Submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-comments-3-day-work-week-possible-ai-2023-11
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.
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 a technology problem…
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.
That is a working democracy.
You should get 33% more pay as the full work force productivity would be 4/3 of the original in your example.
This difference might be clearer with an example where only half of the work force is required to match the original productivity. In this case, if the full work force continues to work, productivity is presumably doubled. That’s not a 50% increase. It’s 200% of the original or a 100% increase. So the trade-off should be between 50% fewer working hours and 100% more pay.
Of course, instead you’ll work the same hours for the same pay and some shareholders pocket that 100% difference.
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
It’s all about power. The 1% will not give up their power ( = the opportunity to do whatever they want whenever they want) just because it would be good for the 99% to work less.
That’s not how the world works.
The 1% will continue to make sure that they are in control of whatever the next thing is that grant them the same or more power.
If owning AI gives them power they will do whatever necessary to own AI and let’s not kid ourselves here “they” would be you and me if we had the chance.
It took me way too long to realize that a lot of people think like you do and then project it onto the rest of us.
No. If I’m being honest, I would pass at the chance to have power. I’m not arrogant enough to believe that I’d do the right thing with it. I have a small handful of people who have suffered at my hands throughout my life and I have a hard enough time sleeping over that.
To know that I was making the quality of life worse for people who I’d never even know for my own sake would break me. I’d deserve it too.
Unfortunately, the people who I’ve know that exercise power over their fellow man don’t seem to lose a wink of sleep. They justify everything, but they’re miserable and they don’t have any real friends. They’re constantly paranoid that people are out to take something from them because they are. Some people try to reach the pockets above the foot on their back to take what they can from the situation. I can’t relate to them either, but I can at least empathize with them.
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.
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.
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
If everyone gets UBI, I assume it is still optional to work. Otherwise no one would produce goods and services that we consume in order to live. Or at least fixing the robots.
I assume the incentive for that is additional income.
Wouldn’t this then create an even larger gap in income inequality? And further dilute the spending power of those who are only able to collect UBI?
The machine doesn’t require a salary but instead of sending the money it saves to the workers it replaces it is added to the yearly profits, a three day work week with more automatisation can’t happen before that last part is reversed or there’s extreme deflation happening to compensate for lower wages.
Look at this guy who doesn’t have billions he made from the 90s and 2000s to rely on!
In 2010 Bill Gates was worth 50 Billion. He is now worth 117 Billion.
He ain’t exactly coasting. He just has a higher PR budget than he did back in the 90s.
Some of you [all rich folks] may cry but its a sacrifice I am willing to make
Let’s just keep doing what we’re doing now
I do wonder if this is even a money thing as even OpenAI has warned investors that money in the future is not certain. Maybe we are going to be forced to look to alternatives other than money as the means of value?
Yeah no shit. The problem is that capitalism hates it.
“Hmmm… Solve world hunger…Why don’t we do that?..”
“Sir, your dinner is ready.”
“The flies were wild caught yes?”
“From Botswana sir. Just as you like.”
Slurp
The Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Denmark are all capitalist societies and run on <5 day work weeks. Capitalism is not the problem, North American society in particular is what seems to have the problem.
Netherlands, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary and Denmark
Each of which have about 2-4x union participation than USA, for example. Which indicates to me that they’re doing a better job of keeping capitalism at bay, not that capitalism is more benevolent in those countries.
Assuming the owners of those machines didn’t restruct the people’s access to that “food and stuff”
People who sell things that are in high demand and necessary for survival generally are not in the practice of denying people access to those things.
Also, What mind bending drugs are you on? Healthcare is riddled with examples of denied insurance claims for treatments.
Then i have got a bridge to sell you. Its quite necessary you see…
if you won’t deny a thing to someone it’s pretty hard to sell it to anyone
denying people access to those things.
The only way I can reconcile your statement is if you finish it with “if they can afford it”. Which also makes your statement meaningless. No one was ever arguing that business denies products/services to those who can pay for them.
Health care, food, and shelter are all in high demand, necessary for survival, and if you can’t afford it, you are denied it.
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.
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.
They’ll milk it until society crumbles putting Bandaids® on problems until revolution.
Once AI and robots can do/make anything they want on demand, they won’t even need money, so don’t need to make money by selling stuff. For sure, they will probably have a tough time transitioning from the idea of making money, but they won’t need to any more.
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, who serve even less of a function when there is no capitalistic benefit for them to exist.
Their goal isn’t to get rid of people. It’s to have more people. That’s why abortion band and stuff are pushed. More people in this system means more people trading their lives to give profit to the owners. Unless there’s an actual threat of revolution, more people is useful to them.
Yeah but my point is, more people may not mean more profits in the future. Depends on what can be automated.
And more competitions for resources. Which means the owners of those resources (landlords, corporations) can drive up the prices. Kill off all the poors and then there’s no demand to rent your apartments or buy your shit. No demand drives prices down and therefore profit down.
Crap, now all the braindead covid conspiracy theorists are going to roll this into their “15 minite cities are open air prisons” conspiracies
Walkable cities would be an absolute hellhole, but not for the reasons that conspiracy theorists are claiming. Packing everyone in densely enough to make everything walkable will be a hellhole.
We need affordable options for transportation. Bad weather and the cold also require enclosed vehicles that can’t tip over.
Packing everyone in densely enough to make everything walkable will be a hellhole
Have you ever heard of the concept of “cities”? Everything important is within walking distance in the capital of my country and if not there is great public transport.
We used to have walkability. It was actually better than the car infested hellhole we are it right now.
Walkable cities exist. They’re quite nice.
A lot of words to to express “I’m an American who doesn’t even have a passport.”
Can’t even imagine a walkable city, and talking about it like it’s a far-off sci-fi concept, rather than a lot of peoples’ actual everyday life. Yikes.
The term walkable includes public transportation. It’s a multiplier on what locations are considered accessible without owning a car. Common misconception.
I mean…isn’t your pattern recognition starting to ring a little bit?
No.
Because I’m not under the self-important delusion that everything is part of a grand conspiracy out to get me.
People who believe in this insane shit shouldn’t be allowed to vote… in fact, should be in literal prisons, as they’re a danger to themselves and society.
My pattern recognition tells me there are faces in clouds too, should i believe in cloud giants?
Sounds great. Only question is how we get paid well enough to live. A question which went conveniently unasked and unanswered.
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.
Bill Gates supports higher capital gains taxes as well as EITC which is a form of Negative Income Tax, and in his hypothetical we’re going to need a lot of engineers and mechanics to make it work.
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.
He used the money from the former to launder his image
Remember when he depended on the workforce and labor of others? Then remember when he stepped away from running a company and stopped depending on labor?
That’s when he magically turned “for” employee rights and sustainability. Weirdly coincidental, I know.
I applaud and respect Gates for what he stands for now and what his foundation achieves. But he would be the first one to mandate return to office and be against anything that cuts into his bottom line if he was still running a company.
Money = Infinity Stone
Lots of PR. I just listened to a QAnonAnonymous podcast episode on him and learned that the foundation isn’t as charitable as it seems. There are many reports that they come in and try to control the charity/project requesting funds, force these groups to give licensing rights to their technology, and often rely on public funds to get their projects off the ground. They likened it to the old Microsoft days where they come in and absorb companies with hostile takeovers.
Cruelty of “hustle” or “work culture” is an imperative for the parasitic ownership class precisely because it ensures the working classes do not have the free time to collectively bargain.
A 3-day work week is antithetical to keeping the proletariat under the boot heel of wage slavery.
People really need to be reminded how much blood it took for us to get a fucking weekend.
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
When someone says technology will make your work easier, they’re looking for an excuse to make you work harder.
Or replace you.
Farmers would disagree
He’s ok with it as long as the machines are all running Windows, and he gets his fair share.
I don’t think ol’ Billy cares much about Windows anymore, I’ll be honest.
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.
I don’t think it’s a “need for a feeling of superiority” that’s keeping it this way.
I think it’s because the hunger of the oligarchy is literally bottomless.
Each oligarch is in competition with all the other oligarchs.
Oligarch power is wealth.
So the oligarch feels eternal pressure to get wealthier. To beat the other oligarchs who are also constantly pressured to become wealthier. It’s a variety of prisoner’s dilemma.
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?
We’re already at the point where don’t have to work 4 days a week tho.
A 3-day work week would give rise to doing 2 non-concurrent jobs, or a six day work week.
I mean, I could see the benefits - don’t like one of your jobs? Quit one, it isn’t loosing your whole paycheck. Of course, there are weird structural problems like getting scheduled for those 3 days and random times throughout the week making it really a 7-day job with only 3-days of work, and the whole “you can only work 19.95 hrs and if you work more, then we are required to give you health insurance, so you can’t work more than that.”
As if we had a 4 day work week already. Maybe start with that?
So some kind of techno quasi-socialism. Sounds great. I wonder who’s gonna get in the way of that, Bill?
Capitalism and automation cannot coexist. Fallout 76 players know it very well.
You know what sounds even better? Turning this dude into ground meat
Fuck Bill gates
I’m even ok with the 0-day work week, as long as I get the salary in time.
That’s The Jetsons, Bill. You’re describing the setting of The Jetsons.
Until machines get real AI and humanity get fucked up… 🤣🤣
He just wants to own the machines and keep all the wealth they create.
What’s the plan/roadmap Mr. Gates?
I love that this headline let’s ole Bill sound like a zoned out stoner college freshman.
Why 3, we could do 0
TheRaven@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
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.
Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
You should, because they are the ones who will be making the decisions.
TheRaven@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
Until enough of us say that we don’t care what they think, and we demand better.
echodot@feddit.uk 11 months ago
Bill Gates isn’t making the decisions anymore and hasn’t been for decades now
RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 11 months ago
And their decisions equate to: how can we employ the fewest number of people with the least benefits and make the most profit off what we’re selling?
But definitely don’t consider that under- or unemployed people don’t have the money to spend on making those profits happen.
Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Companies would automate and save on employees, making people poor. Automation only makes sense if basic universal income is applied
Syrc@lemmy.world 11 months ago
The “””end goal””” would be people working half the time, earning half the money, and stuff costing half as much to make and half as much to purchase.
The issue is we have to force them to translate the manufacturing cost decrease in a price decrease, or it’s never going to happen.
TheRaven@lemmy.ca 11 months ago
A reduction in work hours is also a step forward until UBI is instated. If I make the same amount doing 4 or even 3 days of work in a week, while automation does the rest, that works for me. The idea is that people need to work less and make the same if not more. UBI or a reduction in work hours are both good paths forward. UBI being the ultimate goal.
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
If people are that poor they will just deautomate the machines in protest until UBI happens.
metallic_z3r0@infosec.pub 11 months ago
I don’t care what he thinks, but I care that he has a platform that others in his class listen to and may respect. It’s not a position you hear often from those with a lot of wealth. I’m ok with progress coming from any direction, even if it’s self-serving in some form, and I do think it’s self-serving.