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 just 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. (or 12,5% work less and 12,5% more pay. Our choice)
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.
Communist!
/s (well kinda)
The term you’ll get more mileage out of here is Luddite.
The looms are stealing our jobs, so we should organize against them.
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
Yeah no shit. The problem is that capitalism hates it.
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.
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.
Removed by mod
People really need to be reminded how much blood it took for us to get a fucking weekend.
Didn’t we get one day a week since the Old Testament? And then we got a second day because new sky giant disagreed with the days from old sky giant?
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.
that’s not a problem because I plan on rising to power soon and will not let that happen
Woah there LeroyJenkins, we don’t need you rushing in too soon now
We need to have a plan in place first
oh my God he just ran in…
Nah, Bill said where the machines make the food. So, we’re good. Least we got chicken.
I disagree, I vote for Leroy Jenkins to have all the power! All hail our new randomly selected overlord! 😁
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.
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.
His foundation is a stack of lies. His desire is the same as it always was, control of what should be free.
Money = Infinity Stone
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.
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.
Given that he has flirted heavily with Samsung as of recently.
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.
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 disagree, I think it’s always just about money. Power hungry-ness comes from the fear of losing your current position, the fear of not advancing and getting left behind. With power they secure the position they have. And it’s not just exclusive to the rich. You can see the exact same pattern in a random fucking McDonald’s.
If it was more profitable (and possible) to automate 40% of work at any given company (the ratio Gates said in this article), everyone would do it in a heartbeat.
Exactly.
We’re already at the point where don’t have to work 4 days a week tho.
Sometimes I wonder what they would do if you could make endless perfect copies of objects like you can mp3s.
Dududdo you wouldn’t copy a car. You wouldn’t copy a cheeseburger Copying is a crime.
Like remember it’s only been recently that it became possible to make endless copies of media at effectively no cost.
They would figure it out some way to enforce artificial scarcity. Can’t have poor people getting free stuff without being worthy.
As if we had a 4 day work week already. Maybe start with that?
But are we still paid the same? Otherwise it would be working 2 jobs which one during “weekends”. Much worse.
Not if you’re a chef.
What’s the plan/roadmap Mr. Gates?
Edit: he solved tuberculosis or something, how about he eliminates an even bigger and more transmissible scourge on society—economic slavery which modern life constitutes
He’ll get back to you on that later. The third day of his work week is over.
Releasse ze prototype!
