The dream of less work

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by Sempu

While it seems self-evident that the working classes appear to be better off than they were during the Victoria era, that period may have been an anomaly that is revealed when we look back further. Primitive culture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia says that it's a defining feature of primitive cultures that they have more leisure time.

Again, it depends on the metric. I'm sure people crippled in factory accidents, coal miners with lung disease, people with no appreciable skill and no means of gaining one would have disagreed.

Some anticipated that work would be optional in the future. Robert Heinlein's first novel "For Us The Living" depicted a "social dividend" (presumably from automation) that was enough for everyone. Closest equivalent I can think of is the oil dividend for Alaskan residents.

That was always going ot be unrealistic, and expecting it is naive.

The original Star Trek series showed work being more or less optional and money no longer necessary (they weren't consistent on that point). Now that seems like a cruel hoax.

Yes, their economics would never have worked without a post-scarcity society (which they arguably had via replicators, but not fully), but it took until well into the 22nd century.
I think you need to read The Logical Fallacy of Generalization from Fictional Evidence - Less Wrong .

Partly I think this is a result of ruinous central bank policies and national debt, a topic that I used to find immensely boring until I discovered how much it was affecting my life. And also that we have not as a people matured enough to deal with the social implications of our changing technology.

Clearly you don't know enough about it then.
Without banking, there would be no money, nothing would be financed. No large scale projects would be possible.

Originally Posted by Niri Te

Sempu,
I think the biggest reason that people are working longer and harder, is due to the Corporate "Fat Cats" manipulating the job market.
They use the threat of replacing the disgruntled, or those that are in THEIR estimation, "lazy", with either those out of work, who will do anything for anything over minimum wage, or the threat of moving the company production to China, and design and public relations to India "in an effort to stay in business", to turn hard working Americans into indentured servants. The fact that many Americans are in hock up to their eyeballs and can't afford to miss a single payment, acts as sufficient pressure to cause many working people into two jobs for scandalous wages.
Niri Te

Again, your beliefs don't align with reality.

It isn't possible to arbitrarily fire someone without paying them. Many does not mean all; it is only the fault of people who took out bad debt and now struggle to repay it (and possibly the banks for taking on too much debt they knew people were going to default on, but that's beside the point).
In al truth, people are lazy. Offer someone two jobs at the same pay and they'll take the easier, or shorter hours. Offer someone a marginally harder one at 2x as much as they'll take that one.

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

The situation seems rather similar here in Sweden too. Here we now have got ourselves a government that, inspired by the US, goes along with the capitalists and which has launched a political agenda called “The line of work”, ie that everyone must work, else they get no money or allowances. Even the ones that are sick are forced to apply for jobs, otherwise they do not get any financial support from the state.
People who are unemployed are put into programs so they will not stay at home (people who just sits around home are considered a problem) but are forced to attend specially created “jobs” for only fractions of a normal salary in order to be able to get some financial support.

You mean you think people should be entitled to sit at home and claim money from people who DO work?
Here, you only get benefits if you apply for jobs, and I completely support that, even as it is there are far too many chavs who have neither intention or action to apply for jobs, yet still live at the taxpayer's expense more or less permanently.

Some parties and political groups have been lobbying for a six hour working day (today we have eight hour mandatory workingdays, but many ofcourse work much longer days) as a first step towards a more work free society, but most of the leading political parties, and ofcourse the companies, have opposed to that idea, claiming that it would ruin our economy.

I'm sure that anyone with a job would oppose it too. Since there's already 30 min mandatory break that is't paid, that's a huge reduction in income (and in Sweden, tax levels are stupidly high anyway).

[redpaintednavi]

Originally Posted by Human No More

You mean you think people should be entitled to sit at home and claim money from people who DO work?
Here, you only get benefits if you apply for jobs, and I completely support that, even as it is there are far too many chavs who have neither intention or action to apply for jobs, yet still live at the taxpayer's expense more or less permanently.

I'm sure that anyone with a job would oppose it too. Since there's already 30 min mandatory break that is't paid, that's a huge reduction in income (and in Sweden, tax levels are stupidly high anyway).

What I mean is that there must be alternatives. More people could share the same jobs, it would at least mean less working hours. And ofcourse the revenues from the work should be divided much more equally among the population and not be allowed to slip into the pockets of capitalists share holders and similar who get an unproportionally big peace of the cake.

The benefits from technological development and mechanisation should be used to create wealth that is distributed among people, and used to reduse working hours and create more leisure (and other forms of prosperity). As it is now most money and resources are gobbled up by all sorts of company owners and share holders and their henchmen (politicians, ceo:s and similar). They actually steel the life and time of people.

About Swedish tax levels: We do have high taxes in Sweden, but we also use at least some of the tax money for social purposes. Because of that we do not yet have the alarming high rate of social problems that one can see in the US and also in the UK. Sweden is still somewhat more equal. For references on that you can read Wilson and Pickets excellent book "The Spirit level".

[Human No More]

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

What I mean is that there must be alternatives. More people could share the same jobs, it would at least mean less working hours.

It also means less pay. If someone could only do half their hours, they'd just take a second job to make up for the huge chunk of their income that was just stolen from them. Since a company would likely pay two people doing less work LESS than one person doing both people's work (due to doubled training, provision, doubled loss of employee time due to mandatory breaks, etc), someone would still earn a lot less with two jobs paying at the same rate than they would now with one even before the wasted time/money from additional travel comes into the equation.

And ofcourse the revenues from the work should be divided much more equally among the population and not be allowed to slip into the pockets of capitalists share holders and similar who get an unproportionally big peace of the cake.

In other words, you want to remove motivation to succeed? If there's no possibility of becoming successful, nobody will work. Everyone will become perpetual benefit claimants, or else get by only doing the bare minimum and stifling innovation and growth, which itself drives unemployment up, driving up government spending as wastage, driving up taxes.
Give someone a choice between two jobs doing the same type of work, paying the same amount; if one requires them to do the bare minimum and the other is highly demanding, unless the work is the person's favourite thing in the world, or else highly interesting or linked to a cause the person feels strongly about, almost everyone will choose the former, and with good reason.

The benefits from technological development and mechanisation should be used to create wealth that is distributed among people, and used to reduse working hours and create more leisure (and other forms of prosperity).

I don't think you understand economics. Wealth isn't created like that; simply moved - you can't just print free money to hand out. Zimbabwe 'creates' wealth by printing money with nothing to back it and no meaningful economic activity, which is literally not worth the paper it is printed on. The Weimar Republic did the same, the former is in state of economic ruin and the same practice drove the latter into one.

As it is now most money and resources are gobbled up by all sorts of company owners and share holders and their henchmen (politicians, ceo:s and similar). They actually steel the life and time of people.

Entrepreneurship is what causes jobs to exist. It's what causes unprofitable or inviable ventures to fail and successful ones to thrive and grow. Government tends to do the opposite by pouring billions into sunk costs. By all means, that has a place, such as essential services that would be prohibitively expensive otherwise, but more often than not, they are simply subsidised, whether by direct aid or tax relief than nationalised, because private industry will always be capable of running things more efficiently by its very nature; all that is needed is for controls to be placed where appropriate to guarantee standards, and then let market forces do their job.

Originally Posted by redpaintednavi

Unfortunately many people are so caught up in the capitalist system, and have been so used (or misused) by employers and others, that they have not always had the possibility to make their preparations. It is better that the society (in the end we all) does an effort to ease each others burdens instead of increasing them, as we currently do just to feed a few capitalists who want to live high life on the revenues of others work.

You have to put oil and petrol in a car and periodically check everything is within normal parameters for it to keep working; it won't maintain itself. Most people realise that; but some people just don't realise that the same goes for their finances. Nobody is going to do it for them unless they pay them to. If pension schemes were private, it is likely people would see a lot more return from them for the investment; but people who didn't think they would need it would miss out. governments rightly don't want that to happen, but the money has to come from somewhere; they do not want to be perceived as taking too much money to feed into an impending demographic collapse; neither do they want to be seen as doing nothing. It's the same as provision of any other service: If you think it's enough, fine and good for you - if not, pay for it yourself - doing so will provide better return than if the extra was taken away and used for the same ends without consent in any case. What one person finds sufficient will be another person's excessive and yet another's insufficient.