The Tyranny of Work or Why Are We Still Measured by Our Productivity?

Free market applied to work&#x2F;worforce (work demand &amp; offer).<p>More technology =&gt; less work needed =\=&gt; less work hours with same pay. This is why the article reasoning (Keynes) is wrong.<p>More technology =&gt; less work needed =&gt; less workers needed =&gt; more competition for jobs =&gt; workers are forced to accept lower wages for even more work hours =&gt; even less workers needed.<p>We can get out of this circle in two ways:<p>1) Slow, by making less children =&gt; less workers =&gt; less competition for jobs =&gt; workers can demand higher pay for less work hours.<p>Good because it&#x27;s the natural free maket way of self-regulating.<p>Bad because it takes generations of misery until it works and it probably doesn&#x27;t work anyway.<p>2) Quick, by passing laws limiting work hours based on unemployment levels (real levels, not what governments count as unemployed).<p>Good because it&#x27;s quick.<p>Bad because people (especially poor people) will complain that they can&#x27;t live with only one job, even though lack of workers would increase wages quick, and also bad because artificially regulating jobs based on unemployment is probably very hard - different industries and even different cities can have different unemployment levels - and some level of market self-regulation is still needed.<p>3) Universal basic income<p>Good because job market still self-regulates.<p>Bad because governements <i>MUST</i> find a way to close the tax haven loophole to generate enough tax money for the UBI, and if they really wanted to do that, they would have done it already.

Poverty is the default state of any society. To survive and thrive specialisation is needed to grow productivity. If a field doesn&#x27;t produce people working on it would starve and die. In primitive societies old and sick were not treated well at all. To care for the &quot;non-productive&quot; members there should&#x27;ve been enough resources for them too. If you don&#x27;t have enough to eat, the weakest usually died or in some circumstances left behind on purpose. So to take care of these members you need productivity to create enough resources for them. Productivity grows from specialisation and tools. When a carpenter builds a house he can&#x27;t grow the food for his family. So he needs to swap his work for food. Bartering is easiest done via a proxy medium like money. The most efficient bartering is when the two parties voluntary swap goods and services. This is the free market. Keeping your stuff is &quot;private capital ownership&quot; and owning your tools to produce is &quot;ownership of tools of production&quot;.<p>This is the way groups of people get wealthy and have enough for all members of society. Free market capitalism creates the wealth for that, because of the ruthless market forces that penalise useless work for which no one is keen to swap their own work&#x2F;products&#x2F;money. This is why capitalism produces enough to share around if&#x2F;when society decide to do so. All other systems have so much inefficiencies that they can&#x27;t produce enough and there is nothing to share.

Work, even at 40 hours per week, can over time be so detrimental to health, that 20 hours per week ought to be the sane default. It would allow enough time for a healthy lifestyle with a proper diet and plenty of exercise. If everyone did it, I would be okay with the corresponding 50% reduction in pay. Moreover, this could allow for more capitalism, not less, as people could use their spare time, if any, to work on their own innovative projects.

&gt; There is no reason, beyond ideology, that human worth should be measured in productivity. We could work less. We could value care as much as capital. We could build a world in which art, learning, and rest are not treated as indulgences, but as fundamental parts of life. The question is not whether Britain is working. It is why we are still expected to.<p>I don&#x27;t even know what vague nonsense this person is even in favor of. It&#x27;s weird reading this leftist (re: conservative government tag) drivel. I&#x27;m a singularitarian for sure. Post scarcity and all that.<p>What the hell is the talk of &quot;human worth&quot; supposed to even mean. If you can&#x27;t even feed yourself, you&#x27;re a fucking joke. Work is just doing something for someone else they like. What is the argument here. &quot;I should be free to be completely parasitic and useless, anything less is tyranny.&quot;<p>What kind of insane value inversion is this? You don&#x27;t want to come to the office. You don&#x27;t want to interview. You don&#x27;t want to work.<p>Is it literally just &quot;gimme&quot;? are you a child?

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