Bill Gates says a 3-day work week where ‘machines can make all the food and stuff’ isn’t a bad idea::“A society where you only have to work three days a week, that’s probably OK,” Bill Gates said.
I don’t care what one of the richest people in the world thinks about labour and work/life balance. I care what the average person thinks.
But he’s right about this.
You should, because they are the ones who will be making the decisions.
Until enough of us say that we don’t care what they think, and we demand better.
Bill Gates isn’t making the decisions anymore and hasn’t been for decades now
He still has more decision making power than anyone I’ve ever met and probably ever will meet.
How fuckin high are you to forget how much power comes from being a billionaire?
wdym? He only gets one vote
/s
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Yeah, every debate about reducing the number of cars always ends at something like “too many jobs are involved in the car industry, so we need to preserve these jobs, and also people need cars to go work in these factories”. I feel like there will hardly be a deep environmental breakthrough if it doesn’t come with a deep social change.
I would rather work down the road at a bakery than drive to the next town to be an engineering apprentice.
Only one of them pays, however.
Companies would automate and save on employees, making people poor. Automation only makes sense if basic universal income is applied
If people are that poor they will just deautomate the machines in protest until UBI happens.
People don’t have that kind of power. Especially poor people.
A person doesn’t, but people certainly do. And a small number can do a surprising amount if they’re coordinated enough.
It’s not a bad idea, but it also can’t exist without a complete re-haul of what it means to live in modern society. Right now, replacing workers and cutting hours means people don’t have enough money to live. That is not an acceptable result of automation. I’m not qualified enough to have a reasonable solution to this, but I know it needs to be addressed before we get to that point.
Isn’t this the primary argument for universal basic income? If you’re keeping unnecessary jobs around just to give people something to do, you’re not actually keeping them for contributions to society… In the long run ubi could probably even be cheaper than paying to prop up obsolete and wholly unnecessary industries.
While true, UBI would have to be funded by corporate tax.
“We no longer need people to be able to sell and deliver our products”
^ Win for the corporations
“Virtually no (low-income) property is unoccupied now. And my middle class tenants are making more from UBI, so I raised rent”
^ Win for landlords (which are mostly corporations)
“We can now demographically target ads to UBI payouts to get people to spend their money”
^ Win for corporations
It continues, but the general idea is that, while the populace could benefit from UBI, if it just comes from their taxes it’s not going to shrink class division in any way, but increase it
Yes, funding UBI with raised corporate taxes is absolutely not optional, I agree completely.
At the end of the day, simplified, UBI means: massive cuts to the workforce, in lieu of technology that can perform the exact same tasks more efficiently, for less; all the while paying people money at the same or similar levels of what they earned before.
It would be insane to assume the former would just grow wealthier over night while the latter is relegated to being financed by - in this example - wishful thinking. The money’s gotta come from somewhere, and it makes sense it be the same place it’s (supposed to be) coming from now.
Look at this guy who doesn’t have billions he made from the 90s and 2000s to rely on!
In 2010 Bill Gates was worth 50 Billion. He is now worth 117 Billion.
He ain’t exactly coasting. He just has a higher PR budget than he did back in the 90s.
The machine doesn’t require a salary but instead of sending the money it saves to the workers it replaces it is added to the yearly profits, a three day work week with more automatisation can’t happen before that last part is reversed or there’s extreme deflation happening to compensate for lower wages.
Some of you [all rich folks] may cry but its a sacrifice I am willing to make
I do wonder if this is even a money thing as even OpenAI has warned investors that money in the future is not certain. Maybe we are going to be forced to look to alternatives other than money as the means of value?
Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing now
I think it’s unavoidable that humans won’t have enough work in the future since more and more stuff get automated.
I also think the evil people at the top knows this and are no strangers to starting wars to get rid of millions of people, when there is no capitalistic benefit for them to exist.
Their goal isn’t to get rid of people. It’s to have more people. That’s why abortion band and stuff are pushed. More people in this system means more people trading their lives to give profit to the owners. Unless there’s an actual threat of revolution, more people is useful to them.
Yeah but my point is, more people may not mean more profits in the future. Depends on what can be automated.
So basically im saying there are two ways to increase profits, either reduce costs (salaries) or increase sales. It’s possible that in the future, the equation becomes that it’s possible to reduce costs very very much by reducing employees to almost nothing, but someone needs to buy the products for it to be a profit, I agree.
It just seems so primitive what we are doing now. We should build societies where humans are happy, but capitalism is the opposite, and other systems seem to suck also.
Those star trek societies are only possible because they can generate items from thin air…
The “other systems” historically have been sabotaged. For example, Cuba had basically no ability to trade externally because the US wanted them destroyed. They’ve been fairly successful despite this though.
For another example, the Guatemala coup occurred when a new democracy formed and elected a leftist who destributed land to the poor and implemented a minimum wage. The United Fruit Company (Chiquita now) was using the land and cheap labor for their banana empire, so they lobbied to have the US overthrow them. They did, and Guatemala ended up with a dictatorship, which also genocided the natives while the US did nothing to stop them.
There are plenty of other options. Capitalists are just scared of them, so they push the myth they always fail. Instead they fail because they kill them.
I wonder what happens when the work is done and all jobs are successfully automated away. It makes very little sense how a stable world could exist where 10 guys own EVERYTHING.
As an end goal, with something like UBI and rescaled salaries etc … yes, this obviously true.
The catch is that there’d be a transition period, with uncertainties and states of incomplete capacity either from the AI or the implementation of the rearrangements of salaries etc.
In that phase, there will be opportunities for people or companies to acquire power and wealth over this new future. Who will make and sell the AIs? Who will decide what gets automated and how and with what supervision. That’s where the danger lies. It’s a whole new field of power to grab.
that’s not a problem because I plan on rising to power soon and will not let that happen
Woah there LeroyJenkins, we don’t need you rushing in too soon now
We need to have a plan in place first
oh my God he just ran in…
God dammit leroy
Nah, Bill said where the machines make the food. So, we’re good. Least we got chicken.
I disagree, I vote for Leroy Jenkins to have all the power! All hail our new randomly selected overlord! 😁
I remember him saying that computers would make people work less by being more productive, but in the end the difference was pocketed by the rich. I don’t think it’s just a technology problem…
It has never been a technology problem.
If society was build correct in a democracy, advances in all fields would always be for benefitting the people and the majority.
This has been a problem ever since the industrial revolution and what caused the great depression.
If technology advances to a stage where we only need 75% of the current work force, the answer is not to fire 25%. It is for everyone to benefit and work 25% less or get 25% more pay. (or 12,5% work less and 12,5% more pay. Our choice)
That is a working democracy.
It’s all about power. The 1% will not give up their power ( = the opportunity to do whatever they want whenever they want) just because it would be good for the 99% to work less.
That’s not how the world works.
The 1% will continue to make sure that they are in control of whatever the next thing is that grant them the same or more power.
If owning AI gives them power they will do whatever necessary to own AI and let’s not kid ourselves here “they” would be you and me if we had the chance.
It would be a great idea except it’s incompatible with capitalism. It would take away a lot of jobs from less privileged people and society would do nothing to support them. These people could then be exploited even harder due to job scarcity.
Would be nice though if we could have nice things.
As if we had a 4 day work week already. Maybe start with that?
Right now we seem to operate on a 5-day work week except somehow it only amounts to about 12 hours of actual work.
The amount of bullshit jobs that exist is insane. So many people in offices that either don’t do anything or barely anything. Then even more who could easily get all work done in half a work day. Then a gigantic amount that could easily do their work in 4 instead of 5 days or 6 instead of 8 hours. I’m typing this at work because of all the downtime I have and I still believe I get more work done then most of my colleagues.
That is completely field dependent. I worked many years of retail and a bit of construction before eventually becoming a software engineer. In my experience, both retail and construction can easily have 9 hours of work in a 10 hour workday. Now that I’m a software engineer, your comment is more akin to my experience with the amount of actual work getting done, while the rest of the work week is filled with time wasting things, like meetings and such.
Also, sick days and vacations are frowned upon, especially in retail, because these kind of places are always trying to get away with the least amount of staff that they can. It’s like the lower paid, ‘unskilled’(no such thing), workers works harder and for less benefits than everybody else. They know they can get away with it, because these people are living paycheck to paycheck, and can’t afford to protest anyways.
But are we still paid the same? Otherwise it would be working 2 jobs which one during “weekends”. Much worse.
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But it would double the amount of jobs in other sectors as well.
Lots of industries can’t just stop 4 days a week.
I think a lot of industries that aren’t attractive right now would be more attractive with shorter hours. Which would mean they could hire more people.
Not if you’re a chef.
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Capitalism and automation cannot coexist. Fallout 76 players know it very well.
What’s the plan/roadmap Mr. Gates?
He’ll get back to you on that later. The third day of his work week is over.
Releasse ze prototype!
Why 3, we could do 0
Sure. Give the wealthy and powerful ownership over literally everything in the world and as long as you follow the rules you can get your survival allowance. Shit maybe even some entertainment if you’re really good.
Dumbest fucking take I have ever heard.
But that’s how things are now… We work 5–7 days a week for the wealthy and powerful to have more ownership, while getting a survival allowance in exchange.
Maybe have a skill worth something then? Wild concept.
So your “solution” to oligarchs owning everything is…sell ourselves to them?
The parent comment was about the current system, where labor produces everything. If your labor can be easily replaced, your labor isn’t that valuable and you won’t be compensated well for your labor. If your labor can’t be replaced easily, it is valuable and you will be compensated well.
That’s pretty much the opposite of this fictional future dystopia where there is no labor at all and everything is produced by automation. In that world, you as an individual have no value at all. You’re just a leech. There won’t be any innovation, because that’s driven by labor which doesn’t exist in this scenario.
0 forced labor doesn’t mean that humans stop doing things. We are a species which psychologically have a need for something meaningful to do, it’s just that our personal resources are spent after all the meaningless stuff we have to do for the ones in power.
If we don’t maintain the institution of slavery, how will we have any innovation?!
A skill worth to them?
Uh yeah. Like literally all of human history, from the beginning of civilization and will likely last until our extinction.
Source?
If we’re going to be basing pay on “skills” that are “worth something,” CEOs should be getting minimum wage.
Working 0 days doesn’t imply we can’t collectively own things. 20% of Norway’s population democratically own their houses (housing coops) and like 90% of the Finnish population are member/democratic owners of consumer coops (Walmart grocery stores). Neither of these are workers of the respective coops they’re members of.
The overlap between the kind of people wanting to do 0 work and the kind of people willing to actually physically fight for it is virtually nonexistent.
Who is going to enforce communal ownership of the means of production and all products in the economy when those in charge decide they should reap the benefits of managing that? It certainly isn’t going to be the lazy asses who don’t even want to work literally one day a week.
I love that this headline let’s ole Bill sound like a zoned out stoner college freshman.
Such a nice little stoner billionaire /s.
Don’t humanize these assholes. It’s the reason why he says stuff like this. He’s a wealth hoarding bastard that fucked a lot of people over to get where he’s at. If he thought it was a good idea he could easily just start a big trial somewhere. But he doesn’t. Instead he sits on his mountain of money and says cute shit for idiots to drool over instead of taxing him.
I’m more on the side of Marx’s character mask argument on people like Bill. That’s why I can make shitpost comments like mine even without liking him all too much.
Can you give me a summary why character masks make this cutesy billionaire shit ok?
I’m not confident enough in my knowledge about Marx‘s ideas to be arguing about that.
I think I got a grasp on the basics, capitalism creates societal positions like owners and workers, and Bill slipped into the mask of an owner.
But to me that does not mean that humanizing the billionaire class is a good thing. I’d rather say it makes it a worse thing, as it takes away incentives for lower classes to change the system and get rid of the owner class. How do we get anywhere close to equality if people see good ole Bill and Daddy Elon, instead of the ruthless oligarchs that they are?
But like I said, I don’t have a good grasp on this theory so would be happy to be corrected/have it explained to me ;)
Fuck Bill gates
He just wants to own the machines and keep all the wealth they create.
Assuming the owners of those machines didn’t restruct the people’s access to that “food and stuff”
You think Bill Gates of all people don’t know that? He’s just trying to gaslight us into thinking the stupid-rich gigacorporation owners like him are the solution and not the problem.
People who sell things that are in high demand and necessary for survival generally are not in the practice of denying people access to those things.
Um healthcare?
