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by eli_gottlieb 3955 days ago
But human idleness is the goal! Working, for most people, is a bunch of miserable drudgery.
3 comments

Profit maximization is the goal behind automation.

We'd need to see changes in human nature or society to ensure that misplaced labor can still have a quality of life if idle, because profit optimization says you won't see a cent if I don't have to give it to you.

Even accepting your premise (which I'm not sure that I do), that still doesn't disprove my point. When farm workers went into factories, we got a bunch of stuff like cars, dishwashers, and refrigerators. That means that I can go to the store less often, and I don't have to walk there when I go, and I don't have to wash the dishes myself each night. We gained a bunch of idleness from that - but we couldn't have done so without moving people from farms to factories.
I wonder what they'd transition to. When I'm not working, I feel depressed and anxious to a fault.