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Comment by howunfortunate | Hacker News Reader

> The job was never about wealth distribution, self actualization, dignity or any of that crap it was always about getting some stupid task accomplished for an industrial system

There are still a whole lot of people, the vast majority of people actually, who's job involves something completely unglamorous and practical like unclogging your sewers.

To these people, it sounds like a cruel joke that people get paid 3x their salary, and after AI can do their job we learn that apparently the only purpose of their was their own self-actualization.

I don't actually believe that about math, but that's what a lot of people in this thread sound like.

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I thought technology was supposed to liberate us from the fields, but it turns out that's what wealth is for, and the wealthy want us back in the fields (no more escape through special training or skill).

Why would the wealthy want you back in the fields?

You were useful in the fields to the degree that was necessary for food production (sustain and grow population) and for wars (using said population to expand and extract more resources).

Once machines automate material comforts and exertion of violence (already have, to a large degree), humans become a pure loss center. Why bother with "fields" lol.

Because fundamentally: certain humans desire power to rule over other humans. Even if the fields (metaphorical or literal) can be done more efficiently by robots, they desire that power to exert over others.

So they will keep some ready for those tasks simply to fuel that irrational desire. They will instead use the more efficient bots to enforce work on the fields rather than work the fields themselves. Or perhaps we go full Matrix and find uses for humans that robots can't properly replicate.

Sure, keeping a few humans around for some kind of futuristic degenerate mammalian social/power games I can get behind.

That's not "back in the fields" though (metaphorical or literal).

>There are still a whole lot of people, the vast majority of people actually, who's job involves something completely unglamorous and practical like unclogging your sewers.

I know, I have that job! And I enjoy it. But the robots are coming for me too.

A bit sad other knowledge workers feel that. I know my job isn't anything trying to better humanity; I just make video games. But making those games (or rather, the tools to make those games) has an end result to have people enjoy themselves a bit in a decreasingly enjoyable world. So there's my fulfillment.

But I understand it from a blue collar perspective. I tinker at toys in a metaphorical basement and I live a cushier life than many who give their bodies to their duty. That doesn't feel fair at all. But I mostly wish that was motivation to band together and get blue collars paid better rather than cause this inter-class divide while the capitalists ransack all of society.

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