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> If you can't dazzle them with data, baffle them with bullsh*t, am I right? Given that your reply contained no data, you tell me. > Life was better when I at least HAD a crummy job, grumble! That very much depends on what they do instead. Plenty of people enjoy gardening who don't get paid to do it now. Plenty of people enjoy making things, craft, art, writing, furniture making, these are largely leisure activities now. Forms of education for themselves and others going to the library, or the park, reading. Working on yourself physically. Cooking. Consumption of media. Volunteering. The idea that someone would rather do busywork than those things is silly, I think. But if, in that future, we still base our judgement of people's moral worth, by whether they have a crummy job, then I think the lack of crummy jobs becomes an issue. The future you outline is coming, in some form or another (at least the work part, the 500yr lifespan less certainly). The question is, in that world, do we want to keep tying people's worth to their ability to find drudgery work? Do we want to keep going with a society that would concentrate even more wealth in the hands of those who control the capital, with no meaningful ability for anyone else to raise themselves out of their 'lower-class' status. It is hard to see how a plutocratic capitalism is going to work then. So I think we need more of this debate now, not less. The solution being brought to the table, a small step in the grand scheme, but a necessary one, is to stop the rhetoric that work of any kind is inherently virtuous, and to stop the rhetoric that work is the way to gain one's success. |