Depends on how much of our needs would be covered. Not needing to work to survive is different from not needing to work to live a comfortable life which is again different from living a luxurious life.
this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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As someone who wholeheartedly supports Universal Basic Income, it should not let a person live a life of luxury. UBI should buy away all the poor though
Nah, I want Star Trek style post-scarcity.
And I want a Star Wars style lightsaber but let's be realistic
This!!
It's called Star Trek
Well, if you knew that for the rest of your life you would have a home, clothing, food and water, internet and some spending money, what would you do with your time?
Many people would probably just relish doing nothing productive at all, like most animals in nature do when they have no immediate needs.
All that free time would probably inspire a renaissance of art and philosophy, probably personal education too, after all, you can do plenty of thinking on various topics if you have all day to do whatever you are in the mood for. But ultimately we would still need a real outlet for our creative and constructive urges, a way to meaningfully occupy our time.
Ultimately we would need a true common cause again that everyone can share in, like Starfleet in Trek is for mankind. A new frontier, exploration and discovery like humanity has not known since we first started sailing our oceans to seek out the unknown. And not just for elite astronauts, for everyone.
We'd be forced to anyway
Would depend how it's achieved. The most realistic way would be through mass automation, but the question is now "who owns the machines that produce everything?" A minority controlling these means of production would mean the rest of the world is at their mercy. If they manage to maintain their ownership (though a fully automated defense force, I guess), they can have the rest of the world doing whatever they want... But what do they need these people for then? All they are is a threat, as they are prone to revolt. Genocide seems like a handy option if the elites are sufficiently ruthless, but it would be hard to put in place; there are many people in the world and they can be inventive when fighting for their lives. Beside, there would probably be several such elite groups, still divided in different country; one who starts building large armies and stacking weapons might attract hostility from their neighbors. Providing the people with their needs to pacify them? Sure, but what if they want more? Or what if they make their own automated armies with the free time they have not worrying about starvation? Keeping them occupied seems safer. Why not invent some bogus job that doesn't actually need to be done and have them believe they still need to earn their living? That could solve the problem from the elite's point of view. So basically, no change for the people.
With collective ownership of the means of production and an egalitarian spread of wealth, it could be cool tho. People would just do whatever they want, many would still probably undertake collective project, either to further better life of for the fun of it. There could still be forms of conflicts about how some things are managed and by whom, tho...
Time will become the currency if other resources are unlimited.
Time keeps moving forward, and you cannot go back to the past.
Someone would start to make or do something for fun. Someone else would see it and want one. A market is born. They try bartering for a while, that gets too complicated, then someone remembers money worked pretty well for exchanging goods and services.
Not necessarily. Lots of people already release their "fun" things they make for free. If you had all your needs taken care of, you could release anything you made for free a lot more easily.
That being said, there will always be limits even if you don't have to work, there are only so many major sports teams that can be owned by a single person. There can only be so many stays per night at fancy hotels in a particular city.
Even with biological needs satisfied human society creates social\cultural 'needs' that people will fight\work just as hard to acquire or maintain. 'Keeping up with the Jones' can create demand for literally anything. Unless we each get a genie that grants our every wish, we'll find something to compete over and markets will develop around those.
Universal Basic Income should buy away the poor and make sure everyone is comfortable. Bartering with earned money is still allowed.
Historically, barter only tends to appear in communities used to a monetary economy when something temporarily disrupts the currency system. The more common pattern of commerce within communities not previously accustomed to currency is that goods are given in one direction at a time, and incur an informal social debt that may be eventually be repaid with reciprocal goods or by some other means entirely (e.g., support during community disputes).
I'd stop spending all my time on trying to survive and poor all my hours into work I want to do instead of have to do. I have a ton of stuff I'd actually want to do that are very definately work but I can't make a living doing it, so I don't!
The art we made would be amazing... and we'd instantly see life spans and QoL skyrocket.
Working is bad for your health.
these people had a beautiful idea:
https://www.thevenusproject.com/
This plus benevolent AI = utopia. and we could be building it now, but capitalism is going to kill all of us instead. arm yourselves if you want to see life on this planet last another century.
Star Trek would happen
everyone will get the same fixed wage, so they can buy what they want, but don't deplete everything by stockpiling too many
I think this a misconcept about Universal Basic Income, or atleast my vision of it atleast. UBI should only buy away the poor and make everyone comfortable. Jobs would still be available, as UBI should not let one live a life of luxury, so you can go out and live the life you want if you have the drive. But if someone else doesn't have the drive and just wants to coast by they should be able to without worrying about dying.
Let's just make the baseline for everyone comfortable
Finally we'll get to some serious space exploration and and other scientific breakthroughs. I'm sure there is plenty of crap to compete with out there.
I don't think that everyone will stop working just because they can. Even if everything even non essential goods would be provided for everyone, we would still produce luxury good, arts and services. So it would in the best case evolve into something like market socialism where everyone profits of of the chance to never have to work again. In the worst case we would be stuck with a system where few hold these unlimited resources and make people work by holding back essential goods despite being abled to provide for everyone. In both situations I think money would probably still play a role.
What (if anything) does the state tax, and in what form do they require payment?
We need teachers. Many would do it, but they want respect and support.
So I'm guessing they'd need money.
Let's be realistic, if humans continue to exist we're going to be raised and educated in AI powered pods
I mean, we could always just go original Time Machine. Human sheep just existing until we don't.
I’d be bored as hell. I enjoy my job and get a lot of satisfaction from it, so I’d probably still work.
I tell people I will work til I die, partly as a tongue in cheek jab at how bleak the future looks, but also because I find my job to be a good way to occupy my time.
Which is to be expected. You can still work you just would not need to in order to survive. I would be a librarian if I didn't have to worry about income to feed, clothe and shelter myself.
What makes you think we "need" to work now?
Food, water, a roof over your head....
Gonna need money, which is obtained through work
The fact that we do it when all our other needs are met, and get antsy if we're prevented from working.
Them we are making more children ....
This is my theory, also. But I think the average would be around replacement.
Have three grown kids. Three was probably about all I could handle. Love them, proud of them, took the best care I knew to do with what I had... But it was a lot as they got into demand extracurriculars.
That movie is called Logan’s Run.
Time to grab me some Soma and check out who is on the carousel tonight!
Drugs are good. MK?
Yes money would be gone. That would have to precede not needing to work.
My guess is that the answer will be unintuitive. For many people regular work schedule is what the rest of their life is built around. If you remove the need for work eveything else falls apart too and this would derail the lifes of the vast majority of humanity. Ofcourse there's some number of people that do have interesting hobbies and other projects that could take the place of their previous job but for many people this is not the case and they would now just be sitting around with nothing to do and no purpose to their life.
If I had to guess what the optimal situation would be it would be something like UBI + less work. UBI would give you the peace of mind to not have to constantly stress about your personal finances which would then allow you to choose a job you actually like doing and instead of doing it 8 hours a day 5 days a week you could perhaps work only 3 days or every day but just for 5 hours or so.
Hunting and gathering is work. If you want to eat you need to work to get food.
Yeah, and imagine the community gardens if everyone had free time to help maintain it just a little
Horticulture? That's work.
Yes. I'm saying everyone can come together to work for a common goal. A common goal of a healthier community with fresh food. And they can work on this farm while volunteering thier time since (ideally) nobody would have to have a job
I put in labor for food. That's a job. You're describing a farmer. This is how the majority of humanity has spent the majority of its time until the industrial revolution. If you're not doing your job farming then you're doing your job hunting and/or gathering. These are all jobs humans have been doing before we evolved into homo sapiens.
I'm not saying if you help in the community garden you have to spend all your time being a farmer. The beauty of not being forced to have a job is you are free to do what you want. And if you want to spend that free time gardening, awesome. Maybe you want to spend free time helping out people in another way, which is fine. Thar free time is free to do whatever.
The food situation in this hypothetical situation is covered for everyone. The original question was what happens if nobody has to work anymore. That includes you food being covered. So everyone would have there basic nutritional needs met everyday. But after your tired of eating basic foods, you can go down to the community garden and help grow fresh food for all to eat.
We have a chance to evolve to a species that doesn't need to hunt or gather out of necessity, but we should still try to let those skills help us thrive
I don't want to garden, could I exchange some of my goods for yours? Maybe a standard currency so that it was easy to share that with someone else.
You wouldnt have to garden if that's not what youre good at. You would be able to help out your community in whatever way best suits you.
But in this scenario, UBI doesn't mean nobody works anymore. It just means nobody lives a life where any day they could homeless and without food. But if you want to live a life of luxury you still work. But you don't HAVE to.