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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Keynes grand idea of the zero hour work week with all prices going to marginal costs.

Which, back in the 1970s, the kind of futurist forecasting envisaged would be in place by 2000 since with increasing automation and productivity, we would all have so much leisure time due to a four hour work day/three day work week, we wouldn't know how to use it all.

Remind me how that turned out, again? "AI will replace workers but that won't matter since something something post-scarcity something something we'll all have UBI and can work as we want, not as we are driven to". Does anybody really expect for-profit businesses to throw money at workers for not working, or rather that they will put the profits into retained earnings?

For-profit companies would put all their profits into retained earnings.

That doesn’t interfere with zero costs products in a capitalist world. (With proper antitrust law etc).

The more realistic scenario is that companies retain prices, expand their profits with the new automation and there is a worldwide wave of unemployment and accompanied crime rise with a expected semi-luddite movement rising from the disgrunted masses of newly unemployed people in free fall in the socio economic brackets. The post scarcity deluxe gay communism utopianism was always a pipe dream.

The more realistic scenario is that companies retain prices, expand their profits with the new automation and there is a worldwide wave of unemployment and accompanied crime rise with a expected semi-luddite movement rising from the disgrunted masses of newly unemployed people in free fall in the socio economic brackets

Why is this more realistic?

because in the other scenario you are assuming that companies are going to finance the same employees that they cut to maximize profit margins. And unless the Woke mind virus becomes a terminal case in the minds of their CEO's I don't see how they would justify doing it. Granted the unemployed can go into the wealthfare state arms, but I don't think that is sustainable.

Does anybody really expect for-profit businesses to throw money at workers for not working, or rather that they will put the profits into retained earnings?

While I don't agree with them wholeheartedly, isn't this the premise of the "bullshit jobs" folks say is already happening? Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers? I guess Elon is willing to take that bet with Twitter.

I think long term we might see changes to improve efficiency, but it's not as if there aren't forces the opposite direction: managers that see status scaling with direct reports, not all technology is implemented immediately, and sometimes bureaucracy stands in the way. Sometimes unions drive this: NYC subways are still driven by hand despite computer controlled systems elsewhere.

Given the relative simplicity of it's product, does Facebook really need tens of thousands of software engineers?

Facebook isn't simple, and if you get caught in one of its circular bugs, there is no human support person who can help you out. I've had three clients in the past year get locked out of some Facebook for Business service or seemingly simple feature due to miscommunication between complex related services or a seemingly easily solvable security issue -- if there were any human beings capable of looking into them. There aren't. It's all completely impersonal and complicated and extremely frustrating when you're the one trying to get some kind of relief.

This is an interesting topic because, broadly, most people sympathize with workers fired from jobs because they’ve been made redundant, but also that automating the blue collar tasks which need to be done is not going so fast, so there’s jobs for these people to go into.