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Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where 'machines can make all the food and stuff' isn't a bad idea
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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I remember him saying that computers would make people work less by being more productive, but in the end the difference was pocketed by the rich. I don't think it's just a technology problem...
It has never been a technology problem.
If society was build correct in a democracy, advances in all fields would always be for benefitting the people and the majority.
This has been a problem ever since the industrial revolution and what caused the great depression.
If technology advances to a stage where we only need 75% of the current work force, the answer is not to fire 25%. It is for everyone to benefit and work 25% less or get 25% more pay. (or 12,5% work less and 12,5% more pay. Our choice)
That is a working democracy.
You should get 33% more pay as the full work force productivity would be 4/3 of the original in your example.
This difference might be clearer with an example where only half of the work force is required to match the original productivity. In this case, if the full work force continues to work, productivity is presumably doubled. That's not a 50% increase. It's 200% of the original or a 100% increase. So the trade-off should be between 50% fewer working hours and 100% more pay.
Of course, instead you'll work the same hours for the same pay and some shareholders pocket that 100% difference.
Communist!
/s (well kinda)
The term you'll get more mileage out of here is Luddite.
The looms are stealing our jobs, so we should organize against them.
I wrote test automation for Microsoft for years. My team turned a process that took 6 weeks of a hundred people working full time to produce manual test results into one that could complete in an hour on a couple hundred computers in a lab somewhere. It was a massive breakthrough in productivity on our part. Of course, 90% of the team was laid off when the code they'd written could be maintained by a couple of people.
So yeah, the difference "went to the shareholders", certainly not to the people that did the work
It's all about power. The 1% will not give up their power ( = the opportunity to do whatever they want whenever they want) just because it would be good for the 99% to work less.
That's not how the world works.
The 1% will continue to make sure that they are in control of whatever the next thing is that grant them the same or more power.
If owning AI gives them power they will do whatever necessary to own AI and let's not kid ourselves here "they" would be you and me if we had the chance.
It took me way too long to realize that a lot of people think like you do and then project it onto the rest of us.
No. If I’m being honest, I would pass at the chance to have power. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’d do the right thing with it. I have a small handful of people who have suffered at my hands throughout my life and I have a hard enough time sleeping over that.
To know that I was making the quality of life worse for people who I’d never even know for my own sake would break me. I’d deserve it too.
Unfortunately, the people who I’ve know that exercise power over their fellow man don’t seem to lose a wink of sleep. They justify everything, but they’re miserable and they don’t have any real friends. They’re constantly paranoid that people are out to take something from them because they are. Some people try to reach the pockets above the foot on their back to take what they can from the situation. I can’t relate to them either, but I can at least empathize with them.
Power corrupts, dilute it as much as possible.
We need a branch of government filled with random people. Politicians are people who seek power, the type of person that wins big elections is not a normal person, thus, normal people are not represented in government.
In the US, I wish the house were filled with random people. Randomly select 3 people for each house seat, have the 3 people debate and explain their personal beliefs, and then people vote. This would fill the seat with someone who is mostly likeable, but is still a normal person and not a career politician.
There is the G1000 initiative in Belgium and the Netherlands. The idea is to have the legislative body be random people. There are even towns that already have implemented it. The concept is simple enough: representative democracy is inherently flawed, so just have legislators drawn by a lottery. With a high enough amount of people, you will get a near perfect representation of the population proportionally represented. For national bodies, the proposal is to have 1000 legislators, hence the number.
Personally I quite like the idea, especially if it were to be paired with a technocratic executive branch.
Too bad the Netherlands is about to go down the shitter with their mini-Hitler.