Three kinds of work: Necessary, Useful, Optional
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Remain Calm Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5216Forum Moderators, Constellation
Remain Calm Join Date: 2002-11-02 Member: 5216Forum Moderators, Constellation
Personal worry that I wanted to get off my chest. Basically...
Necessary work is what you can't live without - the production or transport of food, water, and so on.
Useful work is such that provides opportunities - the production of cars which let you get to opportunities farther away, networks that allow you to find out about them, and such.
Optional work is things like culture, entertainment - good for the mind or soul, but not necessary.
Consider a customer in search for entertainment. He finds a provider, and likes the look of what they've got, but not the price it's being offered at, so he moves on. Again he finds something, but isn't willing to pay for it, so he moves on. This continues, and in the end he doesn't find anything. Oh well - that's not so bad, just leaves him a bit bored.
Now if you substitute entertainment for food in that sequence, there's no "oh well" at the end - he has to buy something, even if he doesn't like the price. That's what markets are based on, buyer and seller both being forced to agree on a price. But it doesn't inherently hold for entertainment...
So what happens once most of the Necessary and Useful work is automated?
Necessary work is what you can't live without - the production or transport of food, water, and so on.
Useful work is such that provides opportunities - the production of cars which let you get to opportunities farther away, networks that allow you to find out about them, and such.
Optional work is things like culture, entertainment - good for the mind or soul, but not necessary.
Consider a customer in search for entertainment. He finds a provider, and likes the look of what they've got, but not the price it's being offered at, so he moves on. Again he finds something, but isn't willing to pay for it, so he moves on. This continues, and in the end he doesn't find anything. Oh well - that's not so bad, just leaves him a bit bored.
Now if you substitute entertainment for food in that sequence, there's no "oh well" at the end - he has to buy something, even if he doesn't like the price. That's what markets are based on, buyer and seller both being forced to agree on a price. But it doesn't inherently hold for entertainment...
So what happens once most of the Necessary and Useful work is automated?
Comments
Then again I'd say the fact that the market are based on buyer and seller agreeing on a price is neither a natural constant nor necessarily good. If you turn products which are essential for reproduction into merchandise which is meant to be sold, then you get to the problem you pointed out. I mean, that what we call market is after all a man-made system to distribute merchandise. Of course it could be turned into something else, i.e. a system which is focused on distributing products to those who need it instead of distributing merchandise to those who can afford it. I mean, we're after all living in a time of high productivity. I cannot understand why goods which are essential to make a living (food, drink, shelter, healthcare, etc.) are meant to be traded as merchandise to those who can pay. Everyone needs access to these products / services whether he can pay it or not. If the market doesn't ensure that, he heeds to be substituted or supplemented by another means of distribution which isn't based on buyer and seller agreeing on a price.
Once most of the necessary and useful work is automated, one might find even less arguments why we can observe high productivity and consumption going hand in hand with poverty and starvation. You don't have necessarily to take a look to Africa, South America or parts of Asia but even within large economies and wealthy countries you can see a growing number of people who don't benefit at all from economic growth and its fruits; the USA as an obvious example but even within European countries that spend a lot of money into welfare you can see that the overall productivity and wealth is rising while poverty is increasing at the very same time. Thus I think that automation doesn't mean anything at all if the way we distribute the fruits of labor is first of all meant to be sold as merchandise instead of being distributed as product.
Not sure I follow. If price for food is too high, consumers can haggle to an acceptable price. If the seller cannot haggle their price any lower, then consumers will get their food elsewhere (farming, hunting, cheaper seller).
The price consumers are willing to pay for an item (and the price sellers are willing to sell at) is the correct market value for that item. Otherwise the demand will be satisfied elsewhere.
Awesome writer Iain M. Banks (r.i.p.) has written alot of books about a society where this is the case.
Highly recommended if you enjoy sci-fi.
They stood on a half-constructed starship, on what would eventually be the
middle of the engines, watching a huge field-unit swing through the air, out
of the engineering space behind the bay proper and up towards the skeletal
body of the General Contact Unit. Little lifter tugs manoeuvred the field unit
down towards them.
(...)
They walked across the black expanse of thoroughly featureless material
('Ah,' the woman had said, when he'd mentioned this, 'you take a look at it
under a microscope; it's beautiful! What did you expect, anyway? Cranks?
Gears? Tanks full of chemicals?')
'Can't machines build these faster?' he asked the woman, looking around
the starship shell.
'Why, of course!' she laughed.
'Then why do you do it?'
'It's fun. You see one of these big mothers sail out those doors for the first
time, heading for deep space, three hundred people on board, everything
working, the Mind quite happy, and you think; I helped build that. The fact
a machine could have done it faster doesn't alter the fact that it was you who
actually did it.'
'Hmm,' he said.
'Well, you may "hmm" as you wish,' the woman said, approaching a
translucent hologram of the half-completed ship, where a few other
construction workers were standing, pointing inside the model and talking.
'But have you ever been gliding, or swum underwater?'
'Yes,' he agreed.
The woman shrugged. 'Yet birds fly better than we do, and fish swim better.
Do we stop gliding or swimming because of this?'
He smiled. 'I suppose not.'
'You suppose correctly,' the woman said. 'And why?' she looked at him,
grinning. 'Because it's fun.' She looked at the holo model of the ship to one
side. One of the other workers called to her, pointing at something in the
model. She looked at him. 'Excuse me, will you?'
He nodded, as he backed off. 'Build well.'
'Thank you. I trust we shall.'
'Oh,' he asked. 'What's this ship to be called?'
'Its Mind wishes it to be called the Sweet and Full of Grace,' the woman
laughed. Then she was deep in discussion with the others.
USE OF WEAPONS
IAIN M. BANKS
Published: 1990. ISBN: 1 85723 135 X
Hell, we already have ever-increasing automation in all economic sectors since the introduction of the computer and the internet to the workplace.
Funnily the wage levels are practically frozen and although a worker is so much more productive than his/her counterpart from the 1960ies, they even work longer hours and receive even less benefits like paid vacation or health care than they would have in the 60ies.
Who decides what happens with those automation profits?
Do workers have to work less? Nope.
Do they maybe receive higher wages? Nope.
Well, where does all this "automation efficiency gain money" end up?
Start at 1:28:41
Having understood how capitalism works, 100% automation wouldn't change a thing compared to what we have today.
It would only turn the growing inequality gap into an insurmountable canyon.
I get working on it, no skipping here!