The abolition of work

http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm

by arcadeparade • 17 years ago

60 42 17 years ago

deoxy.org

chrismear• 17 years ago

Standard counter-argument: someone's still got to take away the trash.

jlc2• 17 years ago

And the Fourier-ist counter-counter-argument is everyone takes away the trash sometimes.

JulianMorrison5• 17 years ago

Now imagine trash bins that trundle themselves, Roomba style, to the loading lift of a DARPA-challenge AI-drone garbage truck.

The problem nowadays is not really eliminating dull work. We're pretty close to the tech level even where we haven't already reached it. The problem is figuring out an economic system that still feeds, houses and entertains people despite near 100% structural unemployment.

CamperBob• 17 years ago

Somebody has to build and fix the truck.

Of course, we could automate that, too. It wouldn't be our smartest move as a species, but it'd probably be our last.

yummyfajitas2• 17 years ago

In such a post-scarcity Asimovian future, limited socialism (perhaps 1-5% of GDP) would be a viable option. Socialism misallocates resources. But if you have nearly unlimited resources, why worry about misallocating a small fraction of them?

jbrun4• 17 years ago

As per trash bins, imagine all materials used in all products were bio-degreadable. Simply throw your waste into a bin in your back-yard, wait 3 months and you have fresh earth. No need for complicated garbage pick-up robots.

Simple, simple.

cellis• 17 years ago

At the extreme end of this argument I can see a Matrix-esque existence where everyone is "plugged in" like so many electronics in a home.

jacoblyles• 17 years ago

Past labor-saving technologies have not increased structural unemployment. People found other things to do.

Perhaps eventually this will change. It sounds like you think it will. Why?

moe• 17 years ago

What trash?

If everybody just ceased work at once (no cheating, breathing is also work!) then all our problems would be solved within minutes. No more trash either.

I propose the author goes first. We sheeple need a proof of concept.

tocomment• 17 years ago

I call my solution to this the "Panera model" everyone clears their own tables instead of requiring bus boys. Same thing would happen for other non satisfying jobs.

psyklic• 17 years ago

I agree this is the ideal method; however, there will be people who will refuse to clear their table/throw away their trash ... then others will look over and say if he isn't doing it, why should I?

smanek• 17 years ago

What if I'm willing to pay someone $2 to clear my table, and someone else is willing to clear it for $2?

Are you going to say that we can't engage in this voluntary transaction? Because this is basically the system we have in place now and a lot of people are willing to pay and be paid.

tayssir• 17 years ago

I agree. I think that after automation, whatever residue of crap jobs in society should be shared in an equitable way. Participatory Economics (parecon for short) offers one decentralized way of doing this; maybe people know of others. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participatory_economics

arcadeparade• 17 years ago

That's in there too, but basically the idea is a lot less work, as in 99% less.

It reminds me of geography class when I was younger and I learned about the primary, secondary and tertiary parts of the economy. We were taught that economies with a large tertiary sector were "better". The tertiary economy mainly produces goods that are not fundamentally important to peoples lives. (Although obviously I think peoples lives are better than they were 50 years ago when it comes to longevity and other health issues, that's not what I'm getting at.)

With developed economies, there were two options that I can see. One was to lessen work hours and maintain consumption levels as technology improved, and the other option, which exists today, is to keep work hours the same (or increase them in many cases), and create more jobs in the services sector, which in turn requires more consumption to keep everything going.

I saw two options instead of two choices, because people were never given this choice.

Basically I think it boils down to this: You can work your ass off to buy stuff you mostly don't need and make someone else rich, or you can be an anti-consumerist, work less and...do whatever you want?

jlc2• 17 years ago

I used to have my freshmen composition classes read Bob Black. Was always interesting, but often hard for some students to see the difference between work, the stuff that gets done, and work, the social construct. I think it's good for everyone to think about the ways in which the latter is alienating (in the Marxist sense) and exploitive, even (maybe esp.) if you're not an anarchist.

Eliezer• 17 years ago

Voted up for being accurate about the evils of work. Pity the author has absolutely no clue what to do about it, and so little knowledge of economics as to not even be aware of his own ignorance.

It's all about incentive structures, professional specialization, and comparative advantage. If you want to replace work, you have to find something better. The author shows no sign of understanding why they are important.

If you could come up with a better incentive structure that gives people a reason to try, while still exploiting professional specialization and comparative advantage, without creating bosses and managers to regiment life, you could systematize it and start companies that used it which would outcompete existing companies.

JulianMorrison5• 17 years ago

Comparative advantage is the biggie. Everyone wants to be the astronaut.

Luff• 17 years ago

From the text: As Smith observed: "The understandings of the greater part of men are necessarily formed by their ordinary employments. The man whose life is spent in performing a few simple operations . . . has no occasion to exert his understanding . . . He generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become." Here, in a few blunt words, is my critique of work.

Then what would the outcome be if man don't have to work at all? Better for some, but worse for many others is my guess.

wallflower• 17 years ago

Marshall Brain's 'Robotic Nation' explores what would happen in a highly automated society (e.g. robots would take over all sectors)

http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

arram• 17 years ago

I'm worried about the full scale psychological break down that's likely to come from not requiring anything from anybody. pg mentions 'Manhattan house wives' somewhere in his writing. It's that psychological affliction writ large. Some people can auto-impose the structure necessary to not sink into an orgy of escapism, but I'm guessing it's less than 3%.

Imagine the popular culture in a world where it's trivial for people to endlessly indulge their most idiosyncratic whims and vices - where hard knocks no longer cull delusional and generally ineffective behaviors.

jbrun4• 17 years ago

I posted a similar idea a couple years back:

http://www.jonathanbrun.com/2006/07/guns-germs-and-happiness...

wizardofoz• 17 years ago

I believe work is the source of happiness. Happiness comes to you when you see the fruits of your work.

I remember feeling really happy after finishing up a program that I had been working on for a long time. Just seeing it work so perfectly gave me an incredible sense of satisfaction. It was far better from the satisfaction/pleasure I got from doing things like watching TV/movies, going on dates, eating at nice restaurants, etc.

Developing the program was definitely not play either. It involved things (like fixing bugs, coming up with algorithms) for which I had to expend a considerable amount of intellectual energy. It was work, but it was work worth working on.

stuffthatmatter• 17 years ago

it's easy to not be stuck to a job; just don't get into debts and marriage. then you can always pick and choose your schedule.

gojomo• 17 years ago

This reminds me of another manifesto arguing to expand our ideas of what's possible, 'The Hedonistic Imperative', that takes a mostly pharmacological approach:

http://www.hedweb.com/

For that matter, this piece has strong similarities to the Unabomber manifesto, aka "Industrial Society and its Future".

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Industrial_Society_and_Its_Fut...

All such romantic manifestos are interesting in how they make you think, but the devil is in the details. Humans compete for power, for status, for reproduction; if you somehow remove economic competition you might get something worse, corrupt and oppressive and murderous in another direction.

And the hunter-gatherer past was a bit nastier than this piece lets on. Some alternate views:

http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Keeley/War-Before-Civiliza...

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html

Pinker summarizes the knowledge of prehistoric combat death rates: "If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million."

sethg• 17 years ago

There is a long-standing anarchist critique of industrial society, and both the Unabomber and Bob Black are part of that tradition. The Unabomber just never got the memo that "we tried bombing our way into anarchy back in the nineteenth century and it didn't work out so well".

Dove• 17 years ago

I could not disagree more with the article. Work is not evil. Oppression is evil, sometimes the way people treat each other in the context of work is evil. But work itself, especially hard work, is good for the soul.

It's not the drudgery or labor that's so satisfying. It's the sense of working on something necessary. No one would drive rail spikes or write in machine code for fun--at least, not on the scale necessary to actually achieve something. But once upon a time, the tasks were necessary, and those who undertook them rightly took joy in what they were achieving. That's work. Doing something necessary and useful is satisfying, even if it isn't fun.

Automate all you want; I'm all for it. It's one of the ways we make ourselves rich. I'd never argue that writing in machine code or taking out the garbage are inherently good for the soul, and eliminating the need for such things is good. But while they remain necessary, they are a source of satisfaction. There will always be tasks like that, because there will always be great things we can achieve that aren't possible without a lot of work.

I'm constantly pursuing projects, some for pay and some for play. But the funny thing about projects for play: most of them I never finish. The ones that do become great have a lot of the characteristics of work: I can see a need for them, I expect a big payoff for completion, others ask me to get them done, there's some sort of time constraint, I approach in a disciplined way and power through the dull bits. Of course, the inverse is also true: those projects I do for pay which turn out great have a lot of aspects of play: I make them interesting, I learn things, I experiment and inject humor, I have time to make them beautiful, to do things right. Great achievement lies in the intersection of work and play, I think.

I certainly wouldn't advocate unemployment, as this fellow does. I spent a year or so unemployed, once--and with no real financial pressure to get a job. It was absolute misery. My creative and passionate impulses slowly dried up. I always say, "I'll learn this new language when I have time," but in fact I learn things exactly when I don't have time, but need them to get something done. When I had all the time in the world, I didn't pursue all those projects I was so interested in. After a few half-hearted starts, I shriveled into a TV-watching video-gaming internet-reading ball of goo.

I plan to never pursue that lifestyle. I may retire early from financially necessary work--in fact, I plan to. But I don't plan to ever actually stop working. That was hell!

known• 17 years ago

http://www.whywork.org/

jdowdell• 17 years ago

I always liked "Theses on Groucho Marxism" better: http://www.collectivereinventions.org/Archives/pages/theses_...

The abolition of work

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