[JulianMorrison]

No, everyone likes work. We call it "hobbies" when its not formally productive and "vocations" when it is. Capitalism, as a system, is awful at allocating this work that people love to the people who love it. They either can't at all, or they are forced to fit it around wasted time, or they have to gamble on trying to build it up from nothing, and often losing their stake and their beloved work.

[imron]

> Capitalism, as a system, is awful at allocating this work that people love to the people who love it.

It's significantly better at it than the alternatives.

Even UBI. Sure UBI sounds great in principle, you'll be given enough to live on and you can spend your time doing whatever takes your fancy, but in large-scale practice I don't see it working.

Making the majority of the population dependent on the government for their income is not something that has historically worked well.

[JulianMorrison]

One, they're not dependent on the government. Only on a society organized to redistribute wealth so as to prevent scarcity, in the broadest sense of the term. Could be anarchic or contributory in a different social climate.

Two, the idea is not that people will goof off all day. Some yeah. Most, no. Most people will find work they like doing and do it. What does go away, however, is the fear of failure, unemployment and poverty. So they will have much better options to search for their most effective niche, rather than leaping in panic upon the first offer.

[imron]

One, there is no practical way to roll this out across an entire society without government involvement. Businesses and wealthy benefactors can make it work for small trials, but large scale society level in a western democracy? It will need government involvement, and even if you try to do it without them, they will stick their nose in it anyway whether you like it or not.

Two, ideas and reality are very different things. The idea of communism is that everyone is provided for and people give what they can and only take what they need. Sounds great, very altruistic. In reality, it's been a nightmare everywhere it has ever been implemented at a societal level because the idea fails to take in to account human nature. UBI proponents overlook or understate this factor too.

[lmm]

> Capitalism, as a system, is awful at allocating this work that people love to the people who love it.

It's actually pretty good at it. The really fulfilling jobs like nursing or teaching go to those who are willing to sacrifice most other luxuries to do them; those who don't get a fulfilling job get more consumption to make up for it. Enjoyable work is a commodity like anything else.

[Helmet]

If everyone did what they wanted to do all of the time, the world would simply cease to function.

[soundwave106]

The utopia vision as I understand it behind UBI is that automation takes care of most / all of the work people don't want to do.

I think the biggest challenge to this utopia vision (assuming automation gets to this point) is more that, frankly, labor is not wealth. Land is land for instance regardless of what is automated or not. Rent seeking for various things is rather common, most of which automation will not touch. I can envision strong resistance to any sort of UBI scheme from this group (some of this group frankly seem to not even care for our current safety nets now).

Before we go through a true "post work" phase, we'll probably go through a phase where service oriented jobs are the norm -- this is also harder to automate away completely, although probably not near impossible like tackling assets and rent-seeking. The main problem here is that this side of the workforce is currently rather undervalued IMHO. So if one wants improvements in the world of work, I personally think putting more efforts here would be better vs. banking on UBI.

[baursak]

Or, with enough automation, the world would be making leaps of progress in a variety of areas of human interest, because everybody is pursuing their true interests.

[JulianMorrison]

The idea being that we automate, design away or do without as much as possible of the scutwork and pay the remainder handsomely. Then people can do the things they like - which may well be highly useful, they just aren't what capitalism will pay for.