[benj111]

Talking heads reference?

Part of me thinks that we're already reaching peak stuff/employment/the current system.

We are currently churning out graduates who work in coffee shops. More and more employment is make work. The issue is can we carry on requiring work, making it a moral requirement.

I suspect it'll be like the industrial revolution, when the average labourer moved to a factory in the city living in a slum, they were worse off. It took time for the conditions of the working class to improve.

Basic income is touted as the solution, but then globalisation means workers are moving much more and I'm not sure the 2 are compatible. Not that I have a better idea.

I do think we need a cultural change decoupling work from self worth. It's becoming less and less defensible to require everyone to work to be 'deserving'.

All that being said, there will still be jobs, there will always be demand for hand made, or something that isn't soulless corporatism. Although I'm starting to sound like Star Treks view of the future, which may not achievable

[SoftTalker]

> like the industrial revolution, when the average labourer moved to a factory in the city living in a slum, they were worse off.

They actually were better off, which illustrates how bad rural poverty was at that time.

[benj111]

By what metric? Around me it was all sheep farming or weaving.

It seems to me having the agency to choose your own hours, to be able to collect fire wood for the fire is better than on paper earning more, but being in a slum a family to a room, with all the diseases, perhaps the mill owner having a monopoly on what you could buy, or banning alcohol. Yes you may have more money, but I don't think the quality of life was better.

We could make the same point today. I live in an area why you can buy a house for £150k. So am I better or worse off than a Londoner that earns twice as much but paid £1M for the equivalent house?

[xorcist]

> They actually were better off, which illustrates how bad rural poverty was at that time.

Perhaps at the start of the industrial revolution, but not during most of it. Which is says a lot about how pricing shifts and finds equilibrium, not only for raw materials but also for human workers.

[georgemcbay]

> Although I'm starting to sound like Star Treks view of the future, which may not achievable

Also worth noting that even in Star Trek, which is viewed as a utopian vision of the future, the sort of societal changes you are talking about only came after humanity almost wiped itself out in a third world war (which coincidentally happened to start in 2026)

[benj111]

Yes, but ultimately. Just like transporters, it was pulled out of Roddenberry's arse. We could have have a long debate about how society would work if transporters were a thing, but that doesn't make transporters possible.

The exact same issue arises with it's society. We can imagine it, that doesn't necessarily make it real. Yes WW3 sounds like a good reason, but it's a story, it's a plausible sounding reason.

So yes I am biased, in that I am aware of the future that star trek presents, and on the face of it, it would solve the problems I see coming. But none of that makes it possible.

See also communism.

[braebo]

Yea capitalism is going to take a lot of us down with it.