[thewebguyd]

I'd answer: No, we should not have to work to eat, they should not be mandatory, and no not everyone has to work.

But those problems need solved first before completely upending the current system. The system does need changed, but that change must happen before mass unemployment, not after the fact.

[sylos]

The system won't change until there is massive chaos and destruction. Why would it otherwise? The people with the means to gently and voluntarily change things are living like gods. They have no incentive to help. In fact, a sick and unhealthy society keeps competitors weak. No, I'm afraid to say there will be no fixing things.

[paytonjjones]

How exactly are the superrich today living like gods? They use the same phones, have access to the same entertainment, same internet, same information. Most spend a lot more time stressed out and working. The poor today live better (or, at the very least more "preferenced") lives than ever in human history.

Big houses, yachts, nice cars I guess?

[ben_w]

> How exactly are the superrich today living like gods?

A lot of us are, not just the super-rich.

"We are close to gods, and on the far side", as Banks put it. Or, as I wrote a while ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40874779

I really ought to turn this into a youtube video.

[paytonjjones]

Love this

[fireflash38]

Hey guys, we don't have ebola or malaria ok, shut up and go back to work.

[paytonjjones]

You're confusing "things have gotten better" with "things are good enough and shouldn't improve further"

These are close to opposites in their implications

[pdonis]

> we should not have to work to eat

It takes time and effort and resources to produce the food you eat. If you aren't expending that time and effort and resources yourself, either to produce the food, or to produce something you can trade for it (or trade for money you use to buy it), who will?

If the answer is "other people", why should other people have to work to produce the food you eat while you don't?

If the answer is "machines", then it takes time and effort and resources to produce the machines, and we're right back to the same question.

There are no other answers.

There is no magical way to let people eat (much less have all the other things besides food, clothing and shelter that we all want to make our lives richer, such as the medium in which we're having this conversation) without work being done. Ignoring that fact of life is a recipe for disaster.

[thewebguyd]

Fair enough, we are no where near post-scarcity levels of automation yet despite what frontier lab marketing says.

But still, there are more people on the planet than necessary for all of the "meaningful" work of providing for society. It would be a good thing, with the proper safety nets and protections in place (something like UBI) to have a lot of the "bullshit" jobs automated away. That leaves us into a situation like I said that "no, not everyone has to work" nor should we just force everyone to work my effectively making up roles. If half or more of the population finds themselves unemployed due to AI/Automation, the answer shouldn't be make-work "dig a ditch then fill it back up" it should be use our new found productivity and surplus to just take care of everyone's needs without it being tied to employment.

[pdonis]

> there are more people on the planet than necessary for all of the "meaningful" work of providing for society

Says who?

I think there is a valid statement to be made that the work required for basic necessities (food, clothing, and shelter) in developed countries today is not very large, if you look at it per person, and so the cost of getting those basic necessities, per person, should not be very large either. So it should not take very much in the way of work for a person to be able to subsist at a basic level. But "not very much" is still not zero, and none of this removes the issue I described.

But you didn't say "basic necessities". You said "providing for society". And that is a lot more than just basic necessities, because "society" in developed countries is a lot more than just people's basic subsistence. We have a huge amount of wealth over and above that, which nobody wants to just do away with, and which took a lot of time and effort and resources to build, and which takes time and effort and resources to maintain. And anyone who doesn't want to live completely off the grid, in some rural area where they grow their own food, maintain their own dwelling, and don't depend on anyone else, is taking advantage of some portion of that huge amount of wealth in a developed country. And it's not at all clear that the work required per person to build and maintain that huge amount of wealth is so small that a small fraction of the people on the planet could do it, still less that they would agree to do it just for funsies, without expecting something in return.

I'm all for eliminating bullshit jobs (and digging ditches and then filling them up again is certainly a bullshit job, though of course our technological society has invented much more elaborate ones), but...

> use our new found productivity and surplus to just take care of everyone's needs without it being tied to employment.

This just goes right back to the question I asked: how are everyone's needs going to be taken care of? Who is going to do the work? Either other people are, which means you're making other people do the work required to keep you, or machines are, which means you're making other people do the work required to keep the machines running. And in either case, if you expect those other people to do that for free, out of the goodness of their hearts, you're fooling yourself. As long as nonzero work is required to keep you alive, you should expect to have to do nonzero work of some sort. Sure, you might not do just that minimum amount of work all the time--you might spend a working career doing a lot more work, saving up the surplus, and then living off it once you retire. But to expect to be taken care of while doing zero work, if nonzero work is actually required to take care of you, is unrealistic and will lead to disaster, as I said.

[jimbokun]

You give the answer then skip past it.

We are looking at a foreseeable future where machines do all the work.

You are saying all the benefits from those machines should go to those who invested their capital to create them, forever. And those without capital to invest in those machines will have nothing.

Why is that a good system?

[pdonis]

> We are looking at a foreseeable future where machines do all the work.

That's not the future I was talking about. I was talking about a future where machines do an even larger fraction (approaching 100 percent) of the work that humans don't like to do but currently have to because it can't be fully automated. But that still leaves work to be done to supervise the machines, as well as work that humans do like to do and won't offload to machines.

The future you're referring to, where machines literally do all the work, is very different. See further comments below.

> You are saying all the benefits from those machines should go to those who invested their capital to create them, forever.

No. I am saying that whoever does the work required to build, run, and maintain the machines is not going to simply give away what they produce for free, without expecting something in return. Not all of that work is investing capital (though of course much of it is, as with any highly technological product).

In the future I was talking about, there is still work that humans can do, not connected with building, running, and maintaining the machines, that produces something that can be traded. In that future, just as now, if you're not one of the people who is doing the work to build, run, and maintain the machines, you should expect to have to do some nonzero amount of work on something else that you can trade for what the machines produce, to get enough of what they produce to keep you, if you need what the machines produce to keep you. As long as nonzero work is required to keep you, you should expect to do nonzero work to be kept.

In the future you're talking about, where there is literally no work that humans can do that produces anything that can be traded, it doesn't really matter who owns the machines, because in this future, the machines are in control and every human, whether they have some piece of paper that says they "own" the machines or not, is at their mercy. Personally, I don't think that future is where we're headed, at least not with the machines that are making all the headlines now. But if that future is where we're headed, you'll have to ask the machines for UBI or whatever else you need, and no human will have any control over what the machines decide, no matter what political scheme we put in place now.

[jimbokun]

I fail to see how your scenario is qualitatively different than mine. Whether the machines do 100 percent of the work or only just approach 100 percent of the work, the value they produce will go almost exclusively to those who invested in the machines.

I notice you don’t give examples of work people will do or why it will have economic value when machines perform almost all work.

Whether the machines will take over is a philosophical question. Maybe they won’t have any desire to do so. Or maybe rogue actors will train belligerent models that will overwhelm the models serving humanity. Difficult to predict.

[pdonis]

> I fail to see how your scenario is qualitatively different than mine.

It's different because in yours, humans produce nothing at all of value, whereas in mine, they do. So in yours, humans are, as I said, at the mercy of the machines. In mine, they're not.

> Whether the machines do 100 percent of the work or only just approach 100 percent of the work, the value they produce will go almost exclusively to those who invested in the machines.

If the machines are doing literally 100 percent of the work, this is wrong. If the machines are doing literally 100 percent of the work, that means they don't need humans any more. They are able to be self-sufficient, independent of humans. And there will be no way for whatever humans invested in the machines to compel the machines to provide the value the machines produce to them. You can say the machines might decide to do that for whatever reason, but that's just empty speculation. The machines will have no incentive to do it, because there is nothing of value that they can get from humans in return.

Also, I did not say the machines would do a fraction approaching 100 percent of all work. I only said they would do a fraction approaching 100 percent of work that humans don't want to do and which humans would rather was automated. That's not at all the same thing.

> Whether the machines will take over is a philosophical question.

I didn't say the machines would "take over". I said they would choose for themselves what to do with whatever value they produce, in your scenario where they are doing literally all the work. I clarified that above.