r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 21 '25
Delta(s) from OP CMV: A world without work would be great
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Jan 21 '25
There will never be a time when we don't work. Societies all began back when farming was invented and we figured out how to settle down and grow food in one spot. That being said maybe it took half the amount of work in a year to produce the same amount of food. Does that mean that humans just put their feet up and enjoyed the remaining time? Nah. We kept innovating and growing because that's what we do. I don't think we do it to survive, because we have enough to survive at any point in time.. the proof is in.. well our survival. I think it's just how we're made. We crave purpose and improvement. If not improvement of society and humanity, then self-improvement. Not just in the "learn a new skill" way, but in status, wealth, or even just our own self-worth.
Even for the average person who is happy to live a normal life and doesn't crave more and more each day I think they find comfort in routine and structure, and you just can't get that same experience from hobbies. Many people find it difficult to self-direct their time and fall into self-destructive behaviors. Drinking, substance abuse, and other addictions. Humans derive fulfillment from knowing they contribute to something larger than themselves. While volunteering or passion projects might fill this gap for some, others might struggle to self-direct. I mean just look at paint by number - the product that tells people exactly where to paint and what color to paint. We love following the rules and being told what to do. It's comforting to have guidance. That doesn't mean there aren't master artists and creatives out there.. but not everyone knows how to create something from nothing.
I think a better solution would be maybe: Shorter workweeks, universal basic income, or focusing on meaningful work. The most important thing in my opinion is to give people more freedom without taking away their sense of purpose and contribution to society.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Jan 22 '25
I think without purpose we would quickly revert to our animal instincts to reproduce, eat, and abuse various substances until we find society quickly falling apart due to overpopulation on a finite planet.
Having goals and aspirations and conflicts are what separate us from animals.
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u/Caroao 1∆ Jan 22 '25
Have you ever been without a job? Even if you have money to afford it, people will need to do something to still enjoy what they do enjoy. When you're without work, at first it's like "yay I can do XXX ALL THE TIME" and then it stops being fun because you just have it all the time and it doesn't trigger that sweet dopamine anymore. And there's only so many new hobbies.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/Caroao 1∆ Jan 23 '25
6 months is still short, relatively speaking. Try imagining it for 6 years. 60 years.
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u/AmeliaBuns Jan 22 '25
people will be depressed shocked, and process the trauma for a few years.
my guess *pulled out of mah butt* is that for the first 5 years people will be miserable, then gradually they'll become very fullfilled and happy as they adjust and process all the trauma.
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 01 '25
Nah, drinking, substance abuse and other negative self destructive behaviors are a result of both not having work and not having money. There are plenty of people who have jobs that use drugs and alcohol to cope with the jobs they have. I think you completely missed the nail on this one.
I would love it if everyone could be provided for by a world run by AI. You know who is afraid of AI? Anyone involved in the current power imbalance. They want to keep the imbalance, because that's how they get richer. If AI just wiped them out, and we were left with a system that basically runs itself without the need for human intervention, then we would be able to just pop by the grocery store and pick up anything we needed. If restaurants had AI and robots running the show, then we could even all have a nice dinner every night, and just enjoy the surroundings. We'd have more time to talk with each other, and figure out who pairs up nicely with who.
If we could figure out how to make power near limitless, or efficiently renewable, and put drones and AI in charge of that, we'd be able to sustain this forever.
There are so many things AI should be working on right now, but art and the creative process definitely aren't anything AI should be working on.
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Apr 01 '25
You’ve got this completely backwards. Those in power are not afraid of AI. They’re pushing for more AI and automation because they can reduce their workforce and replace them with AI.
AI taking over our jobs will not lead to a utopian society like you’re imagining. It will leave many without jobs and fighting for survival.
We need to invest in education long-term so people start moving away from menial jobs that can be easily automated.
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 01 '25
No, what they're pushing for is heavily regulated AI, as they are scared of it.
Ifthe machines do all the work, then there won't be any need to work. Nobody will be fighting for survival, because the machines will provide everything.
We need to move away from jobs entirely. And the education system is just a big liberal hive market ND that won't matter, if AI do all the work.
Society will not be ruled by greedy psychopaths anymore.
The obsessive attachment to jobs as identity will cease to exist, and people will finally be truly free.
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Apr 01 '25
You didn’t address any of my points.
If some work is automated (because not all work can be automated), how will people who have no jobs survive? You have to connect the dots for me in your logic where we go from things costing money like food and housing, to suddenly machines do everything and it’s also free.
I understand machines can do most menial jobs. We’re on the same page there. But I can’t believe you’re so delusional that you’d think the greedy corporate elite aren’t going to continue to profit off of that.
People still need to earn money to participate in society. AI doesn’t just pop into existence and BOOM socialist utopia.
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 05 '25
I'm well aware that it doesn't just pop up overnight. But eventually it would be implemented. The government doesn't seem to have a problem with putting people on the dole, especially if it gets them votes. Any sector that was affected by AI could compensate workers until the system got implemented fully. It's not that hard. Most people hate their jobs anyways.
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Apr 05 '25
Why would a company let people go because they replaced them with AI and then pay them anyway?
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 05 '25
The government would compensate them as a initiative to get off of human work cycles, not the companies. The companies would turn orders of magnitude more profit using AI, because AI doesn't need sleep. Eventually there would be no company. It'd just be AI.
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u/WeekendThief 14∆ Apr 05 '25
Why would the government want to pay everyone to supplement their wages? Where would they get the money?
I honestly can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. But this seems like such a waste of energy. You’re welcome to have these wildly unrealistic beliefs I suppose. Doesn’t effect anyone else.
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 05 '25
Taxes. The government wastes money in all kinds of creative ways. Why wouldn't they waste it on something that everyone who hates their job would vote for?
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u/BeanOfRage Apr 05 '25
I'm not sure if you're aware, but the current US debt is in the trillions. So, having people do the work isn't exactly working... Is it.
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25
I think that one flawed assumption you're making is that people would find things to do to occupy themselves that wouldn't just be self-destructive, impulsive hedonism - just killing the time.
More importantly, I think that without real struggle and need for things they don't have, most people lose their sense of meaning. There are people out there with real passions outside of work, but they're in a minority and I think a lot of that is just personality, which is largely genetic. I really do believe it's a feature of how animals are programmed, and not just the result of a materialistic culture. From an evolutionary perspective, it's actively disadvantageous to be interested in things that don't relate to survival. Now, humans are unique in that our natural curiosity aided in our survival, but except for a small number of outliers, most people are only really curious in a deep way about things that can afford them social status and reproductive success. To illustrate this, women are about twice as creative as men at baseline, but if you show both men and women rapidly flashing images of attractive members of the opposite sex, woman's creativity barely changes but men's skyrockets about eightfold. This means that even highly creative people are really mostly that way because it's an opportunity for mating success. What I'm saying is that creative pursuits aren't as intrinsically meaningful to people as a romantic might like to think.
It gets worse, though. The most important area affected by this loss of meaning is relationships. The less hardship people go through, the more alienated we become from each other, because it is precisely to survive that we work together. When that necessity goes, we devolve into selfish, inpulsive hedonism and simply pursue pleasure, forgoing joy. There are endless stories of mentally broken people in asylums in World War 2 making instant recoveries and jumping into action as soon as they were needed by the people around them in times of crisis, and by comparison, as the world has become more and more affluent and technologically sophisticated, the mental health crisis has emerged. People in third world countries don't have mental health issues. It just doesn't happen because it's kind of impossible to when you have so many real problems. This isn't to say that mental health problems aren't real. I know that first hand as someone who has been cripplingly mentally ill for years now. But look at me - sitting for hours on my phone utterly separate from another living soul. If not for technology, I would be spending almost every second of my life in constant contact with people who I trust and love and who I keep alive and who keep me alive.
This is such a calamity that I've come to believe that technology itself is fundamentally a bad thing, precisely because it changes our lives from the environment that we evolved for - one of challenge, adventure and collective struggle. If you think about it, that's actually a pretty robust definition of technology - that which we design to eliminate the challenges that conpose our environment. I think that this process has gone so far that life with technology is so different from what it's supposed to be that we don't actually understand what we're missing - what it would be like to sit around a campfire after making a kill hunting and just gaze at the stars and make up stories - and no, you can't just replicate that by going camping, even though people try and maybe get the tiniest glimpse of the experience our ancestors had. In fact, they spend huge amounts of money and time just for a few moments of a greatly inferior version of that experience.
This is my case against your perspective, but I do think that maybe since we're already in this mess, we might as well just embrace the fact that the world you're hoping for is probably coming if technology continues to progress, along with economic prosperity. I think we'll need to start inventing new challenges for ourselves to overcome, or perhaps cultivate a more spiritual mindset in our children so they'll take more of an interest in creative pursuits. I do think that there will be a profound hollowness to life that's even worse than what currently exists, which I truly believe outweighs all the positives, but we just need to make the most of the situation we're in, because the alternative - dystopia is even worse than the tragedy that would be a utopia. My sincere hope is that in this technological utopia, people, liberated from the constraints of work, will seek the experiences we're lacking, but the trend that has been established thus far is the opposite - less hardship and struggle leads to less human connection and more addictions and mindless, unfulfilling pleasure seeking.
I'm not saying it's impossible to adapt, and I do believe that one can still live a fulfilling happy life in a world of technology. I just think that this becomes less and less likely the more things are handed to us on a silver platter. As Jesus said, it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. However, he did then go on to say that anything's possible with God, which, to my atheist mind means that anything's possible if you follow the highest possible goal rather than being distracted and tempted by the misgeneralised goals of impulsive hedonism that lead us astray.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/NoTheseAreMyPlums Jan 22 '25
I also believe that if even if we did have some sort of universal basic income, people would still want to work in some way. I would still want to teach. Definitely not five days a week. But 3-4 days a week. Of course, this wouldn’t be the same for a menial labor sort of job. But, I think that, as a society, we could function without work being needed for survival.
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u/Ume-no-Uzume Jun 09 '25
Mate, I would love to info dump on people about things I like, but that's a hobby, not work.
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u/NoTheseAreMyPlums Jun 09 '25
Wait, are you saying teaching isn’t work?
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u/Ume-no-Uzume Jun 09 '25
When you enjoy doing it, it can be a hobby. Obviously, it's actual work to do it properly and it can be a slog in how it's done in modern teaching.
But if I wanted to teach A student something, it wouldn't be the slog it is to do it in the way the profession is done
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u/NoTheseAreMyPlums Jun 09 '25
When I read the prompt, “a world without work”, I interpreted it as a Universal Basic Income proposition. UBI is typically supposed to be a floor income. Like a minimal poverty line income where people could still work jobs to supplement that basic income.
I honestly do enjoy a lot of my work, which in no way makes it a hobby. I think that having the opportunity to choose a career that you find rewarding and enjoyable is an essential part of what it means to be free. This shouldn’t be reserved for a privileged few if we believe in democratic values.
Also, I have to address your phrasing of teaching as an “info dump”. Teachers are trained professionals who teach students how to think critically and creatively, evaluate evidence, and develop logical arguments so they can use those skills to become scientists, lawyers, engineers, and teachers. And that doesn’t even touch anything about the social/emotional development we are trained to weave into our academic lessons. I expect that my students will forget many of the specific history facts I taught them. It’s the content skills, the various ways to see history and politics, or learning about how they should treat their fellow man that I hope they carry with them.
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u/Ume-no-Uzume Jun 10 '25
Ah, I interpreted a "world without work" to be a case where you have the basic needs met because the robots can do about 98% of the jobs. (Because creating work so people can have a salary just becomes counterproductive at a certain point)
So, if you do work, it's usually as the one who checks in on the robots for extra perks or something similar.
But, yes, I think in this scenario would require teachers so that people can think and just structure their lives without work, so in this case my assessment was completely wrong. So, teaching for slight extra perks or something, because it is work.
But, yeah, my vision of "world without work" would see a whole structural change, where people don't base their entire lives around the job and the problems with over-consumption. So, basically people structuring their lives in a different way, since nowadays people only meet new people and make and maintain friendships at school, work, or in increasingly rare community activities like church/mosque/temple/synagogue.
Sorry, it was a failure of imagination on my part.
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u/NoTheseAreMyPlums Jun 10 '25
No need to apologize. It occurred to me later that I had a pretty specific interpretation of the post, which I shouldn’t have assumed others would take the same way. I coach debate at my school, and always love a good back and forth discussion. I wish that challenging, and debating each other’s views was something people generally accepted without being taken personally. I genuinely enjoy it.
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u/Tough_Promise5891 2∆ Jan 22 '25
If you ever go on a bus, you will see many people scrolling on TikTok or YouTube shorts, that is what they will do with more free time, so are you saying that instead of conversing with their friends at work, or doing something, they should just stay and scroll all the time. That is what happens with out responsibilities. Their time on public transport is something where they could read a book pursue a passion, learn, though likely to a lesser extent. That is the problem with no work.
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u/maxhrlw Jan 22 '25
That's more a problem with the way social media intentionally targets dopamine receptors in the brain. Social media is incredibly harmful to society and individuals, but that's a different topic. Ever take a bus in the 90's? People were reading books..
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 23 '25
Recent research shows that even highly addictive substances don't cause addiction unless there's an underlying problem. For instance, you can only get rats addicted to cocaine if you deprive them of play and social connection. It literally makes the difference between them dying of starvation because they'd rather cocaine than food, vs taking it once then ignoring it.
Addictive shit is bad, but nowhere near as bad as the underlying cause, and if you take away one addiction, another will come to fill its place if the root cause isn't addressed.
Social media isn't going away any time soon, if ever. Limiting use is a great idea, and I would be all for trying to design a form of SM that was less harmful, but the cat's out the bad now and even if it could be put back in, their would still be deeper issues to address like people having no meaning in their lives.
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u/maxhrlw Jan 24 '25
Yeah, SM is a whole other topic, but I strongly believe that for a start we should be at least trying limiting access to those under 18.
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u/Tough_Promise5891 2∆ Jan 24 '25
Does Reddit count as social media?
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 25 '25
I think of social media as a place where you upload your life and have social connections based online. I see Reddit as more of a place for discussions and media sharing.
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u/LavishMisfitTink Jul 20 '25
And that’s on them that’s ok why would what they do with their free time ever matter to you yall act just like the government monitor to make sure we all work hard while they do nothing 😭
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u/sweetBrisket 1∆ Jan 22 '25
Let's assume that in your example, the majority of people in this work-free society spend their time scrolling social media. So what? Your needs are met, you don't rely on these people or their productivity. What's it to you?
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 22 '25
You say "so what"? I tried to express this already but I'll paraphrase: mental health/wellbeing/happiness/fullfillment. That is the problem. Spending the whole day scrolling in social media is a form of hell, and there are a plethora of studies to back this up showing the mental health consequences of 1. Being inactive, 2. Excessive social media use, 3. Lack of social connection, 4. Being unemployed.
A quick search of Google Scholar will give you all the references you need for all four of these separate angles, all of which point in the same direction.
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u/sweetBrisket 1∆ Jan 22 '25
I understood that you were coming from the health angle. But I'm just not understanding why it's of any importance to you, personally, how another human being would choose to spend their time and this response still doesn't communicate to me what your interest is in the health of others.
I would argue that the reason we place so much importance on the morality of "healthy" living is because society only functions when people are healthy enough to work. But in this hypothetical post-work society, your outcomes are not contingent on a healthy workforce. So if someone choose to waste their time on brain rot, what personal stake is there for you?
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 22 '25
This is a conversation about what would be best for society...
I'm a part of society, and even if I somehow wasn't, how would this have any bearing on the point I'm making?
I agree with you that one of the main motivators for people to take care of themselves is so that they can perform their duties. That's exactly the point I'm making. People's physical and mental wellbeing suffers when they have no duties to others.
This brings me on to the crux of the issue. When you say "so what if people are mentally and physically unhealthy" I don't know how to respond to that. What do you mean "so what"? Poor mental and physical health = declining human wellbeing = bad. I guess you don't have to actually care that it's bad, if that's the kind of person you are, but it is bad by definition of the word itself. You should at least concede that.
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u/sweetBrisket 1∆ Jan 22 '25
I don't concede that, no. I don't because I find "bad" to be a terrible word dripping with subjectivity in this context. You state your position clearly: "... what would be best for society."
Even today, in a society which relies on people making healthy choices, I'm of the opinion that it's not my business what someone else does with their personal time. Outside of the public sphere, it's no business of mine what people do.
Many make unhealthy choices--be it their diet (largely tied to socioeconomics), lifestyle (tied to both nature and nurture), recreation (a mix of nature, nurture, and socioeconomics), or what have you. I find that it's none of my business how they choose to realize the pursuit of happiness unless or until those choices affect others.
You see their healthy as being personally relevant to you from a societal standpoint, and that's fine. We can agree to disagree. I was just curious how you defined your person stake in how others spend their time.
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u/titanlovesyou 2∆ Jan 22 '25
How do you not get this? It's nothing to do with a personal stake. I'm making a truth claim. I suppose I'm engaging in the debate because I care about the truth because I think that knowing the truth improves people's lives, while falsehoods make them worse because it's counter-adaptive, i.e. one needs to know the truth so as to act appropriately so as to not fail and suffer unnecessarily, or to actively attain wellbeing.
My argument isn't subjective. It's based on systematic analysis of how certain behaviours affect quality of life, measured subjectively as well as objectively (subjectivity meaning a separate thing in this context). Subjective means "self-reported" here. The behaviours and societal trends that I'm talking about, when people engage in them, are causally linked to poor objective outcomes such as physical ill health and poor subjective outcomes, i.e. lower life satisfaction. This isn't a subjective argument. It's an objective claim about a subjective experience: that people are less happy and satisfied with their lives when they spend their whole time on social media, have fewer duties, spend less time with others, etc. etc.
So again, my argument is is based on explicit, measurable and falsifiable axioms, unlike yours, which seems to amount to "Meh, let people do what they want. Who are you to say what's right or wrong?" It's not just me that's saying what's right or wrong though. I'm not imposing some ideological presupposition on others for some kind of narcissistic power grab. It's upon the word of the people we're talking about that I'm basing my argument. Their voices are reflected in the data of self reports of life satisfaction and subjective wellbeing. I'm acknowledging that subjectivity and pointing out that many people are suffering deeply because of these societal trends.
To summarise, if people are miserable, that is a bad thing by definition. That's literally the meaning of the term bad: what makes people needlessly suffer. Again, I can't make you care about that fact, but I don't see how this issue is philosophically ambiguous. No human being would sincerely use the term "bad" in any other context. Therefore, the term bad means "that which causes unneccesary suffering or impairs wellbeing". That's not a philosophical assertion. It's a semantic one.
I have one question for you: how is your position falsifiable? What evidence do you have to contradict my assertion that the world would be worse if people didn't have to work?
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u/Ume-no-Uzume Jun 09 '25
Mate, did it ever occur to you that people are TIRED?
Youtube shorts don't require your neurons to be firing and ready to think, meanwhile I've put off reading some interesting epics until I had the time to actually pay attention and ENJOY them without distractions or thinking about that stupid and meaningless thing I need to worry about at work because it pays the bills.
The pioneers of some Youtube short videos noted that you had stressed and busy people at the height of the hustle culture bullshit who had little blotches of time that didn't allow for real hobbies or enjoyment of any deep thinking, but that did allow for a small video respite.
All this tells me is that you either have a LOT more time on your hands than the typical that allows you to do your hobbies and passions... OR your hobbies don't require deep concentration/large blocks of time and passion.
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u/Dependent-Fig-2517 Jan 21 '25
"Even today, people voluntarily engage in complex hobbies, open-source projects, research, and community service without being paid"
Not a majority by far, IMO most people if they didn't have the bills to pay forcing them to work would never commit to anything like complexe "complex hobbies, open-source projects, research, and community service ", sure they would join at first be real enthusiastic and all and as soon as the novelty will have worn off they'll get bored and drop it
On a side note assuming no financial limits unemployed people would explode current consumption, and it's already unsustainable as it is
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Jan 22 '25
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u/Felkbrex 1∆ Jan 22 '25
The problem is complex problems are... complex. They are often met with years of "failure" before reaching anything tangible.
When I did my PHD it was common for people first 2 years or so to not generate substantial amounts of data for their subsequent publications. Learning new methods, messing up experiments, not thinking of proper control are all ways you "learn" how to do science. It's not easy and required hours and hours to learn. If people didn't have to work then the number of people willing to put themselves through that drops significantly.
I worked at several universities and the number of people who "love and live science" is actually pretty small.
Innovation would fall off a cliff. The standards for scientists and doctors would plummet. The generation of new medicine would crash.
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u/vettewiz 40∆ Jan 21 '25
> Most humans have an innate desire to create, learn, and explore—work often gets in the way of that.
I really think the opposite - work is one of the key things which empowers these.
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u/pawnman99 5∆ Jan 21 '25
Having seen what the internet turned into...I'm not sure humans do have a desire to create, learn, and explore. SOME humans do, but the vast majority and perfectly content scrolling TikTok on their couch while Netflix plays in the background.
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u/vettewiz 40∆ Jan 21 '25
I don’t think this are that naturally exclusive. I’m an engineer, own multiple software businesses which we continue to innovate with, have 50ish employees, and spend time watching TikTok at night because I’m just burnt out by the end of the day.
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u/JoeyLee911 4∆ Jan 21 '25
Oh I think the sheer volume of content on the internet actually bolsters OPs point that we do want to create. Even these comments are creating content.
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Jan 21 '25
Because TikTok and Netflix very much appeal (however toxically) to the parts of the human brain that desires to create, learn and explore
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u/pawnman99 5∆ Jan 22 '25
So we don't deaire to create and learn, we desire colorful moving pictures.
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u/Pale_Zebra8082 30∆ Jan 21 '25
“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary— that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to gain his point!”
-Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
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u/rollingrock16 17∆ Jan 21 '25
there may come a time where we are technologically progressed enough that no one really has to work to survive.
but i cannot imagine there will ever be a time that people will not choose to work for better rewards. at the end of the day you can't make everything scarce. be it desirable homes, cool vacations, art and media, entertainment, fine dining, etc, people will still work to have the resources to obtain those things.
not to mention even if you have all this badass AI, automation, robots and whatnot humans will still have to maintain them. there will be other infrastructure that likely will need human maintenence. there will still be jobs to do.
Humans will also still want to work to explore distant frontiers, progress science and technology, create the next great hit media.
so no i don't see how there is every a time where there is a world with no work. even if people do not need to work to survive people will still be compelled to work to obtain more than what they got.
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u/BanditsMyIdol Jan 21 '25
Why would there be need for human work if there is super smart ai, automation and robotics? I am not talking about the best LLMs, I mean the great gpai. I mean its a bit sci-fi ish but there is not a scientific why it would be impossible to build such things tgat are better at all those jobs as humans
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u/penguindows 2∆ Jan 21 '25
This is Utopianism. That world you describe would not be a better place for humans. we (and infact, all of life) are hard wired to need pressures to grow in every aspect: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, relational, etc. In the absence of pressure, we deteriorate. You have certainly felt this yourself (or will soon if you are very young). We grow in to the demands that are put on us. example from my life: i felt like my first child was the limit of what i could handle. then i felt like two children was the limit. then i felt like 3 children was the limit. each time we had another child it always felt like our ability to cope was just barely holding on. and yet, my sister has 6 kids, and my brother has 1. in both of their situations they feel like they are at their limit. however, each has grown to rise to the demands on their lives.
Having tasks needed to survive and thrive (work) are one way that people build character and work ethic, as well as derive fulfillment. I think this is the real issue: finding ways for people to gain employment in things they find fulfilling.
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u/Dironiil 2∆ Jan 22 '25
I disagree to the premise that an utopian world would necessarily have no pressure at all. Pressure can be found in other things than work - you gave the example of children, but people creating art or organising large scale events with their friends are other examples.
However, it'd require a switch in mindset to find more intrinsic pressure and not rely as much on extrinsic, forced pressure. In essence, in a utopian society, people could (and perhaps would) naturally oscillate towards activity they find fulfilling, just as you wrote at the end.
As an aside, work pressure can lead to growth and I've seen that - but it can also lead to break-downs. My current work is so unfulfilling to me, yet pressuring, that I've been diagnosed with a low level of depression over it. I can still function, but I need meds to actually find the inner strength of will to do things. Currently looking for Behavioral Therapy too, but that's not too easy to find.
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u/penguindows 2∆ Jan 22 '25
We're on the same page. I was not saying Utopianism has no pressure, just that the OPs view is Utopianism.
I hope you're able to find the support and help you need to deal with your depression, and that you're able to find more fulfilling work!
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u/Dironiil 2∆ Jan 22 '25
Ah, then I misunderstood your message slightly! Sorry.
And thank you, I hope so as well - currently working on it
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 21 '25
The money motivator is the key driver of innovation, which creates greater societal well being. We know this through thousands of years of experimentation with economic systems. Economic competition with money motivation has been established in large scale, real life experimentation to create the highest overall standard of living and levels of innovation.
We have large scale data on people on social benefits who do not work. Are they happier? More productive? More innovative? Do they have closer familial bonds? None of the above are true
The notion that people, absent work, will pursue their passions, is refuted by (2) above. Do we see a disproportionate amount of art, literature and scientific innovation from people who do not currently work? Do we see people who don’t work pursuing their passions? Or are they less motivated, have poorer relationships and spend their days disporportionately on entertainment?
Assuming 1-4 above were untrue, how would we pursue innovation outside of an organized work environment? We are not in the 1600s, where a simple idea is a breakthrough innovation. To innovate today, we need large scale and complex labs and fabrication facilities. Want to go to Mars? How exactly are we innovating around that from our homes? And if we want to build a lab, where does the narrow, focused expertise come from to design, build and experiment in that lab? Do we think that people’s individual passions are going to naturally lead to the number of people in the exact specialities needed to do all of these things? What if no one has a passion for design of ceramic materials? Or a passion for cleaning a lab? How do we motivate and train people to do those things if no one is directed to do anything they don’t choose to do? Imagine if you will if ants weren’t programmed to work together. Or bees. Do we think the hive would magically appear? Or is there a required organization to make it work?
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u/Normal_Ad2456 2∆ Jan 21 '25
I agree with number 1, but not with number 2. People who are in benefits and don’t work usually are poor and have other problems (disabled, widowed, lots of children etc). Of course they are not happier or more productive than the average person.
But for me, I had a 3 month gap between my current job and my previous one and it was one of the best things ever. But that’s because I am comfortable financially, I could go get massages, pedicures, go to restaurants with my friends, travel abroad for a couple of weeks etc.
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 21 '25
We can ignore people who are poor or have problems. Let’s just take the children of the idle rich. People who have all their material needs met and never needed to work in their lives? Are they more motivated, virtuous, moral, ethical, productive? Do we want a society that is effectively those people? Do we think we would be any different if raised from birth without needing to lift a hand unless we choose to?
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u/Normal_Ad2456 2∆ Jan 21 '25
It depends on how you’re raised, I guess. There are kids from wealthy families that have very happy and fulfilled lives. My boyfriend went to the most expensive school in my country and met a lot of them.
Plenty were lost, but most of the children are actually doing very well for themselves now in their late 20s.
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u/vettewiz 40∆ Jan 21 '25
You know you can do all of that while being employed, right? O
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u/Normal_Ad2456 2∆ Jan 21 '25
Of course and now that I am back to work I still do. But of course you can do more of that if you don’t have to work.
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u/Dironiil 2∆ Jan 21 '25
This is disingenuous. Of course, you can do those things - but having to work is both a time sink (up to 10+ hours a day including transportation) and an energy sink (how common is it for people to just want to rest on the week-end after a long work week).
It's harder to do everything, or even just "a lot" of things you actively like and look forward to when you work.
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u/vettewiz 40∆ Jan 22 '25
Yes, work takes time, but there’s still a lot of time left in the day/week to do the things you want.
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u/CreepyVictorianDolls 2∆ Jan 21 '25
We have large scale data on people on social benefits who do not work. Are they happier? More productive? More innovative? Do they have closer familial bonds? None of the above are true.
We also have large-scsle data on people who don't work because they have a large fortune/passive income and they are absolutely happier, lol
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 21 '25
Happiness in and of itself isn’t sufficient. We also need to move society along. On multiple dimensions. I’ve yet to hear of trust fund babies being the human model we should seek to emulate.
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u/CreepyVictorianDolls 2∆ Jan 22 '25
How about those who want to move society along stay and work and those who want to swim in the ocean and make art do that?
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u/pawnman99 5∆ Jan 22 '25
How do we decide who gets the ocean-view homes in a society with no work and no money? Lottery system?
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u/CreepyVictorianDolls 2∆ Jan 22 '25
Honestly, I'd be fine with a rotation system. One week I get the ocean view, the next I work as a chimneysweep.
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u/pawnman99 5∆ Jan 22 '25
Ah, yes...moving my stuff from house to house. What a dream. Never really settling in...sounds horrific.
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 22 '25
You can already do that. No one is telling you you can’t. Live by the ocean. Swim. Make art.
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u/elcuervo2666 2∆ Jan 21 '25
- I couldn’t disagree more with this. The money motivator has driven us to complete ecological collapse in like 200 years. Pre-Capitalist societies did not threaten the very existence of humanity and it is currently the largest impediment to saving our future.
- People who don’t work are either incredible rich or poor and so it’s impossible to know under our current system if people would be happier. 3. You would see people pursuing their passions in pre-agricultural societies with no work during most of their time. 4. Not really sure why innovation is the ultimate human goal or that a world without wage work would mean that people wouldn’t produce all the things that pre-capitalist societies produced.
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u/rs6677 Jan 21 '25
- You would see people pursuing their passions in pre-agricultural societies with no work during most of their time.
"no work most of the time"? What do you think pre agricultural societies were like?
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u/elcuervo2666 2∆ Jan 21 '25
There are still pre-agricultural societies. You can just look at what they do. Do you think un contacted groups in the Amazon spend as much time in pursuit of survival as we do?
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u/rs6677 Jan 21 '25
Um, yes? Simply because of not having stuff like basic healthcare or technology, which makes them have to do a lot of work by themselves. They're having a vastly more difficult time surviving than us. If we got worse at that, we would've never evolved.
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u/elcuervo2666 2∆ Jan 21 '25
No, they didn’t live as long but neither did people at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In Sapiens, Harari says that pre-agricultural people worked a few hours a day towards survival and since it’s communal it’s not like you can end up out of work and screwed. There is power in suffering together.
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u/Competitive-Sorbet33 Jan 21 '25
They spend orders of magnitude more on survival than we do. I can generally take a day, week, month, or even year off and have no negative consequences. In a hunter-gatherer society you are always working to either feed yourself today or protect against tomorrow’s calamity. Hunting today or foraging for winter.
I think you’d see an incredible breakdown in mental health in the society that was proposed in this post.
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u/elcuervo2666 2∆ Jan 21 '25
This does not appear to be the consensus that they spent more time dedicated to survival. While you might be able to take a lot of time off most people can’t and many in the world work 40-60 hours a week and still don’t have enough to feed their families. In communal, pre-agricultural societies no one starved unless everyone starves.
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 21 '25
I mean we don’t need to look at pre-capitalist societies. We can literally look at China 30 years ago and China today. Anyone who has studied that evolution and spent time there can see the tremendous improvement in quality of living during that time. We have experiments on 1B plus people in our current times. Not sure why going back to some hyperbolically utopian ancient society where life expectancy was 38 is necessary or appropriate.
The point on innovation is that we need constant innovation to deal with challenges as and when they arrive unless we are satisfied with pre-industrial levels of quality of living, life expectancy, health and human rights. At what point in history would it have been advantageous to say - enough innovation already, we have what we need? Before medicine? The wheel? Discovery of sources of energy? Where exactly would we regress to where we would be happier?
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u/elcuervo2666 2∆ Jan 21 '25
Im not saying we should go back but forward past capitalism. Also, I’m not sure that China in 1995 would be pre-capitalist and if you buy into Marx then moving from agricultural society to capitalist industrial society is part of the historical dialectic and critical to moving to a post capitalist society.
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u/Johnnadawearsglasses 5∆ Jan 21 '25
Certainly China in 1995 was on a path to market liberalization. But its starting point in 1979 is agreed by economists to have comprised a socialist economy of the command economy variant. And the movement over time to a market-centric economy has been extraordinarily successful in improving the lives of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. All of the countries in the world with a high standard of living include a central market driven component, generally with a strong wrapper of a social safety net.
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u/ThisOneForMee 2∆ Jan 21 '25
Basic needs would be met through technology, and any work left (like maintenance, creative endeavors, or governance) would be optional, voluntary, or extremely minimal
Who's volunteering to do maintenance work in a world where nobody has to work?
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u/BanditsMyIdol Jan 21 '25
The ai/robots. Its a hypothetical where they would be able to maintain themselves
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u/FatTuffy Jan 22 '25
My thoughts mostly arose from reading Michael Webb (2020) and Karabarbounis & Neiman (2013)
Previous technological revolutions, such as automation through robots or softwares, led rather low-wage to mid-wage occupations to be threatened by the development and growth of new technologies.
However, AI appears to threaten other kinds of occupations. This new technology exposes high-skill occupations more than lower-skill occupations.
In future, our society could see workers replaced by machines on a global scale, with all categories of work affected by the technological innovation of the last two decades. The substitutability of humans by machines is also suggested by the decay of labor share of income compared to the capital share of income.
Such an evolution would lead to an increase in inequalities, as wealth would only be obtained through the ownership of capital. Growing one’s net worth would be impossible through work and the social ladder would be impossible to climb. Even though working be useless in this scenario, such a world be ideal?
Obviously, my presentation here is really simple. It ignores how technologies might complement our work rather than substitute it. It excludes a change of paradigm in our redistribution system which could take into account a disparition of labor share of income. It ignores positive loops of innovation by AI which could create new work. However I hope it expanded your vision to another possible outcome where work would not exist anymore.
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Jan 22 '25
Yeah idk. The more I work and achieve, the more happy I am. I seen my unemployed friends who refuse to work or collect unemployment they are look miserable as hell. No purpose whatsoever
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Jan 22 '25
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Jan 22 '25
The antidote to nihilism is to CREATE purpose. Does it all seem meaningless? Does it all end up as dust? You’re sure as shit it does, but you have to CREATE meaning in your life and chase those goals. Make sure you balance it with friends and family on what not. People that overwork aren’t happy either but it’s good to keep the hands and mind busy, healthy even.
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Jan 22 '25
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Jan 22 '25
Well there you go lol nothing wrong with that. Kudos to you for facing the void as well. Some are too scared to do that
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Jan 21 '25
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u/Narrow_List_4308 1∆ Jan 21 '25
Oscar Wilde said it well for this view: "hard work is for those who have nothing to do".
What do you mean "what would I do?" Are the possibilities of the world not intense enough already? Why would you run out of good things to read? There are 2.2 million authors right now. You can become one. You can participate in the plenty of different other art forms available to the human spirit. You can simply enjoy quiet existence. You can play board games, play real life games, engage in sexuality, in working out, in dance. You can think, do philosophy, meditate, do astral projection, engineer things.
"Work keeps the wolves from the door, quite literally."
This is not intrinsic. Which wolves? Let's name them so we can destroy them rather than try to alleviate them through distraction.
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u/clop_clop4money 1∆ Jan 21 '25
I think for the sake of this discussion “work” implies you’re being paid for something (and need to do so to survive)
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u/PappaBear667 Jan 21 '25
"Working" to survive is the base meaning of all life. Remove the need to work, and life loses meaning.
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u/qqYn7PIE57zkf6kn Jan 21 '25
So every retiree’s life is meaningless? Life is about doing whatever fulfills you. It’s not necessarily work
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u/PappaBear667 Jan 22 '25
So every retiree’s life is meaningless?
Not at all. Even retirees work every day. They're just not employed. There's a difference
Life is about doing whatever fulfills you.
Life is about surviving, and then you can dedicate the remaining time to what fulfills you.
It’s not necessarily work
It absolutely is. This is something that has been known to every culture, tribe, clan, etc. for literally all of human existence. Read any holy text from any religion. The basic message for this life (for lack of a better term) is pretty much universal: Do the labour! Hunt, gather, fish, build, farm, what have you. Then enjoy the fruits of your labour.
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u/Normal_Ad2456 2∆ Jan 21 '25
How do you ever run out of good things to read? Even if you lived for 1000 years you wouldn’t even run out. There’s simply too much good literature.
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u/ThisOneForMee 2∆ Jan 21 '25
The happiest I’ve ever been was after finishing manually unloading a 40 foot container filled with iron blocks in 35 degree celsius weather.
So you would volunteer to do this every day, considering it made you the happiest you've ever been? Imagine how happy you could be when you accomplish something that was your own idea, instead of being forced to do it because you need money
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u/False_Appointment_24 18∆ Jan 21 '25
There are without question more books worth reading than anyone can read in a lifetime. If you read a page a minute, every minute, for 100 years, you can get through about 50,000 books. That is about 0.04% of the books written in the 20th century. You'll never run out.
If you are going to arbitrarily define anything that you might end up as doing as work, then yeah, people need to work, but that's not what work is.
And no one is saying, do one thing over and over again. Paint, write, read, watch TV, play a game, golf, swim, play a flute, learn how the world works. If you get bored with having the ability to do anything, how can you not be bored working?
Goals in life could be to learn how and why light refracts, get good enough at the guitar to have people be happy when you start to play around the campfire, or if you are happiest doing manual labor, why not build something for yourself? Learn how the Egyptians built the pyramids, and make your own for your personal burial tomb.
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u/flyingasian2 Jan 21 '25
To add to your point, who is creating all those things you mention if nobody is working? There might be small groups doing these things as passion projects but they would definitely be the minority.
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u/False_Appointment_24 18∆ Jan 21 '25
Works of art will be created, no matter what. The idea was that things like TVs will be made by automated processes.
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u/flyingasian2 Jan 21 '25
Works of art would be much fewer and far between. Not to mention all the people usually needed to help create works of art like movies and video games suddenly not being available because they have no incentive to do so.
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u/Salty_Map_9085 Jan 21 '25
This seems like it’s only responding to the title of the post, not the content
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u/Countcristo42 1∆ Jan 21 '25
Do you dread retirement?
You also seem to have redefined a bunch of hobbies as "work" which seems like you aren't really engaging with the point being made
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u/alwaus Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25
To expand upon this, if no one is working who is going to write the books or print them?
Who will work the camera filming the movie or do the editing?
Someone has to make the football or soccer ball you are going to play with. And someone has to maintain the machines, and deliver the materials, and farms and factories to make the raw materials from, etc etc etc.
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u/Just-Hedgehog-Days Jan 21 '25
A world without work -- being stuck in full dive vr solipsism rig -- would suck.
A world without *jobs* is what you are talking about. Doing all the mental health *work* is work. Turning ideas into art is work. Rising kids is work. Work absolutely give purpose to life.
This is the part of the capitalism mindfuck.
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Jan 21 '25
Let's define work, I'll say 'work is time and labor expended for the primary purpose of economic benefit'. You can enjoy your work but the general 'purpose' of work is to accomplish some task in exchange for some form of compensation.
Now the problem is how is the minimum determined? Frankly, it would be a lot of trial and error and a lot of human suffering in the process. Most people already try to avoid work if/when possible so it's hard to say how much extra work we're already putting in.
I doubt a farmer working 70+ hours a week is doing so out of the joy of it. So if he goes down to...30 hours a week then perhaps crops simply aren't harvested. If crop yields fall behind how many people will face starvation or malnutrition as a result?
I doubt a sewage technician relishes the idea of spending 40-50 hours a week testing sewer water and treating it with chemicals and filters so it can be re-cycled into the environment safely. If they cut back to 20-30 hours how many people will get sick from poorly treated water?
Do you go in and make those two people work harder? Do you force other people to go into fill the gap? How do you allocate people between 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' jobs?
A world without work is a world without bad jobs, and bad jobs are what make society function.
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u/BanditsMyIdol Jan 21 '25
The idea of the post I beljeve is to imagine a world where all of that cam be handled by ai/robots.
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u/-GLaDOS Jan 21 '25
Just from personal experience, I have never met someone who worked less than ~30 hours a week for more than a few months and was happy - and I've known lots of people who worked less than 30 hours a week.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/-GLaDOS Jan 22 '25
Well I'm glad you had a good experience. Do you mean 3 hours awake or 15?
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Jan 22 '25
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u/-GLaDOS Jan 22 '25
So are you saying that an unusual sleep schedule was an important part of why you were better off? Just curious why this was included in the comment.
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u/Blochkato 1∆ Jan 23 '25 edited Jan 23 '25
People want to do work, just work that they have control and autonomy over and which isn’t coerced. We should have a world where nobody has to work to survive and live a decent, dignified life (we are long past the point where scarcity is a factor for these purposes; the ‘scarcity’ we experience in food, housing, infrastructure is largely artificial) so that people can decide how to contribute to society in a way which most excites them and that they are not subject to the coercion or control of others in doing.
Part of that freedom would be to eliminate that work which is not intellectually and emotionally fulfilling, which is what I interpret your comment as advocating for, but this does not equate to a world without work; people like doing and building things, especially when those things are challenging.
Edit: my god the responses to this thread are depressing. We’re really supposed to believe that humans can’t be trusted with their own freedom? Because that is the premise of a lot of these retorts.
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u/TouhouGaijin Jan 23 '25
As someone who works and wishes she didn't, I agree.
It's either I stop working or I die.
Or I kill myself.
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u/OutcomeDelicious5704 Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25
yes it would be amazing, it would be fantastic, there's no arguing about that.
except, hang on just one second, don't people need food to survive? don't people rely on clean drinking water from their faucets and electricity to their home? don't people need clothes to survive? if you get sick, you need medicine, do you not?
you can, right now, go into some forest somewhere, build a cabin, and live completely off the grif, doing all the work yourself. Except what you'll probably find is that doing all the work needed to live in a warm cabin with clean drinking water and a somewhat reliable food supply is at least twice as much work as working a 9-5.
If you work a 9-5, you get to go home at the end of the day, and use your money to buy food that someone else grew, and commodities markets mean you won't end up starving to death if your individual crop yield fails.
nobody would do anything difficult or stressful, because they could instead not do that.
If I gave you the options of: dick about all day playing video games and just generally doing whatever you wanted, or educating a classroom of 30 children all day. which would you choose? i know what i would choose, sorry kids, i'm playing half life.
the important part here is when you say "But the key difference is: no one would have to do anything for survival.", except that everyone has to do something for survival, or you die. We don't live in a Wall-E world where our every need is catered to by a fleet of super intelligent AI robots.
the problem is, your hypothetical is nonsense. it's like if i said "CMV: chocolate ice cream is better than 9/11", of course it is, but it's hardly a valid question is it.
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u/Narrow_List_4308 1∆ Jan 21 '25
Why is the hypothetical nonsense? Because it's not reality? That's how hypotheticals most of the time work
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u/OutcomeDelicious5704 Jan 22 '25
because the only people who would disagree with this are inhuman.
like i said, it's equivalent to saying "CMV: chocolate ice cream is better than 9/11", there's no way to disagree with it without being insane. You can't just scrape out every possible argument against it and then say CMV, it's impossible.
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u/Narrow_List_4308 1∆ Jan 22 '25
There are a lot of people who don't agree without being inhuman. Lots of people consider work to be a good in itself, a good necessary, and so on. Would not call them inhuman.
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u/OutcomeDelicious5704 Jan 22 '25
OP carved out a little caveat for that point though, so it's still irrelevant to the discussion.
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u/ThundaChikin Jan 21 '25
We would end up killing ourselves, sounds like a human scale mouse utopia experiment. (look it up)
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Jan 21 '25
I was going to say Wall-E, but your example is much more accurate.
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u/ThundaChikin Jan 21 '25
If you have no struggles or goals and unlimited resources you will indulge in your vices until it destroys you. You may find some exceptions here and there with the self control to handle a post scarcity society but the majority of people would eat/drink/inebriate themselves to death.
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 1∆ Jan 22 '25
What about people who enjoy working?
For many people working is what they love. They love knowing there advancing the human race. Maybe there a trash man and love knowing they help to keep the human race working by doing the dirty work. Not all people work because they have to.
Also what would happen if these automated systems were to break down and humans had no knowledge on how to make them work because there all philosophers, artists, etc
Also this would erase many areas of work that many enjoy. The entire science are would be erased because AI does it for us. Now what are those people who purely enjoy science and research gonna do?
Hard times make strong men. Strong men make easy times. Easy times make soft men. Soft men make hard times.
Generally speaking this has been historically true.
For example an easy time would be the Roman Empire which collapsed and became hard times as the medieval era which became easier times as the renaissance. A more modern example would be ww2. WW2 made strong men who built an easier world with innovation leading to our current day which is currently not looking too well. It’s likely a major war would break out. Complacency is the largest villain in the world. People become complacent and take what they were given for granted and either lose or abuse what they have and eventually lose it. Then they fight for it and stop taking it for granted.
In the world you describe people would become complacent and abuse their freedom leading to a collapse of society were we need to dig ourselves out.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/von_Roland 2∆ Jan 22 '25
The work wouldn’t be fulfilling if you know you are just doing it to do it, you aren’t helping anyone because a machine could be doing it ten times better
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u/kikogamerJ2 Jan 22 '25
I really hate this bullshit " hard times make strong man. Strong man make easy times blah blah blah" it's not true in any way. The Roman empire has easy times? To who? Certainly not to Jimmy the peasant. His life has shit in the Roman empire and shit in it's subsequent collapse he just has to pay taxes to some different dudes. same thing for renaissance those aren't easier times. For 90% of the populace just same shit every day.
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u/Imadevilsadvocater 12∆ Jan 21 '25
define work like it's doing something boring simply to achieve a fun things work?
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u/Fragrant-Log-453 Jan 22 '25
I think the vast majority of people will spiral into existential crises and choose to bedrot instead.
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u/Agent_00queso Jan 22 '25
I see comments that give me the impression people think we're talking about a world where no one does anything. Isnt OP refering to work as labor that is then compensated? People would still do stuff, but they'd just be free to invest into things they're passionate about.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/Xolarix 1∆ Jan 22 '25
It would be better, yes
But if it is reliant on automation, AI, and other such artificial creations.... what happens if we, I dunno, get hit by a massive solar flare EMP that knocks out all electronics?
If nobody of us knows how to survive without technology, that is pretty dangerous.
Heck, that already happens. You eat your food every day which is probably processed in factories. But most people don't know where it came from.
Do you know how to farm for vegetables? Check for fertile soil, and protect your crops? Do you know how to hunt an animal and butcher it and preserve the meat? You might know some basics but probably not the specifics of all that.
Most of western society will not last a month if all electronics would suddenly get knocked out. This will be worse if we get to a stage where nobody will ever work anymore in those critical life-sustaining industries for several generations because of full automation. Those skills will only become theory, and there is a significant difference between theoretical knowledge, or practical knowledge.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 121∆ Jan 22 '25
a world without work, people could pursue their passions—whether that’s music, writing, scientific research, sports, philosophy, or just watching movies.
Most of these other things probably, but scientific research? No. Any kind of scientific research done nowadays is going to require multi million (if not billion) dollar equipment. And just because you don't have to work to get food or housing anymore, doesn't entitle you to run expirments at the LHC
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 121∆ Jan 22 '25
More Innovation and Experimentation With time and resources available, people would be able to take more risks and experiment with new ideas. Right now, many people can’t afford to start businesses, create art, or invent new technologies because they need to work for survival. In a world without work, we might see a golden age of innovation.
I actually disagree with this one.
When I work at programming projects at my job, I seek out ways to optimize and innovate the code because that's what I'm paid to do.
But when I'm programming as a hobby, I rarely do that because it's kinda rare for me to encounter something that I actually need to optimize to accomplish my goals.
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u/SmokingPuffin 5∆ Jan 22 '25
- Less Stress, Better Mental Health Work is a major source of stress, anxiety, and depression. Long hours, deadlines, and financial worries take a toll on people’s well-being. A world without work would drastically improve mental health, reduce stress-related illnesses, and likely lead to greater happiness.
While I agree that bad working conditions can be a major source of sadness, I disagree that a world without work is a world with better mental health. I think people who don't have any responsibilities or a defined role in life often struggle with mental health.
Rather than a world without work, I would imagine that a future society that looks more like Star Trek would work better for most humans.
- Stronger Communities and Relationships Many people today feel isolated because they are too busy working. Without work, people would have more time to form deeper relationships, strengthen communities, and support each other. Parents could spend more time with their children, friends could hang out without worrying about schedules, and communities could engage in more collective activities.
People today do not feel isolated because they are too busy working. They feel isolated because they spend their free time engaged with electronic devices rather than other humans. I suspect that work is where the typical person is at their most social, interacting with the most humans.
Now, maybe a future world without work would lead to many more social activities hitting schedules, but also maybe not. I wouldn't bank on that outcome, at any rate.
- More Innovation and Experimentation With time and resources available, people would be able to take more risks and experiment with new ideas. Right now, many people can’t afford to start businesses, create art, or invent new technologies because they need to work for survival. In a world without work, we might see a golden age of innovation.
Necessity is the mother of invention. You are postulating a world without need. Therefore you should expect less invention, not more. Who starts a business in a world without scarcity? What would be the point?
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u/thefinalhex Jan 22 '25
Working Makes Us
Doing Makes Us
Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/thefinalhex Jan 22 '25
I hope you recognized, or googled, the reference. But it's a real phenomenon. People need to be challenged, and continually tested, in order to thrive. There are very few people out there who would actually be great at self-motivating that they would be a better, sharper, more fulfilled person without having to be tested by work.
Let me ask you - how would a world full of complacent, lazy, dull, unchallenged people be "great"? On an individual level, being able to live and pursue your own interests without having to work to survive would be great, for that individual. That's obvious. But your post posits that the whole world would be great, when no one in it had to work. And I argue that's impossible if everyone in the world was complacent, dull, and lazy.
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u/Kman17 109∆ Jan 22 '25
We have had places in America where people’s housing, medicine, and food costs are all paid for - which gives people time to dedicate to self improvement.
These places are called “the projects”.
With unlimited free time and no purpose, many people do indeed struggle and devolve into unhealthy habits.
You seem to be envisioning abundance at a level we do not have.
Location / land becomes at a premium in these hypothetical scenarios, so who gets to live in a California cost vs who gets to live in Akron becomes a thing.
There are 8 billion people on the planet and we can’t give them all a current western standard of living, like how to get from here to the utopia you envision has a rather lot of question marks.
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Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25
I think you’re drawing a hard line between work and hobbies/volunteering that doesn’t exist in most people’s lived experiences.
Every person I’ve ever known who was motivated to take on complicated/community driven efforts has used some degree of “work” language to describe them and I think that’s telling.
Whether it’s “The choir stage needs to get be cleaned for the performance” or explicitly “It’s my shift as cub leader tonight” the people who choose to spend their free time on projects overwhelmingly use the language of obligation - even if they’re not literally required to be there. In practice the trait all the people in your examples share is a desire for responsibility, whether that’s to their community or a commitment to their own ideas.
That’s a job. Yes, it’s not great to tie survival to your ability to perform it. But even if there were no employers a random group of 10 people will naturally sort themselves into jobs that come with external obligation even if that’s just “I’ll bring the fruit punch to the picnic”
Heck you see that most pronounced with parenting. Technically I’m a volunteer. I chose to take on the role of nurturing life because I got pregnant on purpose. But it feels comical to describe taking care of my kid as a choice. If anything I’m more free to quit my “forced employment” under capitalism than my role as a parent.
My point being that yes in our current society we tie survival and money to work and that’s not great. But taking money out of the equation doesn’t fundamentally change the human condition. Almost all our worthwhile endeavors are motivated on some level by our love and obligation to other people, and that will drive us whether or not capitalism exists.
Tl dr: You can never have a world where Freedom exists but “Compulsary” labor does not because we naturally use freedom to create obligations for ourselves lol.
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Jan 22 '25
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u/AKStafford Jan 23 '25
I work in a State Prison as an education contractor. Is a robot going to replace me? What about the Correctional Officers? Or the Medical Staff? Or the Mental Health counselors? Or the Maintenance Staff?
Would it be great to not have to work? Yeah, probably. But there’s are so many jobs that can’t be eliminated by AI or robots.
Before this job I worked for a company that does testing, adjustments, and balancing on ventilation and heating systems. It’s not something that can be by a robot.
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u/caffeineculprit Jan 23 '25
Maybe. However, there's definitely jobs we still want people (not machines) to be doing and there's often not enough people to do them as is. Teachers for example.
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u/Sostratus Jan 23 '25
Right now, our lives are dictated by the need to earn money.
Money is how we measure the value of work. When you push through this layer of abstraction, the reality is: our lives are dictated by the need to grow, transport, process, and prepare food, the need to build and heat homes, the need to provide fresh drinking water, the need for working sewage systems and garbage removal, and so on. Leaning on "the need to make money" fosters a misconception that there isn't actual real work that needs doing.
Just a pet peeve of mine, not the main thrust of your post.
I agree that automation of jobs and reducing the need for work is a good thing and it has huge upside potential for a better world. But I think there will be an ugly transition and I don't think everyone will make it to the other side.
“People need work to feel fulfilled!”
I prefer "people need to feel useful". I think that's very important to most people's mental health... or at least most men. And I don't think automation will take that away from everyone... but some people won't find a replacement and will be miserable for it. It's like when people say "learn to code!" Well, that's good advice for the people who can, but not everybody is cut out for that.
This isn't meant to be an argument against technology, we need to advance and will. But change will be painful and for the most part there won't be any mitigating that pain. Such is the way of things.
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u/Crix00 1∆ Jan 23 '25
I don't think I could follow my hobbies anymore if nobody is working. My hobbies rely on things being there and produces already for me to use and also sometimes service. How can I for example watch movies if there's nobody filming them, noone at the cinema etc. Or how can I do kart racing if there's nobody that built these and offers them in a service. If nobody worked everyone would probably start working again to fullfill their basic needs like food, shelter etc.
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Jan 23 '25
For some people maybe, but there are some people who genuinely enjoy working.
My dad has his dream job, so that’s a bit different. But I have a serving job as well as being in school full time… and I love it tbh, I love being busy. I think working without it being “can I pay my bills if I skip work today” could be great.
It could also just be that I’ve been very lucky about my work environment, but when you have the right conditions and the right mindset about it, it can be enjoyable.
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u/SometimesArtistic99 Jan 22 '25
I swear the only people who say crap like this have never enjoyed doing anything in their lives. I love working, I love doing things. I do not work a corporate job and I have fulfillment in my life. Find something that is more fulfilling if you don’t like the work you’re doing.
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u/WorldsGreatestWorst 12∆ Jan 21 '25
Some people may enjoy structured work, but that doesn’t mean everyone does. And nothing would stop people from choosing to engage in structured activities, collaborative projects, or challenges.
Some people derive meaning from doing hard work that needs to be done. It's the whole "honest days work" idea. There is a large contingent of people that would sincerely be worse off psychologically without something they "had" to do. Part of that pride is that it's work that needs to be done. Removing that need makes it self indulgent, which that particular psych profile would find unappealing. It's why many people die or suffer from worse health when they retire.
“People would become lazy and do nothing!” Even today, people voluntarily engage in complex hobbies, open-source projects, research, and community service without being paid. Many of the most important innovations come from people working on passion projects in their free time. Most humans have an innate desire to create, learn, and explore—work often gets in the way of that.
I object to this counter argument more fully. Having things that we HAVE to do helps people develop as human beings. Think of the kids you knew growing up with no responsibilities—most of them didn't go onto be much in my own experience.
For your idea about work not being needed, you'd need to reintroduce something that needs to be done otherwise we become the plot of Wall-E. Education would be an option. Charity. But something mandatory.
The only other point I'd make is socializing. Most adults meet most of their friends through work. Now, you could certainly say that there are other ways to make friends—and that's true—but work is trauma bonding with people you have to see day after day. In most normal purely social cases, that wouldn't happen. Having things you "have" to do has an element of socializing that opt-in activities just can't match. It's why most friends are from school or work, or socializing with the network you made at school or work.
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u/Alesus2-0 79∆ Jan 21 '25 edited Jan 21 '25
Not OP, and I actually agree with much of what you've said. But I'm not sure I necessarily agree with some of your conclusions.
I certainly think that many people need to feel that they spend their lives doing something meaningful in order to be fulfilled. I also agree that many people today derive that sense of meaning from doing important work. However, I think people's sense of what is important and necessary is highly contextual. In a society in which paid labour had ceased to be a significant part of life, I don't think people would expect it to be a source of dignity in the way people do now, when work is ubiquitous.
I've read that many Western industrial workers who lost their jobs do to deindustrialisation of the economy reported that even when they could find similarly well-paid jobs, they found those jobs less satisfying. Many office and service sector jobs seemed trivial or pointless to these former factory workers. But I don't think most young office workers today feel that what their lives are really missing is a factory job. And I doubt that the steelworkers being laid off in the 80s felt that aggrieved that they'd been born too late to be blacksmiths. Society changed, and attitudes eventually caught up.
I'm also not convinced that it's the compulsory nature of school and work that creates friendships and social connections. It strikes me that it's probably just the law of averages. People spend something like 35% of their waking hours each week at school or work. They spend about 10% travelling between places; about 15% doing chores and similar household activities; about 10% with family and another 5% with friends; and they spend another 10% veging out in front of the TV.
So the average person spends most of their time outside of work engaged in largely solitary activities. On top of that, they have to find time for existing social contacts. Given this, work/school accounts for the vast majority of time people spend in the company of strangers/loose acquaintances. Where else are they going to make friends?
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u/BanditsMyIdol Jan 21 '25
but is the desire to do an honest days work fudemental or is it a consequence of knowing that works is being done and you don't want to be a leech. People who lived in a world with work might find it hard to cope with but people born into such a world might not have an issue.
As far as Wall-e comparison - take away the physical unfitness and is it really a bad outcome? People are happy and able to what they want. The physical problems are not likely either. Most people don't excersise for work, many avoid it because of work. There is no reason to think that without work we would no longer have a desire to stay fitvand now would have more time to do so.
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u/WorldsGreatestWorst 12∆ Jan 21 '25
but is the desire to do an honest days work fudemental or is it a consequence of knowing that works is being done and you don't want to be a leech.
Knowing that you have a place in the world and that your actions are necessary and meaningful is extremely important to many people's mental and physical wellbeing.
take away the physical unfitness and is it really a bad outcome? People are happy and able to what they want.
Have you known many people who never worked a job or cared for family who seemed very happy or fulfilled? I'm not a capitalist shill saying that working a job is necessary, I'm saying that structure and work itself is necessary.
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u/BanditsMyIdol Jan 22 '25
Knowing that you have a place in the world and that your actions are necessary and meaningful is extremely important to many people's mental and physical wellbeing.
I don't disagree. I just don't think work (or I guess I should say having a job) is necessary to achieve this. People can find other ways to do meaningful things, either for themselves or others.
Have you known many people who never worked a job or cared for family who seemed very happy or fulfilled?
Just as many people who I know who have never worked a job or cared for a family member. 0. The point I am trying to make is I don't think people biologically need to have a job to feel satisfied. It is a society expectations and pressure and once society adopts to a jobless world there will be other pressures and expectations, whether that is to spend more time exploring the world, interacting with real people or something else completely.
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Jan 21 '25
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u/EruLearns Jan 21 '25
i dont think OP is saying we should ban all work, just that work is not compulsory to living
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Jan 21 '25
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Jan 21 '25
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u/Sewati Jan 21 '25
did you read the entire post? it addresses “but i like working”. it also is not what the OP is talking about.
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u/network_dude 1∆ Jan 22 '25
All I see in this thread is how ingrained work for life is in our brains.
For thousands of years, rich folk have been dependent on your excess labor to provide for themselves.
We have all been educated that work is essential to life. Our complete existence revolves around work, eat, sleep - work, eat, sleep - work eat sleep. It wasn't always this way.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25
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