That society will not exist. People derive meaning from work. Ambition also drives personal development. You take those away and all a person has left is self-medication with drugs and booze and suicide. We need the struggle.
The parent comment didn't want to get rid of work. Just focus open source work improving robots that did the jobs we used to.
All of human desires for competition and struggle would still be catered to.
Maybe. This discussion is a little abstract, but if OP is proposing a system where there is an outlet for ambition that lets crazy people push themselves to raise themselves above others, then I have no qualms against that. The problem is that such a system is going to look a lot like capitalism or some sort of market-economy (maybe with a social welfare state). That is, such as a system is going to to look like either our society, or it will be a disaster like Venezuela (in the extreme) or Argentina and Brazil.
You point me to a past, or present society that is a model for what OP is trying to argue for?
Most of the "labor" on a plantation was done by slaves which will be very similar to the automated labor provided by robots of the future.
But those slave owners still had jobs to do, they were still competitive with each other. They still used money and tried to acquire more wealth.
Sparta was a neat example too. Menial labor was provided by slaves, but Spartan Citizens competed with each other for military honors and societal placement.
Wow. Ok. Setting aside the humanitarian disaster that the South was in the 1800s, here's some qualification to your example:
- The South was poor, much poorer than the North, both in economic and technological advancement.
- The vast majority of Southerners were NOT slave owners. Meaning that Southern society was extremely stratified with wealth concentrated with a relatively small number of plantation owners. So your example is more inline with a bunch of rich people hanging out together.
But your example does touch on the actual deep problem with automation. The Southerners that prospered under Slavery did so because they owned most of the capital (land and slaves), but the poor non-plantation-owning population still had to work to provide for themselves! Under a cynical (but realistic) views on automation, we expect to see owners of the automatons do great, but what of the masses? Bolting either UBI or increasing our social welfare state is not a solution, because redistribution of wealth is not the core problem (we know how to redistribute wealth - with plenty of examples from modern market economies with social welfare, to less-market/more-socialist attempts as exemplified by your traditional Soviet-style economies). The problem is we don't know how to run a society where the vast majority of people have nothing to do.
I have full faith that if work is this valuable, we’ll do it voluntarily. I cannot believe the fantasy that we have to be forced to work or we’ll be miserable. Humans are way too intelligent to just sit there getting more and more miserable because they don’t have to work. Yes, people coming from a capitalist society usually don’t know what to do when their work goes away. But people in a society where no one needs to work will find things to do. Maybe they’ll repair motorcycles as a way of finding Zen.
There is a lot of work we can do that is not focused on economic productivity. In a world where people don’t have to work to survive, they choose what they do. Some will waste away, just as some do now. Most will not.
We have multitude of examples of populations with generational unemployment, accompanied by crime and drug use even though basic necessities are provided for by the larger welfare state. We see that with rich trust fund kids who also degenerate into drug use, crime, and suicide and are shitty people too.
>Yes, people coming from a capitalist society usually don’t know what to do when their work goes away.
This is not a capitalist thing. This is a human thing. Many people (not all mind you) need some pressure to push themselves ... because if not you can always find a way to fill your time with drugs. I don't think I could survive in a society where you don't have to do anything.
My second point was that you need an outlet for ambition because there are people who will push themselves extraordinarily hard in order to raise themselves, and their families above others - in those cases material wealth is major a factor in that even if there are other goals (like saving the environment, or improving patient outcomes). Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk are examples, startup founders are too, and even immigrants are examples of that. My father left an eastern european communist nation to work (much harder) in a western capitalist democracy even though though his country did not suffer from political instability, nor was it the case the he could not provide food or shelter for his family. Within certain constraints you could live a comfortable life, and yet, a third of the country left over 50 years.
>But people in a society where no one needs to work will find things to do.
Again, we have many many examples where that isn't the case. I can't think of a SINGLE example that illustrates this however (even under communism, it was illegal not to work)
People will do creative things.
Ambition will exist even if the useless work we do today (getting clients richer with more software).
Related - Interview of Noam Chomsky regarding Work:
Would we? Many (most?) people push themselves not only to satisfy some abstract goal (save the environment, build the best widget for industry X to improve efficiency, etc.) - and that's great, but the material wealth is a major component of that. This is literally the startup culture that resulted in the biggest corporations on the planet. It was a bunch of people who wanted to change the world for the better, with wealth being a secret (or not so secret) secondary goal. This also explains economic immigrants, or anybody who decides they want more than they have and so push themselves to get it.
Also, why is Noam Chomsky an expert on everything? I understand he is a brilliant linguist, but what could somebody who self-identifies as an Anarchist could add to a reasonable political discussion? That is, his political ideas are clearly crazy and so his political reasoning is suspect because who the hell could think Anarchism is a good idea. Anarchism is an unworkable utopia that manifests itself as warlord-based tribal disaster akin to what is happening in Somalia and Afghanistan with warlords holding all power in a region, or El Salvador and Honduras with gangs and crime.
What special credentials or expertise give him insight into work?
Only the investors (or gamblers) are in it for money.
> This is literally the startup culture that resulted in the biggest corporations on the planet.
So you think having these corporations are good for us? These are simply big because it allowed gamblers to take a share in the pie. Once the actual people who truly want something worthwhile happen leaves, then we are left with Oracle or Balmer.
> Anarchism is an unworkable utopia that manifests itself as warlord-based tribal disaster akin to what is happening in Somalia and Afghanistan with warlords holding all power in a region, or El Salvador and Honduras with gangs and crime.
What do you really think Anarchism simply means chaos? It's like talking to this person then:
https://pics.me.me/i-dont-know-what-marxism-is-but-letmetell...
> What special credentials or expertise give him insight into work?
His credentials doesn't matter. What matters is what he said.
... I disagree.
>Only the investors (or gamblers) are in it for money.
I think you're severely downplaying the incentives that material wealth and ambition and wanting to rise above others, have on people's behaviour. It doesn't matter whether the person is a startup founder raised in a rich, upper-class household, a gang member from the 'hood', or an 'economic' immigrant (i.e. not a refugee) resettling in an another country, this same base incentive drives all them. In all three cases, the individuals have their basic necessities provided for, but they choose to struggle because they want more.
>What do you really think Anarchism simply means chaos?
That's the colloquial understanding but that wasn't why I made my pont. The utopian Anarchism (as described by the 'Anarchist FAQ'[1] which was my introduction to Anarchism) isn't actually that far from the colloquial understanding. In practice there is no mechanism under Anarchism to prevent violence, and there is all the incentive to engage in gang and tribal warfare (why farm, when you and your friends can go beat-up the hippy farming commune for their supplies). The typical Anarchist answer to this is that under their utopia people would simply not do that because they only do that today because they are brainwashed by capitalism. OK. SURE. Good luck with that. You may think I'm strawmanning that position, but think again, this theme that every single vice of humanity is only there because of Capitalism comes up in Anarchist writings all the time. And you're doing the same thing! You attribute common attributes of humanity, that cross cultures and history, to a socio-political system that was only in existence for 200 years. This is just utopian thinking, not reasonable thinking, and this is why your view isn't taken seriously outside of internet forums populated by like-minded people.
>His credentials doesn't matter. What matters is what he said.
Right. And what he says is pretty dumb.
[1]https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/the-anarchist-faq-ed...
What matters more to me is that we are just so far away from all the important work being "done". As long as there are sick people, people in physical or emotional pain, people needing better housing or better education or any form of improvement to their lives, and as long as the global population has yet to figure out how to exist without harming the environment, there will be work to be done, much of it of great importance and urgency.
This idea that we are within reach of all the important work being "done" so we can all just live a life of leisure seems fanciful to me; I haven't heard anyone propose a realistic pathway to bring about that version of reality - at least not one that doesn't just rely on handwavy concepts from science fiction.
I'd be happy for you to point me to any solid material on this if I'm missing something.
[1] I personally think all kinds of things can give people meaning, and those things may be considered "work" by some people and not by others (E.g., caring for loved ones, learning to create art, or indeed, writing open-source software), so it quickly becomes a futile debate over definitions.
Later, its true even some engineering, doctoring, lawyering (wait that happened already) jobs will be automated too, and those folks will find the UBI useful.
Its a strawman that work just comes to a halt at some date.
"Make work drudgery" will still need to be be done by someone.
>its true even some engineering, doctoring, lawyering (wait that happened already) jobs will be automated too, and those folks will find the UBI useful.
How?! How will they find UBI useful? It is really frustrating to hear people argue that UBI solves problems that it does not actually solve.
UBI has no answer to automation. For one thing our current welfare state can already provide the basic necessities (for example, nobody ever starves in developed economies), and we can keep adapting it as things change. What we don't know is how we can have a functioning society where the majority of the population doesn't need to do anything.
UBI also has no answer for third world countries which have no capital to drain on a social spending. How is UBI going to work with failed states like Congo? Or Somalia? Or a developing nation like Bangledash? How is immigration going to work? Right now there is an economic case that developed nations can make for new immigrants, but in a fully automated world immigration is ONLY charity since every immigrant you take in will be a drain on your social system and provide no contributions back.
UBI is also ill-defined. Libertarians think UBI will replace our social welfare state (including healthcare system). Progressives, Leftists and Socialists will NEVER EVER agree to that. At best, they may see it as a complement to the existing welfare state.
So what problems is UBI actually solving for us?
Everybody needs to do something. But we're not all brainwashed drones that only live for work. This is getting ridiculous. What do we do when we leave work? Go to a game, play on a team, socialize with friends, help a buddy renovate her garage, fool with our car.
The world doesn't collapse every Friday after work as it is. We muddle along somehow until Monday morning.
And who is resisting now, is not any kind of argument for who will go along in the future. It may take 30 years for the old farts with the almost religious work ethic to fade away (grow old and die), but it will definitely happen.
Society isn't going to fall flat if we don't have to sit in a chair for 8 hours, 5 days a week. Just the opposite.
Why not?
Has there ever been a functioning society where the vast majority of the population did not have to work for a living and all their needs were provided by a massive central bureaucracy?
Why is it so obvious that such a society would work given that we also have many examples of populations (within existing societies) that suffer from multitude of social ills when their basic needs are provided by the welfare state but no jobs are available.
>But we're not all brainwashed drones that only live for work.
What brainwashing??!?!? You make it seem like working for a living was invented last week. This has been the reality for all of human history.
FUD and naysaying isn't the same thing as informed argument. Lets table this for now, and maybe read up on the subject some?
You don't have to ask me for permission - you're a free individual, do what you want.
The problem however will still remain. The Capitalism system encourages businesses to work for profit mindlessly, and so we have invoked Oracle from the depths of hell. And a demagogue who can possibly tweet us into nuclear annihilation.
Prices will keep increasing and economist will confuse us by calling it 'inflation' and put a bunch of fantasy-based math to delude themselves. The money I got from the mailbox won't be enough to afford me a much need vacation to unwind. And so I will have to gamble my meager UBI money into buying shares, insurance, retirement etc.. Then the corporations will keep exploiting the countries you mentioned, sending firearms to fanatics while extracting resources like oil.
The answer? There is no guaranteed answer I believe. There are simply just too many moving global variables. With that said, I found the idea of worker-owned-cooperatives to be one good path to improvement. The idea is for employees to own the corporation and vote upon what to do with the profits. Ofc, this will require maturity of the employees just like how Agile requires that the team members to be seasoned in building software. The Mondragon umbrella of cooperatives is a good case study of this working in scale. Not perfect but still a success. The worker-owners used the profit to build a school, compensate for the effects of recession etc. Prof. Richard Wolff whom ironically is an Economist himself has been working hard to push this idea.
You know you can have today, if you want to. You can go on food-stamps and make use of the plethora of social programs to provide your basic necessities and then you can spend your days writing your 2D game engine in Java. ... But you won't do that. And we both know why.
>The Capitalism system encourages businesses to work for profit mindlessly, and so we have invoked Oracle from the depths of hell.
OK. So this is where hysterics start against the best socio-political system we have developed. And you do agree with that, right? That the modern iteration of capitalism (i.e. a market-economy with democratic government oversight and social safety net) is the best system we have ever tried?
>The Mondragon umbrella of cooperatives is a good case study of this working in scale.
I have nothing against Mondragon or worker-owned coops in general, but ownership structure doesn't really change anything. The core challenge that people have with Capitalism is 'creative destructive' because it means constant change, and change is always hard. If you've been making horse-and-buggy wheels for 20 years and you've been put out of business by automobiles, it doesn't matter whether you're employed by a Capitalist corp or a co-op - it is still hard. So worker-owned coop doesn't solve this or any problem. In fact, I'm not even sure what problem it does solve.
And that is because these basic necessities is not enough. To be human is to have family and travel (in economy not in business class).
> OK. So this is where hysterics start against the best socio-political system we have developed. And you do agree with that, right? That the modern iteration of capitalism (i.e. a market-economy with democratic government oversight and social safety net) is the best system we have ever tried?
Doesn't mean it is good enough. And you do agree with that, right? Feudalism, Caste System, Slavery, Central Planning, Capitalism, Church control. One replacing the other. And with less centralized power, we get a better system.
> and you've been put out of business by automobiles, it doesn't matter whether you're employed by a Capitalist corp or a co-op - it is still hard.
Well during 2008 recession. One of the big products of Mondragon was creating Washing Machines. Then demand suddenly fell, and they had to lay-off man-power like many other Capitalist corps. However because their policies was made democratically, they have handled it better than traditional Capitalist corps.
Any excess worker of the Washing Machine Cooperative (remember Mondragon is a group of many Co-ops) is offered two options:
1) Keep their membership in Mondragon. Company will re-skill you and get you to work in another coop. Any additional commute time will be compensated by the company.
2) Retire early. You get your retirement benefits. And parting compensation.
Mondragon, since they are not servant to investors can afford to do this. The profits are used for the workers, not for the 1% capitalists. Oh and by the way, compensation for managers and CEOs are only several times the lowest salary. Unlike your capitalist corps where CEOs get a bajillion times more than the avg salary. The key is in the details.