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Yeah I think about this a lot and it really depresses me
Especially since someone owns the machines and the materials and the end product. We own nothing, so in frame 2 we’re missing the capitalist off frame somewhere (probably lounging on a private island) saying “lol, fuck you. You get nothing, it’s all mine.”
Their idea is “if there isn’t enough work for everyone any more than that means there are too many people for what society can support so… Die.”
Capitalism at its peak
The second frame shows the ideal of post-scarcity communism, the end goal of Marxist communism.
There’s still promise as weve seen with the Great Resignation after the 2020 epidemic lockdown and furlough. We learned that:
- People are not typically lazy and rather turn to hobbies and projects rather than TV. (Those who can watch TV for weeks are showing avolition a symptom of mental illness.)
- Some of them were even able to turn their home gig lucrative and some of those were able to quit their day job.
- People don’t like their job not because they’re layabouts (goldbrickers! slugabeds!) but rather because the job sucks. It may be tedious, or arduous, or frustrating or overwhelming. The work environment might be toxic (literally, if safety precautions are insufficient). It may include inappropriate politics, or deception or harassment by management with no oversight. All these things can be fixed.
- The job may not pay sufficiently. Also bosses may push workers to do more than is impossible to do well. These should be dealbreakers, but we’re expected not just to do our jobs, but to negotiate at a disadvantage. Bosses who don’t fuck with you and pay you what you’re worth are doing you no favors. That is the bare minimum.
- Capitalists would rather seek out exploitable work forces than treat their workers fairly, like human beings, hence efforts to cut benefits early to force people back to shit jobs, and later, seeing to relax child labor protections.
That is in fact how I was radicalized on the economic front in a debate with a socialist in college
Radicalization. So hot right now ;)
I was radicalized before it was cool
Maybe as a middle ground, you can train an A.I. with your individual skills and institutional knowledge, when it had a gap in response, it pings you. You casually main new things and track it to the A.I. in your style. If/when you leave, company needs to give you all of your data and start again training a new A.I. with new hire.
They won’t, but this could be a way to allow A.I. that can work longer, have human oversight, maintain salaries for humans and not repurpose their data if you no longer employ them - as would be the case in real life.
ROFL. Do people really think this?
Definetly if you’re old enough to experience it.
Hilarious.
Def can tell you’re not old enough then.
I’m 51.
I don’t know man. I feel like by now you should have experienced a loved one or someone close to you lose their job due to automation by now. Everyone wishes they could do what they want to for a living but they can’t, especially now with AI coming for artists as well.
There isn’t a job that you’d love to do that isn’t gonna get automated away within our lifetimes.
Within our lifetimes is a big stretch imo
It’s possible
I think I might be confused about the message of that cartoon. Because I’m wholeheartedly against AI taking over jobs. And I thought this was pro Ai.
Wholeheartedly? The problem for people is the income, not the work.
Kind of.
I probably thought like this in my 20s.
Now I’m old enough and jaded enough to realise that it’s not really achievable.
I do think this type of utopia is possible, but its not really achievable for 21st century earth mostly because we’re more comfortable with a social hierarchy than a less stratified structure.
oh defintately before I was 20. I think the thing is that its the reason I was a science major and then I was to busy for a long long time to really think otherwise. Once I was no longer working toward such a future and was more just working for a living it became increasingly clear that we are not progressing in this way that I thought we would.
Yeah, have you ever worked with someone who wasn’t good at their job yet? Like so bad you wonder why they even bother coming in.
Imagine a world where computers and machines can do anything you can do but better. You and everyone else would be like an incompetent employee no matter how hard you worked at it.
Why would you even try to keep up? Why not just do things you actually wanted to do and live your life? Is this really such an unbelievable position to take?
It makes sense if all the jobs are that way and there’s a universal basic income associated with that society.
The reason this post is stupid though is because the position being automated is not yours once it’s automated. So a machine now flips your burgers, what does that mean? The employer you had now has to track which burgers you would have flipped and pay you for them? For how long? Until you “retire” and they have to “hire” someone else the robot flips the burgers for?
It doesn’t make any sense. You stop getting money when you stop providing value unless society as a whole decides to support all it’s people. That is a great aspiration but hard to do fairly.
I think you’re misunderstanding. I’ve always heard this in the context of a UBI, never that an employer should pay an ex-employee for the work that a robot does.
With this setup, nobody is forced to do menial labor. Those that are willing and able can pursue higher education and pick up more skilled jobs, increasing potential for technological advancement. Those that can’t or don’t want to can pursue their own interests and hopefully create some cultural significance. Essentially, the automation will allow people to leave their shitty jobs and pursue something more fulfilling without worrying about going bankrupt, all while society still has its basic needs met.
I’ve always thought this was an ideal scenario. Whenever I hear people talking about how automation is taking jobs and needs to be stopped, I think about how automation should really be encouraged to allow people to contribute more meaningfully, but this can only be done after we’ve established a UBI and other social programs to ensure that these people can get by without the income they get from their current jobs.
It’s absolutely the ideal scenario that automation proliferates to all the jobs people dont care to do. To be utopian it requires societal shifts toward the collective instead of individual capitalism. It would be decidedly dystopian if automation became pervasive and a handful of people got even-ultra-wealthier and the lower class became totally unable to work to provide for themselves.
I guess I am confused, because on one hand you say the post is stupid, but in the other hand you seem to agree with it but think that the “correct” way would be very challenging.
So it sounds like your only problem is with the implementation details. Am I understanding your point?
Yeah you got it. I take issue with the fact that it’s an individual in the comic. In reality, automation comes first, then (probably) job loss at scale, then UBI, then a more idealized society that isn’t focused on individual labor.
This graphic as it is looks like some dumb oversimplification from anti-work.
I see. I see the comic as pointing the interesting problem that arises from automation today.
A tool like automation should be a boon to humanity and therefore a boon to all individuals. Instead, in the current reality, automation is causing a lot of problems because our system wasn’t designed for the level of automation we have today.
I think the comic is stating that the system should work for us, not the other way around. You seem to agree with this point and I do as well.
I don’t see the comic prescribing any order of changing policy to arrive at the “correct” panel. I also don’t see any specific anti-work themes.
There is an assumption that more time to do what you want is better than more time at a job, but I don’t see this as anti-work as I think most people would agree with it.
Perhaps kids
