Mind Experiment - We No Longer Have to Work

[a_unique_person]

Yes, machines can do it all. We no longer have to go to work. They can mine, clean, build, farm, advertise.

The economy has never been doing better. Growth is good, there are riches aplenty.

How do we allocate those riches. No one has to work any more. Are we entitled to any of the wealth generated. Should we just be put down as irrelevant.

[The Fool]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Yes, machines can do it all. We no longer have to go to work. They can mine, clean, build, farm, advertise.

The economy has never been doing better. Growth is good, there are riches aplenty.

How do we allocate those riches. No one has to work any more. Are we entitled to any of the wealth generated. Should we just be put down as irrelevant.

Hmmmmm, I suppose the people that control the machines would control the goods and services produced by the machines. Who owns the machines?
In the end, even if I don't have to work because a machine could do it I may still choose to work if I don't have a machine or someone else is skimming the profits generated by the machines....

anyway...someone still has to turn the damn machine on....thats got to be worth 80K a year plus medical :)

[Cain]

I've often wondered about this myself. A fellow BSer in high-school frequently fretted on the current state of the world compared to the undeniable, inevitable future: a utopia of robots performing all the rot work. No one would live in poverty and he could be free to program, others could write, and still others could put on plays.

I pointed out that it depends who owns the robots. If they're privately owned and controlled, then the rich would have no use for us, and robots designed to exterminate the poor would probably be in the works. He exhaled painfully and agreed.

How do we allocate those riches. No one has to work any more. Are we entitled to any of the wealth generated. Should we just be put down as irrelevant.

Scarcity still exists, right? Goods and services should be allocated to the greatest benefit. Living standards in rich first world countries would probably decline dramatically (according to my principles, at least) because the machines would be more concerned with producing the goods necessary for destitute Africans rather than televisions, sports cars, and computers.

And of course we're entitled. The machines (their mystical origins currently unknown) should be viewed as a resource no different than other natural resources (thinking along the lines of apple trees, oxygen, and clean water).

Still, the question is difficult to answer without knowing how we got from here to there.

[Badger]

I think people would always work. They'd just define it differently, or find something to do that machines couldn't.

Take lawyers for example (insert joke here). The more there are of the, the more there are of them. It's kind of self perpetuating. Then there's the whole service industry, where people are payed to rub your feet, and wash your hair, etc.

In the modern world, we have many labour saving devices, but we also work more hours a week than ever before.

So, I think people would find a way to work even if they didn't have to. It gives their lives meaning.

[JAR]

I sure hope the day comes during my lifetime when machines can do everything, including the ability to reproduce and repair themselves.

[glee]

Originally posted by JAR
I sure hope the day comes during my lifetime when machines can do everything, including the ability to reproduce and repair themselves.

Ah, but then the machines will be self-aware and will want someone else to do the work for them. And then we humans make a comeback! :D

[karl]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Yes, machines can do it all. We no longer have to go to work. They can mine, clean, build, farm, advertise.

The economy has never been doing better. Growth is good, there are riches aplenty.

How do we allocate those riches. No one has to work any more. Are we entitled to any of the wealth generated. Should we just be put down as irrelevant.

No matter how you construct such a thought experiment, there will always be resources that are limited. Land, for example. The total land area of the Earth is about 57 million square miles. With a population of six billion people, we can't all live on big ranches. And there will always be a demand for things that either can't be provided by machines, or that some people for one reason or other don't want machines to provide.

Even if there were all-robot sports events, computer-generated sitcoms and simulated cybersex aplenty, odds are a lot of people would still have a craving for "the real thing." Then how do you, for example, motivate the actors to put in the necessary effort so that you can watch the 49th season of "Friends" with the original cast? Well, you'd have to give them something beyond their fair share of the limited resources and/or some human service.

Presumably you'd use money to facilitate transactions. And in order to get money, you would have to provide other non-machine services that were in demand (i.e. work), or give up resources. In other words it wouldn't be all that different from what we have today.

[to.by]

If machines did all the work, and nobody was working. Nobody (except the machine owners) would earn any money, which means no consumers, which means no goods purchased, which means no money to the machine owners.....

A drab world!!!

[Doubt]

Originally posted by glee


Ah, but then the machines will be self-aware and will want someone else to do the work for them. And then we humans make a comeback! :D

No! The machines would try and kill us!

Ever heard of the play RUR?

:D

[Agammamon]

Or an alternative is that do creative work for the sheer joy of it and the social status gained. Look at open source programming, lots of people writing OS and apps and distributing their completed work merely for bragging rights within their community. H/Crackers and amatuer astronamers also run under a similar model. There are other examples of people who spend inordinate amounts of time doing what many would call work just because they find it fun.

[Flo]

Originally posted by a_unique_person
Yes, machines can do it all. We no longer have to go to work. They can mine, clean, build, farm, advertise.

The economy has never been doing better. Growth is good, there are riches aplenty.

How do we allocate those riches. No one has to work any more. Are we entitled to any of the wealth generated. Should we just be put down as irrelevant.


Daimyos and samurais during the Tokugawa rule had it that good: commoners did all the work, they could enjoy life. Had to fill it with lots of (somehow) empty rituals and pastimes, though, and were finally put down as irrelevant.