On Thu, Jul 23, 2020, 9:20 AM stefan.reich.maker.of.eye via AGI < [email protected]> wrote:
> > Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a > six hour workday. > > True, six hours would bring us closer to a normal human existence. But I'm > still at odds with the idea of employment itself... and basically the idea > of work hours too. > False. Jobs are not interchangeable. Even in the same field, replacing a skilled employee costs 1% of their lifetime earnings. Cutting work hours by 25% would cut the economy nominally by 25%. Actually less because people would find ways to work around the law and because the last 2 hours of the day are less productive in some fields. But even a 15% cut to the economy would undo 5 years of progress. 5 years ago, global life expectancy was 1 year less. By comparison, a worst case covid-19 pandemic that kills 0.2% of the world population (15 million) would amount to only a 9 day reduction (assuming 12 years lost on average per covid-19 death, as one study found). A 6 hour work week would be 40 times more deadly. The obvious application of AGI is job automation. But technology doesn't destroy jobs. Instead it gives us better working conditions and more career choices. In the last 200 years, we went from agriculture making up 80% of employment to 6% worldwide and 1.5% in developed countries. Instead of putting farmers out of work, it gave us cheaper (and better) food and more money left over to spend on other stuff. That spending creates new jobs. ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tfff0b25ca7abd598-M7164982cd0fda65b492aabe4 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
