cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/49663892

Does technology provide more jobs than it takes away? In the modern world where most industries are constantly changing, most jobs are completely unnecessary, many are unproductive and people can move countries to find work it can be difficult to judge this claim. But we can go back before benefits, government-funded useless jobs, international travel and chaotic job markets. If we do that we can see more clearly how technology has affected the availability of jobs.

The Second (or British) Agricultural Revolution provides one example of technological change. Did it lead to more jobs or less? Here's what I learned about this today. Most of this information comes from here and the pages it links to.

This revolution wasn't an overnight technological development which led to a temporary wave of unemployment that ended as new jobs were invented. This was a gradual change over hundreds of years which led to rising unemployment and poverty that didn't go away.

The lead up to it began in the 1400s with enclosed farms that were able to make better use of the land and crop rotations. This became more common into the 1500s and meant that fewer people needed to work on the farms, causing some to slide into poverty. The government and nobles of the time were apparently unfamiliar with non-temporary unemployment except as a result of laziness or disability. It was a totally alien concept to them. In reaction to increasing numbers of beggars and vagrants the government passed laws to punish them. At the time making poverty harsh was seen as a way to motivate people to get jobs. This approach didn't seem to work as by the end of the 1500s the government decided to change their approach and begin making Poor Laws. The first (Old) Poor Laws provided housing, money, food and clothing to those who were unable to work because of age or illness, but at the same time the able-bodied could be made to work in houses of correction as punishment for being a "persistent idler".

The British Agricultural Revolution really started to take off in the mid-1600s and by the end of the century unemployment and poverty had increased further, leading to the workhouse movement. These gave housing and employment to the poor and reserved houses of correction for punishment. But put poverty didn't end and around 1 million Britons may have relied on poor relief by the end of the 1700s. The number of able-bodied males taking poor relief was rising and again this has been attributed to the enclosure movement that increased agricultural productivity.

Because machines were taking people's jobs, there were widespread riots that destroyed machines in 1830, known as the Swing Riots. The existing system of poor relief wasn't able to handle all the poor people so in response to this and the riots the New Poor Law was passed in 1834. This made it harder for the able-bodied to get relief and made workhouses harsher to discourage leeching. The new system was a complete failure because the unemployed either went without any provisions or suffered in prison-like workhouses. There was no attempt to undo whatever had caused all the jobs to disappear in the first place.

In the end the Poor Laws gave way to country councils providing public housing, government pensions and eventually the full UK welfare state. The Poor Laws were an early example of a European welfare program that influenced the development of welfare states beyond the UK.

So considering all this, do we really think technology has helped or hurt the public's ability to get jobs?

Before the 1500s it was unheard of to be unemployed unless it was temporary or you were too old or sick to work. Now find one developed country where that's the case today. I'd wager you can't. And what could possibly be responsible for that? Is it the increased population? Globalization? I don't think so. More people means more mouths to feed and more jobs. Globalization didn't take away the jobs in Britain between 1500-1900. The most reasonable explanation is that technology and efficiency improvements have caused the lack of jobs by taking over more and more of the productive work, leaving humans with pointless jobs or no work at all. And what good are efficient systems if they put us out of work so we can't afford anything? Maybe efficiency can be bad and sometimes it's good to do things the hard way?

When you're so deep into capitalism-brain, it's easy to forget that technology has never been about creating jobs, it's been about efficiency—you know, removing jobs. Because only under capitalism would "less work" be considered a bad thing.

Scarcity is manufactured. We have more than enough resources to eliminate poverty entirely, forever.

yeah efficiency trumps all including quality so we create so much trash.

It's just the natural state of humans that they have to work to survive or rely on their family/friends to look after them if they're unable to work. There could potentially be a society where hardly anybody needs to do anything productive, but this would be a completely unnatural society that would have widespread mental illness due to many people lacking goals or productive things to do. Most people would also get physically unhealthy and lazy (both physically and intellectually) - like they already in developed countries.

Conflating capitalist toil with productive things to do is a bad look.

The western business world has promoted the idea that humans are naturally lazy and unproductive unless compelled. I don't believe this at all. There's some interesting reading to be done on UBI pilots that suggest that humans will naturally be productive if they don't have to worry about their basic needs. And contrary to your statement, the UBI studies that have been done generally show that both physical and mental health improve with UBI. This seems far more "natural" than the society we live in today.

The propaganda about humans being lazy derives from the wealth class, and they truly believe it. But consider yourself--if you had enough income to buy food and have a roof over your head, would you sit around and do nothing for your whole life? If you would have physical or mental health issues in a world where there are fewer stressors, you probably have it worse right now.

No, you're describing economy.

us efficiency is dollar cost efficiency. no other efficiency matters to it.

Anyone who's had kids or worked with kids knows that people will be lazy if they are allowed to be. If you don't think this applies to adults (who are basically big kids with only slightly more self-awareness) then consider this. Most people in developed countries have all their basic needs (food, water, shelter, sleep, physical safety, social stability and so on) easily met and do fewer hours of work than the vast majority of humans in recorded history. Yet they still frequently complain about not having enough money or too much work or their other responsibilities and they still want to retire early and go on lots of vacations. Their mental health and happiness is way worse than their grandparents' and worse than those of less developed countries. This is not only obvious from every day experience but confirmed by just about every study.

So it's very obvious to me that people want to be lazy, but being lazy actually makes people unfulfilled and unhappy. I have seen this process at work with numerous people I am closely acquainted with. They can have all the important things in life yet still be unhappy. They can blame it on not having the right looks, not having enough vacation, the people they work with or whatever, but they obviously wouldn't be so stressed about those things if they had real problems like ensuring the family has food. And when people do have real problems instead of focusing on inconveniences they are happier.

At what point does growing food or producing other goods to trade for food become "capitalist toil"? When a common currency is involved? When you're working on someone else's farm for a share of the produce?

At "for trade".

More broadly that the notion of "productive work" being what's needed to give human lives meaning... That's a big leap.

Are we as humans so incapable of devising our own structures for meaning absent the framing of capitalism? I wouldn't say so.

At “for trade”

So everyone has to make their own food rather than get it through trade? Sounds very individualist and isolated. What's wrong with making other things and trading for food?

More broadly that the notion of “productive work” being what’s needed to give human lives meaning… That’s a big leap.

The alternative to productive work is unproductive work or passing the time away. It means nothing you ever do has a goal or purpose to it except perhaps satisfying your immediate desires like hunger, entertainment and sexual pleasure. That doesn't seem like a fulfilling life and from experience I know that kind of life doesn't make people happy.

Are we as humans so incapable of devising our own structures for meaning absent the framing of capitalism?

I never said anything about capitalism being necessary, just productive work. Productive work can be working towards personal goals and need not have anything to do with money or material goods.

First paragraph: not what I said.

Second and third: sounds like we're roughly on the same page. I take issue with "need to do productive work", as in compulsion being a requirement. We live in artificially coercive societies and I don't think that's healthy. It might be what we're used to but that doesn't make it fundamental.

Perhaps not what you intended, apologies if not. I'd engage more but I haven't got the headspace to think about this further, sorry.

I'm not saying everyone will be unproductive unless there is a necessity to be productive, although from experience it appears that most people will. But even if everyone will be productive without necessity, surely people still need motivation to be productive right? And how can there be motivation in a world where machines do everything faster and better than us and we could just get them to do all our projects? Even the self-improvement projects like losing weight or learning things are hard to motivate when you can just take a drug to lose weight and instantly look things up or rely on an AI brain chip instead of learning things.

Regarding my first paragraph not being what you said then you'll need to clarify in order for me to understand what you meant, but I appreciate you don't want to continue this discussion.

surely people still need motivation to be productive right

I don't know for certain, but I don't think so.

I think it's quite obvious that for someone to do something that they know will take a lot of effort they will need some motivation to do it. Anybody who did anything did it out of necessity, some perceived benefit to someone or some personal interest in doing it. Nobody ever dug a hole for no reason unless they were extremely bored and had nothing else to keep them occupied but a shovel and some dirt.

Okay, but that's not what you said in your previous comment. Many of the things I've done in my life have not been due to an external pressure. I've created a lot of things with no external motivating factor whatsoever.

Where did I say otherwise?

You may not need external pressure for some things but you still need motivation. And I think motivation would be very rare in a society where everything can be done by robots with a simple request.

Where did I say otherwise?

But even if everyone will be productive without necessity, surely people still need motivation to be productive right? And how can there be motivation in a world where machines do everything faster and better than us and we could just get them to do all our projects?

And I think motivation would be very rare in a society where everything can be done by robots with a simple request

...and I think otherwise. Humans like doing stuff. Whilst a subset of us are content to do almost nothing, I believe that's a small minority.

I'm not trying to convince you, but I am trying to get you to understand that there is another position. I understand your take, even though I disagree with it. You are welcome to disagree with me but I want you to understand what you are disagreeing with.

I don't see what the contradiction is in what I said there and my other comment.

In a world where everything is done better and easier by machines I have a hard time imagining people wanting to spend years of their life learning how to program, how to paint, how to make furniture, how to do science and so on. Hardly anyone makes complicated software in assembly code now that we have higher level programming languages. Hardly any farmers don't use machinery. Hardly anyone mills grain by hand. People in developed countries don't wash their clothes by hand. People don't do things that we can now automate. Those things that everyone used to do now feel like way too much hard work. So I don't understand why you would think people would still break their backs to do productive things when others are getting better results by asking a robot to do it.

I understand your take, even though I disagree with it.

You can keep re-iterating if you'd like, I am firm in my position.

But I don't understand yours in light of what I have explained.

We continuously and compulsively come up with stuff to do, whether needed or not.

People grow vegetables at home, even though it is more efficient and substantially cheaper to buy most of them - is it necessary? What's the external motivation? It's because they want to and they like doing stuff.

I could go down a rabbit hole listing endless examples but it boils down to that I have faith that humans like doing stuff and that in the absence of being required to do stuff, we do other stuff. I've toyed with the idea of learning to program in assembly - I've no idea if I'd enjoy it or find it frustrating and I have a million other things that need doing so I doubt I'm going to find out any time soon. But even if most of those things were done for me, I'd still have lots of other things I'd want to do.

If that doesn't make sense to you, or you disagree, sorry, but I'm not working harder than that for you.

I agree there will still be some things that people can do that they find enjoyment in. But look at how people use their free time today. Do people who like gardening spend more time gardening or on non-productive things like watching TV/YouTube/TikTok? Do people who like playing musical instruments but don't do it for work spend more time doing that or watching TV/YouTube/TikTok? What about people who like painting? Only a fairly small percentage of people do gardening, play music or paint, yet most people watch TV/YouTube/TikTok. Because passive (non-productive) pastimes are more attractive than active ones. Yet it's passive pastimes that make people depressed and feel like their life is meaningless (at least when they are used for more than a couple of hours per day). In the future these can be even more attractive with virtual reality and involvement of the other senses, including sexual stimulation.

I expect if people no longer have to work then even people who continue to have passionate hobbies will not want to spend more than 50% of their time awake on them. And since they will no longer have to prepare any food, clean the house, manage finances or do anything, the remaining 8 hours of their day (assuming they don't sleep excessively - also bad for mental health) will be on purely passive pastimes. And currently people spending less than half this time on social media are already depressed.

https://piefed.social/comment/10641560