Bull**it Jobs

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

i'm all for reducing my working hours, but can I do one week of full time, with one week off?  Job sharing with someone else would be great. 

Do I still have enough money for holidays in this brave new world?  Because if not I would rather work full time, the reason I go to work is to be able to afford to go nice places when i'm not at work.

Theoretically there’d be no money. That’s kind of the point. Abundance discourages the need for capital.

[Heartofice]

36 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Theoretically there’d be no money. That’s kind of the point. Abundance discourages the need for capital.

There will always be someone who has more access to capital than others though right? 

In reality I'm guessing you have a lot of people on just about enough to get by, and almost no ability to do anything to create more wealth (wealth in any form, not just money) in comparison to others, and then a tiny elite of people who have absolute control of capital from the top. Unless of course everything is controlled by the AI overlords, making us closer to the Matrix.

[Rippounet]

2 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

In reality I'm guessing you have a lot of people on just about enough to get by, and almost no ability to do anything to create more wealth (wealth in any form, not just money) in comparison to others, and then a tiny elite of people who have absolute control of capital from the top.

Seems like you're describing the current system here. Individual creation of wealth is becoming increasingly harder for the majority: what we call "death of the middle-class" really means that people who depend on their job for a living no longer have the resources or time to create additional wealth. There's been lots of studies about this already, the main conclusion being that it's become near impossible to get rich(er) through your work/salary, you only achieve it through investment (especially financial). So unless you inherit significant wealth from your parents you become poorer than them in most respects.

If you cancel the requirement to work 40h/week otoh the majority will have a lot of time to create their own wealth. Of course, such wealth wouldn't exactly be measured/perceived in the same way. Someone spending his free time to become a great guitar player would have a form of "wealth" but this wealth would not necessarily translate into money.

And of course, abolishing bullshit jobs means there has been a significant evolution of capitalism and far less concentration of wealth in the first place.
Yes, it's utopian.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

56 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

There will always be someone who has more access to capital than others though right? 

In reality I'm guessing you have a lot of people on just about enough to get by, and almost no ability to do anything to create more wealth (wealth in any form, not just money) in comparison to others, and then a tiny elite of people who have absolute control of capital from the top. Unless of course everything is controlled by the AI overlords, making us closer to the Matrix.

No, it doesn’t have to always be that way, and like Ripp said, all you did is just describe modern times, times in which a tennis player can sport a $700,000 watch while half the world is starving in poverty. We can change that. It’s simply a choice.   

 

[felice]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Theoretically there’d be no money. That’s kind of the point. Abundance discourages the need for capital.

There's never going to be unlimited resources of all kinds (unless we relocate to a virtual reality), and I think money is too useful to give up as a way of allocating finite resources. Just eliminate the concept of financial investment instead, so money is just something you spend for everyone (like it is now for most people). Lotteries might be more suitable for some allocations, but not all. If everyone can reasonably access about the same amount of money, then a market system will allocate scarce resources to those who value them most, rather than a rich elite.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, felice said:

There's never going to be unlimited resources of all kinds (unless we relocate to a virtual reality), and I think money is too useful to give up as a way of allocating finite resources. Just eliminate the concept of financial investment instead, so money is just something you spend for everyone (like it is now for most people). Lotteries might be more suitable for some allocations, but not all. If everyone can reasonably access about the same amount of money, then a market system will allocate scarce resources to those who value them most, rather than a rich elite.

In theory we can create self-sustaining ecosystems that will produce unlimited food and water. Once you can achieve this, money starts to lose it's value. It diminishes further once we can establish universal housing. Over time it will be less and less necessary as we are able to mass produce anything we want, and it becomes totally useless once we achieve some of the technology you see in shows like Star Trek. Obviously this will not likely occur in any of our lifetimes, but yes, over time the need for money can be phased out. 

[felice]

11 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

In theory we can create self-sustaining ecosystems that will produce unlimited food and water. Once you can achieve this, money starts to lose it's value. It diminishes further once we can establish universal housing.

But who gets the houses closest to the beach, or with the best views, etc? Tickets to live performances, and the best seats in particular? We might be able to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, but there will always be things that can't be replicated infinitely, even in the Star Trek universe.

[Heartofice]

15 minutes ago, felice said:

But who gets the houses closest to the beach, or with the best views, etc? Tickets to live performances, and the best seats in particular? We might be able to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, but there will always be things that can't be replicated infinitely, even in the Star Trek universe.

And who owns the Star Trek replicators

[DMC]

36 minutes ago, felice said:

But who gets the houses closest to the beach

Would anyone really want beachfront property in the coming decades?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, felice said:

But who gets the houses closest to the beach, or with the best views, etc? Tickets to live performances, and the best seats in particular? We might be able to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, but there will always be things that can't be replicated infinitely, even in the Star Trek universe.

I’m not sure those things would really matter once we reached the point I’m talking about. We’re not talking about 2030 or 2050 or probably not even 2100. The world will be a very different place, and if we head down this path, it will get us as close as possible to having utopia.

11 hours ago, Heartofice said:

And who owns the Star Trek replicators

Every household.  

11 hours ago, DMC said:

Would anyone really want beachfront property in the coming decades?

But we could live under the sea!!!  

[Heartofice]

14 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Every household 

But who makes the replicators?  Who owns the property rights to them? 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

But who makes the replicators?  Who owns the property rights to them? 

The robot slaves make them and nobody owns the property rights to them. You’re not thinking big enough.

[sologdin]

beachfront property in the coming decades?

dunno if it'll be worthwhile--consider tulum, a paradise, but overwhelmed by sargassum. obscene climate change aliens are winning.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Wouldn't any replicator that doesn't suck total ass be self-replicating?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

46 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Wouldn't any replicator that doesn't suck total ass be self-replicating?

We might have a bit of a Russian nesting doll problem here, but we can make it work.

[DanteGabriel]

2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Wouldn't any replicator that doesn't suck total ass be self-replicating?

Clearly someone has never seen the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

[felice]

4 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m not sure those things would really matter once we reached the point I’m talking about.

That humans would cease to care about who gets access to limited resources seems like a pretty radical claim, and failing that, even in a utopia some things are still limited and/or vary in quality (eg real estate, time with specific people).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, felice said:

That humans would cease to care about who gets access to limited resources seems like a pretty radical claim, and failing that, even in a utopia some things are still limited and/or vary in quality (eg real estate, time with specific people).

The point of the theory is that we can eventually create universal abundance.

[Conflicting Thought]

6 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I’m not sure those things would really matter once we reached the point I’m talking about. We’re not talking about 2030 or 2050 or probably not even 2010. The world will be a very different place, and if we head down this path, it will get us as close as possible to having utopia.

How probable is that we reach that point though, we are now facing one of (if not THE worst) the worst threats to our existence (as we know it) , in the history of humanity. As i see it, its much more likley a dystopian society than a utopian one, whre money doesn't exist. 

And if for some reason we solve our little problem, a 100 years for money to disappear is way to low of a time span for that to happend. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, Conflicting Thought said:

How probable is that we reach that point though, we are now facing one of (if not THE worst) the worst threats to our existence (as we know it) , in the history of humanity. As i see it, its much more likley a dystopian society than a utopian one, whre money doesn't exist. 

And if for some reason we solve our little problem, a 100 years for money to disappear is way to low of a time span for that to happend. 

It's quite possible that the climate crisis actually drives us towards what I'm describing. An initial increase in scarce resources could change our collective mindset, leading us to aim towards a smarter society that creates abundance and slowly undoes the damage we've caused to the Earth. All of this is theoretically possible, but it requires mass buy in, which we are very far from at this point in time.

Also, 100 years is a pretty liberal projection. Hundreds of years is the more likely outcome, if it happens at all.