[ExI] retrainability of plebeians

[Dagon Gmail]

2009/4/22 Emlyn <emlynoregan at gmail.com>

> 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>:
> > The amount of
> > useful work that can be performed by humans is always larger than
> > their ability to perform. As soon as one specific job is "destroyed"
> > by technological change, another job opens. And the reasoning is quite
> > simple - Jobs exist because they fulfill human desires but there are
> > always more desires than there are resources (including humans) needed
> > to make them come true. If an easier way of fulfilling a human desire
> > is found, it will increase the amount of resources or decrease their
> > use in fulfilling the desire. The extra resources are not destroyed -
> > since there are always more desires available to soak up resources
> > (including workers), the resources will be used to satisfy yet another
> > unfulfilled desires, and not destroyed (i.e. sent to a concentration
> > camp).
>
> This is econ 101, and I think the really depressing thing is that you
> are right. In fact, I'm pretty sure that we passed the point long ago
> where most employed workers were doing anything real with their lives.
> I know that value is defined relatively in this context, so it is
> invalid to say what is real and not real value, but surely there is
> some difference between work which directly feeds another person, say,
> and work which is on the face of it entirely superfluous (eg: many
> faceless bureaucrat jobs in government and large industry)? Maybe
> tentatively you could say any particular job has a "reality
> coefficient", which is derived from how much impact would be felt by
> that job no longer being performed? Fuzzy. Sorry, this is difficult.
>

So the future will give everyone a chance to get by, by making virtual gold
in
WoW, to sell to people that do have a job (or the equivalent, ultra useless
job) ?
If you are right, it's a so-so future. If you are all wrong, a lot of people
will be
unable to get by, and too unlikeable to be given charity.

Those will die, or worse linger on for years in abject misery.

I sure hope that self-replicating matter compilers and cheap robotics are
enough
to provide people with food, shelter, safety and meaning. Because if this
new
economical balance can not, we are in for serious misery - until we can
rewire
the brains of those locked out ... the future may belong to those with
wireheading
treatments - those will win, sitting around all day in a small dingy
apartment,
eating dole yeast, grinning like idiots, doing nothing but being perfectly
satisfied.
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