Ask HN: Human flourishing after jobs? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Human flourishing after jobs?

How do we prepare for a society where paid work is unavailable?

In conclusion:

After jobs -- do what you love, love what you do, as long as you have food, shelter and medical.

Thank you for your comments!

I don't understand why this question comes up so often. If you like your work, you keep doing it even if there's no salary. If you rather do something else, you do that. If you don't know what to do, you explore till you find something of interest. I don't mean to be rude. I'm self-employed and always has been since university 12 years ago, so maybe there's aspects I just don't see.

That may be the answer. Out of curiosity: Will UHI cover for your work expenses if there is no salary? What roles plays communication in your life and will you be able to continue it? Wondering if all people without forced or available job will be able to find something they like.

> I don't understand why this question comes up so often.

You don't understand because baked into your entire reply is the assumption that a decent standard of living is guaranteed.

Based on current trends around economic inequality, it seems quite likely that the average person may be given very little to subsist on once their main source of leverage (their ability to perform valuable labor) has been removed.

I assumed in this thread that UHI will be delivered as promised, rather soon. Yet, even UBI, or fraction of thereof, is not guaranteed at all. But that's a different story.

If a significant number of society cannot buy the goods and services, then what sets the price for the real goods and services outside of AI that we need?

I have no problem with a future without work, if the economists explain how the price/value equation works. There's a solution, but it's not been considered appropriate for some years, since December 1991

Very good point. Yet, Robert C. Allen might have somewhat different opinion, not that I support it. Would be interesting to see a roadmap to UHI though.

Learn to raise chickens, subsistence farm. It's easier than it looks.

What educational approaches, communities, or social institutions should we build to help humans thrive?

Start with a family, work your way out from there...

Very good start. Home schooling, infinite vacation. Next?

it's easy to do if you don't depend on the results. harder to do if you do.

also there is a sort of exposure to the environment that we're just starting to recognize in the era of climate change: e.g. your ancestors felt out of control of their lives and prayed to the gods for a good harvest back before the empire came with its soldiers and scribes and took away their religion.

Fusion won't affect climate change, neither fission, the techs of the future

With material security, we could focus on developing ourselves and caring for others

The question is: does self-development mean anything without pressure from the environment?

No societal pressure under UBI/UHI (if it's truly Universal), no pressure from env under green tech. Farming will be a hobby only, with robots.

Well what I am thinking more is that without that pressure people will just screw off and do meaningless things that please themselves in the short term but add up to nothing and leave them feeling hollow and empty in the long term. There's the obvious concern that it might just be eating sweets or jerking off but I've seen many people waste time on 'creative' projects which go nowhere because they aren't trying to satisfy a need anybody else has or bothering to contextualize what they want to do with what other people have done.

Like I think businesses only provide good products and services because they have competition and when they don't, they don't.

You can make the case that UBI will lead to human flourishing and probably some people actually will flourish in that case while others will languish.

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