can rubber stamp it an give it back to me. If you need such a piece of
paper, which seems to be a regular thing, you need to pre-book an appointment
for this around two months in advance and book a time-slot of roughly one
hour. I'm not making this up, I've gone through this process several times.
It's annoying, it eats up time, and it only serves to prove a fact that they
are supposed to administer to themselves.

Sure, there are hard working people as well but they are outnumbered by people
not doing a whole lot that are stuck in processes that actually don't make any
sense other than to generate more work that also doesn't need doing.

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peterwwillis
This article makes the argument that all humans really strive to have more
time for self-improvement. That's clearly not the case. The only kind of
freedom we need is freedom from the existential fear of needing to be employed
to live. We can already at least partly achieve that, simply by moving more of
our lives to a DIY model - which, in turn, would leave less time for self-
improvement.

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neolefty
I keep looking for ways that automation's benefits can be shared more
democratically, but this essay sheds no light. The concluding paragraph, in my
view, restates a well-worn plaint:

> With automation, the plutocrats get the increased efficiency and returns of
> new machinery and processes; the rest get stagnant wages, increasingly
> precarious work, and cultural kipple. This brave new world is at once new
> and yet the same as it ever was. Accordingly, it remains as true as ever
> that the project of extending liberty to the many through the transformation
> of work is only incidentally about changing the tools we use; it remains a
> struggle to change the relations of production.

Maybe it _is_ just a matter of better tax policy.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
If left unfettered the system would eat itself, if there is no means of
consumption then there is no need means of production.

In reality the political pressure will increase and policy will change long
before then.

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mindcrash
Flagged for being political and ideological drivel hiding behind and
pretending to be concerns regarding automation.

What the fuck has Trump suddenly to do with the impact of automation?

