• deaf_fish
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    21 year ago

    Yeah, have you ever worked with someone who wasn’t good at their job yet? Like so bad you wonder why they even bother coming in.

    Imagine a world where computers and machines can do anything you can do but better. You and everyone else would be like an incompetent employee no matter how hard you worked at it.

    Why would you even try to keep up? Why not just do things you actually wanted to do and live your life? Is this really such an unbelievable position to take?

    • dream_weasel
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      1 year ago

      It makes sense if all the jobs are that way and there’s a universal basic income associated with that society.

      The reason this post is stupid though is because the position being automated is not yours once it’s automated. So a machine now flips your burgers, what does that mean? The employer you had now has to track which burgers you would have flipped and pay you for them? For how long? Until you “retire” and they have to “hire” someone else the robot flips the burgers for?

      It doesn’t make any sense. You stop getting money when you stop providing value unless society as a whole decides to support all it’s people. That is a great aspiration but hard to do fairly.

      • I think you’re misunderstanding. I’ve always heard this in the context of a UBI, never that an employer should pay an ex-employee for the work that a robot does.

        With this setup, nobody is forced to do menial labor. Those that are willing and able can pursue higher education and pick up more skilled jobs, increasing potential for technological advancement. Those that can’t or don’t want to can pursue their own interests and hopefully create some cultural significance. Essentially, the automation will allow people to leave their shitty jobs and pursue something more fulfilling without worrying about going bankrupt, all while society still has its basic needs met.

        I’ve always thought this was an ideal scenario. Whenever I hear people talking about how automation is taking jobs and needs to be stopped, I think about how automation should really be encouraged to allow people to contribute more meaningfully, but this can only be done after we’ve established a UBI and other social programs to ensure that these people can get by without the income they get from their current jobs.

        • dream_weasel
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          01 year ago

          It’s absolutely the ideal scenario that automation proliferates to all the jobs people dont care to do. To be utopian it requires societal shifts toward the collective instead of individual capitalism. It would be decidedly dystopian if automation became pervasive and a handful of people got even-ultra-wealthier and the lower class became totally unable to work to provide for themselves.