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Re: The implications of a post scarcity world
I can't speak for Canada but in the UK it kind of is. I had one conversation with a rather stupid girl a few weeks ago (well I say a few weeks ago, it was at some point in the summer when I was still in the middle of a job hunt myself) who was whining about immigrants in true "DEY TURK UR JERBS!" style.
It went something like this:
Her: But they give all the jobs to them. You know, the stuff I'm too good for.
Me: They are the only ones applying for them you know. I know, I've been to an interview for a couple of crappy cleaning jobs and was the only one there that couldn't speak Polish.
Her: But I want a job, but they're giving all those jobs to them.
Me: Have you actually applied for one of those? I know it's kind of a sucky job but a job's a job. I've applied for plenty of things like that because at least it's something while you look for something else.
Her: I'm not cleaning someone's bathroom! I have ethics!
Me: *facepalm*
Then you have the people who are all "I'm looking but nothing is there!" which is Lazy Moron for "I'm going to wait until the one job I want appears and apply for only that".
The thing that pisses me off is that it causes the people who genuinely are desperately hunting for a job, any job, to be tarred with the same brush as all of the idiotic white trash.
The UK is also plagued with the issue of people being too lazy to actually get the qualifications at school, because they expect to be able to just drop into some unskilled job after leaving school. One reason why immigrants get the good jobs in the UK is that they are actually qualified for the jobs they apply for. Who would you rather hire? Wayne who dropped out of school at 16 and will show up at 11 stinking of weed and vodka and barely speaks English in an understandable form, or Vladamir, who will turn up an hour early, dressed smartly and is qualified, and speaks better English than most of the people in the UK?
There's plenty of other factors for sure, stupid Government Policy, lazy parenting, lack of investment in deprived areas, failure of the education system, good old fashioned greed. However, dismissing laziness entirely is nothing short of ignorance.
To get back on topic to the podcast, yes laziness IS still relevant. The problem is when you get to the idea of people being free to pursue whatever creative desires they want: they're not going to be able to afford to do that without some kind on income in the current economic and monetary system that we currently have in place. Plus many people aren't going to have the resources to consume that if they aren't able to purchase the media and media players in order to consume that created media. Without a complete and utter change in the whole concept of currency, it is unlikely that this would create some kind of Utopia.
What it would create is the few people with the money and resources being the only one able to consume/watch/read/whatever because those are the only ones able to afford to. Everyone else would just be stuck in an impoverished underclass.
Now how does this relate to laziness? People will always be lazy. Even if this does produce a Utopia, something that is highly unlikely with the current social and economical norms, you will always get groups of people that expect something for nothing, or will exploit the system to gain something for nothing. Plus there is the fact that a lot of people simply aren't that creative.
But back to the concept of the Utopia, we would essentially have to change everything, how we think about the value of something. How we see the concept of currency, how we define concepts like "work", "laziness", "wealth" and "leisure", what we would actually define as a job, and how we would look at the people who are actually working to keep things running.
But seriously, blaming a lack of jobs purely on machines replacing the people doing them and no other reason be is political, social, economic, cultural or any combination of those? Come on that's just ignorant.
I can't speak for Canada but in the UK it kind of is. I had one conversation with a rather stupid girl a few weeks ago (well I say a few weeks ago, it was at some point in the summer when I was still in the middle of a job hunt myself) who was whining about immigrants in true "DEY TURK UR JERBS!" style.
It went something like this:
Her: But they give all the jobs to them. You know, the stuff I'm too good for.
Me: They are the only ones applying for them you know. I know, I've been to an interview for a couple of crappy cleaning jobs and was the only one there that couldn't speak Polish.
Her: But I want a job, but they're giving all those jobs to them.
Me: Have you actually applied for one of those? I know it's kind of a sucky job but a job's a job. I've applied for plenty of things like that because at least it's something while you look for something else.
Her: I'm not cleaning someone's bathroom! I have ethics!
Me: *facepalm*
Then you have the people who are all "I'm looking but nothing is there!" which is Lazy Moron for "I'm going to wait until the one job I want appears and apply for only that".
The thing that pisses me off is that it causes the people who genuinely are desperately hunting for a job, any job, to be tarred with the same brush as all of the idiotic white trash.
The UK is also plagued with the issue of people being too lazy to actually get the qualifications at school, because they expect to be able to just drop into some unskilled job after leaving school. One reason why immigrants get the good jobs in the UK is that they are actually qualified for the jobs they apply for. Who would you rather hire? Wayne who dropped out of school at 16 and will show up at 11 stinking of weed and vodka and barely speaks English in an understandable form, or Vladamir, who will turn up an hour early, dressed smartly and is qualified, and speaks better English than most of the people in the UK?
There's plenty of other factors for sure, stupid Government Policy, lazy parenting, lack of investment in deprived areas, failure of the education system, good old fashioned greed. However, dismissing laziness entirely is nothing short of ignorance.
To get back on topic to the podcast, yes laziness IS still relevant. The problem is when you get to the idea of people being free to pursue whatever creative desires they want: they're not going to be able to afford to do that without some kind on income in the current economic and monetary system that we currently have in place. Plus many people aren't going to have the resources to consume that if they aren't able to purchase the media and media players in order to consume that created media. Without a complete and utter change in the whole concept of currency, it is unlikely that this would create some kind of Utopia.
What it would create is the few people with the money and resources being the only one able to consume/watch/read/whatever because those are the only ones able to afford to. Everyone else would just be stuck in an impoverished underclass.
Now how does this relate to laziness? People will always be lazy. Even if this does produce a Utopia, something that is highly unlikely with the current social and economical norms, you will always get groups of people that expect something for nothing, or will exploit the system to gain something for nothing. Plus there is the fact that a lot of people simply aren't that creative.
But back to the concept of the Utopia, we would essentially have to change everything, how we think about the value of something. How we see the concept of currency, how we define concepts like "work", "laziness", "wealth" and "leisure", what we would actually define as a job, and how we would look at the people who are actually working to keep things running.
But seriously, blaming a lack of jobs purely on machines replacing the people doing them and no other reason be is political, social, economic, cultural or any combination of those? Come on that's just ignorant.
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