
What if jobs are not the solution but the problem? - jonbaer
https://aeon.co/essays/what-if-jobs-are-not-the-solution-but-the-problem
======
cesarbs
Another good read on the topic: [http://newramblerreview.com/book-
reviews/political-science/t...](http://newramblerreview.com/book-
reviews/political-science/the-shame-of-work#.WDH4ARBQD-M.email)

I like this bit:

"the knowledge worker is under severe external constraints. Much of their work
is assisted or mediated through information technology, which contributes to a
de-skilling of their cognitive labor. And on top of this they are expected to
fully invest themselves in their jobs in a way that manufacturing laborers
never did: they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted
work hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work.
The whole thing is exhausting."

~~~
vacri
Are you serious? Knowledge workers have it _easy_. It's hard to get here, but
once we're here it's a great gig. We're paid well, we're in demand, and
there's a robust freelancing sector to our industries, be it software, legal,
medical, engineering, or whatever.

That link describes a _call center worker_ as a knowledge worker. That's
absolute nonsense. You could, in theory, argue that a call center worker is
about managing some sort of knowledge, but in truth they deal with less
knowledge than a subsistence farmer, who has to know a hell of a lot about
agronomy.

Classifying call center drones (of which I was once one) as 'knowledge
workers', and then using them to discuss how hard knowledge workers have it,
is beyond disingenuous.

~~~
cesarbs
This is the bit that hits close to home to me:

> they must demonstrate commitment above and beyond their contracted work
> hours, and express constant satisfaction and happiness about their work

My wife and I are both software engineers and that is a nearly constant source
of stress for us. In our experience, people in our field frown upon people who
treat software engineering as just their job. Two things I recall from my
experience that illustrate this:

\- I had a team lead who once said, "I don't want people in this team working
like this is a 9-5 job"

\- Something I heard from someone in a team that worked close to ours: "the
candidate was solid in problem solving and coding ability, but we didn't hire
them because they didn't show passion"

This sort of bullshit is pervasive in our field and IMO is what the quote
above is referring to.

~~~
goatherders
My biggest frustration at work is the colleagues - most of whom are software
engineers - that are inconvenienced when being asked to consider work outside
of normal business hours. I don't really care if they are happy; that's what
overpaying them is for. What I care about is getting one of them to answer the
phone at 5:05pm on a tuesday and not getting a return call until 9:03 on a
Wednesday.

~~~
throwaway368
This is exactly the kind of moronic bs that I haven't and will not put up
with. Executives most of the time are paid, and compensated to be there 24/7\.
Software engineers are not. While founders and other execs have tendency to
forget that - deal with it. I am there between 8am - 4pm, or 6am - 2pm or what
ever it says in my contract. No more, no less. You want me to do extra hours,
fine, most of the time happy to, you just need to pay me for it. Oh btw -- we
have this online service that needs one or more of of the devs to bring it up
if it goes down at 3am - well - don't expect me to pick up the phone unless
you've set up the appropriate schedule for us devs to be on call, and that
we're compensated accordingly.

Bottomline -- you want to call me outside work hours, then you better
compensate me accordingly.

~~~
pfarnsworth
My colleagues have base pays > $150k/yr and I'm closer to $200k/yr. I consider
myself very well paid, I'm grateful for it, and I'm available whenever I'm
needed, within reason.

~~~
TuringNYC
I once had a conversation with an HR manager in our Manhattan office, she was
upset that the office cleared out at 5pm and how we didnt have a "banker's
hour culture." I just nodded but knew the problem -- we had an underclass of
workers, mostly H1Bs, on a tight HR-policy driven rate card, most making 2/3
or 1/2 that other workers were making. They made ends meet by living in outer
New Jersey and commuting 2hrs each way. They jetted out quickly to catch the
5:35pm train out to NJ before express trains stopped. I'm sure the more we
paid them the closer they could live to the office and the longer they would
work. In NYC, homes and rents go down as distance to Manhattan increase.

I knew this as a fairly senior manager. Many people dont realize the stark
differences in pay across different classes of workers. Getting up at 3am to
fix a problem doesnt work for someone who needs to then get up at 5am to
commute into work. It needs more thought and I did just that -- we had workers
rotate night batch schedules and gave them Work-From-Home days or late-come-
in-days during on-call periods. Even some of these things require thought --
allowing someone to come in late does'nt help if they live so far away that
express/local train schedules dont make it feasible to come in mid-day...the
commute ends up being as long as the half-day.

Sorry for the ramble, TLDR: be mindful of people's situations and things they
dont control. Not everyone has it as good as you do. HR can save a dollar here
but it comes out of productivity figures. Don't expect "banker's hours" but
forget "banker's pay."

ASIDE: Several years later, the HR group got absorbed into the executive
offices in posh rural Connecticut, where few low-level workers could afford to
live locally. Low-level workers were required to visit the head office 2x/wk.
The same exact HR manager then complained (in earshot) of how her commute was
close to 3hrs each way and how she planned to sneak out at 4:30pm because she
couldn't take it anymore.

~~~
justinclift
Did no-one explain the above to the HR person, or was she just resistant to
common sense?

------
chadcmulligan
Maybe a better approach is how can we spend the surplus labour? There are lots
of things I see need doing looking around my neighbourhood - public parks need
cleaning up, old houses could be torn down and make some nice new ones, old
roads could be fixed. Probably stacks of other things. Maybe some creative
accounting will enable us to do these things? I know national parks near me
have great paths that were built in the depression as a job creation scheme.
Maybe this is the new status quo, there are still jobs that need skills and
some are in shortage, though people with labour skills are in abundance -
maybe use them instead of having people sit around while there's stuff to do
but society can't put the two together.

~~~
tachyonbeam
I agree with this sentiment. There is a lot of work that needs doing. There
are also a lot of parents out there with young children who could use a nanny.
There's a need for more therapists, or just people to talk to.

There's a lot of work that needs doing. There's an abundance of people to do
the work, and I feel like we have plenty of natural resources. It seems to me
that we could build housing for everyone, we have the capability to do it.
It's just that our economic model isn't about the betterment of manking,
providing the people what they need, etc.

If you told an unemployed man that he could have guaranteed food, clothing,
medical care, lodging and basic income for his family if he goes work a job
where he builds houses for other family in need, I think that would be a very
appealing offer.

~~~
knieveltech
There is no need for additional construction to meet housing demand. In the
continental US there are something like 6 empty units for every homeless
person in the country. In turn this means there is no pent up demand for
building materials, so putting people to work in forestry, quarry, cement,
steel, etc is also a non-starter. Global food surplus indicates there is no
pressing need to put additional people to work in agriculture. I'm not certain
that there is pent up demand for 3.5 million new nannies or therapists in the
country, which is a relevant number as that's roughly how many OTR truckers
that are on the cusp of losing their livelihoods to automation. There simply
isn't enough work to go around.

~~~
stale2002
There are empty houses, but not in places where people want to live.

There is absolutely a housing shortage in popular metropolitan areas (take
your pick) . If there wasn't, then prices wouldn't be so high.

~~~
internaut
Why aren't we building down?

Each plot owns the land beneath, yes?

So build downwards if zoning prohibits building up.

~~~
Tempest1981
The cost per sq ft is higher. You often hit aquifers. Less light. More
difficult egress in an emergency. (Just giving some reasons why building down
isn't done more, but it _is_ happening.)

~~~
internaut
Yes it is happening I know, I remember a 99% Invisible podcast episode talking
about it. Also there was a documentary on London millionaires doing it.

I find it striking it is not done even more. I recognize the technical
difficulties but the costs are surely lower than the potential value of easily
doubling the sq ft.

There are interesting tricks you can do with fibre optic cable and mirrors to
send daylight down there. Not to mention CoeLux and similar products.

------
reflexive
Article has many holes in reasoning.

 _The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible
projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to
dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum_

As NN Taleb points out exhaustively: social science puts too much faith in
their models. "Measurable" trends? How do we even know what to measure, or
that it's a trend? "Plausible" projections? What is the scientific measure of
plausibility?

 _there’s not enough work to go around_

There's a _limitless_ amount of work - it just doesn't pay minimum wage. Every
time you lower the minimum wage, it makes a new class of activities
profitable.

 _you’ve just met an attractive stranger at a party, or you’re online looking
for someone, anyone, but you don’t ask: ‘So, what do you do?’_

This ubiquitous question may be asked and answered in the sense of "what are
you passionate about" rather than "what is your largest source of income". It
would be great if those co-incide, but that's often not the case.

~~~
kazagistar
Limitless is not quite right: at some point, the value of work drops below the
level at which a human can subsist on it.

Of course, if we take away that constraint through some means, like for
example basic income, then the same problem remains in a different form; the
value of the work drops below the level that a human can be bothered to do it.

Because this minimum exists, there is indeed a finite amount of work, and as
machines drop the value of human labor in certain areas, there is potentially
less and less of it available.

~~~
reflexive
_the value of work drops below the level at which a human can subsist on it_

I agree with this analysis; the question becomes: how do we value a person's
contribution to society, if not by someone's willingness to pay their wages?

I hope there is a solution in advanced tools for economic cooperation...
imagine 90% of the population living off something like "GoFundMe for artists
and educators".

If we can't or won't find such an answer, we then have the question: how many
lives are we willing to subsidize who are contributing, by our best measures,
a net negative to society?

~~~
PeterisP
"Contribution to society" is the main problem that needs a paradigm shift - if
we look at 1900, then a system where economic subsistence is directly linked
to a measurable contribution to society (whether by wages paid in capitalism
or full participation in a collective society or whatever) makes sense.

However, if we look at year 2100 then it seems rather clear that a _majority_
of population will not ever be able to make any real contribution to wider
society whatsoever, since any job that they can do can be done better _and_
cheaper by someone else (machines or other people - e.g. being a third rate
guitarist is of no use if you have many first rate guitarists that _also_ are
eager to work for free) so there can be no practical, economic reason to ever
choose them for any job.

Subsidizing people who aren't contributing to society seems the only humane
option. Having them "contribute" to society in some artificial way is not a
solution, since that policy by itself would be a net negative to society; Not
subsidizing them is not a stable solution, since in the absence of any
reasonable ways to survive they'll either starve to death or manage to
violently overthrow the system.

In essence, the likely future involves the unprecedented scenario of billions
of people who are, from an economic standpoint, absolutely unnecessary and a
net economic negative to society; and the only (?) possible solutions seem to
be either to accept that we'll subsidize them or exterminate them. Or,
possibly, "others" will subsidize or exterminate us, as it's not set in stone
on which side I or my kids will be.

~~~
reflexive
_Subsidizing people who aren 't contributing to society seems the only humane
option._

I think _humane_ is the key word here. We are human, after all. It's human
that you would take someone in to your home and feed and care for them, though
they might never repay you.

It's not human that you would take 10 people into your home and support them
indefinitely while they contribute nothing, and then support their children,
their children's children, etc forever.

------
Animats
We're there already. There are vast numbers of people who cannot make an
economic contribution large enough to cover their costs.

Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one
human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as
many computers as needed doing it. The US has already hit "peak school" in
terms of economic benefit. About half of college graduates take jobs that
don't really require a college education. Trade schools do even worse.

The classic solutions are lots of poor people in slums and dying towns, and
ethnic cleansing.

~~~
edblarney
"Education won't help. Teach a human how to do something, and you have one
human who can do it. Teach a computer how to do something, and you can have as
many computers as needed doing it. "

This is pragmatically not true.

There are tons and tons of jobs that can't be done by computers.

The 'entertainment sector' was not even a part of the economy 100 years ago.
Now it's a big chunk.

Think of how big sports are. That was all 'unpaid amateur' stuff before.

It's worth examining how much we ought to work and not, but we also should
understand there will always be work to do.

Also - the industrial revolution had a far greater direct impact upon 'labour'
than the computing revolution.

'Machines' could do the work of thousands of men - and the economic
translation was direct - not 'soft' as we have with computers.

And yet what happened? Consumer surpluses found their way into the economy,
and 'people did other stuff'.

Paradoxically - through the entire history of 'automation' unskilled labour
has been getting more expensive, not less.

~~~
sqldba
The whole "computers can do anything" theme in the original post and the
comments is borderline retarded and describing a mythical state always one or
two decades in the future.

Teaching a computer to do anything is fucking HARD. And most of the time the
problems are just unsolvable.

Sure you see cool demos like one that can cook for you. That shit is awesome.
So uhhh... where are they? They're demos and proofs of concept, so expensive,
require maintenance and programmers (gasp!). Don't except to see real ones
mass produced and taking over for a good 30-40-50 years.

We can do a lot with computers and automation but IMHO every article that
starts with, "If you don't agree then you're an idiot" is immediately sitting
on a faulty foundation.

~~~
edblarney
Ya.

Whenever anyone talks about 'the singularity' (i.e. computer consciousness) I
usually respond with "get your bot to make me a goddam ham sandwich and clean
my toilet!" \- then we can talk!

But let's avoid calling people 'retarded', eh :)

~~~
freehunter
Of course a robot could do those things. Those are very easy things to do. The
problem is, you wouldn't want to pay thousands of dollars for a robot to make
you a sandwich or clean your toilet because those are things you can easily do
yourself for free. And there's no economy of scale to offset the cost, because
it's just doing it for only _you_.

How about "get your bot to build my microprocessors" or "get your bot to route
my package through a warehouse" or "get your bot to weld a car"? There you can
get robots to do amazing things, and they can cost whatever the company wants
to charge because those robots are making money. If a robot can build a modern
CPU, it could clean your toilet. That's not the problem.

Even still, there are household robots that are fairly common. I've got one
running upstairs right now. It's called a Roomba.

~~~
edblarney
"Of course a robot could do those things. Those are very easy things to do. "

Sorry, but no. Very, very hard.

\+ Find my fridge \+ Open it \+ Find the meat \+ Find the bread \+ Open the
mayo \+ Get a knife \+ Spread it

etc. etc. etc.

Even if you do it 'the machines way' it's extremely difficult.

No way. Not for quite a while.

Much harder than 'driving a car'.

Without proving it directly - let me do it indirectly:

Factories would love to have robots with such intelligence and dexterity. It's
definitely worth '10's of thousands of dollars' per machine to do that.

If machines could do that ... even Chinese labourers would be out of a job.

We can barely make robotic arms that 'hold stuff' of any weight reasonably
without getting out of balance.

Go ahead and look at industrial grade robot-arms - you'll see these powerful
steel machines - max load: 5 lbs (!).

McDonald's would be having robots prep your burgers - even ina a
controlled/machine setting - and they don't do it - because it's a ways off.

There are so many issues with that one, it's a long way off.

~~~
gregpilling
If you get to do it "the machines way", then you get this -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE)

I agree with the idea that we are 20 years away from a walking talking robot.
One that could find the fridge, figure out which mayo is the good one, and
which mayo has gone bad. The get the right ham, not the crap the kids like,
and find the knives. Where are all the knives? And then put the stuff away, so
nobody complains later....

I own 2 welding robots.(Miller-Panasonic Prefab Welding Cell) They are time
consuming to program, and you do have to 'touch up' the program all the time.
They are both 7 axis machines, with the capability of running another 13 axis
each. The complexity of a setup is much much higher than a self driving car,
which has go/stop/left/right as possible inputs. A self drive car is only 2
axis of movement.

In order to deal with 900 types of sandwiches in another factory, humans are
used, not machines . [http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sandwich-factory-
worker...](http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/sandwich-factory-workers-make-
three-5844492) . They don't do it because they like paying humans. It is too
complex to handle the high mix of products (900 sandwich types) for
automation.

~~~
adwn
> _If you get to do it "the machines way", then you get this -
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPTwpLIpDWE)
> _

Those are some of the worst sandwiches I've ever seen – which confirms your
point, I suppose.

------
Practicality
At this point I've already come to accept that fulltime _labor_ for everyone
is simply not going to happen. We just don't need it.

The big question is will the majority be able to maintain enough power to
obtain income for those who aren't working, or will we see some kind of
serious class warfare/starving populations?

This is a huge question in human history and it remains to be seen how we as a
species are going to answer it.

[My hope regarding the labor is that it meaningless work can be replaced with
research and development]

~~~
AmirS2
> fulltime labor for everyone is simply not going to happen. We just don't
> need it.

and from the article

> there’s not enough work to go around

I disagree.

There's not enough paid employment to go around, but there is an enormous
amount of _work_ that needs to be done!

Our entire society needs to be weaned off its carbon dependence if we want
humans to survive the next century. This will involve at the very least the
wholesale transformation of our transport and energy systems, and probably
construction too. We should be putting massive numbers of people to work on
solving and fixing this, and there's no point leaving people unemployed while
there's still work that needs to be done. Whether we can organise society in
time to achieve this is the real question. Once we've fixed the environment
and created a truly sustainable civilization, then we can talk about labor
that is surplus.

Other work that will be in increasing demand is healthcare and elderly care
(especially given the aging populations of most countries). I don't see robots
replacing humans for this any time soon, and we are far from the point where
we have enough health / personal care for everyone. Plenty more examples of
work that's needed but not currently being done can be found with a bit of
creative thought...

~~~
pygy_
The constant supply solar of energy (and finite supply of mineral energy
sources) also means that we won't be able to grow the economy indefinitely and
need to find a way to transition to a system that thrives at equilibrium.

~~~
nhaehnle
The rate of CO2 emission per GDP is already decreasing thanks to technological
advances. There's no fundamental reason why the same couldn't happen to the
ratio of energy use per GDP. So finite supply of resources is not a problem
per se, and certainly won't be within our lifetimes, which is what we need to
deal with.

~~~
pygy_
You can't be more than 100% energy efficient, so, while there may be some
headroom in that direction, there's a hard limit as well.

Edit: Also, while there seems to be a positive correlation between GDP per
capita and energy efficiency, the most efficient nations in the world have a
very low GDP per capita... I wonder why it is the case.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity#Economic_ener...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity#Economic_energy_efficiency)

~~~
pdonis
_> You can't be more than 100% energy efficient_

Yes, you can, practically speaking. The amount of energy needed to produce a
given amount of value to humans is not fixed; it can be decreased, and in
principle can be made as small as we like given sufficient advances in
technology. That means the amount of value to humans that can be produced with
a fixed amount of energy can increase, in principle as much as we like. That's
what the parent to your post was saying.

Obviously it will be a while before we have technology advanced to the point
where, say, the amount of value currently being produced per year on Earth can
be produced with one tenth or one hundredth or less of the energy it currently
takes. But we also have a while before we hit any hard limits of the sort you
are referring to.

------
jokoon
There is a difference between a job you like, and a job you do because you
believe "work sets you free" or because you believe work is a some sort of
value or a necessary pain everybody has to take part in.

I'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast food
or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live poor and
be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be able to live a
frugal life and still be healthy enough.

I hear so many people yelling about moochers and parasites, it's becoming
weird. Everybody wants everybody to behave like superman, yet nobody realizes
you can't educate everyone to have enough qualified workers.

My great fear is that as time passes, more and more people decide to live like
I do, and economies might change because people stop consuming.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _I 'm unemployed and I really don't think I have any duties to work in fast
> food or to deliver pizza because I must contribute. If I decide I can live
> poor and be happy with welfare, I will. I think it's a great thing to be
> able to live a frugal life and still be healthy enough._

Why do you think that you should have the right to live off of other people's
work? Welfare checks aren't fairy money, they're money that came out of other
people's paychecks.

~~~
PrimalDual
So right now it comes from other people's paycheck but does it have to? Why
don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money to
cover their spending?

Inflation is not the problem it used to be and I actually think it's a much
better measure of the economy's capacity than unemployment. Would inflation of
4% be that bad for the public and financial system anyways?

In the US at least I strongly oppose tax-based welfare because I percieve it
as a rigged system where the wealthy can avoid paying their fair share through
loop holes and classifying their income differently than mine. But inflation
in a sense is unavoidable and progressive since the more money you have the
more you lose to inflation if you don't invest it. This is especially true if
the cause of inflation is labor scarcity and not some other key resource like
oil.

~~~
pdonis
_> Why don't rich countries like the US, Switzerland or Japan not print money
to cover their spending?_

The US is doing exactly that, and has been for decades. Since the 2008 debacle
it has being doing even more of it.

 _> inflation in a sense is unavoidable_

If you mean politically unavoidable, I agree; no government in human history
has been able to avoid messing with the currency.

If you mean unavoidable period, I'm not sure why it would be. There is nothing
in principle impossible about having a currency that cannot be inflated.

 _> if the cause of inflation is labor scarcity_

How does labor scarcity cause inflation?

~~~
PrimalDual
What do you mean by decades? The US has been borrowing money but that hardly
translates to printing it. I can definitely see how quantitative easing
essentially translates to printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding
debt but that has already stopped.

By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it.
Especially if you are holding assets that are appreciating at a slower rate
than inflation. Essentially I don't think the wealthy get to loophole or
lawyer their way out of inflation the same way they can with taxes.

I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of literally
running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if businesses have
to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will inevitably rise.

~~~
pdonis
_> What do you mean by decades?_

The US money supply has been increasing fairly steadily since WW II.

 _> The US has been borrowing money but that hardly translates to printing
it._

The US has indeed been borrowing money. But it has also been printing it.

 _> I can definitely see how quantitative easing essentially translates to
printing a couple of trillion to buy outstanding debt but that has already
stopped._

QE is just the latest round of printing money. (More precisely three rounds,
since there was QE1, QE2, and QE3.)

 _> By unavoidable I meant that if you hold currency, you are subject to it._

Only if the supply of currency increases. Why is that unavoidable?

 _> I meant labor scarcity not in the exonomic sense but in the sense of
literally running out of people to allocate. I think it's clear that if
businesses have to compete for a dwindling pool of workers prices will
inevitably rise._

No, it's not clear at all. What is clear is that the price of labor (wages and
salaries) will increase relative to the price of capital (e.g., interest
rates). But that does not mean price levels in general will rise. That depends
on how well businesses can substitute capital for labor. In the age of
automation, that is usually "pretty well".

------
scandox
> there’s not enough work to go around, and what there is of it won’t pay the
> bills – unless of course you’ve landed a job as a drug dealer or a Wall
> Street banker, becoming a gangster either way.

This kind of lazy discourse from someone who has authored a whole book on the
topic under discussion is remarkable.

~~~
lnanek2
The things he lists to justify calling Wall Street that are real, however:

" When I see, for example, that you’re making millions by laundering drug-
cartel money (HSBC), or pushing bad paper on mutual fund managers (AIG, Bear
Stearns, Morgan Stanley, Citibank), or preying on low-income borrowers (Bank
of America), or buying votes in Congress (all of the above) – just business as
usual on Wall Street – while I’m barely making ends meet "

So I wouldn't call it lazy when he flat out listed what they are doing to get
put in that gangster category.

~~~
bbcbasic
Glass houses. Monsanto. Mc Donalds. Uber. ....

Not just wall street doing unethical stuff so why pick on them and call them
gangsters?

~~~
nico_h
Maybe because they made their money playing with imaginary numbers and caused
huge amounts of harm to the economy and lots of people when it all blew up in
their face?

~~~
bbcbasic
And the harm obesity is causing? Arguably just as bad.

~~~
nico_h
In theory you could can alter your diet and exercise regimen (not easy but
doable). Good luck getting a pension fund or a mortgage not affected by the
stock markets these guys blew up.

------
nhaehnle
The essay opens on a horrible false dichotomy.

No, full employment alone won't solve the problems of inequality that the
essay very capably outlines.

But full employment may be necessary _anyway_ , because having the sense of
being needed and being useful may be an important factor to many people's
well-being. Full employment is really just another way of saying that everyone
can get this sense of being needed/useful via employment.

~~~
Practicality
Maybe, but it doesn't need to be useless labor. In the town I grew up in we
had automated trash collection for a few years. The town eventually voted to
get rid of the automated trash collectors because of _jobs_.

Seriously. People that did those jobs HATED their jobs. Now a group of people
have a job again that they hate. Surely we can find something that fulfills
their desire to be helpful without a completely unnecessary and unfulfilling
job.

~~~
zcoyle
Just curious - how did the automated trash collection work?

~~~
Practicality
There was still a driver, but all the bins and cans were ID tagged and had
weight sensors installed. This was earlier technology (a lot of cities have
similar things now), but it was basically a locking hydraulic lift that
coupled with an interface on the cans. That picked the cans up over the truck
and inverted them. So it just dumped things into the truck.

So there were no workers, just a driver.

Because of the jobs issue, they went back to having two men that pick up the
cans by hand. But because everyone had the new cans with all the extra
hardware now the work was harder. It was the worst of both worlds until they
issued everyone new regular trash cans a few years later.

------
crdoconnor
"These days, everybody from Left to Right – from the economist Dean Baker to
the social scientist Arthur C Brooks, from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump –
addresses this breakdown of the labour market by advocating ‘full employment’,
as if having a job is self-evidently a good thing, no matter how dangerous,
demanding or demeaning it is. "

And, when you _experiment_ with a job guarantee program and turn it into a
basic income scheme you can see why:

[http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-
gu...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/04/randy-wray-the-job-guarantee-
and-real-world-experience.html)

The increasing “feminization” of the program (caused in part by economic
recovery that pulled most men out of the program and into the private sector)
proved to be a political problem. Government officials adopted the attitude
that the program was providing jobs to “economically inactive” women who
should be at home instead of working. I won’t go into the details (in part
because I am not sufficiently familiar with them) but officials created an
alternative scheme by which the remaining men would be moved into an
unemployment program and the women would be moved into welfare. These moves
were voluntary, but higher pay in either unemployment or welfare was the
attraction that helped to gut the Jefes program. One of my PhD students
continued to study participants as the program was reduced—and found that
women would rationally take the higher pay in welfare _but continue to work in
their jobs (without pay) because they found substantial benefits in the social
networks they had created through work. They also wanted to contribute to
their communities._

Somehow I doubt this story has permeated James Livingston's Brooklyn bubble
though.

~~~
henrikschroder
That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future.
Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as
their stated goal. Some experiment with basic income, but it's still just seen
as a different way of doing welfare, and it's always assumed that the majority
of government taxation will come from other people's labour. People just
cannot wrap their heads around a future where taxation is based on
productivity, not human labour, and where labour is optional.

~~~
crdoconnor
>That's the biggest problem I see as well with reaching a post-labour future.
Every single political party across the entire spectrum has full employment as
their stated goal.

Yes, because the boring truth is that because people want jobs and we need
them to do stuff.

The only reason we really have a "reserve army of the unemployed" is as an
inefficient way of enforcing "labor market discipline" for private companies.
That's why they lobby for austerity, etc.

------
freshhawk
No better addition to the subject than David Graeber's piece: On Bullshit Jobs
([http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/) \-
click the "here" link on that idiotic splash page)

And an interesting evaluation from The Economist
([http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-m...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/08/labour-
markets-0))

The Economist does miss the point a bit by concentrating on a comparison
between industrial jobs from a century ago and clerical jobs today. The author
discards any notion that workers are intelligent enough to be affected by the
true meaning and value to society their job creates, instead comparing
physical pain from a industrial age factory job to the tedium of killing time
on facebook at a cushy office job.

That's a cheap hack reframing in order to make a point in my opinion, either a
sign of dishonesty or just being completely out of touch. Graeber is very
clear that the meaninglessness of these tasks is important.

------
visarga
Today most people work for companies they don't own. In the future, the
unemployed will become self employed and work directly to support themselves.
Some have land, and can cultivate food. Others can make furniture, or give
medical consultations, or teach children. Even owning a small solar farm could
be a source of income.

All of them were formerly professionals, now jobless and moneyless. So they
have to work directly for themselves and barter products and services. It will
evolve into a bazaar of companies and professionals, offering products and
services to each other, maybe even with its own currency.

We might not have money but we have work power and are not stupid, and are
motivated to find a solution. If nobody will hire you or give you free stuff,
what are you going to do? You got to work for yourself, like it's always been
since there are people on this planet. But this time, after you earn some
money, you can buy your own robot, or get your friends with a small fab to
make one for you.

So, coming automation, people will migrate from employment into self
employment. By relying on each other, maybe with some help from the government
as well, people can make it.

~~~
nico_h
Rule #1 : Anything that can be economically automated will be.

Corollary: Anything that is automated is not economically sensible for a human
to do.

\- Freelancing and consulting gigs have huge overhead.

\- Uber drivers (for now) own the car but don't make most of the money. And
they will be made redundant by self driving cars.

\- Medical services have the most overhead and require years of expensive
training.

\- Making artisanal furniture might feed one or two person per town, but
that's no way to feed a family.

\- Farming is also getting automated in vertical greenhouses.

If you have health problem, or cannot make something with your hands or your
brain _that people are willing to exchange enough money for_, should you be
left out to die?

~~~
visarga
> Anything that can be economically automated will be.

Yes, but when you can't pay the wonderful automated hospital its fees, you
hire the local unemployed doctor (replaced by an automatic diagnostic system)
and in lieu of payment, you go and fix his roof.

My point is that there are going to be lots of unemployed people and they are
going to work for themselves because they need to survive, because they got no
money or jobs. Automation will make it cheaper for corporations to manufacture
things, but people are not going to buy their products because they don't have
hard money. They only have barter money. And companies don't take that as
payment.

The alternative, UBI, requires that companies realize they actually want UBI.
UBI would be like a pot of gold they can sink their hands into. People would
buy shit and they would make profits. Of course, UBI comes out of their
pockets, but hopefully they make more profit than the competition and win.
Also, hopefully, with automation there is enough increase in productivity to
cover UBI and some profits for the industries. If UBI doesn't come, they are
busted. Rich people can't satiate economy's demand for customers. They can
only eat so much food, and sleep on so much bed, and use so much car. The
larger the UBI, the more money on the table each year.

But for people it's going to be great to become more self reliant, even
acquire automation and support themselves by directly benefiting. Automation
is going to become much cheaper and an open-source community of makers is
going to appear. We won't need to buy much except generic computers and raw
materials. Or the government will subsidize buying commercial automation for
self reliance, as a cheaper alternative to UBI. Automated farms, 3d printers
and solar panels are going to empower people.

~~~
nico_h
The trouble with all that is that we don't think about an alternative to
"corporation extract the maximum economic value they can" (a.k.a profit).

One hope is that with sufficient automation and competition, the marginal cost
on providing a diagnostic or other services might fall to close enough to 0 to
be free. The value provided to society would be very high. The profits might
be astronomical?

I agree that UBI or something like it is a necessity, but I'd rather live in a
Star Trek "all needs provided for without currency exchange or social stigma"
society rather than 5 trillionnaire families and 9 billions peoples
surviving/mooching on UBI.

Increased automation has a high chance to be very expensive, in the "printer
cartridge" kind of way. Cheap "robot". Expensive maintenance and consumables.

I wish you're right, and that corporations will not go full "Bacigalupi" and
patent everything from the plant we are allowed to grow to the brand of
electrons we're allowed to put in our robots.

------
hermitdev
The author lost my interest after stating 6% unemployment is good without even
mentioning the Labor Participation Rate. It would be if the Labor
Participation Rate [1] hadn't fallen as much as it has. The US economy has
lost 3.2M jobs since Jan 2006 thru Oct 2016.

tl;dr The unemployment rate is falling because people are losing their
benefits and falling out of the labor force, and no longer being counted as
unemployed.

[1]
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)

(editted for grammar)

~~~
edblarney
Secular decline in labour participation rate decline is mostly demographics.
People are getting older, and not having as many kids as they used to.

This started in 2000 coincident with the downturn.

The big drop in 2008 was mostly the crash.

------
IanDrake
Forget the word "job" and instead use the word "value" to understand just how
silly this idea is.

What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore. You
know, like the guy who built the house you live in, chopped down the trees it
was built with, managed the project to build it, inspected the building to
make sure it was put together correctly, etc...

Hundreds of people had jobs to make the shelter you value. They want something
in exchange for that value. These pseudo intellectuals can't seem to
understand this basic underpinning of civilization.

The exchange of value is as old as time and nothing is going to change that
for a long time.

~~~
dvtv75
Perhaps if you read the article without the intent to argue everything written
because it contradicts your ideology?

> What he's saying is that no one needs to do anything of value anymore.

Can you point to the particular sentence where this is stated? Didn't think
so.

The article I read said that the majority of jobs aren't paid at a level
appropriate to their value, and that without the (rather limited US) welfare
programs to support them, the bulk of employees would be below the poverty
line, and with the impending automation of almost 50% of available jobs it'll
be those bottom-line jobs that go.

The article then tells us that we'll need to redefine our attitudes to both
income and work, but nowhere can I find the statement that "no one needs to do
anything of value anymore." It tells us that almost half of the population
already don't do anything of sufficient value, and many of those jobs are
going to go away.

~~~
IanDrake
"In short, it lets us say: enough already. Fuck work."

I feel like that's pretty clear.

You're right though, it does contradict my "ideology". I'm willing to be
enlightened though but there were no rational arguments in this article to
sway me.

------
joantune
The answer: communal work. Academic research, science, your own projects! UBIs
for nothing would only work for certain people. We should ask them to commit
to, and then supervise them in projects. That'll be the future, not fuck work,
but love the work that you're doing, because you chose it after all!

The author referred to some interesting concepts of lack of work that we can
draw conclusions from: the Aristocrat era (on which there was a decay of this
class, for excess of leisure IMO)

We still need to have a purpose in life, we should help people find more about
their purpose and help them achieve it. UBIs can and should be complemented
with bonuses for achievements. This way we can take back the work hard and get
good results kind of balance. Difference will be: you can choose whatever you
do, it doesn't need to give money directly (just imagine what that could do
for scientific research)

~~~
thenomad
That's a really interesting proposal, and one of the few I've heard that
actually could improve on a UBI in some ways.

The obvious leak point - who would determine what was "worthy" work? If
someone said "my project right now is to watch all of The Wire", would that be
OK? Would it differ if it was "all of CSI Miami"? What about if it was "All of
MIT's lectures on machine learning"?

~~~
joantune
That's a tricky question, and an important one.

What I meant with projects is something tangible. What you are talking about
is education? should that count? if those people are being educated or want to
learn something, shouldn't they be able to still have an UBI while doing it?

My answer to that is:

20hours/week of communal work - they would do that work 20 hours/week and
still have time to learn whatever they want..

Also, a centralized system could give more rewards to scientific advancements.

The system that we have now seems to be:

If other people want what you are creating, they'll pay for it, so that's how
you define what it's worth to have.

However, the system that we have is flawed in many ways, because the closer to
the selling point and to the money that you are, the more reward you make.
Which makes sense, but undermines by underpaying some very important
jobs/tasks that are the backbone of a lot of things, to name a few:

Scientific research Investigative journalism

~~~
thenomad
I was talking about self-improvement, which is similar.

OK, further question - what if they want to watch The Wire and write a series
critique for public consumption as their communal work? That's definitely
something tangible.

Does that answer change if they're:

1) A complete unknown with a blog 2) Have published work but aren't very well
known 3) Are a famous media writer with thousands of fans asking for this
critique? 4) A well-known academic in the field?

If the answer to all of the above is "no", is that also true of other academic
work? What about journalism? What about artistic work?

Having worked in the arts for years, the issue with any sort of "we want to
pay people to do Good Works" plan is that eventually you have to have someone
define what Good Works are, and more importantly, aren't.

I do not envy the many people on grants councils around the world trying to
say "well, this thing is Art, but this other very similar thing is not."

~~~
joantune
Yes, it's very tricky to classify something as worth subsidizing and something
else that doesn't, especially in regard to Art. I would say:

To get an UBI, you would need to do 20hrs work/week. Every other activity
would be as is today. i.e. if you have and are able to reach a good crowd,
you'll make money with sponsorships and ad revenue.. but you need a big/good
enough crowd for that to happen.. and that takes time and effort.. you would
have more time for that..

In regards to science, I'm of the opinion that any scientific study, even the
ones that only find dead ends, is worthwhile as it advances humanity's
knowledge

~~~
thenomad
And what's the definition of "work" here? Sorry, we seem to have missed that.

~~~
joantune
The process of achieving a goal.

For the communal 20hrs/week I would say something that is helpful in different
sectors. You could choose:

Fix stuff; Clean; Social services; etc..

------
cmurf
Well, if we're going to simplistically blame just one thing and blame the
premise of jobs, why not blame the premise that everyone has a right to
propagate, or do so as many times as they want? Obviously it's less
provocative to say fuck work than fuck children; or jobs are the problem than
too many humans are the problem. But if there aren't enough jobs to go around,
part of that is because there are so many people.

~~~
sqldba
Agreed.

Why stop there though? How come some people hoard and/or inherit millions or
billions?

Has one Bill Gates really done the work of 40,000 people worth a million each?

~~~
cmurf
Certainly. That kind of disproportionate wealth comes via exploitation though,
not only hoarding and inheritance.

Is there even enough wealth to go around? If the total wealth is $233
trillion, and there are 7 billion people, each person gets $33286. If we were
to just wealth redistribute, does that actually solve the problem under
discussion? I don't know whether it does. For a huge amount of earth's
population it's the value of more than a lifetime of work.

And could it be true that there's a big fat bubble everywhere else where that
same amount of money doesn't even get you by for a year, or in the richest
cities in the U.S. not even 6 months? What happens if the veil of ignorance
applied to resource allocation were simply reset, globally?

Probably a lot of fraud, exploitation, and murder, to take that share from
others to enrich a few. I think we like to pretend we're civilized. The
language we use now isn't even describing the problem fairly or accurately.

------
pdonis
The article lost me in the second paragraph, with "there is not enough work to
go around". Seriously? There are _so_ many things that need to be done. We
need better energy sources. We need better health care. We need better
infrastructure. I could go on and on.

There is a huge amount of work to be done. More than enough for everybody.

~~~
JamesBarney
Then the big question is if work is a aplenty, and workers scarce. Why is it
so hard for such a large portion of the population to find good work? Why
doesn't all of that work turn into jobs?

~~~
arrosenberg
That work requires government initiative and investment. Many of the depressed
areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced government doesn't work
and they are determined to prove it. Thus, the labor force remains depressed
instead of fixing the obscene number of infrastructure issues in the rust
belt.

Can you imagine if they spent the next 4 years spending some money to fix up
the cities to make them attractive to young people? It might bring new
investment, jobs and life to the area.

~~~
pdonis
_> That work requires government initiative and investment._

No, it doesn't. It requires initiative and investment, but there's no reason
why those things have to come from the government.

 _> Many of the depressed areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced
government doesn't work and they are determined to prove it._

Many other depressed areas keep voting for politicians who are convinced
government _can_ work--but they are unable to prove it.

------
shin_lao
When the steam machine was invented, it seriously disrupted Europe where most
of people were working in the fields.

Some people rebelled and destroyed these machines who "stole their jobs". Some
thinkers thought it would be the end of work.

There was a long and difficult transition period, but in the end, they were
wrong. People moved to cities and did different jobs. New jobs.

It will be the same over and over again.

~~~
imglorp
Not this time. Automation really will replace people on massive scales because
this time it's all of possible, cheap, and better. Pro drivers are first, 10m
in the US. Fast food and retail are next. Imagine McD's and Walmart as drive-
up vending machines.

~~~
thadjo
I'm sympathetic to the 'not this time' argument but I don't think it has to do
with the _scale_ of technical disruption. At the beginning of the 20th century
nearly half the labor force was in agriculture; now it's somewhere between
1-2%.

In terms of magnitude of displacement, I don't think what we are seeing now,
or anticipate seeing in the next decade is of a different kind than what we
saw with the mechanization of agriculture. What concerns me is:

    
    
      1) The rate at which these disruptions are occurring, and
      2) The ability for displaced labor to find other opportunities in the economy. 
    

The shift from agriculture to manufacturing took place over decades and didn't
require significant retraining. The shifts we are seeing now cut across a wide
swath of 'unskilled' labor which is appears to be in a general decline. (I
recommend checking out EconTalk episodes with David Autor and Erik Hurst:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/econtalk/id135066958?mt=...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/econtalk/id135066958?mt=2))

------
z3t4
There will always be _work_ maybe not paid work, but there's always work to
do. A lot of "work" will be automated by robots, and even if we get AI and
don't have to "work" ourself, we will still invent work, but we will not work
because we _need_ to, we will work because we want to.

------
jwatte
As the tweet says: "Just how much have we fucked up when robots doing all the
work is somehow a bad thing?"

------
etherealmachine
The World Economic Forum estimates tech advances will destroy 5 to 7 million
jobs in the next four years alone. In the coming years, Universal Basic Income
will sound less and less fanciful after hordes of workers become completely
unemployable through no fault of their own. And we aren't just talking about
low skilled jobs anymore but white collar, professional and even creative jobs
are all on the chopping block.

------
Fuffidish
I think it's not true that there is no more work to be done. We are just stuck
with the idea that jobs come with growth, and that only jobs that yield growth
should be paying salaries. I believe if we sat down and talked we could find
hundreds of jobs around us, it's just the money that is lacking, if we could
access even a little percentage of the huge money spent in wars,
entertainment, gambling,... Many cities, forests, beaches need cleaning,
people and animals that need care, understaffed hospitals, etc... These jobs
just don't pay. I'd be happy to hear your opinions on this.

~~~
scalio
You've hit the nail on the head. Some jobs come from unnecessary complexity in
the system (civil servants, accounting people); some jobs exist because
they're too complicated for machines (for now); some are just plainly unneeded
(stock brokers, hedge fund managers and the like). As AI and robotics advance,
progressively more classes of workers will suddenly find themselves
superfluous.

What will they do then? My biggest fear is that most will simply fall into
consumerist lullaby mode. I have no doubt big corporations will find a way to
make non-labour-bound income work to their advantage.

Rendering healthcare possible for everybody and -thing, up to planet scale, is
certainly an enticing aspect of this labour revolution (these activities need
humans and human intelligence, which are currently all locked up and
undervalued in traditional jobs).

It gives us time to think. For the first time in history, an entire
civilization gets the opportunity to work on its intellect. See my other
comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13042772))
in this thread.

That all these jobs don't pay just shows how ill-equipped our current system
is to handle free-thinking people, and freedom as a concept.

~~~
Fuffidish
Aside for intellect, I wouldn't mind trading some desk time for time spent in
the forest cleaning / doing research or anything useful...

------
brokenmasonjars
I know people how love work. Actually majority of people who I'm surrounded by
in my daily life - love work. It's been weird growing up...as every job I've
ever held has turned me into a depressed turn. I hate work. I hate all of
work. I hate spending time outside of my own parameters. I prefer waking up
whenever I want. I prefer not having obligations. Work not only ruins this but
adds an additional set of things to the mix; the commute, co-workers, and the
sheer fact of hey - here comes the weekend and the time of freedom ticks away
towards another week of hell and torture. I left the workforce to get a PhD. I
used money I saved to learn to trade with my brokerage account, lots of losses
before I got decent enough at it. I don't see my PhD as something for job
holding, it was just something I wanted to accomplish. Trading is my income.
Often I have to deal with the nonsense of people asking me what I do and I
prefer just to lie and say I telework as an assistant or something because..I
don't want to hear uneducated thoughts about how I make my money. That
said..I'm not rich but eh..suppose it was the need to adapt and avoid things I
hate that got me to this point. Either or..having grown up in a very bias
setting that favors work I really look forward to the continue destruction of
the labor force. This mentality that you must work for even the purpose of
character must die. Not everyone is going to trade, a basic minimum income is
needed etc..but yea..jobs must die and the sooner the better.

------
carsongross
The essay suffers from Ted-talk disease: lots of grand gestures and bromides,
not as much rigorous thinking. The underlying problem is an important one,
however.

A little-discussed solution to this problem is one I would like to see tried,
distributism:

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

A book I am currently reading (and enjoying) on it is:

[https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-
Distributist...](https://www.amazon.com/Toward-Truly-Free-Market-
Distributist/dp/161017027X/)

~~~
alexmingoia
> Under such a system, most people would be able to earn a living without
> having to rely on the use of the property of others to do so. Examples of
> people earning a living in this way would be farmers who own their own land
> and related machinery, plumbers who own their own tools, software developers
> who own their own computer

Nonsense. Our abundance is increased by specialization not a lack of it.
Specialization and trade allow for higher-order goods to be used as inputs to
produce lower-order goods. Farming doesn't just require a tractor and some
land. You need fuel to run the tractor, other industries to come together to
make the tractor, a merchant to purchase the tractor from, and on and on.

It does not follow that owning more things related to a trade will produce
more things. The opposite is the case, it's cheaper for the farmer to buy the
tractor than produce tractors himself.

~~~
lucideer
Generally speaking, I agree with the overall content of your post. However
your first and last sentences really emphasise for me the real problem:
oversimplifying and stratifying the discussion.

"Nonsense" is an extreme overstatement, there are nuances to both arguments.

"This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an economic
system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely what's
needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been
treated as absolutes, which they're not.

A farmer needs to buy their tractor from a tractor manufacturer and fuel it
from a fuel extractor/generator, but not everyone need be involved in this
cycle and not every step need be specialised in a completely unary manner.
Also, the emphasis on individual economic efficiency over efficiency of
communal benefit is important: if a farmer can produce less - but sufficient -
food, for less - but sufficient - material profit, while not producing
negative impacts for others elsewhere in the economic system at large, that's
a more "efficient" overall system.

The most important word in the excerpt you quoted is " _most_ "

~~~
cperciva
_" This is economics 101" is exactly the problem: we're dealing with an
economic system that isn't working. Questioning economics 101 is precisely
what's needed, and I'd argue that while your arguments are sound, they've been
treated as absolutes, which they're not._

This makes as much sense as saying "You say that my magical spacecraft won't
work due to the laws of physics, but physics is exactly the problem: We can't
travel to Alpha Centauri yet. Questioning the laws of physics is precisely
what's needed...".

You don't get to ignore facts simply because they're inconvenient.

~~~
thesagan
Begging the question; economics is not a physical science where you can run
A/B tests on an economy and find results. It's a social study, mostly. As
someone who studied it for _years_ , institutionally and on my own, I can tell
you that economists do not agree on any basic laws except that people have a
long list of wants and that not all of them can be satisfied.

Many economists are questioning their 101s lately. Look closely in the various
journals and you'll see evidence of that, both explicitly and implicitly.

~~~
BurningFrog
> _economics is not a physical science where you can run A /B tests on an
> economy and find results_

The is broadly true of Macro Economics. This might even be impossible as a
science, since the object of study (world economy and markets) is aware of its
findings, and adapts around them.

Micro Economics, or "Price Theory" as it maybe should be called, is OTOH a
very powerful science that gives deep and counter intuitive insights into how
the world works.

It is also largely ignore by decision makers :)

~~~
tomp
Are you sure about microeconomics? AFAIK, only recently have economists
started to use behavioral economics (psychology & game theory) to logically
explain empirical behaviours that were previously thought of as irrational. It
doesn't really seem to be a solved problem.

~~~
BurningFrog
I'm not a real economist, just a really interested amateur.

My impression is that "behavioral" economics is a promising field that can
help explain some unusual phenomena. But it doesn't change the solid core of
the science.

I think it gets talked about like that sometimes by people who don't like the
implications of the established science. Much like what happens with Climate
Change and Evolution when any seemingly contradictory study appears.

------
metasean
Related short story -
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
atemerev
"Jobs" are a relatively recent phenomenon, and are not forever. Inequality,
however, was and is forever.

Basic income is economically unsustainable.

~~~
sqeaky
Why is it unsustainable? Why must inequality be forever?

~~~
AndrewKemendo
No physical system is uniformly distributed, and dynamical systems ensure that
it will stay that way, therefore enough differences are baked into the system
that it's effectively impossible have equally functional systems everywhere.

Some people can just lift more stuff than others, or think about numbers
faster or whatever happens to need to be done and their labor is more valuable
because it's more efficient. Therefore inequality.

~~~
sqeaky
Clearly their ability to lift is not why there are millions without clean
drinking water, for example.

You are right that there are difference built-in to humanity, but we have
already overcome those with fairly common technology already. Now inequality
is more about who your parents were instead of where you are born or other
purely physical problems.

We can ship drinking water to anyplace on the planet. We just aren't
incentivized to do so. The person leading a team building the roads that will
support that effort could be a wheelchair bound parapalegic.

Our systems don't need to be perfect they just need to be better than they are
now.

~~~
grzm
_Our systems don 't need to be perfect they just need to be better than they
are now._

You make a great point here, and one I hope you continue to push for.
Statements like _Why must inequality be forever?_ will obscure this point as
it doesn't include the nuance of "not perfect, just better". You will always
find people who will argue that "Why must inequality be forever" is naïve at
best, needlessly preventing you from finding solutions you might agree on.

------
rdtsc
> Most jobs aren’t created by private, corporate investment, so raising taxes
> on corporate income won’t affect employment.

But won't raising taxes on corporate income drive corporation to other
jurisdiction? So employment in that company then won't just slowly trail off,
but will look like a cliff, dropping to 0.

So isn't that idea ignoring the fact that companies don't have to stick into
one place and so we arbitrarily tax them and then provide basic income to
everyone in that community?

It goes the other way as well. In some places like West Virginia they've bent
backward to accommodate coal mines, easing EPA regulation, destroying the
environment and so on. Just to keep companies around. It is like a bad abusive
relationship.

Other states for example know the game so they would court and offer incentive
for companies to move to their state. I've seen that happen and it was painful
for the original community to lose all those jobs.

I agree that we need something like basic income and the accounting is not the
only problem, the social and moral aspect is a just as big.

The pessimist in me says we couldn't even meaningfully have a decent health
insurance system like other civilized countries. We are a long way from any
kind of distributism.

It is good there is talk and discussion about this. The ideological re-framing
of this might have to be done very carefully.

One quick example I can think off the top of my head is how in Alaska there
was redistribution of income from natural resources. People there probably
don't think in terms of "socialism" or "handouts". Well at least the people I
know there didn't a few years ago...

Wonder if basic income can be advocated in those terms - "You deserve this
because we've created the automation / robots to work for all of us..." or "We
want to free people's time so they can volunteer and help their own
communities...". Some will play video games and consume drugs perhaps all day,
some will decide maybe they want to visit some lonely elderly person in a
nursing home or help in the hospital or soup kitchen some more.

~~~
nico_h
This are the idea I have been struggling with:

1) how do you get people to accept the existence of basic income without
perceiving the beneficiaries as moochers.

2) what do people on basic do?

Right now your example of people visiting the elderly is in some place paid
work but can also be performed by volunteer. However volunteers should be
vetted.

My guess is that when everybody is on basic, you can earn "social credits" for
volunteering. But should that grant you access to more resources, or should
that be like "Achievements" in video games? And how do you avoid turning that
into the Black Mirror episode "15 millions Merits".

But even "social credit" cannot prevent the paid workers to look down on the
moochers on basic.

How do we get to the star trek society utopia...?

~~~
nhaehnle
Well, we already have a form of "social credits". It's called money. We're
just not used to thinking of it that way, but that's really what money is.

So replace "social credits" in your line of thinking by money, and you've
basically arrived at the idea of a Job Guarantee. And somebody who works for
their money is no longer a moocher, so...

~~~
nico_h
The flaw in this analogy is that the current top earners (CEO, traders, White
collar) net contribution to society has no correlation with the money they
extract from the system. Does a CEO improving his company market value by
firing people have the same contribution to society as a paramedic saving a
life, a nanny taking care of a baby so the parents can work or a teacher
educating kids?

These are highly valuable services provided to society that are not rewarded
in either status or the current social credits.

~~~
Pyxl101
> Does a CEO improving his company market value by firing people have the same
> contribution to society as a paramedic saving a life, a nanny taking care of
> a baby so the parents can work or a teacher educating kids?

According to society's value system, as reflected by market pricing, I believe
the answer is generally yes, the CEO is valued more.

The CEO is valued more because their work affects the company they lead as a
whole and the work of many other people at the company - such as by
determining what to work on, what initiatives to invest in strategically, or
by obtaining funding for the company from investors. Poor decisions by the CEO
can cause the entire company to fail; good decisions can create 100x as many
jobs at the company, and increase its value by 100x.

It is more difficult for people to grasp the value of CEOs because their
effect is spread out over a lot of people and abstract concepts like company
success. It is easier to grasp the value of a nanny who spends time with your
kids. But the fact that the nanny's work is much more concrete and obvious
does not mean that it's more valuable. Consider: how much will you personally
spend on a nanny? Would you spend 30-50% of your income on a fantastic nanny
(the way that many people will spend that amount buying a house?) Most people
don't value a nanny that much.

For a comparison, think about the effect that a good or bad president will
have on the entire US. They can make a tremendous difference to the lives of
hundreds of millions of people. A good CEO can do the same for their company,
and all of their workers and investors. A bad CEO can do the opposite, and run
the company into the ground.

Nannys and CEOs operate at entirely different scales. A CEO can destroy
billions in value, or create billions in value. This is why companies and
their boards and investors value good CEOs highly and pay them well. They want
the best possible person for the job, and the best people demand high
compensation.

There are also factors of supply and demand to consider. Most adult humans are
intrinsically equipped to be nannies - to care for children. We're evolved to
do it. No specific qualifications are necessary beyond not being a shitty or
unreliable person. By comparison, not many people are equipped to be an
effective CEO of a large, medium, or even small company. Thus, nannies earn
less because there is a large supply of people who can act as nannies (almost
the entire adult population), and a substantially smaller supply of effective
CEOs. They need intelligence, drive, education, charisma, leadership
capability, experience, vision, and other qualities.

Regarding your specific point about CEOs cutting jobs, sometimes that needs to
happen. Lines of business don't always remain profitable. Sometimes a company
needs to shut down unprofitable business units entirely, and exit the
business. Sometimes a company needs to lay off workers and find a different
approach to remain profitable.

Sometimes a job that was done by humans before will be automated tomorrow. For
example, the company Hostess that makes Twinkies used to employ 22,000
workers. The company went bankrupt, and people bought its ashes and restarted
it. The new hostess now heavily takes advantage of automation and employs only
1,170 people. (1)

A lot of people got laid off in that transition. The layoffs were also
necessary for the company to continue at all; otherwise it would have gone
under for good. They had a non-viable economic model for producing their baked
goods. The leaders in charge of the transition took the only reasonable action
(in hindsight) to prevent the company from cratering. (1)

CEOs are the people in charge of making the best decision for their
stakeholders in really tough circumstances. Sometimes layoffs are the best
possible outcome among many worse outcomes. No CEO would prefer to lay off
their people - it's a horrible thing to have to do - but when the company is
in dire financial straights, sometimes there is no better alternative.

(1)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/07/05/w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2016/07/05/what-
it-took-to-save-the-twinkie/)

~~~
nico_h
Your point is well taken.

I agree, in reality, "the market" thinks the CEO ought to be rewarded more, (I
agree with the principle but not with the current levels). However if a CEO
destroys billions of dollars of value, he gets a golden parachute or a new
title. The employees get a pink slip.

If the CEO creates billions of dollars of value, the employees sometimes get a
(tiny) bonus (medium bonus for bankers).

But what really is the value of Twinky to society compared to the life of a
human being? (millions of $ vs $0?) And that is the fundamental place where I
think we disagree.

I have a strong disagreement with the main tenet of this line of reasoning
(this might become a strawman argument): that maximizing profit and financial
success (or jobs) is the desirable goal for society. If you look at it in the
sense that society should be organized such that "all men are created equal"
with the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", maximizing
profit (or jobs) is perpendicular if not antithetical to the pursuit of
happiness, at least for the many.

The CEO's happiness might be perfectly served by the current system, but what
about the worker's? Also, what was the cost of the failure of the (previous)
management teams to the CEOs vs the employees?

I confess that I've only read about "working" alternatives to the current
system in fiction.

As the article points out, we are running out of jobs. Maybe now would be a
good time for a rethink before we hit the crunch?

------
adentranter
I feel there is another point we are not looking at which worries me.

The author connects work to our self-worth which I think is an important
connection to be made. If our worth is defined by work completed/productivity
and there is a lack of work, slowly it means there is going to be a rise of
people with a lack of self-worth (And being unemployed means your at home
alone alot more) Depression will come.

I worry that this trend of lack of work will begin to lead a rise in suicide
due to a compounded effect of lack of self-worth/identity.

Unsure if this is a sound conclusion to draw, but it worries me.

------
grigjd3
Some variance of the end of labor seems to work its way around every five or
so years. The focus of these articles are always the abstract concepts of
labor that make it into politidal campaigns and economics. They never seem to
notice that people often enjoy work: camaraderie, taking pleasure in a job
well done and seeing how one's personal efforts can make a positive impact.
What we should be struggling against is dehumanizing or demeaning work. People
should be able to seek personal meaning in what they do.

------
lstroud
Article takes political positions as axioms for the goals of an economy. This
makes it hard to say much other than they agree with themselves. Lots of straw
men running around.

------
andrewclunn
Free money for everybody! Cool now to go buy some groceries... hey where's the
food? Oh I guess the farmer realized they didn't have to work any more
either... it's almost like money isn't some magical thing that automatically
has value, but merely serves as a medium of exchanging value, something this
author completely misses.

------
DenisM
The ethics of work in the age of abundance has been covered rather well by
Bertrand Russel in 1932 [1]. Not much has changed since then.

[1] [http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html](http://www.zpub.com/notes/idle.html)

------
generousMuffin
When there are no more jobs that need to be done, we will invent something new
and create new jobs. No one would have imagined 50 years ago that so many
people would be software developers, designers, game developers, etc...
Innovation builds on innovation

~~~
grigjd3
Sure, the nature of work isn't static. Before there were permanent
settlements, people hunted and gathered. Then we started agriculture, then
construction and this leads to writing and scholarship. These articles are
simply bemoaning change, but change is making us stronger.

------
hvindin
Something thats probably worth pointing out, deciding that you are going to go
into a specialty in criminal enterprise doesnt make you wealthy. The same
amount of hard work is required to become a drug dealer and make a living as
is required to do other jobs and make as adequate living, actually it requires
a lot more work.

Obviously this is not relevant to the entire article, but I would suggest
doing something like reading freakonomics before making what are imperically
wrong statements.

Not that I dissagree entirely with the overall argument made by the article. I
just feel like some of the examples could have been researched a little more.

------
rileyphone
It's not so much that we will be entering a post-work society, but rather one
where the value of labour as a commodity continues to fall. Let's hope this
means more meaningfull, non-alienating work.

------
choonway
Where we are now is similar to the era where nuclear weapons were
theoretically possible, but the practical implementation was still elusive
until ww2 provided the impetus.

Similarly, at this juncture self-production needs more effort at the
technology and engineering side, not more op-eds by economists.

/r/reprap was started as a movement to enable self-production, but sadly,
these days people buy 3D printers enabled by the movement but don't subscribe
to their philosophy.

------
dnprock
I think it's an effect of globalization. Once you're linked to other
economies, you'll have to run at full speed to compete with the other guys.

------
biafra
Don't confuse passion with doing overtime. When I do things outside work that
have to do with computers - for example helping kids to learn programming - I
do this because I like programming. Not to please my employer. As a friend put
but nicely: we would do our job without being paid because we like programming
so much. But then we would need to do a different job to get the money to get
by.

------
wallace_f
I studied Economics and Public Policy in uni. I just came to the realization,
what essentially boils down to 'utopian theorycrafting' seems fine and all,
but when we are currently using only a very small fraction of the capability
of our current system it makes me feel that an earnest attempt should be
something more pragmatic than dreaming up our utopian society.

------
Tempest1981
I'm hoping someone can explain this:

 _You don’t need profits to ‘reinvest’, to finance the expansion of your
company’s workforce or output, as the recent history of Apple and most other
corporations has amply demonstrated._

How do you reinvest without profits, and what is the Apple example? Apple
makes a profit, and reinvests... confusing. Is he suggesting a loan, perhaps?

------
danschumann
Uh, jobs are not obsolete. If everyone who didn't have a job practiced
massage, we'd all be able to get a rubdown for $10/hour. There's always a way
to add value to the market place.

------
redthrow
> Economists believe in full employment

This doesn't sound right. It's laypeople who tend to measure the economy by
employment.

Economists tend to measure the economy by production.

------
partycoder
Well, a call to rethink the concept of a job itself, is a very provocative and
interesting idea. I would like to see more discussions around that.

------
mdpm
When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of their work, as the
colour-petals out of a fruitful flower;—when they are faithfully helpful and
compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and
vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse to the body. But now, having no
true business, we pour our whole masculine energy into the false business of
money-making; and having no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed
up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily
and darkly.

\- John Ruskin

------
known
Sounds like [http://www.whywork.org/](http://www.whywork.org/)

------
EugeneOZ
Sorry, I missed the point: what is the proposed solution? I mean, what is
alternative?

------
protez
What if unemployment is not the problem but the solution?

------
aminok
>I know what you’re thinking – we can’t afford this! But yeah, we can, very
easily. We raise the arbitrary lid on the Social Security contribution, which
now stands at $127,200, and we raise taxes on corporate income, reversing the
Reagan Revolution.

In other words, we massively increase the scope of human-rights-violating
income taxation, while chasing capital out of the country.

The problem here is that the author is not making the link between this:

>Those jobs that disappeared in the Great Recession just aren’t coming back,
regardless of what the unemployment rate tells you – the net gain in jobs
since 2000 still stands at zero

And this:

>The fastest growing component of household income since 1959 has been
‘transfer payments’ from government. By the turn of the 21st century, 20 per
cent of all household income came from this source – from what is otherwise
known as welfare or ‘entitlements’.

The increase in social spending is the most likely cause of the decline in the
labor participation rate and the less-than-stellar wage/productivity growth.

>But, wait, isn’t our present dilemma just a passing phase of the business
cycle? What about the job market of the future? Haven’t the doomsayers, those
damn Malthusians, always been proved wrong by rising productivity, new fields
of enterprise, new economic opportunities? Well, yeah – until now, these
times. The measurable trends of the past half-century, and the plausible
projections for the next half-century, are just too empirically grounded to
dismiss as dismal science or ideological hokum. They look like the data on
climate change – you can deny them if you like, but you’ll sound like a moron
when you do.

The author is lying. The empirical data does not confirm his technological
unemployment hypothesis. The demand for labor globally has grown over the last
half century, and it has accelerated over the last couple of decades. Wages
have grown faster over the last 20 years than in any period of history:

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-
glo...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war-
on-poverty)

Another leftist demagogue looking for government money.

If you want to understand how automation affects the demand for labor, I
strongly recommend this article over the submitted post:

[http://www.vox.com/new-
money/2016/10/24/13327014/productivit...](http://www.vox.com/new-
money/2016/10/24/13327014/productivity-paradox-innovation-growth)

~~~
nhaehnle
Taxes are not related to human rights. Unless you can point to cases where
taxes have been so high in the past that people starved from it? But in any
case, that's not on the table. Don't pretend that it is.

~~~
aminok
A tax on income means throwing those who refuse to hand over a share of the
currency they receive in private trade in prison, where they are kept in small
enclosures, and where they often develop mental illnesses, and suffer physical
and sexual abuse.

An income tax uses the threat of imprisonment to force people to surrender
their privacy rights, in disclosing how much income one received in private
trade, and from what sources, and their private property rights. It's a
violation of human rights.

------
debt
automated Jobs could spell the end of design.

automated jobs could spell out the end of capitalism.

but idk

------
unabst
Work is not about building character. It's about getting shit done. The
delusion isn't in work itself. It's in thinking it somehow makes or breaks us.
In reality, it has nothing to do with us. Once you get your ego out of the
way, it only gets easier. For only then can we truly focus ON THE TASK and not
ON OURSELVES. And it's when we see the fruits of our labor in all of its
extraordinaire that ordinary people become heroes.

There is plenty of work. The only problem is with quality, because the fact of
the matter is, most work just sucks. And it just gets worse.

That's because most work is delegated. Meaning, it's packaged and marginalized
into it's simplest form to minimize mistakes and maximize simplicity, and it
just keeps raining from above. Such work sucks to most people. It's Foxconn,
it's berry picking, it's beneath us.

But it isn't. That's the delusion.

And this kind of work we have infinite amounts of. What every aspiring
entrepreneur needs are good workers that just get shit done regardless of the
task, and that first hire must be themselves. Be picky and you're screwed.
Obsess about character and self worth and you might as well just burn all your
time and money. Those things are important, but the point is, they have
nothing to do with any task at hand. Those are the HUGE tasks that are NOT AT
HAND. Even if you're working for yourself the IRS will rain work on you, your
clients will, a bad sales day will, a broken web site will.

There was an interview with Elon Musk once where he was asked how he had spent
his day so far. He explained how he was buying up all the USB cables at the
local electronic stores because one of his suppliers missed their deadline and
he needed to finish building some cars. How fun is that? Imagine all the
glorious work he could be doing. Imagine how much his time is worth. He could
be making millions. Except, that is precisely how he makes millions. By
chasing down USB cables to meet deadlines. And volunteering to be interviewed.

There was also an interview with Sean P. Diddy Combs where he was asked how
great life was and he basically said he had no complaints, but that he'd
rather be having sex all day. And he is absolutely right. There is no work
that is going to beat sex. Work = Not sex. That's it. He is worth 700 million.
Madonna was also asked about sex, and she basically admitted being too busy
for it. No shit! She is worth 500 million. Anyone can fuck all day. But that
isn't work, and that isn't how anyone becomes a pop mogul.

The point is, stroking your own ego and thinking certain work is beneath you
is like confusing work for something better. It isn't. It's like refusing to
work because it's not fun or sexy or sex. And whether it's taking out the
trash or making a presentation to a VC or just coding, work is all just work.
It's shit that just needs to get done.

Then what's the difference between me or you buying a USB cable versus Elon
Musk? The only difference is what happened years ago when Elon sat down and
made a decision to build Electric Cars. The only difference is when he decided
he wanted to colonize Mars. After such decisions were made, the rest is all
just work, and it's mostly work that just rains down from above. He went to
Russia to buy rocket engines because he had to. He poured in his own money
because he had to. He watched a rocket explode because he was lied to about
the specs of some bolts, because he had to. Is this the work we all seek?
There is no seeking. There is no above or beneath. There is no character
building. There is no you. There is just work work work!

There is plenty of work. Fuck not working. We need to get back to work not
because it defines us, but because we can define our dreams. Let's Make
America Great Again (TM). And when we see our new America in all of its
extraordinaire that is when we become heroes again -- not the assholes we are
known for.

The American Dream requires American Dreamers. It's all work, and no sex. The
"fuck" in "fuck work" is as close as it gets.

------
bertiewhykovich
Please just read Marx already.

~~~
freshhawk
But what of the risk to your mental health if you end up realizing that how
much money you make isn't measuring how much value you provide to society?

Or that, there are inherent contradictions in capitalism and therefore people
have lied to you. The system is more complex and less rational than you
thought. That would mean that we _aren 't_ in Fukuyama's post-ideological,
end-of-history era!

Sounds terrifying, maybe it _is_ better to avoid becoming an educated adult.

~~~
bertiewhykovich
It's good and not at all insane that I make $100,000/year for dicking around
on a computer every day. Those poors just aren't creating value.

~~~
grzm
Snide comments like this do nothing to promote constructive discussion. Please
post civilly or just don't.

~~~
freshhawk
This should be aimed at me just as much then. My comment was more snide if
anything.

Also, I disagree, irony has its place and one of them is to poke fun at
commonly held but profoundly mistaken beliefs that result in widespread
suffering. Even if that has a high chance of offending people who don't like
smart ass comments chipping away at the pedestal holding up their privilege.

I'm sure you meant well, and I'm not attack you. I have noticed that often
cutting jokes are considered acceptable here only when they align with certain
political beliefs, and I feel it's eminently constructive to politely push
back on that, so please take this as my intent.

~~~
grzm
Agreed. Though to be honest the political alignment doesn't matter to me so
much. I see so much acrimony on both sides which I've tried to push back
against in general. I'm sure I unconsciously push back on one side more than
another, but I have tried to be even handed and civil (as you have, and I
thank you for that) when I do so.

------
jsonmez
Drivel

------
quadrangle
[http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/](http://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/)

------
jondubois
I agree with the characterization of investment bankers and hedge fund
managers as 'gangsters'.

I'm tired of hearing these people rationalize their work as being 'to allocate
capital efficiently' \- Their real job description is 'to dilute real value
and centralize capital'. These people don't create jobs; they transfer jobs
from small businesses to big corporations.

Those big corporations gain market share not by offering a superior product
for a lower price; they do so by manipulating the markets and using the media
to project a false image of quality...

If you go to MacDonald's and get a burger, if you forget that you're eating a
Big Mac for a second and try to think about it objectively; it's very poor
quality; the meat actually tastes like wet cardboard and the bun is like 70%
air!

~~~
ng12
I don't think people rationalize it like that. I think they rationalize it as
"I can make a lot of money here so I will". The only way it gets better if you
can disincentivize people from acting in self-interest which doesn't really
work in a capitalist society.

~~~
jondubois
Maybe, but I think they should. That's what it means to have a conscience.

I worked for a major gambling (sports betting) corporation as a software
engineer (for 6 months). The job was enjoyable (and extremely well paid) but
it was obviously bad for society. I don't have a problem admitting that what I
did was evil. I was a small fish, but it's no excuse.

Essentially, I took money from people who were not as smart as me. Maybe I
caused people to lose their homes, maybe they got divorced or maybe some even
committed suicide (there were stories in the office). I think it's important
to acknowledge these things and try to fix them (by quitting, for example).

You can always rationalize that people are responsible for their own actions,
but when you are guilty of manipulating people's minds, I don't think it's
reasonable to do so.

Sometimes you do have to do a little bit for the common good.

~~~
ng12
But most of the time it's not black-and-white and people are really good at
rationalizing. If you work at a hedge fund chances are a good chunk of the
assets come from pension funds, foundations, and university endowments. You
can feel good about that! Alternatively, if you work at Apple improving iOS
for blind users you still have to deal with the fact that the phones are made
by mistreated, underpaid workers in China.

I had kind of the opposite experience as you. I worked at a company that I
felt good about, but over time they took on projects I was less on-board with
for various reasons (money, political capital). Eventually it got to the point
where it was no longer worth the lower paycheck.

