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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33387 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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At what level of 'smarts,' however, will an AI that is already training on how you do your job going to stop needing you around to do it?

At some point soon we will at least increase productivity by 1.5-2x per person. At that point why don't we collectively demand a 3 or 4 day workweek?

First ask yourself this: why do you not already have a 3 day workweek?

Because I'm too poor.

As usual, WTF Happened in 1971 is a fitting reference. Productivity and compensation stopped correlating in 1971, and we haven't (effectively) collectively demanded a reduced work week yet.

We could have transitioned to three day work weeks way before 1971. The flaw in Keynes's famous prediction is that, past the point of basic subsistance, economic utility is relative. People don't want to make $20,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 or $200,000 inflation-adjusted household income to be happy. They want more than their peers. They want to have class-markers that low status people don't, not the luxuries that those class-markers manifest themselves in. It's why the canard about modern trailer trash having it better than kings in 1900 is so ridiculous.

If whatever happened in 1971 never happened, people would still be working as much as ever. The hedonic treadmill would just be moving faster.

Humans don't 'collectively' demand things because generally there's a massive divergence in values at scale. Coordination problems abound.

And put simply, if you can make $4000 for a 4 day work week, and $5500 for a 5 day work week, then there are plenty of rational reasons to just work an extra day.

The choice to do or not do so comes down to, I'd say, values, as above. If you have high time preference and thus value leisure and 'fun' things, you'll try to minimize the time spent working as much as you can.

The markets will balance supply of labor and demand for labor, as they always do, unless we actually do achieve fully automated gay luxury space communism.

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