[mathieuh]

Hopefully breaking the link between people's labour and their worth as a human. I hope that as more and more things become automated and fewer people need to work, that we restructure society so they don't have to do bullshit jobs or work if they don't want to.

Unfortunately, people have been hoping for this for as long as there has been machinery which multiplied humans' labour and it's yet to materialise, but I remain hopeful.

[dsfyu404ed]

>Hopefully breaking the link between people's labour and their worth as a human

Look at how people who are Nth generation welfare recipients and Nth generation trust fund babies turn out (as people, not in terms of wealth). People just find other ways to dick measure. You could fill a library with all the dumb stuff victorian royalty did to keep score amongst each other.

And you can see impressions of this kind of human behavior among all sorts of groups who work minimally and are mostly provided for by others.

(Inb4 some jerk looking for a few quick virtue points straw-mans me) I'm not saying work is the meaning or life or anything like that but people not having to work for their basic needs (which is always a relative target) isn't some harmonious utopia.

[monkeydust]

So Startrek like, pursuit of personal and society goals?...although we haven't solved for finite resources (yet)

[mathieuh]

I admit I don't know much about Startrek, but from descriptions I've read of their society it sounds pretty good to me.

A society where basic needs are taken care of, and beyond that–as long as you aren't hurting anyone or infringing on anyone else's liberty–freedom to do what you believe is most valuable.

[monkeydust]

This was a decent attempt at trying to explain the economics around startrek if your interested. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trekonomics-Economics-Star-Manu-Saa...

A nice change from all the dystopian reading!

[mathieuh]

Thanks, I'll take a look!

[incomingpain]

>A society where basic needs are taken care of, and beyond that–as long as you aren't hurting anyone or infringing on anyone else's liberty–freedom to do what you believe is most valuable.

Only plausible due to high energy reactors and magical boxes which fabricate things instantly using only electricity aka replicators.

[rbanffy]

Not really. We don't need replicators to provide basic needs. Ordinary volume manufacturing can cover that nicely, and more sustainable approaches can be used when we cease to program obsolescence.

[incomingpain]

>Not really. We don't need replicators to provide basic needs.

The utopia in star trek depends upon all basic needs, all necessities, and all luxuries to be supplied at no resource cost. Anything short of this star trek's utopia does not exist.

Star trek themselves addresses this in many many episodes. It was a key issue in the Voyager -> Kazon conflict.

>Ordinary volume manufacturing can cover that nicely,

This happened 150 years ago. It's what anti-capitalists are fighting against. The industrial revolution happened immediately before karl marx was born. This is what created the possibility for Marx to exist. Yet today for whatever reason the communists fight against this very thing. Boggles the mind.

If I were a communist, the path to communism is full robotics and automation.

>and more sustainable approaches can be used when we cease to program obsolescence.

Yes, a more modern problem of foreign manufacturing sending intentionally poorly designed goods to harm the wealth of our nations. We should be seeing planned obsolescence as a national security risk and set tariffs so high these planned obsolescence stuff goes away.

[rbanffy]

> We should be seeing planned obsolescence as a national security risk and set tariffs so high these planned obsolescence stuff goes away.

The concept of antagonistic nations dividing a single planet is one of the things we could get rid off in order to make it easier to build an Utopian society.

[cauefcr]

>If I were a communist, the path to communism is full robotics and automation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

They know, if only the US would not murder and coup every socialist country maybe it'd be solved by now.

[incomingpain]

>Hopefully breaking the link between people's labour and their worth as a human.

Not really possible until virtually all 'work' is done by robots. It will speed up near the end as finding workers will be more and more challenging.

>I hope that as more and more things become automated and fewer people need to work, that we restructure society so they don't have to do bullshit jobs or work if they don't want to.

Economists pretty well agreed we should have been down to a 10-15 hour week many decades ago. I've worked in MSP where I have a pretty good idea how little people actually work.

So why are we still doing the 40 hour work week, mostly pretending like we work this much? Because there are some professions which do require the hours. Doctors for example? If all doctors stopped working 40+ hour weeks. What would be the wait times for doctors?

How is AI going to solve this problem? Do we really want to stop having doctors and goto AI doctors?

>Unfortunately, people have been hoping for this for as long as there has been machinery which multiplied humans' labour and it's yet to materialise, but I remain hopeful.

The realization is machines already did it. They couldn't do everything but they did enough.

Circling back to people's purpose and self-worth. This change has been detrimental to humans' feeling of worth.

[bryanrasmussen]

>I hope that as more and more things become automated and fewer people need to work, that we restructure society so they don't have to do bullshit jobs or work if they don't want to.

so at the point where machines can be clever for us, cleverness will no longer be of value. I guess then it will definitely be how hot someone is.

[jstx1]

If bullshit job are really bullshit, do we really need AI in order to make them obsolete?

[mathieuh]

That's what I mean when I say labour is linked to people's worth. In our societies we place a lot of stock in what job people perform, and people who don't work at all are often looked down upon in mainstream discourse, regardless of the circumstances.