I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”.
Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.
To use different phrasing, what you're saying is that you want people to be poorer. Please understand that I don't mean this as a personal attack on you, your beliefs or philosophy. But from a different perspective, that really is what you're saying. Do you really want to say that?
Perhaps a better alternative is: a good goal would be to allow people to have more while using less natural resources and polluting the environment less. While certainly difficult, I'd hope that advances in efficiency (such as more automation) could theoretically allow this!
Likely, their lives will be greatly enriched by an extra day off of work per week.
Bank accounts, the GDP, and other similar metrics fail to capture enormous amounts of value and meaning in our lives. Even the progress of scientific understanding
is poorly measured in this way.
I don't find this style of discourse productive. Why do you insist on putting words in their mouth in an attempt to lead them down the discussion you want to have instead of what's being presented? Asking for clarification on why you don't understand their statement could be more productive, but I don't think you're interested in that anyways.
It's worth noting that more automation should also lead to shorter work weeks (or alternatively more unemployment). So the effect stays pretty much the same, the question is only if people keep the same compensation for fewer hours or if compensation per hour stays about the same.
> Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad?
Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
> What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway?
People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the demand for those goods and services. In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
So it may very well be that the exact opposite of what you think is true and that you currently have to compensate for people working badly with long hours.
> In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
Thus far UBI tended to be about the same amount of income just from different sources.
I think some people imagine that people like me calling for 32 hour work weeks are part of some slippery slope to everyone working an hour a day.
I trust the research that suggests that humans may only be built for ~30 hours of detail oriented work per week. That's also a nice number where I have time to work on other things, rather than just loafing about. If my boss offered me 30hrs/w plus insurance, I'd spend an extra 5+ hours a week working on my side projects and volunteer work.
Competition still exerts a downward force on prices, and as the cost of labor increases the cost of developing automation will become more and more attractive to replace it.
You don't need UBI then, prices will just go down towards 0 because of competition, resulting in free food / housing / clothing / mobile phones for everyone.
> For which the market should correct by increasing their compensation, thus incentivising people to return to working, no?
Partially, but some of those increased compensation costs will translate to increased prices for everyone. That reduces the real value of a fixed UBI amount.
It's a given that a significant amount of UBI will be absorbed by inflation, particularly in housing prices in competitive cities. If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.
==If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.==
If we accept this logic as true, wouldn't it incentivize builders to increase housing supply? They would want to capture those higher rents and prices, right?
How so? The compensation is increased because less people are working, so the cost of labour is fixed (which is neglible in any case in a post-scarcity society as envisioned in the future)
If labor remains fixed then people as a whole have more money. Prices go up due to inflation and increased demand, no? I realize that's simplistic, but is it not generally true?
> the harder everyone else must work to compensate
I really don't want to get into this argument but supposedly productivity gains from automation/AI should make those who keep working work proportionally less to compensate non-workers.
Why I don't want to get into this argument: there's no conclusive view about UBI + automation yet, so it's all speculation
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
Or adapting to productivity gains, the productivity required is increasing to meet the needs of increasingly productive people.
So taking into account human nature might mean that productivity gains enable us to do more advanced work, not to work less. But like you said, we're all just speculating.
Since we already have the productivity to grow and make all the necessities of life, why are we worried about maximizing degree to which we work for more luxury goods?
> Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
Workers are more productive now than they ever have been.[0] Productivity was up 253% since 1948 seven years ago. For decades they’ve been promising us the 20 hour work week, and it’s here. In fact it’s only 15 hours comparatively.
The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
> The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
Maintaining isn't what people are aiming for though, they want improvement. People are not satisfied by objectively living much better lives than some king or pope 500 years ago.
First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
Second, who said anything about the rate of change going to zero? Even if productivity suddenly dropped to 1948 levels, it’s not like we’d be living in 1948. It’s not a time machine.
> First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
I agree. What follows from that? Do we let some people live in the 21st century but hide their life style from the rest so we can keep them happy at a level that we can more easily automate?
And sure, it's not going to reverse necessarily (though it will to some degree, because we can't "automate" the 2020 economy). My point is that people aren't satisfied with no progress. Wanting to change things for the better seems to be a very natural part of humanity, making plans that don't account for that drive doesn't seem wise.
I would give up some of my income to finance UBI without thinking twice. I probably would work a bit less, but I am planning that nevertheless with or without UBI.
What I am skeptical about is work that is real hard, not some silly office stuff. Care and nursing for example. There might be few people who would do that under current working conditions with UBI in sight. Not that I think the current situation is in any way sustainable. It is already completely broken before the large demographic bombs hit some countries.
On the other hand, maybe family members had more time to offer care themselves.
So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Edit: You downvoted me within a minute of my posting. I asked two questions. If you can't answer them, then it is because you fear their answers.
So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
>So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Management and administration is a skill that not everyone possesses. There are such things as good and bad managers. Just because the work they do doesn't directly output a tangible product doesn't mean it's not valuable. Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay. That's not to say it's a perfect system but this is generally how it works.
As for working less, unless you mean they do less physical labour than the people they manage, they often work more. It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
>So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it. I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from. Companies seek profit and have no desire to pay people simply for existing, especially if they do not meaningfully contribute to the bottom line. Managers are hired exactly because they do affect the bottom line in a sufficiently meaningful way to justify their presence. And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
That isn't to say there isn't a thing as too many managers or levels of management or even bad managers that do not get fired, but to sweep them all aside as irrelevant is simply not a realistic interpretation.
> Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay.
Who has more responsibility for cooking your burger correctly, the cook or the manager? Who has more responsibility for measuring before cutting, the carpenter or the architect? Who has more responsibility for not leaving PII all over service logs, you or your team leader? I would politely suggest that there are different responsibilities for managers, but not that this somehow removes responsibilities from laborers.
> It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
My former CEOs have had enough spare time to show up in the tabloids because they can't stop having sex with their employees or making questionable business decisions with authoritarian governments. I don't have time for sex with my coworkers. Perhaps team leaders or low-level managers have to put in hours, but administrative management definitely does not.
> They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it.
In my lifetime, Linux was born and became not just a serious competitor to proprietary kernels, but supplanted them. Thus, the FLOSS model of a massive global commune of public-domain information and tools is a viable contender, able to compete with any corporation.
When I contributed to Linux, I reported to one of the subsystem lieutenants, and my code was reviewed by them and other contributors to the subsystem. For no money whatsoever, they advised me on which parts of the subsystem were worth contributing to, which outstanding tasks were too hard to tackle, and which documentation to read.
Also in my lifetime, Wikipedia was born, supplanting many proprietary encyclopedias within only a few years, and today it is another shining example of the triumph of the FLOSS model.
When I contributed to Wikipedia, I just did whatever I wanted. Whenever something looked like it could be improved, and I had the time and energy to improve it, I did what had to be done to make things better. If people disagreed, they could undo what I did; if I disagreed with them, then there were community arbiters who could negotiate a solution.
So, like, do managers actually optimize labor to the point where they earn their keep? I can't tell, and I think that we ought to measure.
> I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from.
Oh, it's worse than that; the typical manager has a net negative impact on their direct reports, from what I've seen.
> And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
I no longer believe that you have been gainfully employed in a corporate hierarchy. This line gave you away.
But we need the counterfactual. When the labor they "optimized" would have done the same or better without their interference, we cannot tell. We just take the estimates from the manager themselves as the baseline. And of course, they would lie about that.
And the less well paid jobs (eg Veterinary Assistant - not technician or McDonald's employee) have individuals working near constantly. There is a class divide under the 1% which is also quite stark, with regard to work demands.
Very few workplaces have 20% management. A few businesses have experimented with radically flattening the organization and cutting out management layers; this has generally not improved productivity or financial results.
So radically flattening the organization and cutting out management layers has generally not improved productivity, but are you then saying it had little impact, or negative impact?
True, but I think the question should be if the company is worse off without the baggage management, not if they are more productive or have better financial results.
The problem is that there is no scalable, reliable way to distinguish between "baggage" management and productive management in any large organization. Many have tried to solve that problem and no one has really succeeded. So cutting out management layers tends to indiscriminately eliminate the good with the bad. If you can figure out a better solution then you'll make a fortune as a management consultant.
Lower level employees often think they know which managers are baggage, and sometimes they're right, but often they're not seeing the whole picture. A manager who appears to be baggage from one perspective is sometimes performing crucial activities that are only visible from other perspectives. Management value added often can't be objectively measured but yet it exists all the same.
You can already have a 30 hour work week if you want to do contract or part-time work, but for a full-time position you’d be competing with companies who still work 40-50 hour weeks so I don’t think there’s much practical opportunity here.
Anecdote incoming. I work double full time and have done so for approaching a decade. It's definitely proven to be a significant competitive advantage in my case. I don't know too many folks who could have comfortably retired in their 20s (that didn't grow up with generational wealth).
Still, I've seen many folks in esports do crazy workloads and get nowhere fast. So there's more to the formula than just pouring in more effort.
Most of American management cannot tell the difference between motion and progress.
While I don't want to dismiss your extra effort as improving your results, I suspect that the value placed on your behavior by management may have been out of proportion with objective truth.
I'm also concerned with whether you were Defecting, in a Prisoner's Dilemma sense. Management always sets unreasonable deadlines as long as anybody agrees with them. Only when people are unanimous that this is crazy do they ever seem to back off.
Typical examples would be a client says "Oh no, our campaign that was supposed to start next Monday just fell through - we need a solution ASAP!"
or
"Our project is six months past deadline with no end in sight..."
For some, this is an unreasonable situation to find themself in. For me, I look at such situations as opportunities. The client's management is under a ton of pressure to fix things immediately and a lot of the internal friction that exists for the employees doesn't exist for me as an outsider. I'm allowed to stick my finger in the wound.
Still, you're absolutely right that management (and it's not in any way limited to the US - I've helped clients across North America, Europe, and Asia who all had the exact same problems) can be unreasonable. I wish I knew a good solution for that, but the truth is that there's a fairly small percentage of people that are actually good managers and there's an enormous amount of political nonsense where managers try to justify their own existence by carving out little kingdoms for themselves.
I mean, congrats, but if you retired comfortably in your 20s you got crazy lucky - that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based. I used to work in the game industry getting peanuts for the same hours, we made amazing things in crunch that I am proud of, but when we started to scale back hours our product got even better because we lowered the stress and increased the healthiness of our workplace.
> that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based.
This is just nonsense and reflects a desire to dismiss the capabilities and accomplishments of others because they don't reflect your self-pitying worldview.
Chances are that the above poster did something you're unable or unwilling to do -- and the difference in outcomes is reflective of that.
The unfortunate truth of our modern economy is that skills are neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome described. They may have been the deciding factor in this case, as may the hours worked, but calling that shot in advance is not trivial.
If you could have worked twice as many hours and made twice as much money - would you? That was the position I found myself in, and that's how I got where I am. I never claimed to have a secret skill.
1. It would have been physically impossible for me to do so since I was already working 10-12 hour days pretty often and without sleep I'd be worthless.
2. Double income isn't necessarily that much income, if you're making 35k giving up sleeping to get 70k seems like a pretty poor trade.
Also, no, never. I would never work twice as many hours (assuming we're taking a base number of hours between 6 and 8) for twice the pay. You effectively earn less money (due to graduated taxes) and you have to give up all the creature comforts of life. Going from working 8 hours a day to 16 hours a day would drastically lower the enjoyment I got from life and probably end up killing me from stress.
I suppose everyone's situation is different. I was self-employed and had the opportunity to just work more and earn more at the time. The luck part of that equation is that I wasn't earning 35k, but I'm sure there are people on this forum earning more than I was at peak regardless.
I personally really enjoy working, and never felt that working 80+ hours was a burden. To be honest I actually look forward to getting up and getting to it most days.
With all that said, the growth I had just wouldn't have been possible on 40 hours a week of work. So I credit the long hours with the creation of a lot of the luck and opportunity I experienced in my life.
> You effectively earn less money (due to graduated taxes)
A personal bugbear of mine: your point is directionally correct but expressed incorrectly. Under marginal tax rates you do not earn less money. You take home less per hour past a certain point, but are still earning more overall.
I'd be a lot less bothered about people getting this wrong if it hadn't been turned into a political football in recent memory.
You're describing my dad perfectly. He worked as much as I do (plus he was doing hard physical labor...) until he died of cancer in 2009. He's the reason I dedicated myself to work as much as I could as early as I could, so I could get myself to a point of financial independence. He never got to enjoy his retirement because he sacrificed his life to adopt me, so I feel a sense of urgency to enjoy life as much as I can in his honor.
I agree that we all have so much stuff that we don't need, but in such an incredibly consumerist society we can't really seperate what we want from what we need without a massive cultural revolution. On top of that our current capitalist society only works because people buy lots of things that they don't need.
Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.