Comment by pfortuny | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfortuny | Hacker News Reader

Mine is a short reflection but I crave for the day in which all human beings will be able to work for free, not for money. And then, they will rediscover the interest of art, handcraft, music, conversation, philosophy.

The world described by Lanier is very much one in which people can live without caring about earning money to survive: "subsistence" will be dealt with by robots.

I see that as a liberation.

Of course there are other problems but solving the 'earn money or otherwise live as a pariah/die' seems to me interesting.

Work is much more important for man than a mere means of making money, as I see it. If it is just that (emphasis), then the feeling of slavery must be great.

Which is probably what a lot of people nowadays feel, sadly.

EDIT: [Just not to look too 'asinine']. Obviously I am aware this is utopian. Please bear with me. However, the abstract reflection stands as it is.

And, by the way: it is important to realize that what is 'dirty' for some is 'beautiful' for others. Even law enforcement and (I've lived with one) even 'Administrative Law'. Yes, even pig-herding and trash-cleaning can be seen as 'liberating' works.

It is not what you do: it is what you aim to.

We're clearly already in a transitional time where our society produces much more wealth than we need - so much so that we have to artificially increase consumption in order to keep the gears of capitalism turning.

There are people who are already advocating for a "guaranteed minimum income" - part of the idea is that if it wasn't so painful to be unemployed, then people would be less likely to oppose automating jobs away.

The post that introduced me to the concept is this one: http://itself.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/from-the-generalized-... . It's a little bit ranty, and I'm not sure it's the best introduction, so if anyone has a better link I'd love to read it.

Thanks for the link.

Yes, I do not understand very much the mechanics of the basic income but the problem I try to think of is not exactly 'have enough money for a decent living', which is serious, but something more abstract: being able to work at what you are good, because you like it, just for that.

Nowadays unemployment is exactly the opposite: being unable to do anything at all. This is a real drama.

Mine is a short reflection but I crave for the day in which all human beings will be able to work for free, not for money.

That's just never, ever going to happen. Never. No one would do the "dirty jobs" if there was no reward for doing so. Take law enforcement for example. Sure, everyone would "play detective" for free, or everyone would be the captain. But who would be the guys who ride in the motorcade to protect a child rapist while he rides to prison? No one would do it "for free". There's too much risk. Who would be a prison guard "for free"? It's absolutely asinine to think that "technology" will progress to a point at which humans are not needed for any menial/dirty/dangerous jobs ever.

Danger is not a deterrent (think of climbers).

Dealing with dirt and feeling it as humiliating is subjective (there are plenty of satisfied janitors and trash-cleaners out there).

Menial does not necessarily mean 'hideous'. There are plenty of happy nurses and people working at hospices.

Serving others can be a real motivator.

I edited my post above just to clarify I am no fool on this.

I get it - you're being all "What if..." It's cool. If you keep going and really think it through, it just breaks down. It breaks down, to pick one of many situations, at the training point for any job that requires study. Take boat captains for example. There are millions of "boat captains" who play at captain on their little 25 foot boat on the weekend. However, to captain a boat containing 500 cargo containers from Asia to San Franscico - that requires months or even years of training. Who would go through such training if the "payoff" only was "I get a free trip to San Franscisco"? Oh sure, maybe you'd find someone who would do it once a year, twice a year but then what? Cargo would stop - if you have 10,000 ships laden with 500 cargo containers leaving Asia every day right now (a guess), where would you find the volunteers? Who would check their backgrounds? Who would be in charge of recruiting new volunteers?

It's just never, ever going to be possible. Without some payoff for doing a "job", people will not do it.

I think you're missing an important factor. Consider how many classes of jobs can be automated away over the next 50 years. Boat captains can easily be one of those. Pervasive automation changes the argument, and the fact is, it's already happening across many industries.

I think it's about time to start thinking about a society where employment is only available to a small fraction of people. It would be much better to have a controlled, thought out transition than to deny the possibility until we end up with mass unemployment.

> I think it's about time to start thinking about a society where employment is only available to a small fraction of people. It would be much better to have a controlled, thought out transition than to deny the possibility until we end up with mass unemployment.

The key, as I see it, is to aggressively pursue a more broad distribution of capital, and to move old age/disability safety net programs (and non-elite health insurance) away from the premise that those who will need them will be people whose income is derived largely from labor.

In a sense, this is the "ownership society" that Republicans liked to talk about around the first term of the second Bush Administration, but the actual policies that they pushed (which rewarded current holders of capital and increased the burden on current laborers) were pretty much the exact opposite of what is needed to get there.

Yes, who would ever do something for free like be a firefighter or policeman for free? What an absurd concept - 'volunteer firefighter'. How could such a self-contradictory chimera ever exist? No one ever did anything except for money.

If I didn't need to support my wife (who works as a nanny) and my mother (who is destitute and relies on me completely for financial support), I'd pack my shit and move to the Bay Area to work on Watsi-esq projects for free.

I look forward to the day we can all work on tasks with more purpose.

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