• mitram@sopuli.xyz
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    19 hours ago

    Automation is great , everything should be automated as much as possible.

    IF everyone benefits from it in the form of higher wages/less working hours due to the higher productivity.

    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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      18 hours ago

      IF everyone benefits from it in the form of higher wages/less working hours due to the higher productivity.

      I know this is a common philosophical statement, but I haven’t yet seen a great implementation of it in reality. I’m interested if your approach is viable.

      Scenario:

      Lets say we have a 25 year old worker named Jim. Jim was hired and his job for 1 year was to log into a system, look up specific values, and populate these values into fields in an Excel spreadsheet. At the beginning of the second year, a small Bash script (computer code) was written by an engineer and set to run on a repeating daily schedule that did all of the lookups and sheet population that was Jim’s entire job. The entirely of Jim’s job has been replaced by automation.

      Result:

      Jim no longer has any work to do for the organization. There aren’t any other open positions at the company for Jim (or if there are Jim is not even remotely qualified to do those other jobs).

      • So how would you apply your philosophy to this situation?
      • Do you believe the organization should continue to employ Jim even without any work for him?
      • Should he be let go, but still paid? If so, how much, and for how long?
        • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          I’m a proponent of UBI, but that has nothing to do with the “IF everyone benefits from it in the form of higher wages/less working hours due to the higher productivity” philosophy OP posted though.

          • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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            2 hours ago

            Automation, in the case of UBI, would mean that the productivity gain would translate into less hour worked, with a minimum guaranteed revenue every month/year.

            The reality is that automation efficiency is going straight into capitalists pockets. And people having a bigger workload for the same amount of money as before.

            Without a societal shift, automation is not for the benefits of the general populace.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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              17 minutes ago

              Automation, in the case of UBI, would mean that the productivity gain would translate into less hour worked, with a minimum guaranteed revenue every month/year.

              That is a typical answer I get to my question. It fully contains the philosophy that automation gains will somehow be funneled into state coffers or UBI initiatives but its completely missing in any substance about how that translates into reality. I’m interested

              I gave an example with Jim above. At the end, Jim is out of work, and the organization has gained money because they aren’t paying Jim, and their automation is doing the work now. Does your actual implementation of your philosophy attempt to tax or clawback some of what Jim was being paid? If so, how and against what metrics? Alternatively, do you propose that what pays the UBI is completely divorced from what the organization earns or pays?