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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.
Who's "we"?
If it's the government, then how? Currently, they can set incentives like full-time benefits at X hours per week and required overtime pay for >Y hours (X=30, Y=40 currently, IIRC), but they aren't anywhere close to banning work (outside of a few edge cases like long-haul trucking).
If it's the companies, then why? They'd have to pay four sets of benefits, rent four workspaces, run training four times, have single-path tasks take 33% longer, and have meetings with four people instead of three with a 30 hour workweek and 120 hour weekly workload. If they're early adopters, then they'd also attract people looking for reduced time commitments compared to the standard, which is horrible negative selection.
If it's the employees, then who are they? Most people I know look for overtime, not temporary layoffs or unpaid time off. That suggests that their optimal work week is above 40 hours given their financial needs and time commitments. Heck, some people take multiple part-time jobs (which sounds horrible) because they want to work more hours than one job can provide.
I wouldn’t mind something similar to what Netflix does with its employees. Or at least did at one point.
A friend of mine who was hired on as a full time developer years ago said the base pay they quote you is quite higher than what you’d find for comparable positions elsewhere. But in return they expected you to buy your own health insurance programs, and the amount of non-monetary benefits you received were somewhat scaled back. Stock options and 401k’s were still available as I understood it, but that about ran the full gamut of what you could expect from them.
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