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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.
What is this actually supposed to do? If you want to work 4 days a week, 6 hours a day, you already can.
Well, the real problem is that there isn't a finite amount of work to be done. The AI taking over a lot of human work because they can do the work of a bajillion people doesn't mean there's no longer work for humans to do.
You actually cannot in most of the white collar world, it's extremely inflexible. Also, it's supposed to increase human flourishing and give us more time to spend on things we want to do! Ideally help people grow.
Imagine this attitude back when work was 7 days a week, 12 hour days. Work is a necessity, ideally we live as well or perhaps work on projects more aligned to our souls when we have more free time.
I do agree that there's always more work to do. I think our modern economy doesn't value the type of work left to be done very well, namely spiritual / emotional / community work.
The white collar world is exactly that place that's dominated by frictions that scale with the number of employees.
People don't value it -- or if they did, they would pay for it.
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