> I don't foresee any garbage collectors or plumbers working "for the fun of it" or "personal fulfillment" anytime soon.
Most of these kinds of propositional ramblings engender a handful of predictable responses - including the dubiously authoritative 'I can't imagine how this will work, qed it can't work', underlying which is an assumption that the proposition needs to (or indeed can) be enacted in isolation of any other cultural changes.
So here's a bit of anecdata back to you. One day in the not too distant I'm intending to build my own house. Because of local regulations I need a plumber (and electrician, etc) to vet all the work performed, but not necessarily perform that work. Unrelated to either regulation or cost, I'm looking forward to performing as much of the work as I can. It is, basically, an opportunity to obtain new understanding and skill, explore some new problem domain, and given the scale (one abode and surrounds) not expected to be especially onerous.
Point being, I expect it'll be fun and personally fulfilling.
The "dubiously authoritative", as you put it 'I can't imagine how this will work, qed it can't work' is far far better than the idealistic "the cultural changes will take care of it in the end". Our cities require a large amount of tedious unfulfilling unfun work to maintain. All the articles on the living wage I've seen either handwave or outright ignore the question of how this work will be performed at the service level comparable to what we have now.
I'm still not settled on whether I think it's a good outcome, but my understanding is that we'd have to pay more to get people to do these jobs and I'm not sure that's altogether a bad thing.
If you've got a tedious job that you need doing, at the moment there are four options:
* Pay enough that someone wants to do it.
* Make the job sufficiently interesting that someone wants to do it.
* Do without.
* Rely on someone needing the money enough that they'll do it anyway.
Basic income removes the last option, adding extra incentive to the others. I've never been in a position where I've been forced to take a job doing something I hate for too little money just to get food on the table, and I'd very much prefer never to be put in that position. I don't want to put other people in that position either.
You are 100% right that the reality is somewhere in between extremes.
However you've fallen into the trap I described - you seem to believe that our cities (I assume you live in the US or EU) need or should be preserved in their current state, and/or that they would be a requisite to such a change.
My gut feel is UBI / end-of-work / etc - involve a tacit understanding that we'd reverse the trend of the past century, and decentralise. I think, but have not thought deeply on the subject, that many of the problems people immediately respond with when first exposed to this (or indeed UBI) are irrelevant in a less urban, less concrete, less centralised society.
Actually, the amount of work required to, e.g. remove waste/provide drinking water & food and provide access to essential services & information is greater in the "less urban, less concrete, less centralized" environment. Someone still has to do this work.
Not to mention that by losing the convenience of highly urbanized environment you force the more productive members of society to waste considerably more time on the things they are un-productive in (e.g. driving 2 hours to a doctor instead of taking a 15-minute detour on the way from work).
Even allowing that it is, the distinction to my mind is that the work is distributed amongst many (in the case of a less urban environment), and the imperative / compensation balance is tilted in that environment more towards the individual, as they have a greater interest in maintaining water and food supplies, handling waste etc.
To suggest that one of the advantages of work is that you can visit a doctor on your way to work ... well, I'm not sure if you're being funny with that one.
A less centralised or urban society doesn't necessarily mean that you're further away from someone with medical skill. You may acquire more skills yourself, people with those skills may also be keen to escape the centre of cities, technologies may provide a mechanism for you to obtain mostly remote access to the relevant knowledge and skills, etc.
Plenty of non-urban citizens of western countries have sufficient and satisfactory access to doctors, for example.
Aside, and I realise this sounds snarky but the intent is not -- would you mind defining (or at least providing some examples of) the 'more productive members of society' in your assertion there? I'm guessing you don't mean the health professionals that they are consulting.
Those aren't the only sorts of motivation folks might have to work.
Plenty of people working in sewage, collecting rubbish and so on do it because they think it makes an important contribution to society, same as people in the army. I find it hard to disagree that their contribution is more important than software development in some ways -- I'd rather have streets clear of rotting rubbish and rats than a new version of office.
The practical question is whether the same or a greater volume of people today, would be working in sanitation and sewage tomorrow, if they could chose not to.
I'm not sure there's a reasonable way to argue in the affirmative.
There are upwards of 2 billion people who don't have sanitation and sewage professionals looking after their waste. I'm not suggesting we'd all want to live in our own filth, any more than I'm suggesting everyone without access to plumbers lives in their own filth.
Wander out into the country (or even some slightly advanced sub-urban areas) and admire the low-maintenance standalone septic systems, humanure outhouses, etc.
If you don't have to work - would you really feel the need to live within ten metres of several other families, in a concrete box, limited sight of or access to open space, etc? Is the location you currently choose to live predicated upon your requirement to work, and a pragmatic decision on the best location to that end - a trade-off between comfort and commute?
I would really feel a need to live in the place with hot water running from the taps, a working in-house plumbing and heating, a serviced waste disposal facility withing walking radius, the electricity service, an internet connection, a speedy access to all kinds of emergency services etc. Not to mention the reliable service level (e.g. I would want to get an electrician to look (and likely fix) at a failure within a day).
I have wandered "in the country" and there are either
- areas where the services are set up in the same way as in the city (large amount of "sanitation and sewage professionals" are involved)
- areas where you have to cope with a subpar standards of living
Folks with septic systems still need them cleaned, and outhouses need to be regularly evacuated.
Decreasing population density simply serves to make us less productive. And really, the author's argument only sounds like it's reasonable because of the massive increases in productivity an the technological advances we've had as a race, through our obsession with work and achievement.
I don't think many of those 2 billion people would say they prefer to poo in a box hanging over a river, then have to get their drinking water out of that river, over more sophisticated alternatives like separate potable, gray- and blackwater management.
I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse.
> Folks with septic systems still need them cleaned, and outhouses need to be regularly evacuated.
Indeed.
So, the OP suggested we could (if not now, then in the not too distant) stop working, or at least stop doing this 40-hour a week for 40 years thing.
Some people suggested 'but who cleans my toilet?!'
I suggested that if you decentralise that task, then you don't actually need to employ a handful of people to clean 4 million people's toilets.
You're now saying 'outhouses need to be regularly evacuated' - which is true, but regular and frequent are often conflated, and humanure systems need to be emptied out regularly every 6-12 months ... it's dry, non-identifiable compost at that point.
But we're at severe risk of missing the point.
If the only retaliation someone has to 'we should start to think about how to consciously engineer our society such that we don't all have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years' with 'I don't want to spend two hours every 6 months moving composted poo around' ... then that person has missed the point.
> Decreasing population density simply serves to make us less productive.
As you get older you realise the imperative to be (exclusively, solely) more productive is somewhat misguided.
> And really, the author's argument only sounds like it's reasonable because of the massive increases in productivity an the technological advances we've had as a race, through our obsession with work and achievement.
This does not devalue the proposition - it merely puts it into context.
> I don't think many of those 2 billion people would say they prefer to poo in a box hanging over a river, then have to get their drinking water out of that river, over more sophisticated alternatives like separate potable, gray- and blackwater management.
You're doing that thing again. I quote myself, from the message that you responded to:
>> I'm not suggesting we'd all want to live in our own filth, any more than
>> I'm suggesting everyone without access to plumbers lives in their own filth.
You also failed to answer any of the questions I asked you.
> If the only retaliation someone has to 'we should start to think about how to consciously engineer our society such that we don't all have to work 40 hours a week for 40 years' with 'I don't want to spend two hours every 6 months moving composted poo around' ... then that person has missed the point.
That is not the author's thesis. His thesis is that having to trade your time for money is wrong.
If what you've said above is what you took away from the linked writing, I think you're projecting your own beliefs onto the author position, and we should stop this argument because I'm not against changing our relation with work. I just think this author is a bit of a nutter.
> As you get older you realise the imperative to be (exclusively, solely) more productive is somewhat misguided.
Economic productivity is what allows us to increase the quality of life and standard of living in a community. Reducing economic productivity reduces, eliminates or reverses those improvements.
> This does not devalue the proposition - it merely puts it into context.
Given that the author's proposition is to dismantle a system that for millennia bore specialists who make possible technological advance, and replace it with a system that rears general hobbyists, yes I believe it does devalue the proposition.
> You're doing that thing again. I quote myself, from the message that you responded to: [...]
That quote doesn't actually contribute to either your position or the discussion. You say 2bb people don't have plumbing, then say you don't think we shouldn't have plumbing, then go onto something else. Or is your alternative that we should all have pit toilets?
We should be discussing the broken alternative proposition of the author, but: those 2 billion folks that don't have sanitation and plumbing would likely choose sanitation and plumbing if they could. They obviously live in areas where pit toilets and outhouses aren't enough to deal with the human waste they produce, or they'd just be digging latrines and outhouses and using those.
So, if your position is that we can get by without professional sanitation and pluming industries, they would seem to be the counterpoint.
Fundamentally, do you really agree we'll get more scientists, engineers, professional specialists, innovating and advancing our society and the same or greater pace, if everyone just stops working and "pursues their passions"?
I'll put aside the plumbing example because I believe that it would be either be done by yourself, by your friends, or by a stranger willing to help because he loves plumbing (I can understand the potential tedium of garbage collection, not so much plumbing, I personally know people would love that kind of stuff)
Ok so, for the garbage collector, you imply a few things :
- Garbage collection in the centralized sense is necessary.
By centralized I mean that one person or a group would be tasked to collect all the garbage within big communities.
Now, in a world where I had all the free time I wanted, I would not care a bit to take my car around my neighbours/family/friends houses and collect it myself, it would simply be much more organic. Worst case scenario, it's gonna be up to you to take care of that, and with all the free time you have, it should be a minor inconvenience if any.
- Garbage will be as much a problem as it is now.
It's pretty ridiculous the amount of garbage we create, and it sure as hell isn't sustainable. The article mentions junk food, feminine hygiene deodorant and the like, I expect this should have to go, or at the very least be distributed in a more suitable manner.
- Garbage collection can not be automated
We already have cars driving by themselves around town, I don't think automatic garbage collection would be any problem.
- Nobody would ever like to be a garbage collector
I and many other find the laborious taks to be a bit meditative and rewarding in some way (not unlike a game).
I'd urge you to take a look at the sales of the videogame 'Viscera : Cleanup Detail' (As of this post around 200k people bought the game for around 10$ on the steam platform alone). It's a game about cleaning up with friends, it's literally nothing but cleaning up, and it's a lot of fun. Just imagine how it would be if it actually accomplished something.
I'm not saying that millions would dream to become garbage collector or even that I myself would seriously consider it (that's also why it's the last point I make), but it's not so ridiculous an idea as you may think.
I believe a lot of work similar to garbage collection would happily be done by the residents within smaller community without any sort of rules or scheduling necessary.
I hope you catch my point, and I realize this isn't about garbage collection. It's about the fact that the all the menial tasks I can think about are either unnecessary, automatable in the very near future or able to be carried by willing individuals without any hassle.
It might seem utopic to you, but bear in mind that without the dozens of hours spent doing a job you hate every weeks and all the stress caused by the monetary system, most of us will slowly ease out of our angry and sad little egoballs identity, and the idea that you're twice as effective as your neighbor in the maintenance of your community will not mean anything to you.
Most of these kinds of propositional ramblings engender a handful of predictable responses - including the dubiously authoritative 'I can't imagine how this will work, qed it can't work', underlying which is an assumption that the proposition needs to (or indeed can) be enacted in isolation of any other cultural changes.
So here's a bit of anecdata back to you. One day in the not too distant I'm intending to build my own house. Because of local regulations I need a plumber (and electrician, etc) to vet all the work performed, but not necessarily perform that work. Unrelated to either regulation or cost, I'm looking forward to performing as much of the work as I can. It is, basically, an opportunity to obtain new understanding and skill, explore some new problem domain, and given the scale (one abode and surrounds) not expected to be especially onerous.
Point being, I expect it'll be fun and personally fulfilling.