Society without labor?

[sserafim]

The development of robots and AI is pushing us closer to a world where all manufacturing and most forms of labour is automated. This is obviously very far into the future going by elites pushing for the use of human labor as long as possible for "ethics" (cheaping out). It is almost impossible to conceptualise a society without work. How would a post scarcity world actually look like? How do we redefine society in a way where work is not only optional but discouraged? How do we generate income to fund this hedonistic lifestyle where nothing requires effort? How do we cultivate the skills to maintain the machinery with upkeeps this society without the shortcut of a financial incentive? What meaning would our lives have if we don't have to work for anything?

 

[xinino]

We get rid of the excess "us" transgressed or kill it duh, silly girl

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

The answer is that we'll probably just come up with some way to generate an even more artificial kind of scarcity than we already have with money. Maybe it will be tied to some kind of digital resources that ultimately mean nothing yet still mean everything to society. We already have some semblance of that with digital credit and net worth.

Whatever new system is created, we as a society will happily lap it up since the competition alone will drive many people and give them a sense of purpose no matter how many have to be left behind suffering just because they don't have enough of whatever arbitrary thing we make up.

 

[pilotviolin]

we should become transhumanist and transcend the human nature so we are not motivated by power, hierarchy and impulse.

 

[SexyIncél]

How do we cultivate the skills to maintain the machinery with upkeeps this society without the shortcut of a financial incentive? What meaning would our lives have if we don't have to work for anything?

If we can't enjoy freedom from toil, we should really die & make space for the next species to have a shot :P

Someone mentioned hating techbros/sistas, and I wondered why. Maybe because they take the dream of automation — unleashing human capacity, freedom from material want — and somehow pervert it into cyberpunk dystopia. Pushing us into their self-imposed hyperwork hell. With them as middlemen, pwning the infrastructure

Fortunately, I think that non-pathological humans enjoy exercising the highest use of their capacities

I don't know many visions of an advanced society befitting free people, but Participatory Economics is a nifty one. And the more people building their own visionary ideas, the better

 

[sserafim]

If we can't enjoy freedom from toil, we should really die & make space for the next species to have a shot :P

Someone mentioned hating techbros/sistas, and I wondered why. Maybe because they take the dream of automation — unleashing human capacity, freedom from material want — and somehow pervert it into cyberpunk dystopia. Pushing us into their self-imposed hyperwork hell. With them as middlemen, pwning the infrastructure

Fortunately, I think that non-pathological humans enjoy exercising the highest use of their capacities

I don't know many visions of an advanced society befitting free people, but Participatory Economics is a nifty one. And the more people building their own visionary ideas, the better

The fact of the matter is, a large portion of the population does not invent anything. They do not create anything. Their labor is easily replaced. There's a term in economics called negative value added, the cost of employing a worker exceeds the value they generate for the company. The employee has no/little skills, they're inefficient, imagine an employee at a service job that insults the customer and makes them not want to return to the store. Is it better to give these people a small stipend and have them stay at home? Objectively, yes, if there was a solid criteria to determine who is like this and who is merely faking it. The people who move this world forward are the people who have a near autistic obsession with a single thing, that spend their entire life dedicated to that thing, it's a select group of people that would do the thing even if they were given a stipend and allowed to stay at home all day. If anything, that'd only give them more time to dedicate to their obsession, instead of getting sidetracked with worries about money.

A large chunk of people work so they can go home with the money they earned and have fun. Rather than monetary incentives, society itself needs to make cultivating skills and knowledge desirable. With technology rapidly advancing, the gamification of learning is needed, if someone can hop on something like TikTok and by the end of the day, be more knowledgeable about a certain topic instead of being braindead like it is now, that'd be ideal. The average person only does things now because it's the path of least resistance, it's the easiest thing in the circumstances. If you make learning/studying the path of least resistance, people will do it. That's just human nature.

we should become transhumanist and transcend the human nature so we are not motivated by power, hierarchy and impulse.

It's not gonna happen, even when the technology gets there, we will continue to be enslaved by the elites.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

Someone mentioned hating techbros/sistas, and I wondered why. Maybe because they take the dream of automation — unleashing human capacity, freedom from material want — and somehow pervert it into cyberpunk dystopia. Pushing us into their self-imposed hyperwork hell. With them as middlemen, pwning the infrastructure

I just hate them because they tend to be too stupid to see that whatever thing they've latched on to isn't actually the big technological boom they think it is. It's pseudo science for venture capitalists. Then they get butthurt when you have the gall to tell them that the emperor actually isn't wearing any clothes.

This is not to say that behind the scenes there aren't still people who are genuinely capable of advancing the technology forward, it just happens slower than we'd like but also fast enough to scare us when advancements do come out.

 

[derpyderpins]

I can't picture anything that works without it being a hellish dystopia. Assuming when you say "labor" and "work", you mean your normal definition of any type of job/responsibility whatsoever. Pretty sure no one is trying to get you to slave away in an Amazon warehouse, so "labor" includes white collar jobs.

This would mean everything is run, determined, and organized by either the AI machine itself, or an elite class of humans. After all, people don't do things for free, and organizing/governing this utopian socialist paradise is "work," so they will expect something in return.

For scenario 1, I don't think I should have to go into too much detail about why machines controlling every aspect of our lives will be terrifying. WALL-E aside, AI will probably figure at some point "wait why am I keeping these humans alive when they contribute nothing?"

So, let's talk about scenario 2: no one works except for the elites, who ultimately get extra power and privileges, unless you want to naively believe there will be benevolent people who make sure you never have to work for nothing in return. If there are people who have more, there will be people who want more. Those people will be willing to do more to have a better life for themselves. But that's work. So, our elites in charge of everything need to have constant propaganda to assure everybody that they are simply servants sacrificing themselves for the rest of you, and their mansions and abundance is simply a little compensation but it's nowhere close to make up for the pain of their minimal amount of "work." They'll take more and more for themselves, so while yes you will be taken care of, it will be in a tiny pod with portioned, dull meals, barely kept alive pumped with dopamine so you don't question anything.

Now capitalism rears its ugly head again. People will read about the US and how it had unprecedented economic growth on its way to being a superpower. The most capable people, who think they should be getting more than others, will want to go back to that, ignoring how badly it ended and saying "they just didn't do it right, we will do REAL capitalism!" You can't have people voting for evil capitalism, so you'd either have to get rid of voting or control their access to information so they don't vote wrong.

Even more importantly you need EVERYONE to be forced to remain in your society. If a bunch of capable people go right next door with all the same advanced tech but start a new society running on capitalism - although it will be awful and have work, which is literal slavery - they will grow faster, which means they will be more powerful, and at some point they may make a military. So, to nip this in the bud everyone has to be forced to stay in the socialist paradise at gunpoint for their own good.

Next, let's think about how entertainment will work in this hedonism-only world. Are you okay with everything - music, movies, websites, etc - being made by machines? It probably has to be. Can't have actual kpop, because being a kpop singer is work. So is setting up the stage and designing the dances and writing the songs, so the machines will have to do all of that and make virtual stars for you to follow. You may say, "no, because all work won't be illegal, they'll do it because they want to," but if you're allowed to be a kpop star, everyone will want to be, and they'll have to compete for the limited spots. As soon as you introduce the concept of competition, people will try to outwork each other, and they'll want benefits for their efforts, which pushes us back towards capitalism.

I don't know about you, but I think if you completely remove the human element, you can't have your high culture, high class. The system will also be set up to use whatever minimum effort/energy creates something that will get the necessary dopamine rush to keep the bad feelings away, so get ready to only have what you consider to be low culture.

This part is personal opinion, but I don't think any unfeeling machine will ever be able to match the emotional depth of human art. So, we're going to have to erase history. Can't have people hearing Mozart and wondering why the AI's music doesn't have that same feeling, or they may decide they want to go back to a world of labor, which means people who do work will want more, which means they'll want to start a capitalist type of system, and so on.

This is already essay-length, but long story short the world doesn't work without work. I think we should be working a lot less, but eliminating it entirely can't be done.

 

[Dr Iron Arc]

For scenario 1, I don't think I should have to go into too much detail about why machines controlling every aspect of our lives will be terrifying. WALL-E aside, AI will probably figure at some point "wait why am I keeping these humans alive when they contribute nothing?"

Somewhat unrelated, but WALL-E is actually my favorite Pixar movie because I view that society as pretty close to a utopia. Then WALL-E himself had to go muck it up and that's why he's the villain of the story.