yba@mit-athena.ARPA (Mark H Levine) (07/03/84)
I think this is an important topic; I fear that the way we deal with such questions is to let nature take its course only after we have done our best to deflect it. What about your number 4? You seem to have left it lying there after expanding on all the others. A popular science fiction theme used to involve the facts you present, and then chose option 4. We go to a shorter work week at the same wage to distribute the work to all, and use the wages simply as an economic means to solve an economic problem-- distribution of goods and services. We abandon the notion that wages are related to worth--they are instead only related to share in available resources. Of course you have a problem in allotment. If you do not favor an egalitarian solution, how about one in which wages are simply proportional to actual value (the constant of proportionality is a function of GNP and total population I suppose). This preserves our ability to focus labor on needs in theory. One can argue that with the system of transfer payments we have, we are well on our way to this anyway. Biggest problem is that we do not shorten work assignments to give full employment, which has additional costs in social (real human) terms. What happened to the notion of robots doing all the work while we relax and pursue happiness? Was it doomed ever to be a fiction? Why? Call me simple, but please, do comment. All the intelligent people I know, including perhaps myself, seem to decide that there is nothing to be done or said, and become content to let things slide all the way down, depending on the self-regulation apparatus to set things right after civilization falls. I read the Latin letters of the ancient Romans with fear: they were complaining about the cost of fruit and the scarcity of goods, about the mob that had taken over Rome and ran the government while demanding bread and circuses, about the legions not being up to their once proud snuff; they conclude there is nothing to do but come up to the seaside villa and relax. I think I'll go to the beach.... -- yba%mit-heracles@mit-mc.ARPA UUCP: decvax!mit-athena!yba
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (07/07/84)
i have no problem with robots. I would like to see lots and lots of them. the problem with dividing the labour around the existing work is multifold. A pretty reasonable generalisation is that there is more thinking-work that needs doing than there are people who either can or want to think. If you know any gopod way to convince people who have studiously avoided thinking whenever possible to get around to thinking, let me know. I thought that the problem was insoluable, except in the case of children. Moreover, the ``amount of work'' or ``amount of wealth'' around is not a static quantity. Every new idea may be converted into wealth that can be counted, but unless you declare a moratorium on new ideas you are going to have to accept that the amount of wealth is changing all the time and can not be pinned down. But, even assuming that it is practical, is it moral? I find the idea that anybody is ``owed'' a job highly unethical. I would rather pay people *not* to work than force somebody to hire somebody. I also think that if I want to work 18 hours a day and my employer is agreeable then I should be allowed to do exactly that. Why should my employer be forced to put up with work done by a less competant when competant people are available? Furthermore, in denying that employment has anything to do with value, you are left with a void where people's sense of self-worth used to be. Instead of feeling that people are demonstrating their value (and increasing it) through productive and good work, you are forcing them to look elsewhere for their sense of worth. I don't know of too many other places where one can get a sense of self worth and (except possibly for some hobbies and sports) they all seem very inferior to the sense of worth one feels when one knows, deep down, that one is damn good at the job which one is doing -- the job which pays for the items that one needs and wants to maintain and further one's existence. This is a rather horrible thing to do to people. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
yba@mit-athena.ARPA (Mark H Levine) (07/11/84)
<Laura:> You make some bold assumptions. One is that we would try to parcel out thinking work to people unsuited for it. Not likely. Also, there may come a time when there is no work to be given out--automation achieves the limiting case--what then? Another is that many people have a job they want and can take pride in. I think you and I are lucky to be in this category, but we do work in ivory towers. Join a factory labor union for a while or take a job with some clerical arm of the US Gov't for a year and tell me if you still feel release is doing something terrible to people. Last, I think it implicit in your statements that things we would do without compensation from a "job" are valueless. I submit there are some, valueless in real economic terms, that would still improve the quality of life--sport, art, zen meditation if you like. The assertion that we have nothing better to do with life than whatever work is available is very pessimistic; I place more faith in human spirit. I want to work on a two-man spacecraft and look at the crab nebula close up before I die--to hell with the weekly status report! Other opinions? -- yba%mit-heracles@mit-mc.ARPA UUCP: decvax!mit-athena!yba
laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton) (07/12/84)
Whenever you divide a job that has been held down by one person into a job that is held down by two people then you have taken a job that could have been held by the better of the two and forced it to be held by the poorer of the two for half the time. If you do not want to do this then why are you dividing things up in the first place? It is not the case of taking the first person you meet on the street and giving them half of my job, thus filling it with someone who is almost certain to be incompetant; this will happen no matter who you get to take half of my job -- if they are crummier at it than I am then I should get to keep all of my job, and if they are better at it than I am then they should get the whole thing. * * * * * There are always people who are in jobs that they do not like, and take no pride in. There seems to be two main cases of jobs involved here: the sort of job that almost nobody seems to take any pride in (which I think are the first jobs that should be automated, given a choice) and the sort of jobs where some people take pride in, but a lot of other people don't. You have to wonder about these other people. Why are they in a job that they can take no pride in? If it is the case that they are not going to take pride in any job that they hold down then they are more or less a lost cause. If, on the other hand, they are instead not in a job that they can take pride in, they should find a different job. Dividing work around is not going to help these people; what they lack is either the confidence or the motivation to get a new job, or the finances necessary to live on while they train for a new job, or the skill to discover what sort of job they would take pride in. All of thse problems are not adressed by taking jobs (or parts of jobs) away from people. You only harm the people who already are happy with their jobs. * * * * * I want to get paid for doing good work. If I am not getting paid for doing good work, then I am a parasite who lives off the efforts of others. I can not live for free. Somewhere, somebody has to earn the moeny that I use to buy food and clothing and pay rent. If you pay me for doing non productive things then you must get that money from somewhere. Your trip to see the Nebula sounds like a lot of fun. But it costs money. You can either earn enough money to pay for you way on that trip, or convince a lot of people that it is in their interest to pay for you to take that trip, or take money under force or threat of force away from people to pay for your trip. I find the third alternative morally unacceptable. I can't think of a single thing that is worth doing which is not worth getting paid for -- though I can think of quite a few things which it would be difficult to persuade other people to pay for! But, in principle at any rate, it could be possible to find somebody who would be willing to pay me to do the things that I otherwise would do for fun and not get paid for -- I know people who get paid vacation leaves, for instance. What is so wrong with work that you see it opposed to the human spirit? Or what is so wrong with these endeavors of the human spirit that I should not get paid for them? I believe that thinking is an activity of the huamn spirit and that is what I get paid for now, after all. Laura Creighton utzoo!laura
judy@ism780.UUCP (07/13/84)
#R:flairvax:-61000:ism780:20200008:000:916 ism780!judy Jul 10 17:55:00 1984 I think the assumptions you make in the base note are 1) no new products and a static economy and 2) machines available to perform all menial tasks. Since neither of these are true I don't think there is as much need for concern as you think. We have progressed as a society because people create what they need. Robots are better suited than people to welding. Let's face it, welding is unpleasant. But they are not better suited for being masseuses, therapists, child care workers, etc.. The service industry will provide jobs to those workers displaced by technology. How much those services are worth will be measured by a free market. Of course, there will be a multitude of people who don't want to create what they need. They will grumble and be depressed. But I have little pity. If we had no technology, those who didn't produce would starve. And those who don't adapt, die. It's a tough reality.
yba@mit-athena.ARPA (Mark H Levine) (07/24/84)
I must believe you missed the point(s) Laura. As for pride, there are some folks out of work these days, and others who feel they have to take any work that presents itself or starve. Automation nor philosophy will not rescue these people, nor will your job satisfaction be an anodyne to their hot summers. If we do have the means to produce goods and services (THIS IS AN ASSUMPTION-- PAY ATTENTION) without intensive human labor, by employing, say, robots and AI systems, then the amount a human can consume of these products is no longer equal to the amount of work he does, nor to the amount of work we all do divided by the number of us. Now how do we divide the goods and services? When I said you think ill of the human spirit, it was because of the implicit belief we have nothing better to do with our time than toil. Not because I think work is useless! If an automated economy is producing food and steel and rocket fuel, I don't need to rip anyone off to go exploring space--once you are in space it is not a zero-sum game anymore. I really disagree--just because you eat does NOT mean someone has to pay for your food. People ate long before we had economies, and the stuff literally just grew on trees. We can harvest a whole lot of things that just grow so long as we don't have blinders on, and both feet rooted solidly in yesterday. Send me a path to you relative to decvax and I'll be happy to continue this private mail. -- yba%mit-heracles@mit-mc.ARPA UUCP: decvax!mit-athena!yba
jim@ism780b.UUCP (07/25/84)
#R:flairvax:-61000:ism780b:27500010:000:1056 ism780b!jim Jul 17 22:48:00 1984 > What is so wrong with work that you see it opposed to the human spirit? > Or what is so wrong with these endeavors of the human spirit that I > should not get paid for them? I believe that thinking is an activity > of the huamn spirit and that is what I get paid for now, after all. I don't think it is work itself that people see opposed to the human spirit. Rather, it is all your talk of better workers vs. poorer workers, competant (sic) people vs. less competent people, and your general cold, elitist, unsympathetic, self-centered, unloving attitude that seems opposed to the human spirit. Can't you conceive of a society full of human spirit in which the concept of being paid for work does not even exist? There certainly have been plenty of "primitive" societies like that. Now, most of them carry a lot of coercive baggage that I would like to do without. This is net.philosophy; can't we get into a little high-quality society design, instead of all this wallowing about in "the harsh reality" (read "status quo")? -- Jim Balter (ima!jim)