this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 262 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 93 points 11 months ago (7 children)

You should, because they are the ones who will be making the decisions.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Until enough of us say that we don’t care what they think, and we demand better.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (4 children)
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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Companies would automate and save on employees, making people poor. Automation only makes sense if basic universal income is applied

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[–] [email protected] 187 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 94 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago

I wrote test automation for Microsoft for years. My team turned a process that took 6 weeks of a hundred people working full time to produce manual test results into one that could complete in an hour on a couple hundred computers in a lab somewhere. It was a massive breakthrough in productivity on our part. Of course, 90% of the team was laid off when the code they'd written could be maintained by a couple of people.

So yeah, the difference "went to the shareholders", certainly not to the people that did the work

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[–] [email protected] 105 points 11 months ago (7 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 11 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yeah no shit. The problem is that capitalism hates it.

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 11 months ago (1 children)

We will absolutely have automation but the workers will just be fired and all profits will be absorbed by the stockholder.

No cost savings will be passed on the other consumer either.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The problem is that would be wildly unstable. The capitalist class can't sell automated-produced goods if people don't have any money because they're unemployed.

However, those mass layoffs will make this quarter's numbers go up, and everything else is a problem for next quarter, which is why they'll do it.

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (22 children)

Assuming the owners of those machines don't restrict the people's access to that "food and stuff"

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 11 months ago (32 children)

Crap, now all the braindead covid conspiracy theorists are going to roll this into their "15 minite cities are open air prisons" conspiracies

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Sounds great. Only question is how we get paid well enough to live. A question which went conveniently unasked and unanswered.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (11 children)

We should stop measuring our productivity in hourly and need to go back to salary well paying positions, or everyone needs to share the costs with UBI instead.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (1 children)

that's not a problem because I plan on rising to power soon and will not let that happen

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Woah there LeroyJenkins, we don't need you rushing in too soon now

We need to have a plan in place first

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (1 children)

oh my God he just ran in...

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 11 months ago (7 children)

How in the world did Bill Gates go from being a scummy unethical monopolistic figure to now some trusted guru on everything? I need an explanation.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago

He used the money from the former to launder his image

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 11 months ago

Here's what would happen in capitalist America: entities would own those machines and use them as a means of personal enrichment, it'd displace a ton of human workers, the taxes generated from profits generated wouldn't offset the economic impacts, and then half of the lawmakers would introduce bills that would provide lucrative incentives to those entities if they maintain a certain ratio of human workers and they'd staple a bunch of regressive crap onto it like abortion or whatever, it wouldn't pass because the other half of lawmakers would want to tax the hell out of profits made with those machines, government would shut down 4 times a year, Jeff Bezos builds a vacation home on the moon

[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (3 children)

When someone says technology will make your work easier, they're looking for an excuse to make you work harder.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He's ok with it as long as the machines are all running Windows, and he gets his fair share.

[–] [email protected] 48 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't think ol' Billy cares much about Windows anymore, I'll be honest.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (5 children)

it will NEVER happen as long as we live in an oligarchy in which the rich are dependent on the lower classes not only for their labor but they also need us to exist for their feelings of superiority. They need people below them to feel good about themselves, they will NEVER let us escape the wage-slave to profit vacuumer dichotomy.

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[–] onlinepersona 25 points 11 months ago (12 children)

We're already at the point where don't have to work 4 days a week tho.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (4 children)

As if we had a 4 day work week already. Maybe start with that?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

What a stupid ass... yeah we're just gonna magically erase all the inequality that YOU HELPED CREATE because robots can make us sandwiches. Sure. That'll totally work out.

How are we going to get there, Mr Philanthropist?

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