this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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All this automation should be going towards doubling the amount of jobs at half the hours for the same pay.
If pay kept up with productivity by now we could be doing 4 hour work days. Morning people could get their work done early and chill the rest of the day, afternoon people could sleep in and stay up late, night people could just have shorter nights and more time to do whatever they do.
The problem is ownership.
The boss owns the machines that increased the production so they are/feel entitled to all of that increase of profit. "You" didn't do anything more so why do you deserve more especially if you're actually doing less now?
I can understand this line of thinking, I kinda hate it, but I can totally see it even from a moral perspective. Yes if you dig deep enough you could argue that their exploiting of your labor afforded them the ability to buy the new machines, but we also agreed to be exploited by agreeing to work at the place to begin with.
I'm not one of these temporarily embarrassed millionaires that sees themselves as that boss, we just need to think of this in terms of what opposition we'll face if this argument is pushed.
Oh my statement was more of a hindsight observation; what to do now? I don’t know. Burn it all down and start over?
I don't disagree but still want to point out that average hours worked has been going down for many decades.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-worker
"All this automation should be going towards doubling the amount of jobs at half the hours for the same pay."
Yes but it is very important how this is done. Some people on the Internet have catastrophically bad ideas like taxing automation.
What I think needs to be done to name a few:
The other big one is UBI which could lead to a decrease in minimum wage but benefit everyone.
Also the housing situation needs a big revamp.
Sounds good.
I’m just saying in the past.. there was that cash register analogy that was going around a while back…
Like a dude buys a cash register - needs 1 cashier instead of 3, but pays the one cashier the same. Business owner dude should be paying that remaining cashier at least double.
Just spoutin’ some hindsight or whatever I dunno.
No strong disagree.
If that was the case we wouldn't ever have economic growth. Businesses need to be competitive and make competitive decisions.
If two people are out of work and one the same then so be it, the system needs to pick them up in a different way. Automation and competition is good.
They can make competitive decisions that aren’t at the cost of society.
Society can be better at dealing with competition.
How much do you think a farm labourer should be paid out of curiosity? Half of what has been saved in wages? That's a hell of a lot of money.
You’re damn right it is. The exact math isn’t important for our conversation, but the point is that the savings gained through automation should be shared with the workers.
No the saving should be divided with society.
If anyone should be getting the gains of that automation it's the people that built it and improved output per person. Not the people that in no way contributed anything at all towards progress.
I don’t disagree, but workers are a part of society too and if automation increases the productivity of the workers, they should get more too.
UBI, lower taxes, free public transport, free education.
Many manys I would agree with that. But what you suggest is too difficult and too distorting of the market.
Say a job get improved because the new version of Microsoft Office is 5% better but no one gets laid off. You can't even begin to work out things like that.