[hgs3]

Automation and technology should be reducing the need for most people to work. Capitalism warps the role of technology: instead of technology freeing you up, it risks destroying your livelihood. Just look at the economic anxiety surrounding AI. AI should be embraced. It should not jeopardize anyone's livelihood.

[badpun]

> Automation and technology should be reducing the need for most people to work.

I think it does. Many people working office jobs are barely doing anything, esp. compared to manual labor in hellish factories just 100 years ago. And, for that puny amount of office work, we live so much better than people 100 years ago.

Also, it's currently possible to work less by just not buying top of the line consumer option. It's perhaps harder in the US, where such options does not exist, but other parts of the world have e.g. specific brands of cheap, crappy cars you could buy and work less in consequence.

[hgs3]

> I think it does. Many people working office jobs are barely doing anything, esp. compared to manual labor in hellish factories just 100 years ago. And, for that puny amount of office work, we live so much better than people 100 years ago.

We have those busy work office jobs because capitalism demands us to make capital. Ideally, as our basic needs are met (housing, plumbing, food, etc...) we wouldn't need busy work jobs. Even if we do need busy work jobs, then consider this: when I worked as a programmer I did so 5 days a week as a web developer. Given modern web frameworks and the abundance of open source packages, I could easily accomplish in a day what would have taken a web developer a week or more to accomplish ~20 years ago. So the question is, if I'm 5x more productive, then why am I working 5 days a week? Why not 1 day a week for the same pay? Ideally, we would not classify the work week in terms of hours worked, but rather by productivity.

[badpun]

> Ideally, we would not classify the work week in terms of hours worked, but rather by productivity.

This is exactly what is happening, but on a slower and more noisy timescale that you'd expect. That's why we work less than people 100 years ago, and yet make so much more money.

[pfannkuchen]

> if I'm 5x more productive, then why am I working 5 days a week? Why not 1 day a week for the same pay?

Because your competitors have also become 5x more productive. If they hadn't you could work 1 day a week for the same pay.

[sandspar]

I know a plumber who keeps his phone ringer on all night so he can wake up and go on calls. He's in his 30's and his knees are as damaged as an 80 year old man's. Try telling him that automation and technology should be reducing his need to work. Those of us in the Silicon Valley bubble should remember that 99% of the world's population has harder jobs than we do .

[dragontamer]

And note that plumbing is simply automation of water.

Instead of us walking down to the stream to drink like our hunter/gatherer forefathers did before us, we create pipes that send water anywhere we wish to settle.

The creation of automated pipes / automated water movement has created an entire industry (plumbing), as people move further and further away from streams. And into deserts even, requiring more and more plumbing to even live.

That's the story of technology. We continuously are depending on more-and-more of it. Be it a modern technology stack like a computer, or a 2500-year-old technology like plumbing / aqueducts.

------------

The bulk of all jobs today is in the maintenance of this automation. HVAC to automate our air conditions. Plumbing to automate our water. Cookware to automate food preparation (fast foods, chefs, etc. etc.). We don't grind grain ourselves anymore, we use flour that's been processed ahead of time in mass.

And we all specialize upon our particular niche. And around Hacker News, we focus on the most abstract of automations: automation of communications, computers, mathematics. We write programs that send messages faster, simpler, easier through various social networks.

You know, instead of running those messages by hand, or by horse. We have wires that talk to a computer router that talks to a network that... eventually delivers the message.

[thunky]

Imagine we develop a robot that is about to perform difficult physical tasks better than a human can.

Is that good news for the plumber you know?

Probably not unless he (and millions of others) are able to figure out how to survive when their labor is worthless.

[sandspar]

The more free time I have, the more I'm convinced that "idle hands are the devil's plaything" is one of our more accurate aphorisms. Considered in total, I'm far less ethical when I have time to myself than when I'm working.