• bentropy@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I understand very well that nobody wants to work anymore. The problem is, that despite all the technological advancements we still have to work. It’s outrageous!

    • physicswizard@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It’s because people’s wants have shifted as technology progresses. If everyone was satisfied to live like a medieval peasant and all we needed to produce was clean food/water we probably could have automated most of the agricultural work and done away with the need for the majority of labor.

      But people today now want on-demand deliveries, entertainment, healthcare, telecommunications, international travel, etc. These shifting desires continuously push the boundaries of what we are capable of producing which ends up redirecting labor rather than eliminating it.

      • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        Tangentially, if we could support everybody at the medieval peasant level without work, well, why don’t we? By which I mean, let’s institute a Universal Basic Income. What a familiar, yet so profoundly different, world it would be if you didn’t have to worry about having a safe (although Spartan) place to live, clean water to drink, basic, nutritious food to eat, and care if you get hurt or sick, no matter what. You’d still have to work for all the modern luxuries.

        I guess the workers would have leverage against abusive, exploitative employers, if the cost of quitting a bad situation was simply not going to Paris this year, rather than life-or-death struggle, and we can’t have that!