This seems like a post about UBI or a post scarcity society, and whether or not humans will be lazy/do nothing if they no longer need money.
So within that premise, those 3 things wouldn’t necessarily have labor issues if people can have a good life regardless of what they’re up to. I think a lot of people would want to spend time contributing to Wikipedia, FOSS, firefighting, etc. if they were compensated all the same. Similarly, if profit was no longer a concern, resources could be allocated to projects based on need, and so funding wouldn’t be a factor.
It’s fun to think about, and I think the post has value for what it’s pointing out
I have usually seen this argument applied as saying that we’re post scarcity now and that if we just gave everyone UBI, you’d be able to fill all the jobs you actually need with volunteers today, and just ‘get rid of’ the unnecessary/wasteful consumer goods.
Yeah, if you centrally applied resources to fields that actually needed it rather than profitable fields, that would in some ways be great. Ads would basically die overnight, for starters.
There’s a small proportion of the population that loves what they do - and more would if you were able to get rid of middle management. A good part of the reason volunteer projects tend to be successful is that they’re almost entirely composed of people who completely believe in the project.
Are you going to find a few thousand people in the same area who really believe in building great quality drugs/aircraft/electrical cables/plastic pipe when their job is mostly repetitive labour?
I’ve worked a fair bit of construction. There’s a feel-good factor for certain kinds of projects, but at the end of the day you’re installing stuff. Are we going to be able to build, staff, and maintain a semiconductor fab, a pharma factory, or an aircraft/engine assembly line with volunteers? What about the wire/steel/pump factories that make the bits used to build the building?
Part of how we’ve got to record low levels of e.g. aircraft fatalities is meticulous documentation (certain issues notwithstanding), procedures, and double/triple checking. And no-one really wants to be QA for long, or have QA watching over them like a hawk, especially when it’s both.
Replacing some of these roles with AI/robots doesn’t necessarily help that much. AI is bad at meticulous paperwork. So are unenthusiastic people.
UBI is supposed to cover basic needs, no? It doesn’t mean you’ll get the funds to cover the things you do to stave off boredom or fill your life with meaning. Thus people still work making, installing, and doing the less pleasing jobs, but there’s no longer the “work or starve in an alleyway” pressure in the background. It also provides leverage against abusive employers, as you don’t need the job to make rent and groceries. (Though people are willing to withstand a lot of abuse to reach their goals as well)
Yes. You’re still going to need to reward those people in some way that isn’t generic feel-good or worthless karma. People won’t go “I’m on the UBI and all my needs are met, but I’ll go build water pumps where one in fifty might get used in a pharma application just for the feel-good”.
I always think of the worst jobs that exist and how there would need to be incentive beyond feel good for those jobs to be worked. Think what you’d see on the show Dirty Jobs. Most of these are jobs that need to be done but nobody would want to do them without additional incentive
And is that actually achieving reliable quality and traceability? Not that mass-market pharmaceuticals are perfect, but I don’t remember hearing that many scandals about actual contamination/mismanufacturing (as opposed to testing/development failures like Thalidomide).
Yeah. I’m not saying that no positions can be filled by volunteers or people working for feel-good rather than profit motive… but it’s a lot easier to find people willing to do novel research or development than it is to find someone to keep the plant chilled water systems running, or to build the pumps for the plant.
Can not speak for all firefighters but we have more applicants than we have spots. We currently need 100 for the municipality we work for and we have some 110 firefighters.
Firefighting is probably one of the best fields to attract volunteers to. Save lives, glamorous, awesome PR, play with cool ‘toys’. Downside is danger but there’s enough people for whom that’s an upside.
Does that mean they’re all/mostly trainable, stick around long enough to justify the training, and willing to put in the work even when it comes to more mundane tasks like training, cleaning, equipment overhaul, drying pipes etc?
I believe most places have both paid and volunteer firefighters and I imagine it’s for a reason.
Downside is danger but there’s enough people for whom that’s an upside.
Worth noting that the shit firefighters breath in absolutely will shave years off their lives.
There’s a growing body of evidence that the payouts from the 9/11 first responders funds are for medical care that’s not exclusive to first responders to 9/11 specifically but just normal long term effects of being a first responder to fires and disasters in general.
Yeah I mean you could do something interesting one day and then just watch some place for a few hours after a fire on another. We have a turnover rate of like 2-5 people per year, but that includes people who are too old since there is a maximum age or people move and join the chapter at their new place.
And trainable, I mean we need people who guide traffic or something else that is not physically taxing so there is something to do for everyone.
And at least here the paid firefighters are usually the first responders since they are on alert 24/7, volunteers usually need up to 15 minutes (our record is 2 Minutes) to respond. So the professionals go im first and then get backed up by the volunteers. Or if it is just something small the professionals will not respond at all and let us handle it.
On my family’s Minecraft server we’ve been using a trick to prevent labor issues. Let’s say we’re making that building in OP’s pic. I’ll stack a bunch of building materials at the front in a pile, set up a bunch of extra scaffolding, and we build from the bottom up.
That way if we find motivation waning, it’s easy to pause and resume. Because it’s not an incomplete Minecraft build. It’s a completed Minecraft build of a building under construction, that we might later upgrade.
I’m not sure it’s that simple.
All of these except Minecraft have perpetual funding and labour issues, especially for the less sexy parts.
You’re not going to staff a pharmaceutical factory with volunteers.
This seems like a post about UBI or a post scarcity society, and whether or not humans will be lazy/do nothing if they no longer need money.
So within that premise, those 3 things wouldn’t necessarily have labor issues if people can have a good life regardless of what they’re up to. I think a lot of people would want to spend time contributing to Wikipedia, FOSS, firefighting, etc. if they were compensated all the same. Similarly, if profit was no longer a concern, resources could be allocated to projects based on need, and so funding wouldn’t be a factor.
It’s fun to think about, and I think the post has value for what it’s pointing out
I have usually seen this argument applied as saying that we’re post scarcity now and that if we just gave everyone UBI, you’d be able to fill all the jobs you actually need with volunteers today, and just ‘get rid of’ the unnecessary/wasteful consumer goods.
Yeah, if you centrally applied resources to fields that actually needed it rather than profitable fields, that would in some ways be great. Ads would basically die overnight, for starters.
There’s a small proportion of the population that loves what they do - and more would if you were able to get rid of middle management. A good part of the reason volunteer projects tend to be successful is that they’re almost entirely composed of people who completely believe in the project.
Are you going to find a few thousand people in the same area who really believe in building great quality drugs/aircraft/electrical cables/plastic pipe when their job is mostly repetitive labour?
I’ve worked a fair bit of construction. There’s a feel-good factor for certain kinds of projects, but at the end of the day you’re installing stuff. Are we going to be able to build, staff, and maintain a semiconductor fab, a pharma factory, or an aircraft/engine assembly line with volunteers? What about the wire/steel/pump factories that make the bits used to build the building?
Part of how we’ve got to record low levels of e.g. aircraft fatalities is meticulous documentation (certain issues notwithstanding), procedures, and double/triple checking. And no-one really wants to be QA for long, or have QA watching over them like a hawk, especially when it’s both.
Replacing some of these roles with AI/robots doesn’t necessarily help that much. AI is bad at meticulous paperwork. So are unenthusiastic people.
UBI is supposed to cover basic needs, no? It doesn’t mean you’ll get the funds to cover the things you do to stave off boredom or fill your life with meaning. Thus people still work making, installing, and doing the less pleasing jobs, but there’s no longer the “work or starve in an alleyway” pressure in the background. It also provides leverage against abusive employers, as you don’t need the job to make rent and groceries. (Though people are willing to withstand a lot of abuse to reach their goals as well)
Yes. You’re still going to need to reward those people in some way that isn’t generic feel-good or worthless karma. People won’t go “I’m on the UBI and all my needs are met, but I’ll go build water pumps where one in fifty might get used in a pharma application just for the feel-good”.
I always think of the worst jobs that exist and how there would need to be incentive beyond feel good for those jobs to be worked. Think what you’d see on the show Dirty Jobs. Most of these are jobs that need to be done but nobody would want to do them without additional incentive
BioHacking with local made open source pharma is already a thing. People are already volunteering to make medication for others.
And is that actually achieving reliable quality and traceability? Not that mass-market pharmaceuticals are perfect, but I don’t remember hearing that many scandals about actual contamination/mismanufacturing (as opposed to testing/development failures like Thalidomide).
Let’s not exploit people either.
Employment doesn’t have to be exploitative.
Even a Minecraft server requires a benefactor.
You’re missing the point: that benefactor doesn’t pay the people that contribute to the server.
You’ve missed my point. The benefactor is themself a paid contributor.
Not volunteers, per se, but my career has been 20+ years of vaccine and biologic discovery and manufacturing. All non-profit.
Yeah. I’m not saying that no positions can be filled by volunteers or people working for feel-good rather than profit motive… but it’s a lot easier to find people willing to do novel research or development than it is to find someone to keep the plant chilled water systems running, or to build the pumps for the plant.
Can not speak for all firefighters but we have more applicants than we have spots. We currently need 100 for the municipality we work for and we have some 110 firefighters.
Firefighting is probably one of the best fields to attract volunteers to. Save lives, glamorous, awesome PR, play with cool ‘toys’. Downside is danger but there’s enough people for whom that’s an upside.
Does that mean they’re all/mostly trainable, stick around long enough to justify the training, and willing to put in the work even when it comes to more mundane tasks like training, cleaning, equipment overhaul, drying pipes etc?
I believe most places have both paid and volunteer firefighters and I imagine it’s for a reason.
Worth noting that the shit firefighters breath in absolutely will shave years off their lives.
There’s a growing body of evidence that the payouts from the 9/11 first responders funds are for medical care that’s not exclusive to first responders to 9/11 specifically but just normal long term effects of being a first responder to fires and disasters in general.
Yeah I mean you could do something interesting one day and then just watch some place for a few hours after a fire on another. We have a turnover rate of like 2-5 people per year, but that includes people who are too old since there is a maximum age or people move and join the chapter at their new place.
And trainable, I mean we need people who guide traffic or something else that is not physically taxing so there is something to do for everyone.
And at least here the paid firefighters are usually the first responders since they are on alert 24/7, volunteers usually need up to 15 minutes (our record is 2 Minutes) to respond. So the professionals go im first and then get backed up by the volunteers. Or if it is just something small the professionals will not respond at all and let us handle it.
Minecraft tangent
On my family’s Minecraft server we’ve been using a trick to prevent labor issues. Let’s say we’re making that building in OP’s pic. I’ll stack a bunch of building materials at the front in a pile, set up a bunch of extra scaffolding, and we build from the bottom up.
That way if we find motivation waning, it’s easy to pause and resume. Because it’s not an incomplete Minecraft build. It’s a completed Minecraft build of a building under construction, that we might later upgrade.