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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.

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?

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.

For a while, yes, AI will only take over some jobs and parts of jobs and free up humans for other productive work. But sooner or later, it will mean exactly that there is no work left for humans to do. Sure there might be a handful of niches where hunter-gatherers outperform agricultural societies, and where a horse is preferable to a motorcar, and where calligraphy beats printers and digital displays, but they won't be necessary for the perpetuation of those who actually create value and those who actually call the shots. Sooner or later, humans will be useless eaters, and they will be optimized away.

And this in turn comes down to whether AI have fundamental limits of their own, which is a matter of some contention not worth typing too much on here.

I thought the whole point of the thought exercise above was AI being capable of doing everything humans can do to the point where humans doing work becomes optional.

The OP is raising a question of a policy. That policy questions rests on a premise, but the premise itself can be faulty.

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