This is the result of us existing in a market-based social order - it creates this culture where the pursuits that give our lives meaning become so intertwined with the pursuits that secure us the resources for survival, that these two are often considered to be one and the same. And I think this is the case whether we're discussing artists or electricians or doctors or whomever.

We need a culture shift in the way we understand the relationship between work and value and what to do with the one life we have on this earth. If we cannot clearly separate monetary pursuits and meaningful pursuits in our minds, we'll be condemned to always view ourselves in terms of monetary value, even though something deep within us says we have inherent value as humans. It stops us from making progress as a global civilization, and traps us in the mindset of "that's how it's always been".

Everyone should work within their own limits (personally 3 days a week, 5 hours a day), and in a job they love.

That's an ideal life until you need a doctor at 3 AM in the morning, because everyone's doing their job 5 hours a day, 3 days a week, and docs wouldn't be working at 3 AM in the morning.

Doctor at 3 AM works maybe with different timezones, internet, and video chat and local robot remote controlled

Well said!

That might be doable, given that the latency of StarLink sat internet at 20 to 40ms is acceptably low enough to operate real-time machinery (or gaming) across the globe.

The main reason why mentally ill people can’t ever improve is because the world still insists on seeing them as someone who should be working first and foremost. All the psychological issues get ignored bc society normally doesn’t give a rats ass about psychological issues. You have to do your job, and if it’s a low-level job, you have to feel bad about not being able to do more ‘important’ shit. And if you’re too mentally ill to work at all, then you have to spend all your time feeling bad about how useless and pathetic you are. The economy makes it impossible for the human psyche to ever recover once it’s damaged, and it also does damage the psyche all on its own even if the person has had a blessed life otherwise.

Who gets to live in NYC, or who gets the beach houses if everyone has the same income levels?

Or perhaps there is a health room in every house, like a bathroom, where the AI takes care of you. Thus freeing up doctors to spend time on creative pursuits...i mean expirements.

"I gotta hit the health room real quick"

What do you mean?

If doctors only worked half as much as they do now, would it be an issue if we then had twice as many doctors? The necessary amount of doctoring in society can be done, while freeing up time for doctors to spend on their non-doctorly hobbies. Could this be a win-win for getting things we need to get done, while also giving each person more time to live a more holistic life?

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here in Canada assisted suicide due to mental health is now a thing, because hey if you cant get over your shit and contribute to society, might as well off yourself. its like a fucking southpark episode.

Yup. It leads to situations where people will fight against the automation of work that nobody even wants to do because that's seen as an easier fight than figuring out some way for increased efficiency to benefit everyone. These technologies are inevitable. We need to work to make them a positive thing.

Nobody said anything about everyone having the same income levels, but clearly if most people are unemployed because of automation but we also have more efficient production chains than ever because of that same automation, some kind of basic support system for people who are no longer needed as workers is necessary and viable.

Robot doctor.

>It isn’t AI that is the real problem here, it is capitalism as we currently know it requiring everyone to either work or suffer

That doesn't make any sense. A person living all alone in an otherwise uninhabited universe would be required to either work or suffer. Blaming a natural circumstance like that on capitalism seems like a bizarre mistake. (And not the only thing I've seen arbitrarily blamed on capitalism in recent years; what's up with that?)

>One possible solution would be a steep progressive tax on large companies profiting from AI.

That also doesn't make any sense. What makes profit from AI a reasonable revenue stream to tax? Why would it be important that such a tax be 'progressive' (whatever that means)?

>Funds from the tax would go to funding minimum basic income for anyone earning less than a certain salary threshold.

Why would it specifically go to people earning less than some certain amount? On what principles would that amount be calculated?

I'm a little disappointed that this article is getting upvoted so much when it doesn't appear to reflect even a basic understanding of economics. Indeed that's probably a big reason why we need to develop superhuman AI quickly: Because it will understand economics, and implement fixes for our economic problems that (as demonstrated by the article) human brains don't seem adequate to find.

>If we cannot clearly separate monetary pursuits and meaningful pursuits in our minds

Money is just a handy abstraction of value, and value measures meaning. The problem in our society relates only to meaning, not money.

> What makes profit from AI a reasonable revenue stream to tax?

Because unlike other software, modern AI cannot exist without copious amounts of human-generated data, which it currently consumes without acknowledgement or remuneration.

Btw it's a bit ironic that you're criticizing the article for a lack of basic economic understanding when you don't even know what a progressive tax is.

Yes, I think this is a direct result of a difficulty in understanding exponential progress. In the early part of the curve people think it will never happen. At the beginning of noticeable exponential growth they think it will never be good enough. Then while it is exploding they want things to just stay the same.

Because where the work comes from is assuming to always have to come from a human. When in reality that does not have to be the case. Work is work regardless of the sorce. The work coming from humans in order for society to function is not impossible.

Someone was granted MAID because they are no longer able to work and are afraid of becoming homeless. I'm all for MAID but not like this.

> That doesn't make any sense. A person living all alone in an otherwise uninhabited universe would be required to either work or suffer. Blaming a natural circumstance like that on capitalism seems like a bizarre mistake. (And not the only thing I've seen arbitrarily blamed on capitalism in recent years; what's up with that?)

What happens if the type of labour you have to sell does not pay you enough to survive, or does not pay you at all, but is still vitally important, e.g. parenting and most forms of non-profit work?

Or if, because the market does not reward all forms of labour equally, the labour that you are most adapt at / talented at / interested in pursuing, are economically unviable, and so you are forced to follow a spiritually unrewarding path, e.g. forgoing most forms of art and passion work?

Or what happens when technology has advanced to the point where you don't need everyone to work in order to provide the means of survival?

If in my city there simultaneously exist hundreds of vacant properties for lease and who knows how many homeless people who will die this winter due to exposure, don't you feel there is something flawed about this system?

In our current system, you sell your labour to secure the resources you need to survive. If you don't, you are free to starve. It's that simple.

Society is all about improving our collective well-being and taking care of the survival-level stuff so we can focus more and more on things we actually care about. At a certain point, our technology and culture will advance to the point where we should be able to see ourselves as something more than mere economic inputs.

A progressive tax is a very specific thing.

Yeah. I can understand finding it scary, but the pessimism exhausts me, especially since it's so pointless. Nobody has any solutions, just fear and hate.

That is brilliant

I wouldn’t mind not working. Fuck that. I just want my head to be plugged in the matrix and enjoy my VR Waifus. For real tho. I view my job simply as a formality that allows me to do the shit I want to do in my free time.

Just plug me into the matrix already

Money isn't always an efficient measure of value, though.

Well said. A lot of people probably don't even know what they want to do but only what they have to do. I have people around me without any real interest (that they know of) because their life revolves around their work and careers.

If 90% of the jobs are automated, than we could have x 20 times the number of doctors.

At some point, with AI and robot assistance, people could do surgeries on their self on their own.

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No, but that's orthogonal. Crypto (whether in its current form or as CBDCs) will allow to (efficiently) monetarize all social value (i.e. simply formalize it).

Why not just have a moneyless classless stateless society? A system with no hierarchies where resources are equally distributed. Like the Venus Project

> because that's seen as an easier fight than figuring out some way for increased efficiency to benefit everyone.

Lets face it, that's not really the case. We know where the money is, we knows who do not wants it to move around. I got a spoiled cousin that illustrated the problem very easily once. "If we don't have poor people, how can there be rich people (like me)"

The answer is in places like r/antiwork, r/latestagecapitalism. It's just frowned upon to talk about those anywhere but there.

Exponential progress that benefits everyone ? Automate the shit out of everything ! Exponential progress that benefits the usual ruling class ? Well, please no because we ain't far of a massive global conflict to cull the population then.

WTF ?

Can't kill off your homeless population directly because that would look bad ? Convince the soon to be homeless to kill themselves with assistance from the state.

This is the worst thing i've read in a long time and i'm here on reddit, reading american bullshit all day long like the rest of you.

Our society values work and money over meaning and fulfillment. This needs to change. We need a culture shift to prioritize what truly matters in life.

No money is an abstraction of exchange value, that is value in relation to capitalist exchange of commodities. This is distinct from actual use value, let alone ethical notions of 'value' and 'meaning'.

The thing is, though, that it's happening whether we like it or not. We're wasting our time and energy fighting against the technology.

Hmm (I'm not the one downvoting btw) resource-based economy sounds good, though the use of AI doesn't come without its own philosophical problems. But it's efficient, yes. Ultimately I think we're moving towards becoming (gradually diminishing) nodes of a super computer. The problem with meaning remains however: what do we prioritize? this defines where money flows to in our current system and where resources flow to in a highly efficient resource-based economy.

What needs to change later in the 21st century, is the view that everyone should work or go to school. It's going to be enough that 5% of people work, because of robots and AI. These resolute people will be extra rewarded, more than the average person who doesn't work. But it's too early to quit working already in 2022. Let's wait for the 2040s, but we need to prepare ourselves mentally today.

It being an abstraction of "exchange value" leads to effectively being an abstraction of value, as it creates a reference system to compare things to each other. And the "use value" is implied.

I swear to god this sub continually surprises me. There is so much entitled bullshit here that it would make the most self-absorbed Japanese NEET hikikomori blush (I use this metaphor because I live in Japan.)

Anyway I am always interested in new perspectives and the concept of the singularity interests me greatly, thus my presence. Please don't take my old man opinion to heart--I am fully aware I don't have it all figured out, and maybe you lads and lasses will ultimately teach me something I need to know.

We'll work it out, for sure. That's why millionaires still go to work every day. Sometimes, it's not about the money.

In an ideal world, there needs to be legislation that if human jobs are replaced by AI, the companies doing the replacing will need to pay into a UBI fund according to their profits.

We don't live in an ideal world though, so good luck with that.

> Who gets to live in NYC

"Gets to" lmao. I wouldn't live in NYC for all the tea in China.

Everyone wants food, shelter, healthcare, education… those things aren’t free. They require other humans to dedicate substantial time into doing

You need to contribute to society, and sometimes the contribution required is going to be something you don’t want to do. This is called a ”job”

you can still have well-fed, housed and clothed poor people receiving adequate medical attention.

UBI will not help anything. as soon as you set a baseline amount, it can be circumvented. we just need to provide everyone with a simple place to live, even a room, food and medical attention when necessary. everything else you'd have to work for.

yeah, who would want to live in the best city in the world?

>A person living all alone in an otherwise uninhabited universe would be required to either work or suffer.

we need to define what "work" is in this context. and what it isn't. we shuoldn't define it as just doing things, like hunting, or picking mushrooms or even growing your own garden. because people out of work still do things like that. they travel distances and wait in lines, they fix their flat tires and make dinner. they put together furniture and help their friends move. all of this would be considered "work" in your definition here.

the trouble is the word work has many meanings. for it to be work in this context, in what we're talking about here, you have to have an employer. your work will most likely make your employer more money than you personally make from your job. or it's work that your employer does not want to do or can't do well, so he pays you to do it.

can you spot the difference between that type of work and work where you have no employer?

People forget universal income is not end of world order, just making sure everyone can have stress-free life when it comes to meeting basic needs like food or hosing. If we can get past this stress, people can be more relaxed, happy, and productive. Instead of waling around with crippling anxiety and depression.

>You need to contribute to society

who says? no one asked to be born into this shitty system. who decides what level of contribution is "enough"? you clark?

I your not as aggressively negative in real life as you are on Reddit

You’re welcome to exit the system. There are communes everywhere. Funny enough, they have a system that they all agree on that states how much work/contribution is required. Feeding chickens, cleaning up, burying waste… You can’t live anywhere and just be lazy/useless.

If you don’t want to work, who do you expect is going to come feed you?

You seem lost, /u/Clarkeprops

The point of this subreddit (r/singularity) is that AI will one day be smarter than humans. What happens to society after that? We’re here to speculate. The current version of society is kind of irrelevant.

It’s not. And there will ALWAYS be work for humans to do. What that is will shift, but jobs will always be a thing. Even in a world like iRobot where all menial tasks are covered, there will be PLENTY for humans to do. Being lazy is and always has been lamentable. There is a way for you to contribute to the society you choose to live in, and opting out makes you a shitty person. Volunteer, make art, care for the elderly, make things for people. Design better ways to do things. Be an activist for change.

All those things are jobs, and not helping out makes you shitty and devoid of value.

you have to define work differently. it's not just having to do anything a tall. that's not what work is in this context. of course we all have to do things. i make coffee every day. that would be defined as work in your silly argument.

you read this as aggressively negative? if so, it's a reflection on you pal.

Working is the evolution of hunting/gathering. As long as human have formed communities the values of individuals has been tied to their productivity to society. This perspective of "living without a struggle" is new to the modern world.

No it isn’t. Making yourself coffee isn’t work. Providing a service of value to society is work. If you enjoy it and don’t consider it work, I don’t care. Make art. Care for the sick. Work with kids. Doesn’t matter. If you expect someone to grow your food, repair your utilities, generate your power, and ship your goods, don’t think that nothing is required in return.

Imagine Star Trek. Everyone has a job. Nobody just hangs out in the holodek all day every day.

yes they have work to be done but it is independent of where they sleep and the food they eat. they're not making other people rich on the ship. if they're sick, they don't get medical help based on their job. they get fixed, no matter what their job is. just like in star trek, you're right, everyone should have basic needs met and you need to work to get anything else. that's what star treks shows us. star trek isn't a capitalistic utopia.

i know where you're going with this. you want it to be black and white, either everyone works slaving away at rigidly structured and segmented social ladder of a society or no one does anything at all and everyone just sits on their ass all day.

this is a strawmen. no one is suggesting that. how you reply next will decide whether i keep discussing this with you or not.

Nope. You definitely don’t know where I’m going with this. No slaving. No rigid structure. No social ladder. Just don’t be a lazy parasite and expect everyone else to work for you. That’s what billionaires do now, and they’re fucking cunts.

If you want input, you should output. You want the benefit of others work? Then find a way to contribute. Don’t want to participate? That’s fine too. Have a house in the middle of nowhere and be self sufficient. No slaving, rigidity, or any of it. Entirely up to you.

>Have a house in the middle of nowhere and be self sufficient.

you sound like an entitled shithead. yeah, just go and get a house somewhere. jesus you have no clue.

Yes. Late stage capitalism is toxic. I’m not saying you should make ANYONE any money. Even just picking up trash 30 hours a week. Do SOMETHING. Fix city benches. Repair books at the library. Repaint playgrounds. Be a kids soccer coach. ANYTHING. Just do a thing for society.

They offered MAID to a disabled woman requesting a stair lift in her home.

Euthanasia is now a leading cause of death in Canada.

> You need to contribute to society, and sometimes the contribution required is going to be something you don’t want to do. This is called a ”job”

People are afraid that the jobs available right now aren't going to be a thing, and the few jobs that will exist will be heavily specialized things, requiring higher education, time, and money.

When you spend 20+ years honing a skill for it to be worthless, it is normal to be afraid. Telling people "just work in other things", is simplifying a very big problem. I mean, it's already a big problem right now, specially for the elderly/older people.

Oh I’m sorry, does having a house require someone else to build it for you? You mean you don’t know how to do that? I guess you’ll need someone else to put in that hard labour. If only there was a way to provide value and easily exchange that value for other goods and services…

In all seriousness, you currently live somewhere that you didn’t build, and don’t maintain. You don’t generate your own power, or refine your own fuel.

What are you suggesting the new paradigm is? I’m certain you haven’t thought it out at all.

Let’s hear it.

You’re partly right, and I have ZERO sympathy for people who are entirely inflexible. And those elderly lived in a time where you didn’t need to finish high school and could afford a house in 5 years. Forgive me if I don’t cry them a river. I’ve had to hustle my whole life and provide value where I’m able and I still struggle.

I think that there should be a limit to how much machines are able to take over, pairing it with attrition. Similar to the automation of Transit systems like the TTC. Trains and stations are already automated. Drivers and attendants aren’t being fired or laid off. They’re just not hiring any extras. Nobody has to lose their job.

That being said, creative destruction isn’t new. 2000 dung shovelers in New York City lost their jobs when they switched to cars from horses. And many other jobs were created in fuel transport, mechanics, and other industries to support the car. Imagine trying to ban cars because someone will lose their job shovelling shit?

I hear ya bud. I always feel like it's such a lack of imagination, and loss of potential, how we have the tools right now (such as implementing a UBI) that could be a stepping stone towards creating a culture where we don't reduce our lives' meaning down to 'worker'.

Yeah, just give me my haptic dick suit already!

"You are all so entitled / but maybe you know something I don't"

Friend, what was the purpose of this post?

Your analogy isn't exactly applicable - in Star Trek they developed replicator technology which basically meant abundance for all. People totally could hangout on the holodeck all day. It's just that now they have created an environment where everyone who does work wants to be there, there is no need to work. At least, from what we see from the Starfleet point of view. Maybe we just don't see all the people on earth who spend their time in holonovels.

No, they can’t just hang out. Have you even seen the show? The ship takes constant maintenance by people with a LOT of training.

That’s my point. NOBODY can just hang out. Unless you want to live like a caveman, all of these things around us are the product of someone’s hard work. Even with the craziest AI, it doesn’t just happen. The phone doesn’t just get delivered to your hand. Peoples work is required. People have to put in effort. Why are you an exception?

> I have ZERO sympathy for people who are entirely inflexible

Where I live, there are a lot of older people (55+) still working & struggling. If they lose their jobs, they are simply fucked until death. Not because they are inflexible or incompetent, but because no one wants to hire someone that old. I imagine that this sentiment is common in other countries.

> That being said, creative destruction isn’t new. 2000 dung shovelers in New York City lost their jobs when they switched to cars from horses. And many other jobs were created in fuel transport, mechanics, and other industries to support the car. Imagine trying to ban cars because someone will lose their job shovelling shit?

Well, no, that would be silly. But that's why this kinda of debate is important: how to make progress without fucking the lives of people? Specially considering the scale that we are talking about (where multiple jobs, even high demand jobs, that exist now will be done by A.I, and new jobs created will be few, and heavily specialized).

Unfortunately, not everyone can be an A.I scientist.

> I think that there should be a limit to how much machines are able to take over, pairing it with attrition. Similar to the automation of Transit systems like the TTC. Trains and stations are already automated. Drivers and attendants aren’t being fired or laid off. They’re just not hiring any extras. Nobody has to lose their job.

I agree, this would be ideal. But I really doubt that this will be what happens in a larger scale, and that's what makes me afraid.

Part of what can guarantee it is organized labour. The reason the TTC didn’t just fire everyone is the union.

For the record, everyone bitched and moaned about grocery store clerks losing their jobs to machines, and that didn’t really happen. I was at a store the other day that removed the machines. Every grocery store I’ve been to has lots of lanes, with lots of clerks, in addition to the machines.

It would be great if the conversion could be gradual, but anyone that thinks that robots doing auto sector tasks instead of a person is bad…. I just don’t agree with them. Let the robots do it and we’ll do something else. Then everything will cost less for everyone.

> Forgive me if I don’t cry them a river. I’ve had to hustle my whole life and provide value where I’m able and I still struggle.

What I'm hearing is "I had to suffer, so you must suffer." This is not how we make progress as a society.

What if that was you? What if you worked your whole life, did everything you were supposed to, invested as wisely as you could, and decided to retire sometime between 2019-2022? Well, we know how difficult it would be, because we're living through it right now.

This argument that technology will always create new jobs is limiting and limited. Limiting because it conceptualizes human beings as workers only. Limited because it assumes that the new situation will always be better.

Humans are not infinitely flexible widgets, and nor should they be. I wonder when you are 50 years old, and your job becomes outsourced / automated / made obsolete by technology, will you also be so eager and ready to retrain to the next viable industry? And keep in mind, new jobs that are created through technological advancements tend to require more skills and education, not less, and there's no guarantee that there will be more jobs created, or even a 1:1 replacement. Or maybe you feel it is viable that everybody learn to write code, or everyone should go to trade school, regardless of ability or interest?

yeah i was brought into this fucked up system just like you. did you think i wasn't somehow? did you imagine the system we've been slaving that's existed for thousands of years somehow precludes me? and again, and for the last time, no one is suggesting that people don't have to do a single thing. that's just a straw man argument you want to argue against instead of the reality, and it's a lazy one. your entitled ass can't see past the stuff you were provided with. you're a useless child of rich parents, i can tell.

I'm done with your lazy privileged ass, sorry. wasted enough time on your straw men arguments. you're a shill whether you know it or not. the system helped you and so you're happy with it. you better hope you die before the system is upended because people like you will suffer when it happens. and it's coming. good luck hanging on to your privilege.

Friend, you need to calm down. From the tone of your other posts, you sound very angry at something but I have no idea what.

The point I was trying to get across, is that everyone in Starfleet wants to be there, even if there's no monetary reward. In this fictional future, the real prize is social prestige. And that changes everything.

The equivalent would be if someone was developing the next AI system, or the next iPhone, not out of the hope to reap massive profits, but because they felt it was something that could advance the species.

There's a shift from the very narrow goal of profit to the much more grand ideals of improving us as a civilization. That's the difference.

it's much simpler than that. people WANT to do things, believe it ot not. most people do anyway. they WANT to contribute. they just don't want to be threatened with starvation and homelessness if they don't do what the system deems worthy enough to be granted those things. we just have to find new ways to motivate people that don't include the get-rich scheme of the bullshit "American dream".

that's the reality of why we doin't provide basic necessities to people today: it would be a lot more difficult to hoard wealth and lord over people if the threat of starvation wasn't a motivating factor. you'd have to pay more for your luxuries because people won't be forced to be part of your luxurious lifestyle. where would we get servants from? well, guess what, there are people who WANT to serve. it just isn't money that motivates them.

You’re hearing wrong.

They DID NOT suffer. They lived through the most prosperous time known to humanity and were given more opportunity for wealth than my generation or any other. I can’t speak to any one’s personal experience, but for the boomer generation, that settled.

ALSO, they are responsible for the economic and environmental situation we’re in, so forgive me if I don’t have sympathy for their misfortune that they’re only just now joining me in.

The struggle isn’t new to me so if being better at it gives me an edge for once, I’m going to take it and feel ZERO remorse. It’s the first and maybe the last time I’ll get any kind of edge.

Oh, I’m sorry, “Interest”? Since when does interest play a part in survival? I’m currently unemployed and am looking for plenty of jobs I’m not interested in. I wasn’t aware that beggars can be choosers.

thank you, this is a better reply at least.

I disagree. Lots of people don’t want to do anything but self indulgent pursuits. Video games, partying, drinking, eating… nobody wants to be a server and everyone wants to be served.

That assumes that there will always be 'something else' to do. It also assumes that we should always 'do something else'.

A union also doesn't stop market forces from operating. If there is robotics or software that can do the same amount of work faster / better / cheaper, you will be incentivized to use it - because if you don't, someone else will, and you jeopardize your position in the market. I'd take a Presto card over a warm body sitting at the gate collecting tokens any day, and so would the market.

From the flavour of your other posts, it sounds like you feel work by itself has purpose. Tell me why?

I'm speaking in hypotheticals here, but if your survival needs were met, would you still work?

they do that because this system has no place for them. because it's all geared towards profits right now. it's because all we offer is money as a carrot, and exposure and starvation as the stick. there are better and more efficient motivations out there. it just has to be tailored more. personalized. we are in a position where we can do that now our technology has advanced beyond the need of currency. we can even, if we wanted to, preserve a social hierarchy without money, royalty even.

Absolutely. I need work for regulation, social connection and I care about my city. AI can never take away every avenue I have to contribute in that way. It might shorten my day a bit… oh no. The horror!

We will never run out of jobs, because our lives will never be too good. There will always be something else to do and some way to provide value. People will always want for something, and people will be there to provide it.

I mean, the general tone of this forum is an optimism about the future and how technology could improve all our lives. Given your personal situation I can understand why this may seem like a mirage, given that you are more concerned with your immediate survival needs. I hope you are able to improve your situation.

Technology absolutely will improve all our lives as a whole. Even if I stand to be negatively impacted, I’m certain that it’s a net benefit to humanity.

I just feel the need to counter the pushback against creative destruction and the stifling of progress for petty material reasons. I also think most fears are overblown and misplaced.

Same as Y2K. Overblown worry that cost more in panic than it did in inconvenience

Alright. And from your other post about your current priorities I can see why work has such an important place in your life.

However, you need to understand that this isn't the situation for everyone - that is, many people find their social connections, life structure, and sense of fulfillment outside of what they do for a living. In fact, Gallup has shown over the past two decades that about two thirds of people either felt not engaged or were actively disengaged (i.e. hating) their job. (There is more recent polling data but this is the first graphic I found, which only goes from 2000-2016, but I recall the numbers have remained steady since then)

This is understandable if we concede that most people most of the time only work because they are compelled to, or else they will starve.

I think what OPs article was arguing, and what many other people on this sub would argue, is that this free-market capitalistic system itself is problematic in the face of ever-changing technology that risks squeezing out the human component of labour. The ultimate concern being, how would we survive within this system if we have no labour to sell?

I suppose what I don't understand, is why you conceptualize someone's value as strictly what good or service they can provide someone else?

/u/ShowerGrapes knows what’s up.

Laziness is neither evil nor inherent to being human. It’s just another thing people do. Robots doing shitty jobs will mean people can focus on tasks that make them happy. In the long term that would reduce laziness.

I would quit my job and do all of these things if I had my daily material needs met. It makes me cry thinking that I can’t do them. Instead I have to work 9-5 weekdays, and after 20+ years living this way has made me incredibly depressed. You would probably call me lazy, but a well educated psychologist might call me extremely burned out and systematically unmotivated.

and it won't matter if the things people do are marketable or not i.e. are capable of making other people rich or not. we've been missing out because talented people have to work meager, soul-sucking jobs. i'd gladly tip my hat to a few more "lazy" people to have a decent life while gaining new art and philosophy. van Gogh sold exactly one painting to his brother, and the system drove him insane. he persevered anyway but his brand of insanity is the exception, not the norm.

besides, if the nebulous concept of being lazy is a genetic thing, can we really blame people who are lazy for being lazy?

i'm in the same boat. spent over 20 years in the software engineering industry, making assholes who wouldn't give me the time of day richer, helping to cement the system as it is, glaring problems and all. i am now completely burnt out by it. lately I've been cooking a bit, making barely enough to get by, writing and helping my family and friends and it's been much more rewarding.

everything is geared toward moving up the social, corporate, political and luxury-goods ladders, trading increases in pay for shinier stuff and more glamorous niehborhoods, more expensive toys and fancier clothing. slow down and you appear to be stuck. corporate America is now becoming the norm. because it seems to work for them. that's only because it has an extensive weeding-out process.

I wouldn’t call you lazy at all. That’s the whole point of UBI. And under a basic level of conditions, I think it’s a great idea. In practise, the COVID benefits were exploited and millions was defrauded to people that were already millionaires.

It’s a great idea, but in practise it works horribly. So many people cheat. Personally I think that’s why Russia is full of remorseless cheaters. They come from a system where the only way to get enough is be corrupt.

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You're welcome to forget your job and go live off grid some place, leave the world behind.

Let us know how that life of leisure works out.

Yeah I always felt I'd be freer and better if I was paid to pursue solutions. I also don't necessarily think AI will be solved without the same free-will paradigm that is needed for us to know an AI that creates as not even an intelligent AI or simply just a system and not yet an AI.

No one is requiring anyone to work to live. All animals have to do something to survive. That's just the way it is (has been).

There are a SIGNIFICANT number of jobs out there that only exist because somebody's nephew or SIL needed a job once upon a time. A great many jobs in the corporate world are "empty suits ", that don't actually contribute anything meaningful other than checking a box. These jobs, and many others, do not contribute to society in any waybata all and are, in fact, a net drain. Why do they deserve a high salary for nothing when the actual workers are struggling?

Modern society has never been about how much you contribute. It is only about maintaining the social and economic hierarchies that benefit those in charge.

I’m honestly shocked at the amount of people who don’t understand this. It’s so engrained into our culture that people just honestly don’t even consider another way being possible

There aren’t that many of those jobs, and they’re often just a form of compensation to some CEO higher up. “I’ll do extra stuff if you give my nephew a job here”

Venting frustration, I expect, coupled with the awareness that I might be wrong.

> "If we don't have poor people, how can there be rich people (like me)"

it's the same argument as those 'if we don't have pain and suffering how can you truly enjoy yourself'

or more simply "removing the toil removes meaning"

and that is a brainworm that far too many people have.

Canada turning into a real shit hole

What a completely solipsistic argument. So the reason we work is to sustain our own lives, and also the economy of the collective of all lives. Similarly the reason why we procreate, is to create more workers to do the same. By this logic then, we should stop procreating! Every little thing we do and take pleasure in is rooted in sustaining The biological collective welfare of the species. So most of these things should be abolished as well. Where do you draw the line?

I saw a Canadian ad for euthanasia services the other day and was appalled in a way I haven't been in quite a while. By far the most dystopian thing I have seen thus far in my life.

UBI is silly. any number, they'll game the system. instead of ubi, give everyone a place to live (even if it's a shared space, enough food to eat and medical help if they need it. that way the system can't figure out how to "top" your ubi money

the star trek show is about voluntary military service aboard a ship with a strict social hierarchy, it does not represent all life on earth on the show. you don't see every facet of life in the universe on that show either.

replicators give you everything you need and instant travel means everyone is where they want to be at any time of the day and they're doing what they want to be doing. in the future we will figure out how to achieve all this, how to motivate people, basically, without money, we just haven't figure it out yet.

Sorry, I don't follow your logic. All I am saying, in the context of commenting on OP's article, is that a broader potential for human wellbeing exists outside of the bounds that free-market capitalism has set for us.

A concrete example: being forced to learn skills for a type of labour that you don't care about simply to trade for the resources to survive.

What I am saying, is that since this paradigm has been in place for so long, that creates an attitude that this is how it will always be. In the context of the article, AI is only an issue because it is perceived as taking away peoples' way of securing those resources necessary for survival. My argument is that if we had systems that didn't make your ability to survive conditional on the labour you are able to sell - i.e. implementing a universal basic income - then greater overall human wellbeing can be achieved. I hope this clarifies my stance for you.

we could have that future now if we really wanted it

>I'm a little disappointed that this article is getting upvoted so much when it doesn't appear to reflect even a basic understanding of economics.

That's reddit in a nutshell. They'll upvote the most random or dumb liberal ideas who have been proved many times to not work.

But who builds the place, who grows the food? Who pays for all of it?

who does it now?

This is even burrowed deeper than the you need to work ideology, I think you can still somewhat convince people that they don't need work but trying to convince that they don't need suffering to be happy is far more difficult ime

Isn't that most people?

So it's not entitlement but rather the logical conclusion of work getting automated in its entirety. It's frustration over the system which will lead you to not having work but requiring you to pay for the basic necessities.

Also it's not that people don't enjoy working but as you'll see mentioned elsewhere in this thread mental health is not given enough attention and made worse by the current system giving rise to the phenomena we call hikikimori and so it appears as if people don't want to work but if you talk to most people suffering through these issues without talking down to them you'll find out they most likely are feeling lost and don't have the right environment to lead them back into a good lifestyle where they can pursue creation of value (we can talk about the political issues related to capital here but that's an entirely separate discussion)

>Because unlike other software, modern AI cannot exist without copious amounts of human-generated data, which it currently consumes without acknowledgement or remuneration.

...from people who willingly upload it to publicly available online databases, expecting to enjoy some sort of free service in return. I don't see anything wrong with this model that would require the imposition of taxes.

>you're criticizing the article for a lack of basic economic understanding when you don't even know what a progressive tax is.

I know what the term sometimes means, but the article used it very vaguely.

That doesn't seem to address any of my points...?

>What happens if the type of labour you have to sell does not pay you enough to survive

Then why doesn't it? How did you get into that sort of situation?

>the labour that you are most adapt at / talented at / interested in pursuing, are economically unviable

That would be unfortunate but I don't see how it creates any obligation on the part of anyone else, much less AI companies specifically, to pay taxes just to increase your work options. There's a big missing gap in reasoning there.

>Or what happens when technology has advanced to the point where you don't need everyone to work in order to provide the means of survival?

That depends how we choose to run our economy. Which is my point: The article's suggestions about how the economy works and how we should run it don't seem to be well thought out. Beyond that, if you have a specific line of thought stemming from this, I think you'll have to spell it out explicitly because I can't guess where you're going with this (or if I do, it'll probably be a very uncharitable guess).

>If in my city there simultaneously exist hundreds of vacant properties for lease and who knows how many homeless people who will die this winter due to exposure, don't you feel there is something flawed about this system?

Very much. However, 'our current stupid system' and 'the stupid system suggested by the OP's article' do not constitute an exhaustive list of options.

That doesn't clarify what it applies to in this context, though. What is the unit across which you're measuring income? Is it on a per-company basis? What stops the companies from just reorganizing into smaller units in order to lower their taxes? Are you measuring just the profit from AI, or all their income? And what's the justification for doing it any of those ways, specifically?

>we shuoldn't define it as just doing things, like hunting, or picking mushrooms or even growing your own garden.

Those sure sound like work to me. Why would you define 'work' so narrowly as to exclude those things? What's the criterion for excluding specifically those things?

>because people out of work still do things like that.

In that sense, everyone was 'out of work' for their entire lives up until, what, a few thousand years ago?

That seems like a bizarre notion of 'work'. It strikes me as doing prehistoric hunter/gatherers a disservice to dismiss their livelihoods as 'not real work', considering how difficult and precarious their lives were.

>for it to be work in this context, in what we're talking about here, you have to have an employer.

So then in what sense does capitalism require everyone to do that?

>can you spot the difference between that type of work and work where you have no employer?

Yes, but I think it's a strange notion of what the word 'work' means and I'm also not sure what the connection with capitalism is supposed to be.

do ants work? do beavers? what about birds? there has to be some baseline where we can talk about work as being separate from other activities. if you define mice as having a job the whole discussion becomes ludicrous. perhaps that is the point of people making these silly arguments.

Retraining have already shown themselves to not be particularly effective at getting displaced workers new jobs, and that's without the factor that as AI improves, it might well be developed to take over new tasks faster than humans can be retrained.

We need a benevolent AI to rule over us all

I think what you're describing is a pipe dream, actually, and if it ever did happen we would be that mych closer to a WALL-E dystopia.

Imagine if things were made for the sake of public good instead of monetary gains like you said, there wouldn't be any scams, maybe some trolls but not scams, iPhone wouldn't be locked down either, every device would've the best chipset, etc

> Then why doesn't it? How did you get into that sort of situation?

Journalism. Teaching. Parenting.

>That would be unfortunate but I don't see how it creates any obligation on the part of anyone else, much less AI companies specifically, to pay taxes just to increase your work options. There's a big missing gap in reasoning there.

Gallup has shown over the past two decades that about two thirds of people either felt not engaged or were actively disengaged (i.e. hating) their job. How much stress, mental illness, and wasted human potential is that?

>(or if I do, it'll probably be a very uncharitable guess).

>...

>Very much. However, 'our current stupid system' and 'the stupid system suggested by the OP's article' do not constitute an exhaustive list of options.

Instead of being snide, why don't you just say what you think?

You seem to be very eager to blame the individual instead of examining the problems inherent in our current economic system.

Yeah, and we also could've started addressing climate change decades earlier. Sometimes it feels like the profit motive poisons us both metaphorically and literally.

People have always worked, that's not the problem.

That's based on the belief that people are inherently lazy which only people with privilege think because as I described it's a mental health issue and no one really enjoys sitting on their ass or not being social

For sure, so many problems could've been solved if profit was not the main driver of… everything

The people consuming it.

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why do you think the same people won't do it?

>A concrete example: being forced to learn skills for a type of labour that you don't care about simply to trade for the resources to survive.

Your entire stance seems to rest on the assumption that a mystical future AI will somehow manifest the ability to relieve humanity of all such work. This may never happen. And in free market societies no enforces anybody to learn anything. And what if someone changes their mind?

>AI is only an issue because it is perceived as taking away peoples' way of securing those resources necessary for survival

I get it, and I agree hypothetically that in its ideal AI would be more of a benefit than a threat, But the pushback is that the reality of AI today is that it's just another tool The markets will use to exploit the only real intrinsic value the human has: as a worker

Because they’re not capable of building housing and rigging it up to code.

If you want a society of self sufficient non specialists, you get Mennonites.

If you want to live in a mid-high density building in a city, you need concrete engineers, crane operators, plumbers, electricians and about 40 other professions. Their time isn’t free.

Even building a house requires permits, and the land to build it on. Technically you could learn it all yourself and it’s fine if it’s to code, but you’re looking at 200k minimum in property and materials just in the middle of nowhere.

you're suggesting the people who currently build houses won't be able to do the same? wtf are you talking about. why would that change? keep all code and all that bullshit. we already have specialists. why would they go away? are you talking about some alternate reality? why would any of that go away?

>you need concrete engineers, crane operators, plumbers, electricians and about 40 other professions.

we'd still have them. nothing is "free". just like when we always had to do "work" we'll always have systems in place for people to benefit from the work they do. people benefited from the work t hey did before currency was invented. they'll continue to after currency is discarded .

people seem to think the "economy" as we define it has always existed. there were thousands of years after the invention of organized farming and before the invention of currency where farms were built, houses constructed, innovations made and necessary work done by people with zero hoarding mentality and almost no social hierarchy. before farming, tribes manage to work together for a hundred thousand years without currency and without millionaires.

it's not only possible, it's the original way we did things.

we can have both now. we've reached the point where we can reorganize society. keep the hierarchy for people who want that sort of thing but also eliminate poverty. all we need to do is find new ways to motivate people. it can be done.

You just said “give everyone a place to live” like there’s some house printer that can make extras.

Who exactly are you suggesting will be giving the houses, and who will pay for it?

who pays for it now? who makes the houses now? none of it would change. and no, not everyone needs a house. nowhere did i say we should build everyone a house. a place to live isn't necessarily a house. a house is something you'd need to work toward.

I don't know, is it? This is what i observe in my surroundings but i also have friends that really did pursue a genuine interest. Trying to make a living with something they really want to do. But they are a minority..

Yep, my experience is the same, most people spend their lives on work that they don't really enjoy, only a minority try to pursue what they enjoy.

Don't be obtuse. It doesn't need to rest on the 'mystical nature of AI' - it's already happening now.

What happened to all the factory workers in the American midwest when all those manufacturing jobs got automated and outsourced away? We saw a massive increase in drug overdoses and suicides. What should've been the correct action to take here? How about professional drivers killing themselves because they can't compete with Uber?

It is a very hard sell to tell someone who has been working a profession for decades to just learn to write code, or to retrain yourself to some other thing in order to stay market competitive. Job retraining programs aren't a guarantee either. How would you like it if you were on the cusp of retiring, but because your job was outsourced or eliminated by market forces, everyone just told you, suck it up buttercup, go learn how to do something else?

There are myriad examples like this that have happened and continue to happen without the need for an all-powerful AGI. All you need is market forces that seek to maximize profit and minimize cost. My stance is that the free market is a dehumanizing machine that always demands more, more, and more in order for the privilege of just existing.

Maybe you are missing my point, although it's not a peachy one. I'll agree that MBI is an important stop-gap as automation takes over many jobs. But in the long run the most important adaptation will be a cap on procreation and a massive reduction in the human population. Market capitalism or Communism alike, the driving force behind human economy has been population. If we are to evolve beyond frogs, we will need less tadpoles

I do believe I am not understanding the argument you are making.

The original article discusses the problem AI poses in a capitalist system - namely, that if it gets good enough to eliminate jobs, people won't be able to make the money they need to survive.

My original comment was expanding on this point, that capitalism pushes us to view ourselves through our economic value first, instead of human beings with intrinsic value, and I argue that we should build systems - capitalistic or otherwise - that allow us to see ourselves as more than just economic inputs.

And so it is in this context why I am confused as to where your argument fits in? As I am re-reading your posts, I believe the point you are making is that an ever-increasing population creates the demand for people to sell their labour? And if we ever want to evolve beyond merely selling our labour to survive, we need to have less people, so there would be less market demand for production of goods and services? Something like this?

My argument is very simply that your 'cultural shift' to embrace the value of the individual, is empty. The value of the individual derives from the useful work that they contribute to the collective. And the main function of the market-driven economy is to reward that value. With AI and automation, that value has been watered down, and the only way to restore balance is to decrease the population to a number appropriate to the demand of society. Having a bunch of people 'just living' and being paid to breed more of the same? Sounds like a bad dream, not a cultural improvement

I believe I see the crux of our disagreement: you do not believe that human beings have inherent value. Would it be fair to say that if someone did not contribute to the collective - let's say, because they couldn't find gainful employment - then this person has no value?

If that is the case then I believe that we disagree fundamentally. It is my belief that all humans have intrinsic value, and it is up to us to build systems that allow all people to flourish no matter who they are or where they come from.

“Give everyone a place to live” -your words

WHO is giving out these places to live?

We can’t go back to a barter and trade economy. How are you going to pay for your internet? Do a 6 hour shift driving AT&T’s truck for them?

We don’t live in a village with a blacksmith and baker. Todays society can’t ever function without currency

it's true we can't go back to barter and trade but it's also true that with technology today, we no longer need currency to function. we're getting there anyway, by small steps. we're "disrupting" industries, putting people where they need to go, doing what they need to do, what needs to be done. uber, fiverr, etc.

things still need to be done and there's no reason why the people who could do it best and want to do it, will still do it. we can also tie jobs to quality of life, if we wanted to.

the same people making houses today, would continue to make them.

You know you’re not answering my question though.

Who is GIVING out these places to live?

you're talking about the transition from a capitalistic, profit based system to one more humane. i'd imagine the people who most benefited from the system should be the ones to bear responsibility for fixing it.

Elaborate.

That's why job market will always exist, so one can have better entertainment in life if he/she contributes anything to society. There should be no requirement to work to meet basic needs though, including basic entertainment, like $5000/month basic income or something, depending on country. I think there must be some nice mix between socialism and capitalism that will work for everyone, but currently no work = no food and no home, which is obviously bad

Plus situation of mentally ill from rich and poor families is drastically different

>do ants work? do beavers? what about birds?

Colloquially speaking they do. Economically speaking they don't because they aren't economic agents.

>Journalism. Teaching. Parenting.

That doesn't really answer the question.

>How much stress, mental illness, and wasted human potential is that?

You're not addressing my point. You don't have to like stress, mentall illness or wasted potential, I don't like it either, but I don't see how that would automatically create obligations on the part of anyone else. (Besides your parents insofar as they created you and consigned you to some sort of existence in the world.)

>Instead of being snide, why don't you just say what you think?

I did say what I think. The article presented some reasoning that didn't make sense to me and I pointed out why it didn't make sense.

>You seem to be very eager to blame the individual instead of examining the problems inherent in our current economic system.

I'm quite interested in examining the problems, I've examined the problems plenty, however it turns out that the principles and solutions are counterintuitive and the vast majority of people would prefer to perpetuate bad (but intuitive and cathartic) ideological nonsense instead. That's why it's important for people to work through the problems themselves and understand what's going on, rather than just listening to more propositions thrown around out of context.

I don't really see how I was 'blaming the individual', other than blaming the article writer for posting bad ideas about economics, of course.