[RevEng]

I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century. The stream engine didn't do it, electricity didn't do it, computers didn't do it, the Internet didn't do it, and AI won't either. The truth is that as input costs drop, sales prices drop and demand increases - just like the paradox they referred to. However, it also tends to come with a major shift in wealth since in the short term the owners of the machines are producing more with less. As it becomes more common place and prices change they lose much of that advantage, but the workers never get that.

[zozbot234]

> I was with the author on everything except one point: increasing automation will not leave us with such abundance that we never have to work again.

That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

[Gigachad]

What is interesting is the new things are cheap while the old stuff is now expensive. Average house in Australia is $1,000,000 while a TV is $500. The internet, social media, etc are cheap. Having someone repair your shoes is expensive.

[coldtea]

>That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work

That's more because we are never given the chance. We only get to keep working or fall of the rat race and at best be delegated to Big Lebowski style pariah existance.

[SecretDreams]

> That's because we prefer improved living standards over less work. If we only had to live by the standards of one century ago or more, we could likely accomplish that by working very little.

Is that trend still true? I can look from the 50s to 2000s and buy into it. I'm not clear it is holding true by all metrics beyond the 2000s, and especially beyond maybe the 2020s. Yes, we have better tech, but is life actually better right now? I think you could make the argument that we were in a healthier and happier society in that sweet spot from 95 - 2005 or so. At least in NA.

We've seen so much technological innovation, but cost of living has outpaced wages, division is rampant, and the technology innovations we have have mostly been turned against us to enshitify our lives and entrap us in SaaS hell. I'd argue medical science has progressed, but also become more inaccessible, and, somehow, people believe in western medicine LESS. Does not help that we've also seen a decline in education.

So do we still prefer improving our standards of living in the current societal framework?

[intended]

Heck no. Given the choice most people would want to do remote work. COVID showed that we can actually achieve remote work, and suddenly many people realized they had a life they loved, without having to lose chunks of it to an unpaid commute that was baked into the cost of work.

Given actual alternatives, workers have made their preferences clear.

Culture also plays a part - America is uniquely mercantile and business first. Workers and citizens in other countries have made different choices.

[anonzzzies]

> we could likely accomplish that by working very little

Yeah I know many people who do in the small town I live in. Mostly elderly who are used to it still, but also some young people who want to work just enough to buy what they need and not 1 minute more. I could've retired at <20 if I would've enjoyed that. Now I enjoy it more; it's kind of relaxing that kind of lifestyle; not because of not working but because of needing nothing outside your humble possessions.

[paulddraper]

Exactly.

Living quarters, transportation, healthcare, food. What were theses figures in 1926, and how much work is needed to achieve them.

[rnewme]

Have you seen the land prices

[globalnode]

sure sure

[suzzer99]

As long as the owner class can leverage, "Hey, that {out group} is sitting around doing nothing and getting free money!" we'll never have anything close to UBI imo.

[gruez]

Seems pretty easy to work around with "UBI for citizens" only. There's not much pushback for social security, for instance, even if minorities get it.

[tty456]

Such is the republican lizard brain these days.

[fourside]

You also need a system that is ok with giving you some of said abundance without you working.

Last year the US voted to hand over the reigns, in all branches of government, to a party whose philosophy is to slash government spending and reduce people’s dependence on the government.

To all the US futurists who are fantasizing about a post-scarcity world where we no longer work, I’d like to understand how that fits in with the current political climate.

[rjbwork]

The thing a lot of people leave out is that literally billions must die for this to happen. In some fully automated world everyone except for a few tens of thousands of the owner class and their technicians will be unneeded. And then what to do?

[_DeadFred_]

Voting for 'indifference to peoples dependence on the government' does not equal 'reduce people's dependence on the government'.

There is zero actual intentional reduction of dependence, just elimination of government support.

[hnthrow0287345]

It fits because now you can start up the conquering war machine and have a bunch of soldiers who're willing to kill in another country before starving in theirs

[initramfs2]

I am also fairly certain that if we do arrive at some abundant utopia where you can wish for anything can have it arrive, society will collapse. It's just bringing up 7 billion (probably more) spoiled brats at that point of time. Work on its own is also a form of "social control". Idle hands are the devil's tools etc.

[jbxntuehineoh]

Imo instead of no-strings-attached UBI we should have something like the WPA. Spend ten hours a week or whatever working in local parks/schools/libraries/etc and get paid a basic living wage in return

[ndsipa_pomu]

Throughout history, big advances have come from humans having more "idle time", so we should be aiming for the population to be less busy as they can then hopefully focus on pursuing the arts or sciences.

[RiverCrochet]

If you can wish for anything and have it arrive, spoiled brats won't be a thing, because competition and envy for things will be pointless.

[int_19h]

Collapse in a sense of many existing power structures becoming meaningless, yes, certainly.

But that is a good thing.

[simianwords]

You are painting this like it’s a bad thing. The workers decided that they would rather have higher working time to buy more things!

A lot of people would not choose to work for half the time as they do now because they do actually like to buy things.

[johnnyanmac]

I'd happily work for 20 hours @200k a year. It'd give me time to work on my own projects.

Issue is that virtually no company offers that deal unless you already have noteriety or money at the level of retiring anyway.

[mmcromp]

How can you say that when workers don't have a choice? What accessible job has professional level pay and is part time?

[cyanydeez]

See, we have enough food to feed the entire world, every year.

It's not our production capabilities that keep people hungry; it's either greed or the problem of distribution.

Automation will definitely amplify production but it'll certainly continue to make rich richer and poor, well, the same. As inequality grows, so too does the authoritarian need to control the differential.

[quantummagic]

Maybe we only have enough food to feed the entire world, because of greed. Every time we've tried to impose a system that spreads the wealth to the masses, rather than it resulting in equality, it has led to suffering and bloodshed. And ironically, in the Soviet Union and China, the death of millions from starvation.

[wnc3141]

This pattern suggests the remaining knowledge work becoming increasingly extracted upon by the owners of ai enabled firms, in similar fashion to sugar plantation workers across the global south. I would think the cost of doing so would be a level of social and civic unrest similar to the colonial revolutions (Bolivar for example) of the 19th century.

[tim333]

>such abundance that we never have to work again. We have heard that lie for over a century.

I'm 0.6 centuries old and have never heard that said for existing tech. Human level AI could presumably do human work by definition but that's not the case before we get that, including now.

[johnnyanmac]

The 0.90 century old economicists were discussing the idea.

https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we...

[RevEng]

Do a search for "the 20 hour work week". You will find plenty of articles from the 50s and 60s talking about how technology is going to make it so we don't have to work anymore. Popular Science was particularly keen on this but they certainly weren't the only ones.

[kovek]

All of those technologies of the past can be managed by humans. Once computers can manage themselves AND other technologies and people, I think it'll be a different situation.

[jjmarr]

If you want to live with no electricity, no running water, and a lack of refrigerated food, you could do so purely on welfare. In that sense, we already have the UBI that Marx predicted.

However, most people want fruits and vegetables instead of getting rickets, goiter, and cholera from an 1800s diet. Many are even willing to work 80+ hours a week to do so.

[9dev]

Most non-banana republics across the world define the Minimum standard of living as having all of the things you listed, meaning welfare/social safety nets provide for that. As they should. We’re not animals.

[stouset]

I’m not really sure the point you’re trying to make behind “as long as you don’t mind dying early and painfully from easily preventable diseases technically you can live in utopia”. Would you mind clarifying your position here?