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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.
Four day weeks already exist, they're a thing in the trades that come with their own set of tradeoffs- either as part of a four/3 schedule or as a mon-thurs/tues-fri schedule. They seems to be slowly getting more popular
Interesting given that the trades are the least impacted by AI. I suppose I'm thinking white collar work should be implementing some of this.
In general, you see four/three schedules at 24/7 facilities, so to spread the undesirable hours around, and four day weeks when no one trusts management to send them home at a reasonable hour.
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