[Wittmann]

I know there's a lot of debate out there over the possibility of a Post-Scarcity economy, and while I recognize the benefits, I don't think it's likely going to be upon us any time soon.

As a result, what should we do?

Post-scarcity is a time in which all needs and reasonable wants can be fulfilled without expenditure of labor by the majority of the populace.

What would be reasonable to strive for is a reduction in the work week. Currently, 40 hours per week is considered the "standard" for full time employment in the majority of the Western World. People put in "over time" to secure additional funds or the chance at a promotion, but why not try and re-set the standard to 20 hours a week, to fulfill a person's life needs, and then working 30 hours would be considered putting in a lot of overtime?

[Figlio di Moros]

Simply reducing the workweek won't engage in any additional benefits; currently, 9.4% of Americans lack any job, and an additional 4.9% work part time seeking full time. Reducing the work week to 20 hours without changing anything else would dramatically reduce the standard of living for those with a full time job and only nominally aid the 9.4% without. Additionally, it'd create a need for a 76.3% expansion of the workforce, assuming the part-time workers are not also loosing additional hours.

That's to say, while greater economics of scale, more durable and efficient technologies, and automation can reduce the workload needed to provide a high-quality standard of living to the widest base, reducing the workweek would arise as an effect from it and not a cause.

[nucklepunche]

The work week has steadily declined over the course of history, and will continue to do so. The truth is that there was a time when massive human labor was needed for every project and slavery was seen as the solution in ancient societies, and later feudalism in medieval societies, and eventually slavery of non-whites from the 16th-19th centuries. It should not surprise anybody that wide scale chattel slavery in the western world only ended with the industrial revolution.

That being said I remember stories from old people about how they rose at dawn and worked until sundown. The truth is technology decreases the need for working hours. The 40 hour week came about because of technology, and political agitation for it only became realistic once technology got there. The problem is the 40 hour week is a vestige of industrial civilization, but now we live in the computer age and there is a gradual attrition of work hours down to 30 and I estimate later about 20.

Unfortunately this attrition has not fully happened, so a large number of people still have 40 hour work week. Also we have tied health benefits to full time work, although this is gradually changing. The problem is that the wages necessary to live decently are 40 hour wages, not 20 hour wages. As work hours decrease in all industries we will adjust down to a radically shorter work week. Productivity increases will mean that even as wages are lost, goods will become significantly cheaper and living standards will not decline, even increase.

I have a unique view on wages that I have come to recently that stagnant or declining wages are not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the prices of goods are declining. Most poor people in the USA have cell phones, computers, and televisions today and can afford far more consumer electronic goods than ever before, in spite of stagnant wages, because the cost to produce these things has come down radically. The cost of food has also radically come down, and obesity is a bigger problem than starvation among the lower class. The truth is our ancestors would have given anything to have widespread cheap access to calorie rich foods, but it has backfired on us and become a social problem. Technology has solved the problem of hunger too well and brought with it other problems like increased medical costs associated with obesity.

The way I see it there are five areas where the costs have not come down radically to keep up with falling wages, as they have with food and consumer electronics. These are 1) energy 2) transportation 3) housing 4) health care and 5) education. This is where the real issue is with falling wages. Arguably, our massive production of shale oil and natural gas in the USA via new extraction technologies is at the start of solving the energy problem. Transportation is tied closely with energy, and beyond that I believe 3D printing will radically reduce the cost of producing reliable vehicles. Housing is on the cusp of being able to be produced via automated means as well, and its price could be reduced, although I think Land Value Taxation would encourage the construction of more affordable housing on top of that.

The two tricky areas are health care and education. I would argue that these things have in both cases had their costs artificially inflated by special interest groups, primarily to keep the wages of those who work in the industry high. In the case of health care it is a combination of government regulations restricting supply. The AMA has prevented construction of new medical schools, and worked to decrease slots in medical schools for decades, to artificially inflate doctor's salaries. Finally, the FDA has restricted access to a lot of new treatments in the name of safety, although arguably this has cost more lives than it has saved. Finally, increasingly unreasonable intellectual property protections have restricted further innovation. With these things in mind, sooner or later the march of technology will overcome even the obstacles government sets up, because sooner or later it will be able to reduce costs by reducing labor costs and making technology more widespread.

Education is important because it can help a lot of people move up the economic ladder. Like health care, education's cost has been inflated via restrictions in order to keep wages high and protect the jobs of teachers and professors. Arguably if we made access to academic resources essentially free by loosening property rights, you would cut a lot of costs. You could also use remote education to do the same by eliminating the factor of physical plants and housing in universities. Finally, you could eliminate a lot of learning that does not directly apply to the real world and radically shorten education time. After learning the basics in elementary school I honestly did not learn one single practical thing outside of a tech class in middle school, all the rest of it was liberal arts. "Liberal arts" is the great shibboleth the educational establishment hides behind to justify high costs and avoid cutting educational training periods down, however in this economy it is time to grow beyond that. People who wish to learn about Aristotle can learn it for free by downloading a free translation of his work published prior to 1923 onto a $70 Kindle or simply go to the library (also more or less free).

I would estimate if we subtracted all the "artificial costs" added onto health care via restriction of supply we could actually not only slow inflation, but reverse the cost curve. As for education, I think we could reasonably cut the cost of higher education down to a literal fraction of the cost it is now via the same means. These things will happen and the establishment can only slow them, not stop them. The problem is we are in a transition period and those who have been hit by the brunt of the transition first will be hurt, while those who hold onto the "old economy" the longest will ease into it. Thus people in manufacturing have been forced to downshift, but eventually this will impact all industries. However was wages in all industries fall, so will prices, which will make it more easy for everybody to afford everything.

Essentially think of technology as a machine that is slowly redistributing wealth. The problem is it dos it by cutting costs radically across the board, however some people's work is hurt first. These people find themselves in a precarious situation because the people who do not see changes come as fast still are taking home larger paychecks. Eventually these jobs will be partially automated or reduced, and costs will be cut, and they will see their pay diminish. However landlords will keep up with this by simply reducing rents, since people will need less money to live on. The problem is those who get hit first are still paying the old rent because there are enough people who can still afford it, so until the changes impact everything, the people who get hit first will struggle to keep their head avove water. This problem can be dimished in the short term by something like a guaranteed minimum income to keep those who are affected first above the water, until the changes impact everywhere. Once technology has sufficiently spread out among sectors, however, theoretically a GMA would no longer be neccessary. The problem is people like not only to have high standards of living, but higher standards of living than their neighbors. In the great long run technology will create a drastically more equal society, but the paradox is that in order to get there, society must become even temporarily more unequal first.

A lot is made of how the millenial generation, those born between 1980 and 2000, is "screwed." The left blames capitalism and the right blames entitlement spending and/or our supposed lack of morals and work ethic. The truth is simpler, it just all boils down to drawing a bad hand in the time we were born. Basically we are in a transition period between the old economy and the new high tech economy, and with any such transition there are birth pains. We are entering the traditional working age at this period, and because people tend to be in a precarious economic situation, it has hurt our generation. Much has been made of how the older generation did not leave us better off for the first time, however this is not some long term downward trend, and the next generation will be better off than we were. What we will see is a sort of delay of traditional adulthood in our generation. It will take us longer to find our way than most generations because society is transitioning. It does not mean we will be permanently ruined, but it does mean that we might be older before we see real prosperity in our lives.

[TechnocracyTNAT]

"DISTRIBUTION UNDER A PRICE SYSTEM

The Factor of Ownership

In the light of the foregoing discussion the answer seems simple and obvious. If it is possible to completely eliminate unemployment by a suitable reduction of the hours of labor per person, why not make the reduction and be done with it? This would be simple enough were it not for the monetary aspects of the problem. Therein lies the difficulty. As it happens, all of our social and industrial operations are conducted in accordance with the rules of the game of the Price System. According to these rules, everything of value must be owned either by individuals or by corporations. Distribution is then accomplished by the mechanism of trade wherein owners exchange property rights over goods and services.

In the pioneer days it was customary for the great majority of our citizens to be property owners, and most of our industrial production at that time came from small, individually owned, industrial establishments. As our industry has grown there has been a corresponding metamorphosis in its ownership. Large units have proven more efficient and have progressively displaced small units. In the process the individual owner has been liquidated and his place taken by the corporation. The ownership and control of corporations has been pyramided more and more into the hands of a minute fraction of our total population.

With this growth of industrialization there has been an increased urbanization of the population until in 1938 out of 130 million people in the United States only 32 million lived on the farms, and all, even the farmers, were directly dependent upon the products of industry.

With the pyramiding of the ownership of the means of production into a small number of hands, there has resulted a large and ever-increasing fraction of the population whose ownership of property, aside from personal effects, is sensibly zero, yet these people, in order to live, must be able to acquire the products of industry-food, clothing, housing, transportation, and the like. Since it is a Price System rule that these things can only be acquired by trade, and since all that these people have to offer is their personal service their man-hours then it follows that the consuming power of the great bulk of our population is directly geared to the income that can be acquired from the marketing of man-hours of labor.

Values

Another fundamental rule of all Price System exchange is that the value of a thing, that is the amount of another commodity or of money that is exchangeable for it, varies with its scarcity. Air, for example, has no value because it is abundant and no way has yet been found to render it scarce. Water has value only in regions where it is scarce. The values of farm products are highest following droughts or other forms of crop curtailment.

The same is true of all exchange on a value basis; it is the fundamental rule of a Price System. In fact a Price System is defined as any social system whatever which effects its distribution of goods and services on the basis of commodity evaluation. When goods are scarce, values and prices are high; when goods become abundant, values decline, approaching the limit zero as the abundance approaches the saturation of the physical ability to consume.

Now, it has already been indicated that the great majority of our population have nothing to sell except themselves, or their man-hours. Man-hours, however, when for sale in the market place, are no whit different from shoes or potatoes. If they are abundant their price, in this case wages and salaries, goes down.

This would be true in any case just from competition, but it is greatly accentuated in those occupations most affected by technological advancement. Here the fundamental discrepancy arises from the fact that man-hours are competing not only with themselves but with kilowatt-hours developed from coal and water power. Physically, a man-hour represents a certain small amount of energy. A kilowatt-hour represents 13 times as much energy as that developed by a strong man working one hour. Yet a kilowatt-hour can be bought at a commercial rate of about one cent, while man-hours marketed at 25 cents each constitute starvation wages. Furthermore, it is an axiom of machine design that in any process wherein the same operations are repeated over and over again indefinitely, a machine can always be devised that can do the job better, faster, and cheaper than any human being.

The result of all this is that while it is physically possible, and in fact already a fait accompli, that our social mechanism can be operated while requiring of each of its members only a limited number of hours of service per day, it is impossible under Price System rules to pay them a living wage in exchange for these services. The unavoidable consequence, if the Price System rules are to be preserved, is that the unemployed must be kept quiet, which requires that they be fed and clothed at the minimum standard necessary to achieve that result.

Since it would remove the keystone of our whole social organization and constitute a violation of its fundamental article of faith which states that it is contrary to the will of God that man should receive something for nothing, for the unemployed to receive relief without working for it, it manifestly becomes necessary that work be provided for which wages can be paid. This work, however, must in no manner interfere with the activities of legitimate business, and the average wages paid for it must be below the average paid by legitimate business so that there will be no tendency for anyone to seek to better his social position by going on relief.

All this, so far as it concerns the destitute, has become familiar enough to the people of the North American Continent over the last several years and need not be dwelt upon further here."

https://archive.org/details/Man-hoursAn ... ingHubbert