Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Billionaire Jack Ma, long an outspoken advocate for China's extreme work culture, says that people should be able to work just 12 hours a week with the benefits of artificial intelligence.
People could work as little as three days a week, four hours a day with the help of technology advances and a reform in education systems, the Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. co-founder said at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai Thursday. He spoke on-stage with Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. who is building manufacturing facilities in the city.
[...] Just this year, Ma endorsed the China tech sector's infamous 12-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week routine, so common it earned the moniker 996. In one blog post, China's richest man this year dismissed people who expect a typical eight-hour office lifestyle, defying a growing popular backlash.
"I don't worry about jobs," Ma said on Thursday, making an optimistic case that AI will help humans rather than just eliminate their work. "Computers only have chips, men have the heart. It's the heart where the wisdom comes from."
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Funny) by Coward, Anonymous on Monday October 14 2019, @03:28AM (6 children)
Well, I've heard of brain-dead managers, but not of a CEO advocating for them so forcefully.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 14 2019, @02:58PM
-1 Redundant
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 14 2019, @03:47PM (4 children)
Don't forget the China factor. Theoretically, they are still on the way to "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Monday October 14 2019, @11:17PM (3 children)
I disagree. Converting their economy to market capitalism has effectively eliminated the Communist theory of abilities and needs. Just look at Jack Ma!
Modern Communism is really more about maintaining a one-party grip on political power, for the sake of power. More information can be found in a useful reference guide called "Nineteen Eighty Four" by George Orwell.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @12:11AM
There is a reason 1984 is not banned in China, while one of his other books, Animal Farm is.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @01:07PM
That sounds nearly identical to Modern Democracy.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday October 15 2019, @10:17PM
That is all that the major examples of communism we have ever had have been about. There was very little of Marx's communism involved once someone solidified power.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @03:03PM
Future Flex.
Isn't there some cost floor for having a single employee (working 1 hour)? Why train an employee to work a handful of hours a week, only to have them leave the company? This doesn't sound efficient, so it's probably a lie by Jack Ma to keep the little people who are about to get screwed off his back.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by drussell on Monday October 14 2019, @03:05PM (15 children)
There is such a disconnect between those in the upper financial crust of society, those people who never have to worry about money or what something costs because they have plenty of cash for anything they could ever need or want....
....and those people who work their butts off 40-60 or more hours per week just to survive, which is most people.
It's like they live on a completely different planet.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @03:45PM (8 children)
The rich are different than you and me. They have money.
My opinion of the disconnect is simply, if I can live on 12 hours (which actually in my present situation, I could do and still save a modest amount of money), then I can do a lot more than live on 50-60 hours of work a week, even if it takes working several jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @03:52PM (6 children)
Poor khallow, working long hours for a life style he'll never have time for. And he still doesn't get it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:00PM (2 children)
At least in the meantime, I get to putter about in Yellowstone. I don't know what I want in the future, I just know I won't get it now, if I don't save some money. I have far greater freedom by saving money now than if I didn't.
And what really would I spend it on?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:48PM (1 child)
How's golfing in Yellowstone at night, after you wasted your life time doing regressions and correlations all day?
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @11:33PM
Pretty sweet, but you have to look for the frisbees sometimes.
(Score: 2, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Monday October 14 2019, @04:06PM (2 children)
How sad it is, to be able to afford good food, good clothing, and live in a nice house in a good neighborhood.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:41PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @10:51PM
Right, because one's purpose in life is solely to consume now and pay for it with your future 20 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:55PM
And you therefore take away the jobs of 3-4 others. Or you gain the resources that 4-5 others could be having.
So... 4 families can all survive together, or just 1 can. (Or, the more likely proposition, you will be taxed the value of 2 of those jobs so that you still get 3x the value and four others get one half the value each).
In short, you're greedy.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 14 2019, @03:49PM (3 children)
It's China; looks different enough to me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @01:09PM (2 children)
Nah, looks about the same, except with more garbage and open sewers.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 15 2019, @01:17PM (1 child)
And all those
Chink... Chinese people, they look the same too to you, right? (large grin)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @03:02PM
They look different from each other, which is a little unexpected given every tenth person is named Wang [wikipedia.org].
Seriously, though, it is interesting to note regional differences. People in the North are taller, fairer, and broader of frame. People in the South are shorter, darker, and slighter. Of course that's not scientific at all, and there are many possible explanations for those differences, but if you ride the train from North to South the people begin to look very different.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
I met a "big company owner" a few months before he launched a "revolutionary" product, he and all his friends thought it would be changing the world. The numbers made sense, the cost benefit was all there, all it required was for everybody to spring an extra $5K per person for this thing and such wonderfulness would ensue.
Yeah, everybody's got an extra $5K to spend and then wait for the world to change. Seeing things from the heliport of his mountain top house, where his big sacrifice was having to remove the blades from his 2nd helicopter so they would both fit inside at the same time... it's easy to see the disconnect.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @03:04AM
Segway? Or RealDoll?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @03:42PM (13 children)
Who predicted the same thing, multiple decades ago
https://www.npr.org/2015/08/13/432122637/keynes-predicted-we-would-be-working-15-hour-weeks-why-was-he-so-wrong [npr.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @03:49PM (11 children)
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday October 14 2019, @04:05PM (3 children)
More demand. If supply and demand works, that would mean more wages, right?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:42PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @06:24PM (1 child)
Then one would think you'd be in FAVOR of universal healthcare that has been shown to have better health outcomes WHILE being cheaper? Right?
Right?
Who am I kidding, common sense can't break through your true believer stupidity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @11:06PM
In other countries which don't yet have the structural problems of the US health care system. Presumably by "universal health care", you're not referring to the universal system the US currently has which is a combination of insurance and personal payment, but rather to a single payer, publicly funded system.
The US already has two single payer systems for particular groups, veterans and the poor. Both are expensive and dysfunctional. I think that augurs poorly for any more universal system of such.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ChrisMaple on Monday October 14 2019, @05:10PM (6 children)
There is so much wrong with economics that the flaws could fill a library. Economics looks at the wrong things, too often uses linear extrapolation, fails to consider the effect of passing time, ad infinitum. Many things just can't be predicted, yet economics pretends it can. Consider LED lights, which are 10 times as efficient as incandescents. The increased efficiency results in increased demand for light, but the efficiency gain is so extreme that the demand for electricity falls. By displacing fluorescent lamps, mercury pollution falls. Long lamp life means fewer car trips to the store to buy replacements. LEDs are a revolution in automotive lighting. LED use in flashlights provides brighter light with longer battery life (hence less pollution from discarded flashlight batteries.) Longer lamp life in industrial settings probably reduces injuries incurred while replacing lamps. The side effects and interactions go on and on, and no economic analysis considers them all, let alone considers them accurately.
LED backlighting (and organic LEDs) is a foundation for digital camera screens and smart phones. By increasing the amount of time spent looking at a screen close to your face, LEDs may be increasing the incidence of myopia, which effects the industries of eye doctors and glasses makers -- or does brighter lighting at home, school, and work reduce the incidence of myopia?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @05:39PM (3 children)
According to this report [eia.gov] consumption of electricity is expected to grow from 4000 TWh (terrawatt hours) to 5500 TWh in thirty years.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday October 14 2019, @11:30PM (2 children)
I tried finding the numbers in the linked document, but was not successful. My question - does this energy increase account for population increase as well (i.e. will the per-capita energy use be higher or lower than today)?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @11:37PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @10:25PM
Did you forget about battery electric car charging? If even half the electric cars that are currently projected are purchased, that should add 30% pretty easily.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @11:42PM
"An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today." (Laurence J. Peter)
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @05:41AM
Just remember that for most economists, the real world is considered an edge case.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Monday October 14 2019, @05:30PM
My takeaway from those predictions is that it is, in fact, possible. But, it's more profitable to not give any of that productivity back to the workers.
Therefore, if we want it to happen we need to MAKE it happen.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 14 2019, @04:24PM (6 children)
I don't know exactly at what point efficiency drops off. I expect it falls in terraces, or plateaus.
Let's take the 40 hour work week, for starters, and compare it to 6 ten hour days, or 6 12's. You get two days off, you tend to forget minor details of where you were at, and what you were doing on Friday evening. Working 6 10's or more, you never forget. You are so heavily invested in your work, you CAN'T forget where you're at, or what you are doing. Working only 5 8's, you forget some, maybe even many minor details, and it takes you ten, fifteen, thirty minutes to grasp all the threads on Monday morning.
Euros can chime in here. What's it like to come back to work, routinely, after three days off? You only work 4 days in any given week, and three days off. Does someone else sit in your desk when you are gone, or does your job wait idle, waiting for you to come back? Either way, it's going to take minutes to grasp all the threads, and get them wrapped into the bundle you need to proceed. Maybe it's only the length of time you take to drink a coffee - maybe it's a lot longer.
What happens when you work only three days? FFS, some of us will forget the way to the job site! Forget where the restrooms are. The job? Hell, I don't remember where I put anything, let alone what I was doing with it!
How about a fifteen hour workweek? Or twelve? You're only on the job for two days?
Oh-kay, if some of you insist that you are THAT GOOD that you won't forget a single thing - you are ready to produce the instant you arrive on site, or at your desk, at your work station - let's just accept that all of YOU are THAT GOOD.
What about the FNG? That fuckin' new guy, who just graduated from high school / trade school / college. He don't know jack shit. Seriously, he doesn't know how to find his ass with both hands. He's here for two days, learns almost nothing, then he's off for five days. He gets back, he's forgotten who the hell he works for, and the shop/office/jobsite looks brand new to him. Work for two more days, off five again, when and how does he develop the expertise he needs?
How many of you learned to ride a bicycle like that? On Saturday evening, when parents feel like it, you can ride for fifteen minutes. Holy - you're never going to learn to ride that bike with only fifteen minutes practice each week!
I find it hard to believe that new hires are going to develop genuine expertise with only twenty hours per week. It's going to take exceptional young people to do so. I just can't see it happening with less than 20.
You people who insisted that YOU can work only a couple days per week, and still do a great job? Tell us, how many hours have you invested in your career, to attain that level of proficiency? Then, tell us, how some kid who only dabbles at the job for a day or two each week is going to develop that proficiency?
It hardly matters whether you exercise your back on the job, or exercise your brain, you're a manager, a tech, a laborer, or an engineer, or a hard corps scientist. If you're not DOING THE JOB, you're never going to LEARN THE JOB.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @04:48PM
I had a job working four 10 hour days per week with 3 days off. I never forgot what I was doing. Then five 8 hour days, then five 6-12 hour days (hours at my discretion). Again, never forgot what I was doing since I was the only one that did know what I was doing. I did work 14 straight days in a row 10 hours each day only once. Made a lot of money but would never do it again. Forcing six 10 hour days on someone will lead to burnout. People have a life and family that work shouldn't cut in to.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @04:50PM (1 child)
Whether that's good enough, depends on the job. I'd be leery of an air traffic controller or a surgical doctor who only did 12 hours a week in their job. I don't know if that's enough for someone to stay in the necessary head space.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 14 2019, @05:15PM
I see an obvious invitation for the line about "part time gynocologist" here . . .
(Score: 1) by zion-fueled on Monday October 14 2019, @09:18PM
Depends on what you do and how much you get paid. A service tech could work a few days a week and still make it. So could a doctor. Hourly/customer service can't since you'll never make it worthwhile for either the employer nor employee.
Where it mainly shines would be salary positions with a whole bunch of downtime. Instead of warming a chair for 40 hours, you could go home when your work was done. Nobody says you can't work longer if the need arises. One would train the FNG up until he earns the privilege of a reduced work week.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday October 14 2019, @11:05PM
On a site owned by that usian conservative Rupert: Productivity soars after Aussie company introduces four-day work week [news.com.au]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @11:31AM
These people should probably be euthanized.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @04:26PM (15 children)
It is better to work just enough so you don't get into the next tax bracket. The more you work the more money the government takes claiming it will be used for something good but instead uses to fund propaganda against you, secret bioweapon labs, etc: https://constitution.solari.com/fasab-statement-56-understanding-new-government-financial-accounting-loopholes/ [solari.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by i286NiNJA on Monday October 14 2019, @05:31PM (5 children)
This is the kind of crap advice I hear from wendys managers who make 35k when they're trying to dupe shift scrubs who make 15k
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @05:44PM (1 child)
Really? Wendy's managers are discussing FASAB 56 with their employees? Do you have a source for this ever happening once?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @11:42PM
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 14 2019, @06:39PM (2 children)
Exploitative managers may over state the case - but there is truth in what GP says. My first year out of high school, I learned that working sixty hours could mean less take-home pay than working forty hours. The sweet spot was 50 hours, and every hour over 50 meant a small cut in take-home, until 59, when the take-home nose dived.
I later learned that you got a big chunk of that missing money back when you filed your tax returns, but it definitely feels like a loss from week to week.
Over the years, that sweet spot has fluctuated a little, but I'll bet if you experiment, it's still pretty close to fifty hours.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:29AM
Not sure about your country/state but that's not how the federal tax code works in the U.S.
Only what you make over a given tax bracket gets taxed at the higher rate, the tax rate of your entire income does not increase.
only what you
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:17PM
I have to correct myself. Where I wrote "forty" up there, should be "fifty". That is, working sixty hours, you can find your take-home being less than it was at fifty.
Mis-spoke, and mis-typed all at the same time. I've never worked overtime, and taken home less pay than I would have taken home at forty hours. And, I spent a couple hours off and on, wondering if I said what I meant to say, LOL.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @05:41PM (8 children)
Tax brackets are gradual. Sure the rate of earning has gone done somewhat, but there's no sudden drop in what you earn by ending up in the next tax bracket.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @05:46PM (6 children)
You misunderstand, I am not talking about taking home more/less money. I am talking about legally making sure the government gets as little as possible to spend on their nefarious or wasteful projects. Basically like eating a low carb diet to fight cancer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday October 14 2019, @05:52PM (2 children)
So how's that going for you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @06:01PM (1 child)
Great. Basically I work whenever I feel like it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @11:44PM
Do you feel any remorse for not helping to fund all the public works (like the roads, duh) that you use all the time?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @11:14PM (2 children)
Somalia is a good destination for you. With a clever choice of your whereabouts, you can end by not paying any tax at all your entire life, however long or short it may be. I guess you can't beat that satisfaction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @12:57AM (1 child)
Somalia is a failed socialist state:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia#Somali_Democratic_Republic_(1969%E2%80%931991) [wikipedia.org]
That is the last place someone like me wants to live.
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Tuesday October 15 2019, @07:47AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @08:26PM
In general you're right, but there are the occasional "tax cliffs" where marginal tax rates can be 100% or greater. Happens frequently with Obamacare subsidies.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DutchUncle on Monday October 14 2019, @04:36PM (2 children)
Futurists were expecting that the 6-day business week would consist of halves of the work force working 3-day weeks of the then-typical 8-hour shift. Instead we got half of the work force working longer hours, and the rest either unemployed or "gig economy".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday October 14 2019, @05:13PM
There's a lot of "big lie" in the workforce, too. One example is an M.D. I knew who was "so busy" - he had a practice south of town, did rounds at not one but two hospitals, and worked with our company too... well, that practice only opened one or two days a week, for a max of about 4 hours at a time, rounds at the hospitals were once a week for a couple of hours total including drive time, and he'd show up at our company about twice a month on average, never for more than an hour or two. His "busy days" included stop-off at the spa, extended lunches, etc. With all that "he's busy somewhere else right now" imagery to go around, he was probably working about 20 hours a week - netting a fine total takehome pay from his four income sources.
This is replicated around the workforce, from the Wallys that show up to work and do nothing, to the travelling managers who are on the road so much it's hard to know where they are at any given time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by ChrisMaple on Monday October 14 2019, @05:33PM
The futurists may not be properly considering farmers, who to some extent work unlimited hours and always have. In the U.S., they have only become statistically insignificant as a portion of the population in the last 30 or 40 years.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday October 14 2019, @04:38PM
Yeah, now instead of needing two secretaries he can get by with just one. Then again, perhaps he'll have an AI assistant like "Jarvis" and poof no more secretary jobs. There won't be less work hours, there won't be a marked improvement in salary *for the little guy*. There may be a nice big fat bonus for the higher ups, though.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by hwertz on Monday October 14 2019, @04:45PM (1 child)
Problem there is, with the large per-employee overheads (all the junk the gov't makes the employer pay for*) and corporate zeal for efficiency, any job that could allow a 12 hour work week would instead have 1/4 to 1/5th the people working a 48 to 60 hour work week.
Effectively that kind of thing was in progress where I worked a while back. They had some production lines originally meant for two people. These are automated enough to be fairly easy with two people on them. You'd have two people on each line, and a "floater" that covered a group of 5 or 6 lines that'd float around and help if a line needed supplies or got behind or cover for break or lunch. So they found one person per line could (just!) keep up and did that (not firings, just having people move out to other work areas). Then sped up the lines a little bit. So then one person is watching for production problems, running quality checks, packaging finished product (which would give you all of about 45 seconds to run a full loop), and top up supplies when needed. Then, they decided they didn't need the floater, so you didn't have the option of having them grab supplies and no-one to help if someone got behind (it was easy to fall behind when the packaging equipment started acting up; then you were fixing that and having to catch up on packaging, all while maintaining that 45 seconds loop supposedly.) Also meant when someone went on break or lunch you had someone covering TWO machines as best they can. Oh, and they found they were running shorthanded on other shifts too so we started getting like 10-20 hours a week of forced overtime plus a forced saturday once or twice a month. Which paid good, but was wiping me the hell out.
Just saying, I can see very few businesses deciding to hire people for a 12 hour work week when they can have 1/4 the people work 48 hours instead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 14 2019, @06:46PM
Huh - we work for the same people?
On top of all of that, they wonder why they can't get good people, and when they do get a good one, they can't keep him/her.
But, who are we to complain? The idiots in the office all have degrees, so they must be a helluva lot smarter than we are!!
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday October 14 2019, @04:51PM (1 child)
Wait, so the guy who thinks the cpu and internet have provided *no reason whatsoever* for shorter work days, thinks that *the next* advance is going to be the one that makes it happen. The skynet one. Superintelligent computers made by superintelligent sociopathic plutocrats is going to find a way to straighten this all out.
ffs take this rich tyrant's money already, it is either making him completely blind or he is a psychopath getting off on the lucy/charliebrown football trick on an epic scale.
And tell him I said that. I want to hear his response. I know the chinese are listening, they send people to take pictures of me at the train station when I post here about what confuscious might say about their organ harvesting and other genocidal operations. I never thought anyone would make nazis look a little less monstrous, but the Xi the Pooh and his elite cult of aristorcratic pretend-communist pseudo-mystics have accomplished it quite nicely.
Their shameful place in the history books is secured, to the extent they are not the only ones left to write them, which we have at least some reason to expect is their actual long game.
Which they likely have in common with other sad fanatical cults bent on reclaiming former glory by any diabolic means necessary.
thesesystemsarefailing.net
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday October 14 2019, @11:21PM
Well, there's a slight problem with that [wikipedia.org]: you'll need to ask the paramount leader [wikipedia.org] Xi for permission first, he has dibs when he decides it needs to happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 14 2019, @05:08PM
QED: This site.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 14 2019, @05:40PM (1 child)
Good luck with that. I find it less likely than the flying cars we're all supposed to be driving by now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @05:50AM
Where the hell is my jet pack?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by meustrus on Monday October 14 2019, @06:23PM
Let's say company A implements this 12 hour week. Company B does 20. At the same level of efficiency per hour, company B wins on employee overhead. Always. And their workers have more time to think of innovations because their head is in the game more of the time.
I just don't see industrialism scaling down. It was developed to be good at scaling up.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hartree on Monday October 14 2019, @06:34PM
Let me translate that:
Jack Ma says that in the future companies will only have to pay people for 12 hours of work a week. They will, however, be on call via GPS enabled smart phone and answer emails/phonecalls/texts continuously the rest of the time.
(Score: 2) by Username on Monday October 14 2019, @10:43PM
If you're getting paid hourly, six 12s sounds nice. Long as you're getting pair hourly the bean counters will do their best to cut your hours, while salary will only get them added. If people can get over their, "oh no, hourly is sooo blue collar", they would have a better life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:52AM (6 children)
A few landlords own a ton of property (ie: my landlord). Most people rent from a landlord that owns more than one property. Population rate keeps increasing. So rent keeps going up because landlords benefit from plenty of competing tenants but tenants don't benefit from nearly as many competing landlords. As long as you want to live in a house, eat food, etc... if there is someone else willing to work more than 40+ hours per week for those same things then you must do the same to compete. Technology can not change this. If you have a growing population of 1000 people but there are only 100 houses for them to live in then you have a lot of competition if you want to live in one of them and not have to live with 10 other tenants.
Technological advancements in one area will just force everyone to compete 40+ hours a week elsewhere or to even do something for cheaper than the tech in a given sector where this is possible requiring people to work more hours to make enough money to compete with the tech at a lower pay rate.
You essentially work for your landlord regardless.
Inflation and high taxes that the government squanders don't help as inflation is a tax on your savings and a tax is the benefits of your labor being taken from you and given to benefit someone else.
Plus often times technological efficiencies make it more affordable for (uneducated) people to have more children. They have more children and that more than negates these efficiencies in the long term.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:56AM
Plus, often times 'efficiencies' are simply more effective ways to exploit/exhaust the environment. Good in the short term, bad in the long term.
An example is a fishers net. May make it easier to catch more fish, resulting in a population boom ... until the fish run out more quickly.
Regardless, none of this really refutes economic theory. First of all economic theory is a model that makes some assumptions. It works very well under those assumptions but economists do not claim that those assumptions are always true. They're not. While those assumptions aren't always true economic theory helps explain so much when you make those assumptions because those assumptions are often true. No model is perfect but some models are useful (under the right conditions).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 15 2019, @07:53AM (4 children)
Not actually. Developed world, that is, the entire developed world, has negative population rate once you exclude first and second generation immigrants. And nobody has an increasing exponential rate, it is universally declining worldwide.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @08:18AM (3 children)
Population keeps increasing * is what I should have said.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 15 2019, @02:54PM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @09:04PM (1 child)
and part of that is due to improvements in technology with respect to birth control. Birth control has gotten cheaper, more effective, and has fewer side effects.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday October 16 2019, @12:40AM
In any case, that's the solution to overpopulation: birth control, women's emancipation, and growing wealth of the global populace. It's all there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @09:58AM
Jack Ma is clueless about what people need. Sure, people want circuses and bread, but what they need is be occupied. It doesn't matter how long you *have to* work, it only matters how much time you spend at work.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 15 2019, @01:17PM
It never really changes, does it? Some guy lucks into a fortune and concludes he's a genius, and has THE ANSWER. Proceeds to lecture all others about what they're doing wrong.
It's narcissistic preening.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 15 2019, @04:53PM
like any good and wise leader, if the first comment didn't work try the opposite.
obviously (and it probably took some coaching and tries to say it out loud without having to chuckle or LoL and keeping a straight face) the 12 hour work week will arrive the same day that break-even fusion goes online. the road to 12 hours work with A.I. is going to be hard and laborious and will be very much profitable ...