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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   23324 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 24, 2025

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I'm thinking about the culture war around AI, specifically the whole UBI debate. If AI truly does take over a lot of human work, there's a lot of people who are savagely agitating for a UBI on one side, saying we'll be post work. The other side of course says no that's not how it works, besides we aren't even close to being able to afford that. The left (generally) takes the former, while the right generally takes the latter.

What I'm surprised by is why nobody has so far mentioned what, to me, seems the obvious compromise - we just shorten the work week! As our forefathers did forcing a 5 day, 8 hour work week, why don't we continue there? Go down to a 4 day work week, and/or shorten standard working hours to 6 per day?

If AI truly will obviate the need for a lot of work, how is this not the more rational solution than trying to magically create a UBI out of money we don't have? How come this idea has barely even entered the discourse? I have been talking and thinking about AI unemployment for years and never once have heard someone argue for this compromise.

AI taking over some human work doesn't make it practical for all humans to work less. It makes it so some humans are useless, while the others need to do as much work (or even more!) as they ever did.

Don't think this is true at all. We can always find uses for humans, even if it's just serving others. Big disagree.

Serving others is no longer considered an acceptable use of humans. Further, the humans most likely to be laid off by AI are not well-suited for it. During the dot-com bust there were plenty of software engineers waiting tables in Silicon Valley, and it wasn't pretty.

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