Comment by coffeemug 4 days ago
I still don’t understand why people oppose that rather than enthusiastically desire it. The end state you’re describing is the culmination of the enlightenment project. Automating labor is the point! Then you can paint, or play chess, or eat amazing food, or do whatever you want. Work isn’t the end, it’s the means. Products and services is the end. If we can achieve the end via technology, who cares about the work?
Because in the world people currently live in, a small class of people own the means of production and the land you stand on, and everyone else has to have a job to access all of the necessities to live. Eliminating jobs means, quite literally, eliminating people's livelihood.
And that same class of people who own everything would rather kill everyone else and also destroy the planet than give up their position or allow any of the socioeconomic changes necessary to change the distribution of wealth.
There's always two sides to a coin right? While everything you said is true, I think that there's a pattern people are generally aware of in this world. Things that don't serve a purpose, vanish.
We see it in worker replacement, in vestigial organic structures that shrink over millinea, and in the tools and objects we keep with us in our lives.
The question, once achieving this grandiose goal, is how long, and by what mechanism, will we continue to enjoy the fruits of our labor?
Perhaps there will be a time when we may enjoy this world without the pressure of being a cog within it, but ultimately this time may be short if we are able to manifest it at all.
The unease comes from the power we lose when we cease to be the means of production, and instead become a vestigial organ on a beast much more complex than ourselves.
Yes work is the means, the means to earn an income. Do you live in a country that has a big enough social safety net that you trust it to provide you the necessary income and healthcare so that you can just paint and play chess all day? I certainly don't... I live in the U.S.A :-/
That automation will be owned by a few and they're known for avoiding taxes not supporting something like a UBI. The masses a mostly likely to be kept busy watching propaganda on Tiktok not painting.
Food continues to go downhill the more agritech progresses and the planets population grows. Proteins are replaced by carbs with savoury flavouring, fats are replaced by thickeners etc. Eating good food like a good cut of steak requires out bidding other people which requires income.