<story><title>We’re all paying for someone else’s 4-hour work week, not ours</title><url>https://aninjusticemag.com/were-all-paying-for-someone-else-s-4-hour-work-week-not-ours-68b2168af55?gi=f8725c21cb1b</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>null_object</author><text>Not really sure why this was originally flagged (or this is possibly a dupe of the original post which was flagged?), but even though the comments that I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far are giving it a negative spin I think there are quite a few important points in the article about the way in which our (I&amp;#x27;m generalizing about the broad HN demographic) quite privileged lifestyles do have a concomitant cost for &lt;i&gt;somebody&lt;/i&gt; who needs to service our day-to-day needs and wants.&lt;p&gt;This ranges from everything like online shopping (I bought a pair of trainers yesterday on a &lt;i&gt;Sunday&lt;/i&gt; afternoon, and they were shipped from the warehouse 2 hours later), to the people who are used in low-wage countries to make those trainers at a price I feel is &amp;#x27;affordable&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of a newspaper interview with a bank director here in Sweden a few years ago. She spoke at length about how we should accept that our children won&amp;#x27;t have regular jobs - they would have a few &amp;#x27;gig&amp;#x27; employments: driving a cab a few days each week before stocking shelves in the evening and maybe working part-time at an old-people&amp;#x27;s home. The obvious implication to me was that it was &lt;i&gt;other people&amp;#x27;s children&lt;/i&gt; she was talking about &lt;i&gt;not her&amp;#x27;s.&lt;/i&gt; On the contrary, &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; would obviously be sitting in the back of the cab, on their way to their well-paid career in banking, just like their mother.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CydeWeys</author><text>&amp;gt;  She spoke at length about how we should accept that our children won&amp;#x27;t have regular jobs - they would have a few &amp;#x27;gig&amp;#x27; employments: driving a cab a few days each week before stocking shelves in the evening and maybe working part-time at an old-people&amp;#x27;s home.&lt;p&gt;This just sounds so staggeringly inefficient.  A person doing one full-time job well is gonna easily beat out many people doing that job part-time (and thus poorly).  Plus, think of all the extra unnecessary commuting that comes with doing lots of little jobs spread throughout the day vs just the one job.  I don&amp;#x27;t know how anyone can seriously advocate that this state of the world would be an improvement for anyone, except possibly the employers.</text></comment>
<story><title>We’re all paying for someone else’s 4-hour work week, not ours</title><url>https://aninjusticemag.com/were-all-paying-for-someone-else-s-4-hour-work-week-not-ours-68b2168af55?gi=f8725c21cb1b</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>null_object</author><text>Not really sure why this was originally flagged (or this is possibly a dupe of the original post which was flagged?), but even though the comments that I&amp;#x27;ve seen so far are giving it a negative spin I think there are quite a few important points in the article about the way in which our (I&amp;#x27;m generalizing about the broad HN demographic) quite privileged lifestyles do have a concomitant cost for &lt;i&gt;somebody&lt;/i&gt; who needs to service our day-to-day needs and wants.&lt;p&gt;This ranges from everything like online shopping (I bought a pair of trainers yesterday on a &lt;i&gt;Sunday&lt;/i&gt; afternoon, and they were shipped from the warehouse 2 hours later), to the people who are used in low-wage countries to make those trainers at a price I feel is &amp;#x27;affordable&amp;#x27;.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m reminded of a newspaper interview with a bank director here in Sweden a few years ago. She spoke at length about how we should accept that our children won&amp;#x27;t have regular jobs - they would have a few &amp;#x27;gig&amp;#x27; employments: driving a cab a few days each week before stocking shelves in the evening and maybe working part-time at an old-people&amp;#x27;s home. The obvious implication to me was that it was &lt;i&gt;other people&amp;#x27;s children&lt;/i&gt; she was talking about &lt;i&gt;not her&amp;#x27;s.&lt;/i&gt; On the contrary, &lt;i&gt;they&lt;/i&gt; would obviously be sitting in the back of the cab, on their way to their well-paid career in banking, just like their mother.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>marcus_holmes</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t this the dream of automation, though? That all those shitty jobs are replaced by robots, and the humans are left with only the interesting, creative, ones?&lt;p&gt;Those old pictures of banks, where there were huge rooms full of 100&amp;#x27;s of clerks, all busy doing double-entry book-keeping. Now that&amp;#x27;s all done by computers and the clerks are doing something else, almost certainly something more interesting.&lt;p&gt;The problem, of course, is that the benefits of automation are accruing to the owners. If Amazon manages to replace all their warehouse staff with robots, then the benefits go to the Amazon shareholders. Which is OK, because the shareholders funded the creation of the robots. But as a society, we need to spread this more. We need UBI.</text></comment>