During spring break last month I traveled to Alaska to give a few lectures. In Fairbanks my host invited me to go dogsledding. He kept his dogs in a pen outside his house. When he emerged from the house with gear they recognized as indicating a run, they began barking and leaping and carrying on in great excitement. They couldn't wait to get going, and once going, they wouldn't stop. Tearing across the snow, pulling a sled was what they lived for.
I thought of this the other day when I was listening to a discussion of the possibility that robots will put humans out of work. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, may make all of us superfluous. We will have a standard of living equal to or greater than what we have today, but the bots will do all the work.
Assuming we can figure out how to share the wealth, will this be a good thing or a bad thing?
One answer is it will be a very good thing. People work because they have to. Give them that time to themselves and they will make better use of it. They will travel, take classes, enjoy the arts and nature and flourish as well-rounded human beings.
An opposite answer is it will be a bad thing. Humans find fulfillment in work. They make connections with other humans at work. Take away their work, and you will take the meaning from their lives.
This second answer might very well be true for some people. But I doubt that it is true for all or even most people.
I draw an analogy from the sled dogs. Their lives take meaning from pulling sleds. But that's not because they are dogs. It's because they are sled dogs, bred for that purpose. Most breeds of dogs, and still less their undomesticated canine cousins, don't go out of their way looking for heavy things to pull. Wild animals seek to conserve energy, not expend it needlessly. Wolves move around to seek food and mates. Otherwise they relax and rest.
The humans who find meaning in their work haven't exactly been bred for that purpose. But they may have been self-selected. Ever since humans’ adoption of agriculture allowed the accumulation of surpluses, some people have been more inclined than others to work hard and amass wealth. They became the ruling classes and transmitted their values to their offspring.
Humans have searched for meaning apparently since we became human. In every culture people looked to religion. In many cultures people looked to art. In some cultures certain people looked to occupational and professional accomplishment.
In American culture, accomplishment has been a preferred metric of personal value. Americans explicitly eschewed nobility at independence. Since the democratic revolution of the early 19th century, we have preferred not to acknowledge class differences. No religion can claim official status above other religions. We are reluctant even to say that some people are more intelligent or naturally gifted than others.
Instead we subscribe to the concept of meritocracy. Success comes through hard work, we tell ourselves. And so we self-select for people who work hard, who identify with their jobs. We meet new people and ask what they do. We and they understand we are asking what jobs they do.
Many such people may indeed feel at a loss if jobs are rendered redundant. Yet in any society they are a minority. Most people work because they need the money. If they don't need the money, they won't work.
We find friends at work but chiefly because work is where we spend most of our time. If we spend time elsewhere, we'll find friends elsewhere.
Since the late 20th century, healthcare reformers who want the government to provide universal coverage have spoken of Medicare-for-all. They got Obamacare, which is not quite the same thing. Yet the concept provides a template for thinking about pay without work. Call it Social Security-for-all. Some retirees lose their way when they quit their jobs. But most figure out how to make use of their free time.
A guaranteed universal income might never come about. The bots might not replace us after all. And if they do, our politics might prevent the necessary redistribution.
But if the opponents of redistribution argue that work is necessary for a person's emotional welfare, tell them to find their own sled to pull.
I don't know if this is germane to our discussion, but I was reminded of a "Wizard of Id" cartoon I saw ages ago. Remember the character "Spook"? He was a prisoner serving a life sentence in solitary. One day the jailor came to him and asked him: "Would you like a little bit of temporary freedom?" Spook replies he'd do anything for even a few minutes of freedom. The jailor says, "the king would like his hunting dogs exercised." In the last frame, the Spook and the jailor are standing on the drawbridge at the gate of the castle. The jailor says: "OK, I'm going to give you a twenty-second head start."
quote: some people have been more inclined than others to work hard and amass wealth.. They became the ruling classes and transmitted their values to their offspring.
These comments seem to indicate that hard work results in wealth, yet I know, as do most people, that many millions of people work hard and never get wealthy. We also have examples of people that do not or did not work that hard that are wealthy- primarily because it was handed down to them.
In my view we do need a guaranteed universal income or a jobs guarantee. Or a combination. A UBI certainly would cause a number of people to simply not work, but the, maybe that minimal income is all they need for their lives. Others would be more aggressive, using the UBI as a base and continue working to make more money more in line with their desired lifestyle. Or a UBI could encourage people to quit jobs and start business knowing they won't starve if the business doesn't work out.
Similarly my argument about universal health care. Obamacare went part of the way, but a true de-link of employment and health care coverage also frees people to pursue other endeavors such as starting a business.
A jobs guarantee has even greater macro economic impact. Currentlly the Federal Reserve is tasked with two mandates: Full employment (evaluated at 4% unemployment) and low inflation (evaluated at 2%). But under our current system these are competing metrics. As inflation climbs, the Fed increases interest rates which usually result in job losses thus increasing the unemployment percentage. And as more people are employed and spending that increased consumer spending drives up prices and inflation.
But remove employment from the Fed mandate and give it to Congress to ensure all citizens have job guaranteed or the income that might come with it. This stabilizes the work force spending, eliminating the increased spending under full employment as well as the drastic drop in spending when people are out of work. Consumer spending thus stays fairly stable and will allow the Fed to simply manage the money supply.
Our current system has a built in Boom Bust cycle of disruption. A UBI/JobsGuarantee removes that cycle