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"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technolog

"We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living." -- Buckminster Fuller, 1930

erikb 11y ago
Let's say we all agree that the global amount of resources are enough to support all of us without work, just for simplification. Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.
- _pmf_ 11y ago
  > Then what about distribution of these resources? The point is that this is an entirely separate question. On a global scale, it's hard to find a worse distribution scheme than the currently used scheme, so any arbitrary distribution is better than the current one (in which the powerful take increasingly more).
  - msellout 11y ago
    On a global scale? I thought all those Hans Rosling "Mind the Gap" videos were telling us the world is increasingly equal.
    - squids 11y ago
      90% of the world still live on less than $10 a day. If you incorporate inflation into the 1981 $1 a day world bank poverty threshhold it would be about $2.50 a day now. At that $2.50 there are something like 300 million more people living below that absolute poverty line than there were when it was created. Unfortunately those Hans Rosling presentations really only deal with mortality at birth, which has consistently improved but probably only down to improvements in neonatal technology. It's really about time people came to realise the World Bank/IMF neoliberal "free trade" globalisation experiment really only works to enrich western asset holders at the expense of the rest of the world through debt bondage.
    - juliangregorian 11y ago
      It's only that way when you say things like "Most of the world has a cell phone, while the Caesars couldn't have even imagined it". Meanwhile, the world's wealth becomes increasingly concentrated at the top.
  - erikb 11y ago
    The quote mentions that people either work to make a living or to make a reason for living. My argument is that there is another reason which is quite common: to get a bigger piece of the pie. If you put in more hours on friday night because you want a raise then the reason is not that you want to pay your bills (you already do that), and it's not because you couldn't do anything else on friday night that would be reasonable in your eyes. It's because you want a bigger share for yourself. So I'm not discussing about how to share the resources, but I want to say that's a reason for people to work. The question was more "Isn't that also a reason to work?" Sorry for not being clear enough.
    - toolz 11y ago
      No one seems to be suggesting taking work away from people that want it, rather, it's to alleviate people from working who don't want it. If you want to work 80 hour weeks to drive a car that can go faster than you'll ever legally be able to push it and live in a house so large you only use a quarter of the living space regularly. Go for it. As for me, I'd rather have my basics met, so I could spend more time doing things to help build my community or just go camping and enjoy nature on a whim. The worst part is that I've found the more money I make, the better people treat me. So I don't have the option of working part-time just to make ends meet. That would quickly land me in a position with people who look at me like I'm worthless and treat me as expendable, which would make working even more unbearable.
      - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
        I think a lot of the slightly crazier competitive types would be completely happy competing in virtual market games that have no real physical effects. I'm totally fine with slightly insane people gambling and trying to out-deal each other, providing they're not doing any physical damage. The problem we have now isn't so much that competitive people exist, but they're not just allowed to do physical damage, they're encouraged to do it to gain "rewards" in the form of tribal status markers. As games go, that's not a winnable strategy, because sooner or later you run out of usable game space.
        11y ago
bgilroy26 11y ago
Excess labor was traditionally consumed by planning grander festivals.
- trgn 11y ago
  Indeed. Things used to be more delightful, because we could, we had the time. Elaborate festivals and parties are a great example. It is a great loss. There was a human touch to so many of things that surrounded us. People wore beautiful clothes, tended to their houses, put effort in the elaborate rituals of the domestic and public sphere. I always have to think of that walking around older southern cities in the US. From dainty modest shotguns to gingerbread victorian family homes, to stately mansions, each of them were carefully crafted, using materials pleasant to the touch and sight, with ornamentation that arose naturally, and even though sometimes elaborate, never garrish, always human. And this extended from the large architectural features - the columns and turrets - all the way down to the doorknobs and furniture. I imagine this architecture as an physical manifestation of daily life. (I could pick any time & place to illustrate this, just nothing after WW1 in the West, when the machine aesthetic took over). Well-tended gardens, week long festivals and carnivals, washing and mending your Sunday clothes on a lazy Saturday evening, shopping for fresh ingredients and preparing multi-course meals for the family ... These things take time. It requires human effort, something a machine can never replicate, time that somehow we don't have any more, even though productivity is so much more higher than it used to be. Perhaps we are wasting that time doing the ritual of work.
dylanjermiah 11y ago
What's an example of a proposed technological break through which can do the work of the adult population?
- antocv 11y ago
  Computer. Before it was a work title, a person, now its just a thing on your desk.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- chippy 11y ago
  1 drone replacing 50 soldiers on the ground?
  - ajuc 11y ago
    Imagine the efficiency increase if countries just did Starcraft 2 match instead.
- douche 11y ago
  Self-driving cars, travel websites, self-checkout lines, Amazon's automated shipping centers, the first fast-food restaurant that lets you order with a touchscreen instead of having your order taken incorrectly by a minimum-wage drone, possibly Watson as a replacement for low-level customer service/tech support
  - prawn 11y ago
    I believe some fast food places have introduced apps through which you can send your drive through order in advance. The drive through window with its crappy speaker and on-the-clock ordering experience is currently pretty poor.
- dsr_ 11y ago
  Past technological breakthroughs: The combine harvester. The cotton gin. The water-powered loom. Factory robots. Clothes-washing technology in general. Proposed technological breakthroughs: Self-driving trucks and cars. Warehouse robots. Supermarket robots. Automated drones. Every efficiency advance not matched by an equal increase in demand reduces the need for people to have jobs.
jotm 11y ago
"Cool story bro. Say that again when you can't pay your rent or even buy some food." - Me. I think everyone should experience that for a few weeks, it changes your perspective on many things.
- jnbiche 11y ago
  The quote does not imply this is the way things are, it's talking about what he believes things should be. Yes, of course many people have to work nonsense jobs now or else they'd starve, but that's because we don't have anything like basic income. With basic income, the lack of food and shelter you refer to wouldn't be an issue -- at least for citizens of the country with basic income.
  - sillygoose 11y ago
    I'm guessing his point was that we're so accustomed to relatively comfortable living (especially here on HN), that we take valuable things for granted. That leads to a sense of entitlement and confusion. We don't see how valuable the things we have are, so we end up thinking they should be "free", without realizing that nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. So if we experienced real hardship, our thinking would shift, and we'd appreciate valuable things more and we'd feel less entitled. My point in another, heavily hissy-fit-downvoted message, was that everything of value costs something to produce, and therefore things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. The same applies to "free money" in the form of Basic Income. People like to fantasize about not being personally responsible for their choices in life. Instead, they'd just get free money every month without having to work. "We have the technology!! Why aren't you giving me free stuff?! Damn capitalist oppressors!!" People should think about how things work in the real world.
    - icebraining 11y ago
      nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. That's not how it actually works; price is only bounded by the value is brings, not proportional to it. For example, air is literally indispensable to life, but good luck selling it. things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. Sure they can; they've always have! Roads, cops, healthcare, education; hell, you're European, you should know. And plenty of people already live without working. Maybe expanding it to the levels of allowing everyone to not work is (still?) unrealistic, but claiming "things can't be handed out for free" is silly.
nathanvanfleet 11y ago
Going back to school and dilly-dallying is mostly only really going to be viable if your parents are the ones who earned a big enough living to support you. I know people like that. Maybe corporations should adopt poor people or commission huge parties or works of art.
- Hytosys 11y ago
  This quote reads as advocacy for unconditional basic income. I don't think education would ever be considered "dilly-dallying" in a society where poverty is generally impossible.
  - Anderkent 11y ago
    Hopefully that would also mean education would become cheaper. Actually, given how expensive education is right now in the states, you could probably take the money one would spend on educating someone, put it in stocks or whatever, and have a nice 20+k yearly income, for which two people can rent a cabin in the mountains, grow their vegetable garden and chill.
sillygoose 11y ago
> We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living Right, because valuable things don't actually cost anything to produce! That's why they can just be (automatically) handed out by some big Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery. We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!
- msutherl 11y ago
  Indeed, some people don't deserve to survive.
  - sillygoose 11y ago
    You seem to be completely oblivious to my point(s).
- noonespecial 11y ago
  No, we should all be able to get whatever we need because for the first time in history, we can. If individuals would like to pursue even more (ie the things they want), they should be free to do so, so long as those wants don't occlude the afore stated needs of others. The interesting thing is that we (humanity) could now actually do this if we wanted to. In the past, the laws of physics (and our lack of knowledge) prevented this. Now only politics do. The "Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery" is real, and it looks like in the end, all it will require to operate is natural resources. We are piss poor at equitably distributing preexisting natural resources amongst ourselves.
  - sillygoose 11y ago
    Here's a relevant reply I posted to someone else: ----- I'm guessing his point was that we're so accustomed to relatively comfortable living (especially here on HN), that we take valuable things for granted. That leads to a sense of entitlement and confusion. We don't see how valuable the things we have are, so we end up thinking they should be "free", without realizing that nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. So if we experienced real hardship, our thinking would shift, and we'd appreciate valuable things more and we'd feel less entitled. My point in another, heavily hissy-fit-downvoted message, was that everything of value costs something to produce, and therefore things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. The same applies to "free money" in the form of Basic Income. People like to fantasize about not being personally responsible for their choices in life. Instead, they'd just get free money every month without having to work. "We have the technology!! Why aren't you giving me free stuff?! Damn capitalist oppressors!!" People should think about how things work in the real world. ------ Suppose Service X costs you $500 per month to produce. If you keep giving it away for free, you're incurring a loss of $500 per month. That is not sustainable. In a similar fashion, running the Nanny-Fairy-Machinery and producing things with it would definitely cost something, and that's why giving the output away for free wouldn't be sustainable. It's a Marxism-tinged pipe dream.
mistaken 11y ago
I don't think that having jobs is the problem. A lot of people can benefit from having jobs. Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals. It is also less risky for the employer (doesn't have to search for someone when a task needs to be done) and the employees (stable income). I personally like to work in an environment where I can decide what has to be done, how to do it, but many people wouldn't want to take this responsibility or would have a far less incentive to work if they don't have to earn a living. In an utopia perhaps we could abolish jobs, if everybody knew what they wanted to do and what they were good at.
- rorykoehler 11y ago
  The issue is that from birth most of us are conditioned, through education and culture to not take this responsibility. Most of those who beat the trap have their passion squeezed from them through poverty or dreary corporate jobs that consume them. You wouldn't believe how many people ask me what people would do if they didn't have to work due to guaranteed basic income or some such. Why do I even have to answer that question. People can do whatever they want. It's not my or the systems job to to tell people what to do. If a person is lazy and the only way they can get motivated is by the threat of starving then that's their problem however I would still much prefer to live in a world were people have the option to be lazy and not faced a threat to their basic survival than what we have now where people are highly driven, working multiple jobs, but socio-economic circumstances mean they are trapped in a poverty cycle they can't escape from. I agree with your premise regarding the workplace providing a way to develop people and to give people a chance to organize around clear goals however I also think this should be decoupled from income stability. Any income earned in the workplace would be a bonus on top of the bare minimum needed to survive which should be provided. How can we say we are civilized when we let people starve, be homeless and deny them access to medical help when they need it because they aren't wealthy enough. The world as it is now is so absurd. Someday (soon I hope) we will look back on this period in human history with bemusement.
  - jsudhams 11y ago
    Great point. I think with robotics and other automations we will get minimum wages and work / art or other efforts will give bonus. Kaliyug in vedas mentioned a 10000 years period where everything will great with everyone happily living with others with out wars and fights. I strongly believe if all countries work together we can make it happen. I think corporates in current methodology done their job and move on two new model which will be that profits be used for bonus and for basic wages for all method.
benihana 11y ago
So basically 9,999 people are completely dependent on the work of one person for them to survive and prosper. Sounds really rosy, for everyone involved.
- Anderkent 11y ago
  Those 9999 people would be completely fine if they were born earlier. We enable some people to be incredibly productive, at the cost of other peoples ability to support themselves. "But society came and paved over the place where all the roots and berry plants grew and killed the buffalo and dynamited the caves and declared the tribal bonding rituals Problematic. This increased productivity by about a zillion times, so most people ended up better off. The only ones who didn’t were the ones who for some reason couldn’t participate in it. (if you’re one of those people who sees red every time someone mentions evolution or cavemen, imagine him as a dockworker a hundred years ago, or a peasant farmer a thousand) Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have. Of course it owes him when he suddenly can’t support himself. Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/
  - geebee 11y ago
    Interesting link, thanks for posting it. The analogy to eminent domain is a clever one. This reminds me of a bit I heard recently about early British hunter-gatherers and the transition to agriculture. http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00009&segmentID=5 http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00009&se... An interesting question that comes up is why British hunter gatherers were slow to adopt agriculture when there is a 2,000 year gap in when wheat was first introduced and when Britain become more agricultural. One possibility is that they simply didn't want to become more agricultural. "..it may well have been the case that the Mesolithic peoples of Europe really did not want to switch to an agricultural economy, but at some point they would have had to switch as their own hunter-gatherer economy would have ceased to be viable as they lose more land to this encroaching advancement of arable agriculture."
floppydisk 11y ago
We tried this idea, in America, at the Jamestown Colony. They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work and produce because there was no advantage to them working more than their peers. Why should I work to produce an excess when Billy Bob sits on the dock all day and receives the same share I do. When they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution, production at the colony skyrocketed because people were rewarded for their effort. Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.
- Anderkent 11y ago
  >why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day? There's a lot of room for manouver between 'everyone gets exactly the same amount no matter their contribution' and 'everyone must be productive (net-positive on the society) to sustain themselves'. So, reasons you might contribute when even the sky-gazers can survive at a decent level: 1. Because the extra pay lets you do more fun things 2. Because you enjoy the work 3. Because the extra status you get from your work contributions is rewarding 4. Because you like the people you work with 5. Because you're one of the one in ten thousand people who can leverage the technological progress to make significant contributions, and feel something of a noblesse oblige 6. Because you don't even consider what you're doing work (you were just playing around with maths and theory, and suddenly new discoveries!)
  - easyaspie 11y ago
    i like reason number 2 maybe 'cause literally our life is so boring hehehe sorry for bad english
mikekchar 11y ago
To be honest, people pay me to do a job, but I am a fraud. I don't work for a living. Somewhere on a piece of paper my name is printed and it says that I will receive a sum of money each month in exchange for some effort at programming computers or some such thing, but I never really pay attention to it. I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun. I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question. I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed. There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud. It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it. In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.

erikb 11y ago

Let's say we all agree that the global amount of resources are enough to support all of us without work, just for simplification. Then what about distribution of these resources? I feel many people work to fight over that distribution, not just to produce. E.g., there might be no $1000/h lawyer who would think that they produce even $100/h worth of resources. But they might still work 80h/week (or make the impression) to get a bigger share of the pie that is already there.

_pmf_ 11y ago
> Then what about distribution of these resources? The point is that this is an entirely separate question. On a global scale, it's hard to find a worse distribution scheme than the currently used scheme, so any arbitrary distribution is better than the current one (in which the powerful take increasingly more).
- msellout 11y ago
  On a global scale? I thought all those Hans Rosling "Mind the Gap" videos were telling us the world is increasingly equal.
  - squids 11y ago
    90% of the world still live on less than $10 a day. If you incorporate inflation into the 1981 $1 a day world bank poverty threshhold it would be about $2.50 a day now. At that $2.50 there are something like 300 million more people living below that absolute poverty line than there were when it was created. Unfortunately those Hans Rosling presentations really only deal with mortality at birth, which has consistently improved but probably only down to improvements in neonatal technology. It's really about time people came to realise the World Bank/IMF neoliberal "free trade" globalisation experiment really only works to enrich western asset holders at the expense of the rest of the world through debt bondage.
  - juliangregorian 11y ago
    It's only that way when you say things like "Most of the world has a cell phone, while the Caesars couldn't have even imagined it". Meanwhile, the world's wealth becomes increasingly concentrated at the top.
- erikb 11y ago
  The quote mentions that people either work to make a living or to make a reason for living. My argument is that there is another reason which is quite common: to get a bigger piece of the pie. If you put in more hours on friday night because you want a raise then the reason is not that you want to pay your bills (you already do that), and it's not because you couldn't do anything else on friday night that would be reasonable in your eyes. It's because you want a bigger share for yourself. So I'm not discussing about how to share the resources, but I want to say that's a reason for people to work. The question was more "Isn't that also a reason to work?" Sorry for not being clear enough.
  - toolz 11y ago
    No one seems to be suggesting taking work away from people that want it, rather, it's to alleviate people from working who don't want it. If you want to work 80 hour weeks to drive a car that can go faster than you'll ever legally be able to push it and live in a house so large you only use a quarter of the living space regularly. Go for it. As for me, I'd rather have my basics met, so I could spend more time doing things to help build my community or just go camping and enjoy nature on a whim. The worst part is that I've found the more money I make, the better people treat me. So I don't have the option of working part-time just to make ends meet. That would quickly land me in a position with people who look at me like I'm worthless and treat me as expendable, which would make working even more unbearable.
    - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
      I think a lot of the slightly crazier competitive types would be completely happy competing in virtual market games that have no real physical effects. I'm totally fine with slightly insane people gambling and trying to out-deal each other, providing they're not doing any physical damage. The problem we have now isn't so much that competitive people exist, but they're not just allowed to do physical damage, they're encouraged to do it to gain "rewards" in the form of tribal status markers. As games go, that's not a winnable strategy, because sooner or later you run out of usable game space.
      - 11y ago

bgilroy26 11y ago

Excess labor was traditionally consumed by planning grander festivals.

trgn 11y ago
Indeed. Things used to be more delightful, because we could, we had the time. Elaborate festivals and parties are a great example. It is a great loss. There was a human touch to so many of things that surrounded us. People wore beautiful clothes, tended to their houses, put effort in the elaborate rituals of the domestic and public sphere. I always have to think of that walking around older southern cities in the US. From dainty modest shotguns to gingerbread victorian family homes, to stately mansions, each of them were carefully crafted, using materials pleasant to the touch and sight, with ornamentation that arose naturally, and even though sometimes elaborate, never garrish, always human. And this extended from the large architectural features - the columns and turrets - all the way down to the doorknobs and furniture. I imagine this architecture as an physical manifestation of daily life. (I could pick any time & place to illustrate this, just nothing after WW1 in the West, when the machine aesthetic took over). Well-tended gardens, week long festivals and carnivals, washing and mending your Sunday clothes on a lazy Saturday evening, shopping for fresh ingredients and preparing multi-course meals for the family ... These things take time. It requires human effort, something a machine can never replicate, time that somehow we don't have any more, even though productivity is so much more higher than it used to be. Perhaps we are wasting that time doing the ritual of work.

dylanjermiah 11y ago

What's an example of a proposed technological break through which can do the work of the adult population?

antocv 11y ago
Computer. Before it was a work title, a person, now its just a thing on your desk.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
chippy 11y ago
1 drone replacing 50 soldiers on the ground?
- ajuc 11y ago
  Imagine the efficiency increase if countries just did Starcraft 2 match instead.
douche 11y ago
Self-driving cars, travel websites, self-checkout lines, Amazon's automated shipping centers, the first fast-food restaurant that lets you order with a touchscreen instead of having your order taken incorrectly by a minimum-wage drone, possibly Watson as a replacement for low-level customer service/tech support
- prawn 11y ago
  I believe some fast food places have introduced apps through which you can send your drive through order in advance. The drive through window with its crappy speaker and on-the-clock ordering experience is currently pretty poor.
dsr_ 11y ago
Past technological breakthroughs: The combine harvester. The cotton gin. The water-powered loom. Factory robots. Clothes-washing technology in general. Proposed technological breakthroughs: Self-driving trucks and cars. Warehouse robots. Supermarket robots. Automated drones. Every efficiency advance not matched by an equal increase in demand reduces the need for people to have jobs.

jotm 11y ago

"Cool story bro. Say that again when you can't pay your rent or even buy some food." - Me. I think everyone should experience that for a few weeks, it changes your perspective on many things.

jnbiche 11y ago
The quote does not imply this is the way things are, it's talking about what he believes things should be. Yes, of course many people have to work nonsense jobs now or else they'd starve, but that's because we don't have anything like basic income. With basic income, the lack of food and shelter you refer to wouldn't be an issue -- at least for citizens of the country with basic income.
- sillygoose 11y ago
  I'm guessing his point was that we're so accustomed to relatively comfortable living (especially here on HN), that we take valuable things for granted. That leads to a sense of entitlement and confusion. We don't see how valuable the things we have are, so we end up thinking they should be "free", without realizing that nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. So if we experienced real hardship, our thinking would shift, and we'd appreciate valuable things more and we'd feel less entitled. My point in another, heavily hissy-fit-downvoted message, was that everything of value costs something to produce, and therefore things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. The same applies to "free money" in the form of Basic Income. People like to fantasize about not being personally responsible for their choices in life. Instead, they'd just get free money every month without having to work. "We have the technology!! Why aren't you giving me free stuff?! Damn capitalist oppressors!!" People should think about how things work in the real world.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. That's not how it actually works; price is only bounded by the value is brings, not proportional to it. For example, air is literally indispensable to life, but good luck selling it. things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. Sure they can; they've always have! Roads, cops, healthcare, education; hell, you're European, you should know. And plenty of people already live without working. Maybe expanding it to the levels of allowing everyone to not work is (still?) unrealistic, but claiming "things can't be handed out for free" is silly.

nathanvanfleet 11y ago

Going back to school and dilly-dallying is mostly only really going to be viable if your parents are the ones who earned a big enough living to support you. I know people like that. Maybe corporations should adopt poor people or commission huge parties or works of art.

Hytosys 11y ago
This quote reads as advocacy for unconditional basic income. I don't think education would ever be considered "dilly-dallying" in a society where poverty is generally impossible.
- Anderkent 11y ago
  Hopefully that would also mean education would become cheaper. Actually, given how expensive education is right now in the states, you could probably take the money one would spend on educating someone, put it in stocks or whatever, and have a nice 20+k yearly income, for which two people can rent a cabin in the mountains, grow their vegetable garden and chill.

sillygoose 11y ago

> We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living Right, because valuable things don't actually cost anything to produce! That's why they can just be (automatically) handed out by some big Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery. We should all just get whatever we want, because we deserve it!

msutherl 11y ago
Indeed, some people don't deserve to survive.
- sillygoose 11y ago
  You seem to be completely oblivious to my point(s).
noonespecial 11y ago
No, we should all be able to get whatever we need because for the first time in history, we can. If individuals would like to pursue even more (ie the things they want), they should be free to do so, so long as those wants don't occlude the afore stated needs of others. The interesting thing is that we (humanity) could now actually do this if we wanted to. In the past, the laws of physics (and our lack of knowledge) prevented this. Now only politics do. The "Magic Nanny-Fairy Machinery" is real, and it looks like in the end, all it will require to operate is natural resources. We are piss poor at equitably distributing preexisting natural resources amongst ourselves.
- sillygoose 11y ago
  Here's a relevant reply I posted to someone else: ----- I'm guessing his point was that we're so accustomed to relatively comfortable living (especially here on HN), that we take valuable things for granted. That leads to a sense of entitlement and confusion. We don't see how valuable the things we have are, so we end up thinking they should be "free", without realizing that nothing of value is actually free, because otherwise it wouldn't have value. So if we experienced real hardship, our thinking would shift, and we'd appreciate valuable things more and we'd feel less entitled. My point in another, heavily hissy-fit-downvoted message, was that everything of value costs something to produce, and therefore things can't just be handed out for free, because the things themselves are not actually free. The same applies to "free money" in the form of Basic Income. People like to fantasize about not being personally responsible for their choices in life. Instead, they'd just get free money every month without having to work. "We have the technology!! Why aren't you giving me free stuff?! Damn capitalist oppressors!!" People should think about how things work in the real world. ------ Suppose Service X costs you $500 per month to produce. If you keep giving it away for free, you're incurring a loss of $500 per month. That is not sustainable. In a similar fashion, running the Nanny-Fairy-Machinery and producing things with it would definitely cost something, and that's why giving the output away for free wouldn't be sustainable. It's a Marxism-tinged pipe dream.

mistaken 11y ago

I don't think that having jobs is the problem. A lot of people can benefit from having jobs. Ideally a workplace should provide a way to develop people, a stable income and clear goals. It is also less risky for the employer (doesn't have to search for someone when a task needs to be done) and the employees (stable income). I personally like to work in an environment where I can decide what has to be done, how to do it, but many people wouldn't want to take this responsibility or would have a far less incentive to work if they don't have to earn a living. In an utopia perhaps we could abolish jobs, if everybody knew what they wanted to do and what they were good at.

rorykoehler 11y ago
The issue is that from birth most of us are conditioned, through education and culture to not take this responsibility. Most of those who beat the trap have their passion squeezed from them through poverty or dreary corporate jobs that consume them. You wouldn't believe how many people ask me what people would do if they didn't have to work due to guaranteed basic income or some such. Why do I even have to answer that question. People can do whatever they want. It's not my or the systems job to to tell people what to do. If a person is lazy and the only way they can get motivated is by the threat of starving then that's their problem however I would still much prefer to live in a world were people have the option to be lazy and not faced a threat to their basic survival than what we have now where people are highly driven, working multiple jobs, but socio-economic circumstances mean they are trapped in a poverty cycle they can't escape from. I agree with your premise regarding the workplace providing a way to develop people and to give people a chance to organize around clear goals however I also think this should be decoupled from income stability. Any income earned in the workplace would be a bonus on top of the bare minimum needed to survive which should be provided. How can we say we are civilized when we let people starve, be homeless and deny them access to medical help when they need it because they aren't wealthy enough. The world as it is now is so absurd. Someday (soon I hope) we will look back on this period in human history with bemusement.
- jsudhams 11y ago
  Great point. I think with robotics and other automations we will get minimum wages and work / art or other efforts will give bonus. Kaliyug in vedas mentioned a 10000 years period where everything will great with everyone happily living with others with out wars and fights. I strongly believe if all countries work together we can make it happen. I think corporates in current methodology done their job and move on two new model which will be that profits be used for bonus and for basic wages for all method.

benihana 11y ago

So basically 9,999 people are completely dependent on the work of one person for them to survive and prosper. Sounds really rosy, for everyone involved.

Anderkent 11y ago
Those 9999 people would be completely fine if they were born earlier. We enable some people to be incredibly productive, at the cost of other peoples ability to support themselves. "But society came and paved over the place where all the roots and berry plants grew and killed the buffalo and dynamited the caves and declared the tribal bonding rituals Problematic. This increased productivity by about a zillion times, so most people ended up better off. The only ones who didn’t were the ones who for some reason couldn’t participate in it. (if you’re one of those people who sees red every time someone mentions evolution or cavemen, imagine him as a dockworker a hundred years ago, or a peasant farmer a thousand) Society got where it is by systematically destroying everything that could have supported him and replacing it with things that required skills he didn’t have. Of course it owes him when he suddenly can’t support himself. Think of it as the ultimate use of eminent domain; a power beyond your control has seized everything in the world, it had some good economic reasons for doing so, but it at least owes you compensation!" http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/16/burdens/
- geebee 11y ago
  Interesting link, thanks for posting it. The analogy to eminent domain is a clever one. This reminds me of a bit I heard recently about early British hunter-gatherers and the transition to agriculture. http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00009&segmentID=5 http://loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=15-P13-00009&se... An interesting question that comes up is why British hunter gatherers were slow to adopt agriculture when there is a 2,000 year gap in when wheat was first introduced and when Britain become more agricultural. One possibility is that they simply didn't want to become more agricultural. "..it may well have been the case that the Mesolithic peoples of Europe really did not want to switch to an agricultural economy, but at some point they would have had to switch as their own hunter-gatherer economy would have ceased to be viable as they lose more land to this encroaching advancement of arable agriculture."

floppydisk 11y ago

We tried this idea, in America, at the Jamestown Colony. They initially established it in a "socialist" vein wherein everyone received an equal share of the proceeds (food, etc) regardless of their contributions to the colony. The colony barely survived because people lacked the incentive to work and produce because there was no advantage to them working more than their peers. Why should I work to produce an excess when Billy Bob sits on the dock all day and receives the same share I do. When they lifted the socialist mandate on redistribution, production at the colony skyrocketed because people were rewarded for their effort. Everyone has to put a roof over their head and food in their belly. If we create a culture that tells people they don't have to work to receive those benefits, it will disicentivize people to actually work (why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day?) and engage in production activities. Supporting a society necessitates producers create more than what they need, but if you create a system that takes what it deems the excess from the producers without compensation or reward and doles it out, the producers will stop producing and we'll back at Jamestown all over again.

Anderkent 11y ago
>why should they if their excess production goes to subsidizing non-producers who stare at the sky all day? There's a lot of room for manouver between 'everyone gets exactly the same amount no matter their contribution' and 'everyone must be productive (net-positive on the society) to sustain themselves'. So, reasons you might contribute when even the sky-gazers can survive at a decent level: 1. Because the extra pay lets you do more fun things 2. Because you enjoy the work 3. Because the extra status you get from your work contributions is rewarding 4. Because you like the people you work with 5. Because you're one of the one in ten thousand people who can leverage the technological progress to make significant contributions, and feel something of a noblesse oblige 6. Because you don't even consider what you're doing work (you were just playing around with maths and theory, and suddenly new discoveries!)
- easyaspie 11y ago
  i like reason number 2 maybe 'cause literally our life is so boring hehehe sorry for bad english

mikekchar 11y ago

To be honest, people pay me to do a job, but I am a fraud. I don't work for a living. Somewhere on a piece of paper my name is printed and it says that I will receive a sum of money each month in exchange for some effort at programming computers or some such thing, but I never really pay attention to it. I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun. I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question. I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed. There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud. It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it. In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.