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[Baffler]

There are already plenty of people engaged in make-work, or at least what they perceive as such. It just doesn't matter, so long as someone is willing to pay them to do it, because depressed as they are with those jobs they don't feel like they have any actual choice in the matter. I've started to see people saying the government should start hiring armies of people to build megastructures (like desalinization projects on the west coast, or The Wall) and other more traditional CCC and PWC type works as a stopgap before an "economic transition." Whatever form that transition takes, something like this would probably at least help out with that as long as it paid reasonably well.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

New Works Progress Administration?

[Reelya]

Wanted to post a random aimless comment and had to look for the proper thread for it.  Looks like this is the one.

One of the suppliers that ships to my customer at work is suffering severe production delays that's fucking up a lot of shit right now.  It's because they're in the middle of upgrading their factory.  To fully automated production.  Delays right now, but their output will be increased when it's done.  When I read the e-mail chain explaining this, I couldn't help but get political in my head. 

Just fucking die already, economy, so we can move on.  I feel like the economy is a decrepit old person who's been lying on their deathbed for years, but won't fucking die because the entire world is putting their own lives on hold to stay by their side and keep them barely clinging to life.  Please just acknowledge your end and release us all.  This can't go on forever, but the longer it does, the more the living are fucking up their own lives for you.

I'm sure it won't be long before my industry (logistics) starts losing shitloads of jobs to fleets of self-driving cargo trucks, and automated reporting functions.  Please be dead before then.

That's actually one of my recent pet theories. When you look at Marx's theorized stages of history:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs

Marx delineated the specific conditions under which such a creed would be applicable—a society where technology and social organization had substantially eliminated the need for physical labor in the production of things, where "labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want". Marx explained his belief that, in such a society, each person would be motivated to work for the good of society despite the absence of a social mechanism compelling them to work, because work would have become a pleasurable and creative activity. Marx intended the initial part of his slogan, "from each according to his ability" to suggest not merely that each person should work as hard as they can, but that each person should best develop their particular talents.

To Marx's historical materialism, stages of history are not events, they're basically inevitable. Socialism is meant to follow capitalism, and communism follows socialism. But in the sense that mercantilism followed feudalism, rather than being understood as an actual revolution. Marx held that politics follows from economic power, rather than the other way around: the idea of a political revolution to impose some sort of Marxist economy was doomed from the start because it doesn't accept what Marx has to say about how historical materialism works.

So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.

[Max™]

Yup, seen that elsewhere, Marx was talking about timescales of centuries, not mayfly revolutions that get tamped back down within a decade.

[MrRoboto75]

So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.

How (and much more importantly, why) would the goverment give several million people allowances to do literally nothing?

[SalmonGod]

This is how I've felt about it for years already.  That things will change when the ability to change is right in front of people and makes so much sense that it isn't even seen as ideological.

I think the best comparison in recent memory is file sharing.  It couldn't be stopped.  When it started becoming popular with Napster and early torrents, media publishers went on a rampage trying to shut it down with an absolutist attitude towards the whole thing.  There was a new story every day over a lawsuit ruining some ordinary person's life because they downloaded something copyrighted.  But this hardly deterred anybody.  Because the whole idea just integrated into people's lives so naturally, and made so much sense, that it couldn't be dissuaded.  Trying to combat it in courts might as well have been like trying to stop ants from collecting crumbs off all sidewalks in the world by walking around with a magnifying glass.  And the issue has pretty well died down.  Piratebay and the like are still hunted, but individual users indulge quite freely with very little fear of repercussion.  Nobody really gives a shit anymore.

And I do see it as a sort of revolution.  It was the population successfully defying authority.  People doing what they wanted in such large numbers that no power could stop them.  If that's not a revolution, I don't know what is.  But it wasn't ideologically driven.  It was driven by millions of people suddenly having the capability to easily do something that improved their quality of life, accessible in a way that felt matter-of-course.

And I think there will be such a revolution for the economy in general.  It won't be driven by ideology, or even by government policies.  It'll be driven by tools becoming available to people that enable different forms of cooperation in a way that feels natural and accessible.  With the existing economy failing people all over the place, I think what we'll see is tools for organizing cooperation and resource sharing online get more and more common and effective.  People will turn to this kind of thing more and more often, and the amount of resources a person can gain access to without traditional capitalist means will expand as a result.  A new economy will grow organically within and eventually consume the dead carcass of the old.

So as much as I get frustrated with and drawn to these things, I agree that it's not politics or riots that we need to create change.  We need to develop tools that make mutually beneficial resource sharing and cooperation as intuitive as making a friend on Facebook, and it will happen on its own.  And established powers will fight it like hell when they see people begin to unwind their resources from capitalist institutions, but they won't be able to do anything to stop it, just like file sharing.

The problem is whether the economy dying drags you screaming into the grave with it.

Poverty, stress-related illness, or suicide... the economy is going to kill me regardless.  Bring it on.

[TempAcc]

Plus, how exactly will this magical government entity which is responsible for giving everyone their allowance not completely and utterly abuse its power and set society back until it gets toppled, akin to every communist regime ever? In fact, given this will be a world in which robots are advanced enough to substitute humans in every conceivable task, how will be this magical government populated by angels somehow not make full use of this new tech to completely solidify its hegemony over every aspect of everyone's lives? How would the people even stop it?

This is why I'm against the government providing basic income AT LEAST until tech advances to the point that resource scarcity becomes almost irrelevant, which is still a far future type thing (if a thing at all, as we have done a pretty great job of increasing our needs at the same rate we increase our capacity of acquiring resources).

I think the future should be more about empowering people as individuals, rather then creating a huge super daddy government that controls everything and gives people's allowances because their work doesn't matter anymore, because there's a pretty bad history behind those kind of attempts, because regardless of how tech changes, people are still people, and people have a tendency to fuck other people over if they gain too much power, either intentionally or unintentionally.

Money gives people a way of gathering power through their own efforts. People will have to remain productive and relevant in the grand scheme of things as individuals. The moment this gets thrown down in favor of some comfortable collective hugbox is when shit hits the fan.
You see, the moment people have tabletop machines capable of basically making anything to the point the market gets less relevant, it isn't communism, but something quite contrary to it. There's no ploretarian struggle because classes start to blend together and get more and more similar, and ploretarian struggle against a perceived elite has always been one of the cores of Marx's economical theories, so communism isn't the proper term for this at all. Classes will, of course, still exist, but the difference in each person's ability to achieve their wants and goals will be far increases and more leveled.

The government should remain as an entity capable of keeping shit from going out of the window, but less relevant and needed than it is today simply because its services will become less relevant at the point I have a star trek style replicator next to me and an AI to answer my inquiries.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

If people fuck each other over like you say, then no effort can prevent it from happening. Why bother?

[Reelya]

So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.

How (and much more importantly, why) would the goverment give several million people allowances to do literally nothing?

FFS, they already give millions of people allowances to do literally nothing. It's called welfare. If all jobs are automated, then more and more people are going to end up on welfare. It's not a "why" question, it's just where things are naturally headed, without any actual decisions needed on part of the government. Your question could be rephrased as "why doesn't the government simply let people starve to death rather than waste money on food stamps".

There is this idea that if you're giving people money to live on, you need to make them "do" things.
But setting up and running those make-work or "job training" things is far more expensive than just handing out a living allowance however, and they're generally a waste of time when excess number of people are already competing for the same jobs. Upskilling yet more people to have skills which are already in surplus is clearly a waste of time and money, and is done for political reasons: to make it appear that people are doing something for the welfare money.

As for the idea of a minimum income, that usually replaces both the tax-free threshold and welfare system. By that measure, a majority of the population already get some form of income assistance. So the question of "how do we pay for that" is by the fact that minimum income is instead of the entire set of welfare agencies, thus saving money on welfare recipients, and replaces tax returns / tax-breaks for lower income people. There's no "free money" involved, because it's just making the existing remuneration system simpler and reducing how much the government pries into what you do with your time.

[redwallzyl]

the idea is not far in the future its starting to ramp up right now. it may take a few generations but it is inevitable. despite what traditionalist economists (and lets be honest republicans and their idiotic anti poor mentality) may like to think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#June_referendums

[MrRoboto75]

So maybe most people get this wrong. Maybe Communism happens when nobody has a job anymore because automation, and at that point people will demand (and be given) a living allowance, because that's now more cost-effective than trying to "employ" them. In fact, efforts to protect worker's jobs and hinder moving to full automation might actually slow down this development: e.g. "communist" states might actually be the worst at actually progressing things to Marx's vision of communism. When almost nobody has a job and literally everything is paid for by government, the rationale for extensive privately-owned business empires will collapse.

How (and much more importantly, why) would the goverment give several million people allowances to do literally nothing?

FFS, they already give millions of people allowances to do literally nothing. It's called welfare. If all jobs are automated, then more and more people are going to end up on welfare. It's not a "why" question, it's just where things are naturally headed, without any actual decisions needed on part of the government.

Your question could be rephrased as "why doesn't the government simply let people starve to death rather than waste money on food stamps".

Well, there is this idea that if you're giving people money to live on, you need to make them "do" things. Basically, the work ethic thing holds that people who don't work should literally be left to starve to death ... i guess? The problem is that societies which literally operate like that turn into hellholes.

Setting up and running those make-work or "job training" things is far more expensive than just handing out a living allowance however, and they just train people in random skills then throw them to "the market" where they still can't get a job. How good is that as tax payers money allocted?

And this sort of make-work mainly exists to assuage our protestant work ethic. Right now people get upset at the thought that someone else gets to take it easy (even if they're dirt poor), so we make the poor jump through hoops to feel like they're doing something for the cash. But it's ineffective, wasteful, expensive and intrusive to run things like that.

As for the idea of a minimum income, that usually replaces both the tax-free threshold and welfare system. By that measure, a majority of the population already get some form of income assistance. So the question of "how do we pay for that" is by the fact that minimum income is instead of the entire set of welfare agencies, thus saving money on welfare recipients, and replaces tax returns / tax-breaks for lower income people. There's no "free money" involved, because it's just making the existing remuneration system simpler and reducing how much the government pries into what you do with your time.

And welfare isn't free.  Who pays for welfare?  We, people who work for an income (or, at the minimum, produce something of value), and pay taxes which go into those welfare systems.

If nobody works, then welfare has zero money to give anyone.  More importantly, which is cheaper, providing for the needs of a million people, or providing for the needs of a thousand people?

[Reelya]

Each dollar of food stamps spent stimulates the GDP by about $1.73. Tax cuts only stimulate the economy by about 30 cents in the dollar. $1 billion "saved" by slashing welfare would also reduce GDP by $1.4 billion dollars. So that means less growth, less production, less jobs.

There's also the crime issue. With no money for food, crime will rise, meaning more police and prisons. And there's no way on Earth that a "militarized approach" to dealing with hungry unemployed people will be cheaper than current welfare payments. So that means more taxes, more crime, higher insurance costs, and higher home security costs.

The one "up side" is that those people kicked off welfare will have to get a job. But since there's less money to go around, then you have more people chasing less jobs, which means pay cuts. So say goodbye to whatever tax saving you made from kicking people off welfare, since your own pay will decline.

What's most likely is that the money that you earn as an American - some of the highest wages in the entire world - is subsidized by the system as a whole, and part of that includes the welfare system, which means your bargaining position for wages is improved. How are you going to do with all these new workers in the market desperate to do your job for minimum wage? The best thing is that a pool of desperate people pulling down wages is the gift that keeps giving ... businesses don't have to hire them, just the threat of hiring them means they can slash wages across the board, which means more money to the rich (which only stimulates a little GDP) and less money to the working class (which would have stimulated a lot of GDP), so overall, this welfare slashing thing that's mean to make people get jobs and grow the economy would probably do the opposite by just about every sensible measure you care to look at.

After all, why are you fundamentally able to earn money? It's because the government keeps printing money so that people have money to spend. Without that constant money-pump, your entire economy would collapse overnight. Making sure people have enough to eat is the most cost-effective way to introduce the new money into the economy, and avoid a deflationary spiral, from a purely selfish economic sense: the fact that it helps people is just a bonus.

[SalmonGod]

And at the end of the day, it's still an artificial social construct thats only purpose is to decide who gets to tell who what they should do.  There is plenty of work that people could be doing for each other and together to improve each other's lives and our communities.  But if there isn't a rich person who cares to say "I will pay for this to be done", then it becomes a matter of personal sacrifice to do those things.  Unless you're financially independent enough that your free time isn't valuable to you as rest to keep you functioning in your real job.

The whole question of "who pays for it" lacks imagination.  If we restructure the nature and priority of our organization, we could eliminate that question.  What I think when I hear "who will pay for it" is that creating true happiness, wealth, and prosperity only matters in our society if it can be measured by the blessing of those with dollars.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

The whole question of "who pays for it" lacks imagination.  If we restructure the nature and priority of our organization, we could eliminate that question.  What I think when I hear "who will pay for it" is that creating true happiness, wealth, and prosperity only matters in our society if it can be measured by the blessing of those with dollars.

At it's heart the speaker may mean "this will be used as an excuse to steal our money and blow it on congressional hookers and drugs".

[MrRoboto75]

What's most likely is that the money that you earn as an American - some of the highest wages in the entire world - is subsidized by the system as a whole, and part of that includes the welfare system, which means your bargaining position for wages is improved. How are you going to do with all these new workers in the market desperate to do your job for minimum wage? The best thing is that a pool of desperate people pulling down wages is the gift that keeps giving ... businesses don't have to hire them, just the threat of hiring them means they can slash wages across the board, which means more money to the rich (which only stimulates a little GDP) and less money to the working class (which would have stimulated a lot of GDP), so overall, this welfare slashing thing that's mean to make people get jobs and grow the economy would probably do the opposite by just about every sensible measure you care to look at.

My income will lower either way, either I have competition in the workforce, or more of my wage gets fed into the government to support those who could have worked.

All you've done is cut off the lowest rungs on the ladder.  At a certain point there's no entry level jobs, because you've rendered them too expensive.  So how will people replace your job when you retire?

After all, why are you fundamentally able to earn money? It's because the government keeps printing money so that people have money to spend. Without that constant money-pump, your entire economy would collapse overnight. Making sure people have enough to eat is the most cost-effective way to introduce the new money into the economy, and avoid a deflationary spiral, from a purely selfish economic sense: the fact that it helps people is just a bonus.

I'm able to earn money because the company I work for earned a profit.  If anything, we have less wealth when the government prints money.  And they really don't print that much money, most government funding is through either taxes or borrowing, and inflation is controlled via the banking system anyway.