Originally posted by Reid:
Why can't everybody become an artist, or skip around in meadows all day? That's quite literally what our species evolved to do. I agree that it's not reasonable for everybody to find an audience for their work, but that's a concern for capitalists, and is neither necessary nor sufficient to be considered an artist.So that really is a huge question, what purpose do most of the people on this Earth have? What can they be given? I don't think everyone can reasonable become an artist, or just skip around in meadows all day.
I mean, maybe the future can be local competitive events world-round? Or maybe teach everyone math and put them towards solving open problems.
I mean, maybe the future can be local competitive events world-round? Or maybe teach everyone math and put them towards solving open problems.
Finding purpose in your life is your own responsibility. I just think you'll need a short "revolutionary period" where boring pointless office jobs are kept open, just to avoid the culture shock. Maybe we're already living in that period, though?
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Yes. This already happens today.Eh, you think this is an actual possibility? That people will starve to death because they're superfluous to economic development?
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I'm not interested in prognostication, I'm stating facts.I think Marx did envision this; are we to look back to him? High unemployment leads to people revolting, sure, but if they're cared for will this still have an effect?
I mean, the truth is, the political and social systems of the world are at the foothills of a mountainous crisis. Our political climate is going to change. We may not have a solution for how that works, but it should bring us hope.
Huh. Well the average age of death is going down in rural America. Marked for death (economically) I suppose describes it.
I get the impression that you're suggesting the future holds some kind of utopian socialism.
I mean, the truth is, the political and social systems of the world are at the foothills of a mountainous crisis. Our political climate is going to change. We may not have a solution for how that works, but it should bring us hope.
Huh. Well the average age of death is going down in rural America. Marked for death (economically) I suppose describes it.
I get the impression that you're suggesting the future holds some kind of utopian socialism.
We aren't talking about a fast, night-and-day switch over to a fully automated, post-scarcity society. We're talking about a long, dragged-out transition period, during which we will continue to experience scarcity, and we'll still need people to work boring terrible jobs they hate, but also during which people are slowly edged out of the economy as the technologies to replace them are invented and implemented. It's easy to guess that socialism might work after this transition is over, but it's a mote harder to predict whether there will still be people alive to call themselves socialists by then.
I think we're deep into this transition period, though, and I also think the only thing that has prevented the world from descending into madness is the psychology of employers. It's well known that wages are sticky, and that employers do not lay off unnecessary workers until there is a pressing financial need to do so (this is why companies downsize, rather than slowly eliminating positions as they become unnecessary). Wage stagnation over the past 30 years, despite ever-increasing productivity, is strong evidence that we're already several decades into this transition.