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[Tack]

Note that this is entirely a cultural phenomenon. It's completely possible to eat without money being involved. We simply have a culture of "work to get money to buy food." Food is produced by things like dirt and sunlight. Things that are not particularly scarce. "Work to eat" is a cultural view. Not a natural consequence.

Well you still need to work the soil to actually produce enough food to keep yourself alive. It is called farming, historically people who were good at it or enjoyed it or didn't know how to do anything else would do it a lot to provide food to everybody. This gave everybody else a lot of free time to make other things. To make sure the farmers got their fair share of cool stuff being made they traded the food for the cool stuff.

Point is that there is no food without work. You will always work to eat, but that work might by with a hoe and scythe.

There's a massive amount of food being produced.
That makes food cheap. Add to that all of the middle-men between the customer and the farmer, and it goes down a long way.

So farmers don't make much money.


And what I'm hearing from bucket is one of two ideas:
A) Controlled capitalism, where the rich get taxed and the jobless get paid. Much like our society currently but with more generous welfare
B) Communism.

[misko27]

Guess I'll have to take the Wikipedia then, though it's usually poor form to cite it and say I'll have to find it myself. I get it, though, and I trust this is accurate.


EDIT:
I did do a quick Google, the site with your graph (a U.S. census website) was the fourth link. Not that hard for me to find, you didn't really need to link Wikipedia.

Wikipedia has better resourced and more unbiased sources then the rest of the internet, and the larger and more important the article, the more researched it is, and the fewer unsourced errors (It takes some effort to find unsourced errors there).

Although some people are selfish. They seem to lack a kind of vision. Not much we can do about it, sadly.

The likelihood of a large number of people holding x viewpoint approaches 1 as population increases. It is very likely a lot of people like to work hard. It is also equally likely there are people out there who will work hard at doing nothing but leeching. I, for one, would kinda have a problem working if I knew I didn't have to to live comfortably, despite the fact that there are things I wish to accomplish through work.

Population growth increased pretty linearly for a while too. With massive medical advances (which, I must remind everyone, are pretty damn recent, and far cry from even a couple hundred years ago.) the psychology of "kids to replace the ones that die" disappears. As kids live, you have fewer and fewer. Hell, my mom had two children, her dad had three, his dad had nine, and only three of them had children of their own (most died). It's one of the reasons there is a aging population in some places, and a young population elsewhere. Population will settle and/or decline naturally. Of course, it's a long view.

The question: Can efficiency of work and the automation of smaller things (robots could, given sufficient advancement and programming, farm pretty easily.) increase to the point where the only workers are working because they want to, and everyone else could live off this comfortably (with presumably option to increase your lot through work?)? If not, and if so until then, someone has got to be doing the stuff. Someone needs to be forced to do stuff. Our current system uses sheer necessity and incentives to get a better lifestyle. Hard to argue with that, even if the means of it and way of meting out resources are arbitrary and uncaring. Can we make it less arbitrary? That is where Meritocracy comes in, although Capitalism, because of privilege and other things, is a imperfect Meritocracy.

[Max White]

There's a massive amount of food being produced.
That makes food cheap. Add to that all of the middle-men between the customer and the farmer, and it goes down a long way.

So farmers don't make much money.


And what I'm hearing from bucket is one of two ideas:
A) Controlled capitalism, where the rich get taxed and the jobless get paid. Much like our society currently but with more generous welfare
B) Communism.

Well there are several ways to increase the wealth of farmers without raising the cost of food for the rest of us.
1. Less middle men. A bureaucratic economy is often a bad thing, not always but often. The fact that we have people making a lot of money by simply trading theoretical good without producing anything themselves should be a bit of a give away. An economy where the farmer sells to the consumer is a little thin, and offers no protection to the farmer, but selling to a retailer and then on to the consumer seems to be the most reasonable option.
2. Reduce the number of farmers, thus channeling more agricultural wealth towards the remaining farmers. Flatten business structures, reduce competition.
3. Reduce operating costs. Reducing carbon consumption through use of renewable, GMO crops that require less pesticide/water/time, reduces soil erosion by growing native barriers.


As for controlled capitalism, I have to say it works somewhat well here in the merry land of Australia. Libertarian economics are the bane of a healthy society.

The question: Can efficiency of work and the automation of smaller things (robots could, given sufficient advancement and programming, farm pretty easily.) increase to the point where the only workers are working because they want to, and everyone else could live off this comfortably (with presumably option to increase your lot through work?)? If not, and if so until then, someone has got to be doing the stuff. Someone needs to be forced to do stuff. Our current system uses sheer necessity and incentives to get a better lifestyle. Hard to argue with that, even if the means of it and way of meting out resources are arbitrary and uncaring. Can we make it less arbitrary? That is where Meritocracy comes in, although Capitalism, because of privilege and other things, is a imperfect Meritocracy.

Yes, theoretically that is all together possible. In fact you might have noticed it a little already creeping in. There is little doubt in my mind that we will eventually get there. It seems that the future consists of artists who design, build, manufacture and what not for fun, and consumers who enjoy their weekly rations of what ever the robots can produce.

[LordBucket]

Technically working the earth to produce food really is farming, that not sarcasm. Its an actual thing.

...why are you even saying this? What you're saying is the exact example that I gave. Why are you trying to correct me by telling me that my example is a real thing?

And what I'm hearing from bucket is one of two ideas:
A) Controlled capitalism, where the rich get taxed and the jobless get paid. Much like our society currently but with more generous welfare
B) Communism.

...no, I think you're mixing up my posts with others. It was SalmonGod who suggested an income guaruntee, not me.

My position is that it would be a positive move to eliminate work, and ultimately, money. Taxing the rich and paying the jobless really has nothing to do at all with what I'm saying, and communism is sort of besides the point. The scenario I suggest could be communist, but it wouldn't have to be. Though it would necessarily be non-capitalist, for the reason that capital wouldn't exist.

I think you're trying to squeeze what I'm saying into classification boxes that don't really apply.

[Max White]

While we may eliminate work eventually, at least non-recreational work, it seems unlikely we will ever get rid of money. Only so much can ever be produced at any one point in time, and we use money as a mechanism for sharing it around. Without money you are either giving people unlimited access to limited resources (VERY problematic), giving people the same resources each (Annoying because you and I want different things) or using a barter system (Slow and clunky) so money is useful in a post-work economy.

[LordBucket]

The question: Can efficiency of work and the automation of smaller things (robots could, given sufficient advancement and programming, farm pretty easily.) increase to the point where the only workers are working because they want to, and everyone else could live off this comfortably

I would say we're either there right now, or we're very close. I think we could probably do it with current technology, provided that society were sufficiently culturally restructured. Though, the way I'm seeing it...it wouldn't quite so much be a voluntary worker class providing for everyone else, as you appear to be describing...and more of a distributed provide-for-yourself scenario. Like, the example given previous of replacing centralized water purification, eliminating all underground piping and sewage, and simply replacing all those publically maintained systems with atmospheric water condensers and septic ranks at every house. That would be a massive reduction in work requirement with no real loss of functionality. Yes, somebody would still need to build condensers and install septic tanks, but if you take that general mindset and apply it enough, I really believe you could eliminate the vast majority of work.

Or, better example...food services industry. According to the labor statistics link earlier, over 11 million people in the US are employed in "Food Preparation and Serving Related Occupations." Waiters, chefs, etc. That entire industry is purely a cultural phenomenon. I don't expect other people to do my laundry for me. I could live in a world where I didn't expect other people to cook and serve my food for me either. Granted, it would be a massive cultural shift. Eating out at restaurants is a very deeply engrained phenomenon. But personally it would be worth it to me to cook and clean up after my own self in order to have 11 million people not have to work pointless, menial jobs that probably most of them hate.

If you were willing to paint with that kind of brush...yes, I think we could probably eliminate the modern "work a job for money to survive" model.

And even if we're not quite there yet technologically, we're probably very close. And in the meantime I'd say it would be vastly preferable, for example, to go ahead and accept that reduced workload and have people working 10 hour workweeks...instead of our present situation where we have lots of people in dual income families, working full time, and lots of other people desperately unable to find work. It doesn't need to be a completely clean transition from one day to the next. If there's less work to be done, then let people do less work rather than trying to increase consumer demand and creating pointless paper-pushing busywork jobs.

[Hiiri]

I'm rather skeptical about too much reliance on technology. Wouldn't such societies be extremely vulnerable to few assholes?

[Max White]

Does todays society seem more or less subject to assholery than a few thousand years ago?

[Hiiri]

An asshole today certainly can do more damage than an asshole few thousand years ago.

[FearfulJesuit]

We'll never be able to get rid of currency in some form, if for no other reason that currency was a unit of account long before it was ever a commodity, and you can't run an advanced society without a unit of account. You need some unit of value, even an imperfect one, and if the tiniest shred of a market is allowed, then it will act like currency.

[LordBucket]

I'm rather skeptical about too much reliance on technology. Wouldn't
such societies be extremely vulnerable to few assholes?

You find it preferable to have an entire population of people spending a third of their waking hours for the majority of their lifetime engaging in pointless, unpleasant work that they don't want to do and is unnecessary for them to do?

[Hiiri]

You find it preferable to have an entire population of people spending a third of their waking hours for the majority of their lifetime engaging in pointless, unpleasant work that they don't want to do and is unnecessary for them to do?

Well, we don't necessarily have to go from one extreme to another. Six to eight hours a day sounds pretty reasonable amount of labor.

Edit: Wait... third of their waking hours? That's not even an extreme...  >.>

[LordBucket]

Well, we don't necessarily have to go from one extreme to another. Six to eight hours a
day sounds pretty reasonable amount of labor.

168 hours in a week. Assuming you spend 8 hours a day sleeping, that leaves 112. Assuming a 5 day workweek, 7 hours a day, that's 35 out of 112 waking hours per week. That's 31.25%.

...so spending roughly a third of your waking hours for the majority of your lifetime working to survive sounds reasonable to you?

It doesn't have to be that way.

[misko27]

I'm rather skeptical about too much reliance on technology. Wouldn't such societies be extremely vulnerable to few assholes?

Since there are still workers, there are still Machinists regulating the machines. And there a regulators regulating the Machinists. And there are meta-Regulators regulating the Regulators. And super-regulators regulating the Meta-regulators, and regulating each other. And there are security guards watching everything. it wouldn't ensure nothing would ever go wrong, but it would reduce the likelihood a lot. And some of that regulation could be left to bots too. Et cetera. Original Programming would require a lot of work to ensure no one messes with it however.

And as for working, I'd prefer not to force anyone to do so if they don't want to.

[Hiiri]

...so spending roughly a third of your waking hours for the majority of your lifetime working to survive sounds reasonable to you?

I think there are benefits in having jobs and duties, yes. Forced social encounters and self-discipline come to mind. Think of discipline with kids, they don't like it, but it's for their own good in the long run.

I'm no fan of capitalism, but technology reliant society + people with too much time in their hands sounds like a recipe for disaster.