Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tomhoward | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The parent may or may not be right about work being necessary to for a meaningful life. I don't have a strong opinion either way [1].

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.

Its not black and white. Currently folks have lives all over the map - from working retail, fry cook, desk jockey, doctor, engineer. Then there are the underemployed. Some folks could be 'ramped down' now with a UBI that frees them from make-work drudgery. Others will find the UBI insufficient and keep working. It could actually be adjusted to tune the workforce to available work.

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

"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?

Oh come on - make-work is defined as 'something that doesn't have to be done'. Lets get on the same page here.

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.

>Society isn't going to fall flat if we don't have to sit in a chair for 8 hours, 5 days a week.

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.

Some comments back, automation is making large numbers of people irrelevant. That's why not, and its been mentioned again and again.

FUD and naysaying isn't the same thing as informed argument. Lets table this for now, and maybe read up on the subject some?

>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.

UBI to me, should be understood as like receiving dividends like how rich people does today. They simply go to their mailbox and voila, money. I can now work on my GPL'ed 2D game in Java. Or work on free software projects for human sustainability.

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.

>I can now work on my GPL'ed 2D game in Java.

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.

> 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.

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com