
A World Without Work - prostoalex
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jan/09/world-without-work-david-susskind-review
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jay_kyburz
I have trouble imagining a future where people don't want to trade their time
for more goods and services. New phones, nice holidays. Especially with the
advertising industry constantly bombarding them with messages about how their
lives could be better if they just spend a little more.

A UBI paid for by taxing capital might help feed and house people, but I think
people are always going to want more, and they will be unhappy if they can't
trade their time for it.

~~~
cryptoz
I think the definition of 'work' here is work that must be done for day-to-day
survival. It is not meant to include all possible enjoyable pursuits, like
trading your time for goods and services. I don't think Wilde or the author or
others wish for the elimination of all human creativity.

There's a big difference between 1) learning sciences or arts or anything at
all for the purpose of _improving_ your life (being able to trade your now-
valuable time for other things, or simply for the enjoyment of the tasks
themselves) and 2) working menial, drudgery tasks simply for the ability to
purchase food and ensure a roof over your head one month at a time.

Many people I've met think that #2 is a required part of humanity; that if you
do not spend most of your waking hours _contributing something_ to society
that you don't deserve to keep living. I think we need a societal shift in
thinking to allow for a world that is coming, where basic needs for all ought
to be met and our unique human experiences can be better spent - either with
family, or exploring the cosmos, or building new inventions.

It hasn't really been possible before that we are so close to building a
society where few human jobs will be required to sustain our populations'
needs.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Yes, but the point I was trying to make was that I still think we will need an
economy so that somebody will pay you study or be creative. Otherwise, what
will you give the owners of the AI in trade for the new Phone / House /
Holiday.

People will probably still want to trade about 30-40 hours of time a week
doing whatever utopian pursuit pays best.

I think the transition from our current economy to this "post work" economy
will be very interesting.

~~~
AstralStorm
Someone has to provide you the basic materials and sustenance for any pursuit.
Certain things will still be rare or kept that way for advantage...

------
himlion
The main reason I wouldn't retire early on a very minimal income is that I
think there might be expensive anti-aging treatments on the horizon in the
coming 40 years. I would like to be situated to take advantage of those.

~~~
kungito
So are you wasting your existing time available for a chance at extending your
life to do what? Work even more to extend even more?

This dilemma always reminds me of Dunbar from Catch 22
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-
shootin...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/496826-dunbar-loved-shooting-
skeet-because-he-hated-every-minute-of)

Personally I'm most happy about the fact that life ends at some point.
Whatever I do, whether I waste my life (whatever that meant) or live it
"meaningfully", at one point it wont matter any more. Don't get me wrong, I
like my life more or less and try to live it "meaningfully" but constantly
thinking about whether I'm doing the right thing at the moment and what will
happen "in the future" is quite tiring.

------
sandoooo
Let's say we have machines that will produce an unlimited quantity of any good
that is currently on the market today. We put one in every house, since that
machine can also produce copies of itself. Does this mean nobody have to work?

You still need doctors. You still need police. You still need yoga
instructors. Plumbers. Somebody to fix your internet. And the need to pay
those people means you will still need to find a way to earn money. Plus, land
is still expensive because physics, and now that people can afford to pay
more, landlords will charge more. Want higher density? Zoning is also not
free. Nor are architects and builders.

All that happens is that goods are excluded from the economic system, but the
system will keep going. The prices for still-limited services will simply go
up to the point where you will still need to work 40 hour weeks to afford
them.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
This is already here to some extent, we have a rentier economy and the bigger
it gets the more of a load it will put on everyone else.

I do wonder if rather than UBI we should be pursuing UBH (Universal Basic
Housing). Cheap food is a solved problem for everyone but the very poorest,
housing isn't.

~~~
sandoooo
Of course it is already here. I think this is in fact the core problem of
Medicare and why costs are going up and up with no end in sight.

In the same vein, all that a UBI / UBH would do is shift around allocation of
actually-limited resources while causing inefficiency, waste and accounting
headaches for everybody. What's more, you'll be shifting those limited
resources away from the most materially productive segment of society - the
middle class - and onto the underclass, who is not going to all of a suddenly
take over the burden of mass production, since that requires many years of
education and training. So what I'm saying is you'll start to get goods
shortages too.

The whole system is an intricate jigsaw puzzle with a billion moving pieces.
People keep suggesting we fix it by hitting it with a hammer and setting parts
of it on fire.

~~~
kwhitefoot
> while causing inefficiency,

More inefficiency than we already have?

> accounting headaches for everybody.

What headaches would they be?

> goods shortages

In the developed world we already have more stuff and kinds of stuff than most
of us need. Reducing the supply of new mobile phone designs is not going to
materially reduce anyone's quality of life.

A lot of the world just needs the kind of stuff we already have, and we
already know how to make that stuff. As William Gibson said "The future is
here, it's just unevenly distributed"

~~~
sandoooo
>More inefficiency than we already have?

Yes, more than there already is. This is the standard thing that happens
whenever there is massive redistribution of _anything_ by government fiat.
Stuff gets redistributed arbitrarily, people who need it don't get it, poeple
who don't need it get too much of it, stuff is lost via administrative error
or outright fraud or political finagling, people being careless with billions
of dollars in other people's money because it's not in their KPI, etc.

Note that most things are not literally on fire currently and there is no
looting. Those things are not guaranteed.

>In the developed world we already have more stuff and kinds of stuff than
most of us need.

Really, now. Do you think we'll be OK if we stop the mass production of
fertilizers and concrete for a while? Just a few months until things settle
down? How about meds? Those tie up a lot of man-hours and medically trained
people to produce, and we could definitely use those people elsewhere (or they
could go take long, UBI-piad holidays).

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rcarmo
I see very little of that “machine-enhanced” future. Case in point:
construction work (buildings, houses, roads) is still carried out by humans,
and will likely always be.

Humans have shifted from subsistence and self-preservation to provide services
of many sorts to each other, and most of the high-value ones are non-physical
in nature (hold that thought!).

Toil is something that our society and industry has eliminated in mass-
production scenarios, to be sure, but there is still a way to go - consider
that ambulatory robots of almost any kind (except vacuum cleaners) are still
niche affairs.

------
mayniac
All of these comments come down to one thing: if work was purely voluntary,
would you still work?

~~~
chownie
Yes, but the work I would do probably wouldn't resemble closely what I do now.

If I have the comfort of being able to carefully choose rather than having to
find anything to pay bills then I would try hard to find something that would
allow me to enrich my community.

I've always wanted to work in assisting illiterate adults in learning to read
but I have no teaching degree (doesn't pay well enough to support my family)
and I don't have the luxury of time to seek those kinds of positions.

------
eithed
Or it could be like in Culture
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series))

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Veoich_py
I'm down for a world with "less" work but when I think back to the moments
when I'm not working and they suck, I always get anxious and depressed usually
start binge drinking and getting super fucked up. :/

~~~
Chinjut
Nobody's proposing you wouldn't be allowed to work; just that you wouldn't
have to. If you want to go find a boss and be their employee, have at it.

------
Unsimplified
How many hours of other people's worktime do you consume every day? Obviously
they want you to work for them too. That's what trade is.

So what does fair trade look like? How much forced charity is fair?

