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
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