In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, predicted that by 2030, most people would be working no more than 15 hours a week.
Posted by SaxManSteve@reddit | collapse | View on Reddit | 56 comments
Acceptable-BallPeen@reddit
John Maynard Keynes was a Marxist pedophile.
DeLoreanAirlines@reddit
They roughly said the same thing about the industrial revolution.
forthewatch39@reddit
Which would be fine if they weren’t trying to force people to keep having children. If AI can fulfill many jobs, what do they need us for to make more people? They won’t be able to work as there won’t be any jobs for them, if they can’t work they have no money to buy things. They really can’t see the forest for the trees can they?
Ok_Act_5321@reddit
How would the economy work with A.I. and how would billionaires earn money? I don't understand this. Any basic income that will be given to people will be given by billionaires but then how do billionaires make profit? And what is the value of money here?
forthewatch39@reddit
That’s what I don’t get, they want to replace workers with AI to save money and they want people to have more babies so that there will be more people to buy things. But if there are no jobs for them, how are they going to buy things?
Corporate_Greed@reddit
They don't want people to buy things, they need them to fix things and dig ditches and act as security. Somebody has to make dinner.
Gretschish@reddit
Sounds like Keynes should have read some Marx.
jaymickef@reddit
Or some Calvin.
Unfair_Creme9398@reddit
Calvinism is exactly a supporter of todays capitalism.
Absolute-Nobody0079@reddit
He was not a kind of guy you would have a pleasant dinner with, just like all the early protestant theologians.
alloyed39@reddit
I'd dig up Calvin just to make him choke on my gay lady bits.
acatinasweater@reddit
r/brandnewsentence bravo btw
Absolute-Nobody0079@reddit
I am a kind of catholic who's kinda like some rowdy Italian rural catholic guy who would blow up the church if God doesn't heal my sick kid. (If I have one)
I read some brief biographical info of John Calvin and it seems like he was devoid of humanity. Unpleasant, emotionally barren, far from lenient.
jaymickef@reddit
Yes, although Calvin probably didn't see the shareholder-driven, multi-national corporation taking over the world, that Protestant work ethic certainly helped it along.
afternever@reddit
You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don't help.
Erinaceous@reddit
He got his staff to read Marx in detail and pass along summaries. He was very familiar with the theory because he had to make a better case than the emergent socialism. His solution as far as remember is pretty much straight from Capital where Marx postulates various was in which the contradictions of capital play out differently because of state interventions particularly around wages and the working day.
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
Agreed. But if he could imagine that, he had better will/good fayth than most modern politicians.
Ask Biden, Trump or Musk if they think humans should be working less time on future as tech advances
ObiWanCanownme@reddit
Don't you think he probably did, lol?
Gretschish@reddit
Yes, obviously. I was being tongue-in-cheek.
ObiWanCanownme@reddit
OK fair enough, lol.
thegreentiger0484@reddit
Just goes to show most jobs are bs, mine included
LilithFiles@reddit
It’s true. Covid lockdown revealed how completely unnecessary most of the jobs/economy are.
TvFloatzel@reddit
or at the very least, the amount of hours. Some jobs really don't need all eight hours plus change.
Ghostwoods@reddit
I am SO sick of the constant barrage of self-fellating propaganda spewing out of the huckster CEOs running tech schemes.
Drone314@reddit
He would have been right if productivity gains had gone to the worker and not the investor.
HR_Paul@reddit
Was Keynes ever right about anything?
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Nope. He was a fraud. Just like most economists.
FYATWB@reddit
It was a perfect prediction, just not the way he thought.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
I had to scroll this far down for the correct take.
Cultural-Answer-321@reddit
Keynes was fraud.
Ross is also a fraud.
ObiWanCanownme@reddit
Most people are "working" no more than 15 hours of week. It's just that mindless busywork and thumb twiddling took up the other 25+ hours.
RoosterCogburnz@reddit
So. Much. Downtime. It's painful that I have to sit in front of a computer and basically wait for the work to come in to do.
J-A-S-08@reddit
I'm an HVAC tech that works for a very large organization. Our local office is small but the overall operation is huge and all the HR/financial/ other shit is done by the mothership.
I HATE with a burning passion to have to run anything by them. They're so fucking bored off their tits that any kind of problem that crosses their desk turns into a multi hour clusterfuck for me. A simple yes no question gets forwarded and cc'd to 90 people and the back and forth goes on for hours. I get invited to a Teams meeting with 100 other people. Kill me.
throwawaytrumper@reddit
Let’s switch identities. I’ll sit in your office and you can come lay pipe and move dirt in the Canadian winter. I can promise you 40-80 hours of actual back breaking work every week depending on conditions. Today I got to harness up and work inside icy manholes. Great times.
RoosterCogburnz@reddit
I worked in construction for 10 years, putting in glass commercially. I've done plenty of work outside, and I absolutely feel for you, my friend.
MarcusXL@reddit
And the only alternative offered is much worse.
g00fyg00ber741@reddit
And then the other industries are forcing 1 person to do 5 jobs at the exact same time
_project_cybersyn_@reddit
It's amazing how many people have deluded themselves into thinking that busywork is work. All the middle managers where I work think the pointless meetings they're in literally all day are extremely important.
Counterboudd@reddit
Yup. 15 hours of actual work, 25 hours of pointless meetings where people brownnose, waiting to get responses to emails, and general pretending to be productive while you procrastinate or have no real work to do.
nicotiana_rustica@reddit
Or each of your jobs cap out at 15-20 hours so that there are no benefits or pension. So, half true?
Of course, you need three of these jobs to survive and each demands 100% availability.
CouldHaveBeenAPun@reddit
IF it happens, it'll be people having to go to an overcrowded office for 40+ hours a week, while doing 15 hours of work.
But that's not going to happen with all the surveillance.
LilithFiles@reddit
Don’t threaten me with a good time 👍
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
We wont stop, Lilith
Admirable_Boss_7230@reddit
This is top. And 15 hours a week probably on capitalists societies. Less than 8 hours of non voluntary work a week on socialist countries is achievable
Busy-Support4047@reddit
Why did ever futurist think AI or convenience technology would create a utopia because everyone would get so much time back instead of the much more obvious outcome that the common person would just be made unemployed, destitute and desperate?
thepersonimgoingtobe@reddit
The great Progressive dream. Self-actualization will be in everyone's reach as they will have time to pursue what they are passionate about. Instead, we are in a dystopia of consumerism as we work at jobs we hate to have crap we don't need, being pacified all the while by screens that kill time and ourselves as we provide free marketing fodder to oligarchs that use it to sell us more stuff that doesn't fill the void in ourselves where our lives are supposed to be.
MarcusXL@reddit
We should include on the box of phones and flatscreens a "death of child-slaves per sq. inch".
FitBenefit4836@reddit
Nah, AI will just be used to cut more corners and make the rich richer. Everybody else gets to die in the climate wars by 2030.
danknerd@reddit
Still have time, if there are no people.. no one is working 15 hours a week, let alone 40+.
newsallergy@reddit
So then these magic jobs can just be filled by more AI. AI can take the physical form in a robot. Robots will do anything a human can and better.
CthulhusEvilTwin@reddit
Well its difficult to devote your time to a job when you're fighting your neighbours over the last bottle of water in the emergency shelter
StatementBot@reddit
The following submission statement was provided by /u/SaxManSteve:
SS: We could have chosen to be wise by orienting our understanding of civilizational progress beyond the narrow metric of economic growth. But we didn't, and so the type of progress we engage in will remain immature, continuing our blind push toward a civilizational cliff edge. Just imagine a world where we measured progress as a function of reducing working hours, increasing play, and increasing quality of life. We could be using technology to serve those ends, but we aren't, instead we are using technology to make lines go up on wall street, all while the world burns around us.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1i3ile1/in_1930_john_maynard_keynes_predicted_that_by/m7n2yr3/
AnotherYadaYada@reddit
He was right, to some degree as most lovely companies don’t offer more than 15hrs to save on holiday pay, sickness pensions but most end up working much much more when the company decides.
Niiiice.
SaxManSteve@reddit (OP)
SS: We could have chosen to be wise by orienting our understanding of civilizational progress beyond the narrow metric of economic growth. But we didn't, and so the type of progress we engage in will remain immature, continuing our blind push toward a civilizational cliff edge. Just imagine a world where we measured progress as a function of reducing working hours, increasing play, and increasing quality of life. We could be using technology to serve those ends, but we aren't, instead we are using technology to make lines go up on wall street, all while the world burns around us.
Peak_District_hill@reddit
I say this slightly tongue in cheek, but so far AI seems to be great for students and for people wanting to make boomers feel things on Facebook.
ExistingPain9212@reddit
Yeh bcs AI will work for 247365