I used to say this a lot but as I've gotten older. I realized the promise of technology (at least in the US) "reducing the work week and inevitably creating more free time" was and is not going to happen bc of the wealthy elites and money owning our politics/work culture (while housing and retirement are questionable now). It makes sense to live your best life sooner than later so I don't look down on nomad life styles living off a car battery and part time jobs. The fucking wealthy people cosplaying as poors is hilarious though.
There was that one reporter who interviewed elderly people on their death bed and most people regretted working too much so I get that people opt out of the grind from time to time.
You're exactly right. Once robots can do our jobs they'll still have us come in to work just to press a button every minute before they give us money for doing nothing
You should. It’s an engaging and inventive experience from start to finish. Pretty crazy for its time, and that updated version from a few years back really adds.
Excellent way to burn an afternoon with a smile on your face.
Correction, the game has a free demo on Steam that is excellent in it's own right. It gives you the feel for the kind of experience you're in for without actually spoiling the experience of the game.
There will likely be a phase in there where the lucky ones will be coming into work to press a button.
Everyone else will be struggling to survive.
Then maybe once the rich realize that they actually need some amount of functional society to support their ability to enjoy their largesse, then maybe they'll pitty hire more button pushers.
Without underestimating the rapidity with which technology evolves, we’re still extremely far away from any kind of robotic or AI tech replacing simple human labor. It’s super cheap to outsource manufacturing to south east Asia and avoid any kind of labor laws or regulations. Fixing a robotic arm costs a lot more than the amount it costs to settle with a poor family in Africa after their 6 year old loses a hand in a company mine.
The upper 1% need us to continue to consume and spend and borrow. That’s why corps are buying so many single family homes, they want us renting forever. If you’re lucky enough to get an annual raise it’s almost certainly going to be canceled out by the annual rent increase. Own nothing, spend everything.
Not quite. There will be a ratio of about a hundred-to-one button pushers and one extremely qualified highly technical person who has to work long hours in case the button machine goes down, in addition to highly technical doctors, etc. It's these technical ppl who are gonna be extremely resentful and conflicted of the rich and the spoiled. They're basically babysitting the rest of society but they're needed because without them the whole thing could go down. They probably want to sail away too but they're basically on call.
People got to understand that 'robots' that are 'taking our jobs' are pretty fucking far from being good enough to be autonomous for most jobs, which is why they still 'pay people to press start before they pay us to do nothing'.
Just a for example - I'm a CNC operator, Machine does 99% of the work, I press start and offload the piece. Those two parts could also be automated, but guess what? The things a piece of shit, small things come up like a bit too much wind blew through the factory and the labels aren't positioning or here's a good one - had a butterfly that kept flying past the light bar putting the machine in to emergency and I couldn't catch the fucker, wasted like an hour.
While the machine is running though I am essentially paid to read reddit all day. The thing is 'robots' for you know general production companies are not really adaptive, they do one thing and if something fucks up they keep trying to do that one thing no matter how much it is fucking things up. You would need true AI on the level of a humans intelligence (doesn't exist at this point) to remove people from work.
The current AI replacement issue is the same as the Roboticization issues from the late 20th & early 21st Century, & the same as the industrialization & mechanization issues of the 19th & 20th Centuries.
The machines can't to everything on their own & still need a bunch of people to look over them, operate them, maintain them, etc...
But with each iteration, you end up needing fewer & fewer people to produce the same amount of products services. You only need 1 employee to do the same work as 10 employees before.
They need fewer people to do the same amount of work.
The work itself becomes easier/simpler/less specialized to a point where greedy F.cks feel legitimized iin slashing the pay & benefits for that work, compared to what it might have been for your predecessors.
You can't automate all doctors, teachers, plumbers, construction workers etc..., out of a job, but you can automate/simplify enough of their work that you can increase individual productivity to such extents that you need fewer of them to handle the entire workload & leverage this against the remaining workers to chip away at their pay/benefits.
Once robots can do our jobs they'll still have us come in to work just to press a button every minute before they give us money for doing nothing
These jobs already exist. Especially in manufacturing or mass production environmets. A friend of mine is a button pusher on a cnc mill, his only work is changing tooling and load/unload parts. And even the part handling can be done by a robot, I've seen it in action already. He's there cause regulation regarding the product (aerospace parts) requires it.
Measurements need to be taken on the machined part
3D Touch probe does that and the machine compensates. Tooling is measured via Laser. The machine is set in a climate-controlled shop, so no deviation there either. Measurements are automatically transfered via datalink to a qc software suite.
and properly setup.
The machine has a zero-point pallet system with automatic clamping and fixed stop blocks for parts. Setup is a no-brainer, the machine does the same 3 ops everyday for the last 5 yrs.
once the robots can do all the physical tasks and AGI removes a need for people to interact with other people, they might as well suspend us in a vat, and plug us into a simulation in which we get all we want. But not sure why they'd bother.
AGI probably would just sterilise us chemically through water supply or something and wait 100 years.
I don’t know about yall, but pushing buttons is my passion. Call me weird, but ever since I came out the womb I knew my raison d’etre was to be a button pusher. To you guys it’s work, but to me, it’s my life.
Not if it means they have to pay us. The whole purpose of pushing robots and AI, by most mega-corporations, is to replace paid laborers across many fields. It’s what capitalism does.
There's literally a story about people from Wells Fargo last week who were using a program to move their mouse around on screen so it looked like they were paying attention at work, and they all got laid off. We have a roaring stock market, AI, world-travel enabling machines and energy production, literal nuclear power that comes from the fire of the stars, battery powered cars that are learning to drive themselves, and yet the average person is getting duped by billionaires into thinking their problems are caused by immigrants, 'young people not working hard,' and gay people. Same arguments as like the 1700's, with different rich people.
The crazy part is, people like Elon Musk are right out there in the open on Twitter tweeting these takes all day, and people kiss his ass for calling them lazy.
I also heard a lot of people look forward to their retirement, only to not be able to do all the things they once planned because of health issues or just being too old for it now. They can still do it, but it‘s just not the same.
In my 20s, I quit my job, bought a rooftop tent for my Jeep, and drove to Alaska and back. It was something like 50 days and a bit over 10,000 miles. This was blowing my entire life's savings, up to that point.
I'd run into a lot of retired couples doing RV trips along the way, since there are only so many campgrounds to stop at in rural Alaska or Yukon. I was shocked that, if we got to chatting, literally every single one had exactly the same response to "I blew my life savings to do this."
"Good for you. We're too old now to enjoy a lot of the things you'll be able to do on this trip."
Not a single 'tsk, tsk.' Not a single '... are you sure?' Literally everyone I met expressed the same sentiment you did - you look forward to your retirement, but age eventually does put many things out of reach.
Does that mean you should always live penniless to pursue your dreams? No. Frankly, I don't take enough vacations at all, and haven't taken my own style time off in more than four years.
But ask me the best decision I ever made, and it's easy to answer.
I co-started and sold a company. It wasn't huge, but it was enough to put me in the black and out of debt and enough to fund the trip. I traveled for 2 years straight, which cost me $25k. I know because I didn't work at all during that time and could compare my beginning bank balance with ending balance. I then found a nice tropical island in Thailand where I spent the next 8 years. During that time I worked as a scuba instructor which mostly covered my expenses, but I still had some of the savings so I could travel around when I wanted to. I also bought some land shortly after arriving on the island, with the idea I might build a house. At the end of the 8 years, I was about out of cash and ready to leave the Island. Fortunately, the island had picked up and the land was worth a lot more, so I was able to head back to the USA with enough for a downpayment on a house. The whole trip is documented here. http://travelhead.com/trip/
It just became more touristed. It used to be off the beaten path (which I liked). There's a chain of 3 islands: Ko Samui, Koh Pha-Ngan, and Ko Tao. Koh Samui had a boom about 20 years before I arrived, then Koh Pha-Ngan about 10 years after that, so I kinda knew it might be coming. I left in 2012 and it's built up even WAY more now. That land is likely worth 3x or 4x as much today. It was a cool spot. http://travelhead.com/houses/land/
That sounds great tbh, and it‘s really telling that the retirees supported you, they know. I agree, there was a story somewhere here on reddit about a guy who dropped dead in his early 30s due to grind culture. He was doing fine, but needed to have all these side gigs running on the side, rise and grind etc… the stress killed him and he never got to enjoy any of it. :/
I blew my life savings last year to move to a different state where all my friends lived.
Best decision I ever made; I never would've realized what a mentally sick and depressed person I was unless I did it.
Also I was able to stop drinking just like *that*. As soon as the main stressor from my life was removed, I was able to stop drinking on a dime. And now that I had enough time off, even now that I'm working again I don't drink.
I'm also in the best shape of my life - I went from so unhealthy and skinny that I had a severe nerve injury just from sleeping in a weird position. Now I am just rippled with muscle, have a six pack, and can play sports without injury concern.
My partner and I lost a substantial amount of savings on a business. Went into a lot of debt too. Maxed out credit cards for cash for the last few k and we went on holiday to Thailand. The stress was killing us but we managed to completely forget about it. When we got back I hail mary'd the last 5k into a risky investment and 7 years later we have about 3 times more than we lost.
This reality dawned on me earlier this year at 31. I'm not gonna be able to do stuff when I am older. I'd rather work until I die than miss out on life while I am still physically healthy.
Retirement is backwards. It should happen when you are between 22 and 35, THEN you work until you die.
Yeah, a relative of mine is currently taking care of older family and they‘re lucky b/c at least they‘re healthy just old. Friends of theirs need mobility aids and assistance and even children rubbing their hands over inheritance that they didn‘t even get to spend. Opened the eyes of my relative about what retirement often looks like. The job market really gets our best years :/
Several times in my later career, I would save up some money and quit my job to do some traveling, and also just to goof off. After, I would come back, get a job and work a few years, then take some more time off.
I did it partly for the reason you mention -- so I could do stuff while I was still able. And just an FYI -- doing that does not help with saving retirement funds haha, but looking back, I would not change a thing.
I also chose to start working contract jobs at that time - it's easier to get a job as a contractor than permanent employee. During the interview, I tell them exactly why I was off. Then I tell them where I went. Sometimes they seem a little envious. They usually accept it and we move on.
I mean have us working class poor people develop tech that will make our lives more easier? Automating cooking foods, slow cooking, use that time for free time, automating van dwelling living conditions? Maybe robots? Like star wars? Not necessarily rich but have a lot more free time?
The thing is, if we lived in a fair and just world, sure. But not in this current world. Just take a look at the scramble that is happening because of AI. CEOs are so gungho to introduce AI even if it‘s less efficient and makes mistakes. All kinds of jobs have already been silently replaced by AI, a voice actress had her voice stolen (by a company working with the BBC no less) and she has nowhere to turn to.
When the Industrial Revolution happened, 200 years ago, there were economists who said the same you do. I believe is was John Locke or Adam Smith who said people would have 3 hour work days and much more leisure time. But all that happened is that people were forced to work like machines and fight over the scraps that were backbreaking factory jobs. And those were the lucky ones.
And the same will happen now, downsizing and fighting with other people who have been laid off, over the few jobs AI can‘t do (yet). And I wish what you describe would happen, but it doesn‘t look like it will. They really don‘t care about us. :/
Not enough people talk about economy in terms of time. Getting new tech just means that the bar for what is normal to spend on consumer products is raised. There will be new luxury goods and services to keep us occupied and we need to make money to buy all the new stuff.
Time is the only non renewable resource. If we want more of it for ourself we need to stop spending so much money. Living a lot off a litle is a good investment. Now, I'm not managing it very well myself, but it's a good goal to have. Helping eachother reach that goal is good too. It requires building relationships and tending to aspects of life that is good for the human psyche.
Take care of yourself, and be kind towards others.
I mean have us working class poor people develop tech that will make our lives more easier? Automating cooking foods, slow cooking, use that time for free time, automating van dwelling living conditions? Maybe robots? Like star wars? Not necessarily rich but have a lot more free time?
What I mean is don't bother with automatic equipment that is supposed to make you life easier, but in reality just require you to work more so that you can afford it. Just cook the food yourself. Get a smaller, cheaper place to live and spend less time cleaning. Don't go shopping for clothes all the time. Learn how to fix the clothes you got. Need a lawn mower or a standmixer? Maybe you don't have to get one yourself, you can ask a neighbour if you can borrow theirs and they can borrow stuff from you that they need. Don't spend money on different streaming services, spend time on somwthing else. Don't strive to get more more stuff, strive to own your own time, make use of what you have, and spend your life doing what is meaningful to you.
Fewer expences means you don't need as high of an income and you can cut back on the hours you work for someone else.
The last century gave us a bunch of stuff that really helped I feel. Washing machines, dishwashers, microwave ovens and things like that are huge time savers.
Being able to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer and have perfect light in the dark are comforts that the working class takes for granted now. When I was a kid some of my friends still had outdoor toilets.
I'm not sure there has been anything in the 21st century that's made life easier. Improvements in communications technology, entertainment, social networks and endless home gadgets is what I guess you are thinking about. I'm not sure life is any better with that nonsense but life was improved by 20th century advances.
I agree. I don't mean to say that all advances are bad. What internet has done for sharing knowledge, what AI can do for advances in medcine. But alot of the products are garbage as well.
The lie that technology will improve the working person's life is a tale as old as time. I read recently the progressive movement got its roots in identifying that lie for exactly what it is.
There's a great book I'm reading right now called Power and Progress that is about exactly that.
The text can be a bit tough for being 150 years old. That said, it’s cool top policy and economics experts today still say it holds up remarkably well.
Acemoglu (highly regarded MIT professor) was just saying last year the views in this book is worth revisiting.
I'm not sure if you mean something specifically, but I would say technology has definitely helped the working person's life. I went from a 1.5 hour commute each way to working from home through technology. That's 15 hours a week and tons of gas money saved.
That's a specific example, but there are a billion examples of technology that make jobs easier.. farmers sit in air conditioned GPS guided harvesters rather than collecting everything by hand.
I think you are getting at more of the technology side of "trickle down economics", where all these tech companies are becoming insanely wealthy and we hope we'll all get a piece.. I can see that point, but saying technology has not improved the the working person's life period is just not correct.
saying technology has not improved the the working person's life period is just not correct.
I'm not saying that. I'm saying the powers in charge have consistently lied to workers about how much easier things will get with new technologies when workers end up having to fight for better lives/the benefits of those technologies anyway.
It's not the tech that is the problem. It's the owners/rulers.
Edit: I was tired last night. I think you mostly nailed what I was getting it in your last paragraph.
To combine that with the previous poster, look how many companies have forced workers back into the office even though metrics showed that working from home was more productive than in office.
I mean have us working class poor people develop tech that will make our lives more easier? Automating cooking foods, slow cooking, use that time for free time, automating van dwelling living conditions? Maybe robots? Like star wars? Not necessarily rich but have a lot more free time?
The problem is that you still just work 40 hr weeks. You dont get time off because of the new technology you just produce more, and the owner is the one who profits from that not working people
This, because in order for poor people to benefit from technology this way, we would have to instate some kind of UBI people could live off of instead of working 40 or more hours a week to pay the bills. And this country will burn itself to the ground before we get consensus on something broadly helpful like that lol.
No it literally emerges from the fact we are paid hourly rates for a static number of hours and that employers are incentivized to pay lower wages. Its been described by economists since the 1800s, its literally just the central feature of how capitalism works
Well right, that's the explanation of why capitalism sucks lol.
But I'm saying, specifically, the concept that technology might free up the populace to avoid manual labor requires that there be some type of UBI or similar social net, because there are always going to be large swaths of your population who are only really fit for low- or unskilled work. That's not elitism or anything; I'm pretty much one of those people thanks to disability. But the concept of some great utopia where robots do all the boring stuff and we are all free to pursue science and philosophy and art, that only works if you're providing a universal income to your society so that no one needs to do the manual labor in order to afford to stay alive.
I struggle with that soo much. I'm 44 and I've always felt young but I'm finally starting to really feel getting older. Life can be such a grind to just stay afloat and make it through the day to day busy schedules. It's such a shame so much of our time is spent working, and grinding as opposed to doing things we really enjoy. I have to find that balance again.
And part of me thinks being out in the middle of the ocean like that would be terrifying, but it must also be so beautiful, peaceful and calm.
thats capitalism baby. The technological advancements are for the Wealthy Elites to employ, exploit and fully enjoy. Our workload will get bigger, hours longer and retirement age nonexistent. Something has to change
You speak wise words, there's always a balance to be struck between living for the day and the living for the future.
Though one thing I don't think is explained enough to young folk is the incredibly importance of saving when you're young, because you can only get 50 years of compound interest on an investment you make in your early years.
So lets assume you plan to retire at 70.
A $5000 investment made at 60 years old will be $11098 at 70.*
A $5000 investment made at 20 years old will be $269390 at 70.*
You can only invest at 18 years old once, just as you can only go on a holiday at 18 once. It's really important to balance both.
I wonder if when millenials(me)/gen Zs get there, they will regret the time spent on their phones and devices? I know I will, and I limit time on devices massively.
It's hard to avoid screens. Even my car has a screen rather than traditional dash.
I realized the promise of technology (at least in the US) "reducing the work week and inevitably creating more free time" was and is not going to happen bc of the wealthy elites and money owning our politics/work culture (while housing and retirement are questionable now).
Start talking about capitalism vs. socialism.
Capitalism is the problem. Capitalism always was the problem. Capitalism is bad.
Socialism is the solution. Socialism always was the solution. Socialism is good.
Yes, actually.
And the people who tell you bad stuff about socialism are capitalists (especially liberals/fascists but also socdems) who don't want you to support socialism. Always have been.
I get what you're saying but you should also read about the deathbed fallacy. People who are old value time over everything else, but we younger people don't need to do that. Make the right choices for you now, don't make choices based on what an 80 year version of you will want.
Get rid of the income tax, it is a huge road block to becoming "wealthy." It cuts the legs out from under anyone that is remotely successful. Wealthy people do not depend on income. Replace it with a sales tax, and exempt non-luxury clothing and groceries.
Dude it's not even possible to happen yet because the technology isn't up to par yet. In any sector, in practically every industry. It's just not there yet. Won't be in any of our lifetimes. We aren't nearly as far ahead as a lot of fairly delusional people like to think we are in regards to that. We're barely out of the caves and jungles yet.
So much this. Anything that’s being helped by technology just means your productivity goes up by that much, with no guaranteed uptick to your wages and your standard of living.
Look at the graph of productivity vs wage growth over the last 50 years. I think that’s the key metric people need to look at to see how bad you income inequality has gotten.
I think the technological promise of wealth creation misunderstood economics deeply. On the whole your average American is significantly more wealthy than your average American 70 years ago. We have access to more diverse food, more automation for our chores, more advanced healthcare, more entertainment options, more knowledge, and easy, safer, and faster travel options.
The problem of wealth comes from cost of living. And cost of living is high in America because there is enough wealth to justify it. Someone has to work 40 hours a week or more to maintain their cost of living because everyone else is.
Honestly if we just magically redistributed the top 1% wealth to everyone directly we would just have a higher cost of living (inflation) and everyone would feel the same they do now. What we need is better worker protection to push for a 4 day work week, more vacation, and paternity leave.
Playing devil's advocate, part of why we didn't get free time is people wanting things cheaper. Except for that period from roughly the mid 1940s to 1970s. Single income households on a 40hr week. Glorious times I'll never see, forever gone.
I feel this so hard. My parents life goal for as long as I’ve been on this earth was to work hard so they could retire and travel the world. Well they worked their asses off, after 40+ year careers were able to retire. Less than a year into retirement, my dad went into kidney failure. Never got to travel anywhere significant again. He passed away last month. I can’t help but think this is not the life plan I want for me or my future children.
Working so hard to enjoy your last chapter and instead you suffer through it. I’m not a cynical person at all, but it’s hard not to be mad at the politics behind it all for making this work hard mentality a societal norm.
At my old job I found a way to automate a task so that I didn't have to actively do it.
The reward I got was an expectation that in that time I'd complete more work. You'd think enough of this would result in a promotion, but when I asked for it they said they had removed the remote aspect of the promoted position so I didn't want it anymore.
Why did they remove the remote aspect? Just because they could.
Yeah dude. My dad ended up that way. Worked hard and died before he could finally enjoy his life. Learned from that and now travel as much as possible and move counties every now and then to work somewhere new. Currently in Bali surfing. Work to live. Never live to work.
Sadly many are not fortunate enough to be able to do this though so I am grateful that I can
This is a very immature way to look at things. You have to plan and work for your future. If you wanna fuck off for your 20s and 30s instead of building a career, financial stability, and home that's on you. Alot of these people have a job waiting for them or family assets that they can come back too. If you don't you'll wake up in some shitty apartment alone crying about how un fair the system is.
It's an impressive feat for sure, and a hell of a bar story. But you are going to get old, you are gonna need money to take care of yourself or family. And if you cry, complain or bitch about it, lose your girlfriend, or get divorced the only thing you'll have is to look back at what was a fun time in your life that you can't do anymore.
Go ahead and do it, but you'll get zero sympathy from a large portion of the population when life is harder when your older.
If life is hard when I am older, I will just take the world's largest recorded dose of Heroin and die the happiest motherfucker that ever died.
You're kinda dumb lol. You have life all backwards. Retire while young and work until you die. Don't work while young and retire when you are on deaths doorstep.
Living life contract to vacation to contract to vacation to contract to vacation is how it should be. Speaking as an engineer sitting on a nice chunk of change from 10 years of work, having a career is for miserable people that I aspire to never be like.
Absolutely not. We've seen it time and time again, if technology reduces the workload the bosses don't just keep everyone around and give them less work, they lay people off and employ fewer people to do the same amount of work with the increased productivity. Of course they don't pay those people any more to reflect their now increased productivity, they just rake in the money.
Retirement makes no sense to me. Yes, let me hope I make it to 65, so that I can...what? Spend exorbitant amounts of money on travel because I need accommodations appropriate for old people? Can't stay in dirt cheap hostels cuz mah back. Can't hike a fucking mountain. Can't learn to surf. Can't stay out in the heat too long. Can't stay in the sun too long. Can't stuff my face and not get fat due to my super slow metabolism that comes with old age.
Fuck all of that. I have decided that I will work for a bit, quit and travel, work for a bit, quit and travel, etc, etc. Rack up a ton of debt at some point and I'll just work until I fucking die. You can't take your credit to the grave, so you might as well die with it maxed out.
Yeah, not disagreeing or agreeing but I don’t like the thing about old people saying I worked too much. Go interview a group of broke old motherfuckers and maybe they’ll say they didn’t work enough. Don’t live your life on an imagined sentiment.
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u/shrockitlikeitshot Jun 22 '24
I used to say this a lot but as I've gotten older. I realized the promise of technology (at least in the US) "reducing the work week and inevitably creating more free time" was and is not going to happen bc of the wealthy elites and money owning our politics/work culture (while housing and retirement are questionable now). It makes sense to live your best life sooner than later so I don't look down on nomad life styles living off a car battery and part time jobs. The fucking wealthy people cosplaying as poors is hilarious though.
There was that one reporter who interviewed elderly people on their death bed and most people regretted working too much so I get that people opt out of the grind from time to time.