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Underemployment could be a society-side solution to class disparity caused by systemic unemployment. Think about mechanization especially: a single factory may have had 100x as many workers before robots, but all the remaining workers are still working full hours. Perhaps instead of concentrating that wealth in the investors, we could keep more like 1/2 of the workers earning the same wages for fewer hours. That way we could maintain a wider income distribution while improving overall quality of life. But there is a fundamental problem that may be intractable: human greed. The investors want the maximum return on investment for the robots they bought, whether or not that return comes at somebody else's expense. And the individual worker, with the opportunity to work 30 hrs/week for the same wage as their former 40 hrs/week, would usually rather keep their hours and earn 33% more.

While there's a lot more written in this discussion thread, I'll stop with that.

There's this idea that work is broken. We're working too much, paid too little, and employers are fat cats leeching off our work. So we're going to force everyone to work less so that these employers have to pay us more. There's a certain sense to it. Lowering the hours worked per week constrains the supply of labor and hence, in a vacuum would raise to some degree the price of labor.

But then we start getting into the many, many problems. The most obvious is simply that work does things and makes stuff. The less we work, then the less things we do and the less stuff we make. This is a problem in a variety of ways.

It means we're doing considerably less overall - the virtues of that level of underemployment aren't enough to compensate for the drawbacks. And I doubt it's a great idea to slow down the rate of progress just for some labor policy. For example, I'd much rather we at least get the developing world up to developed world status and some major progress on human longevity done before we dial back.

That output of work also pays for our labor. The less we do, then the less output there is to pay for our labor.

We also have large fixed costs per worker in the developed world. The less labor per worker the more these costs dominate. That means yet another way employers end up employing less people.

Moving on, another key observation here is that work (not effort!) and employment are not fixed. We can always find more stuff to do, we can find ways to do that stuff better, we can start new businesses, or change existing ones. This leads to another observation. Why curb supply of labor when we can increase demand for labor? Well, that would require throwing bones to employers such as reduced minimum wage; easier employment termination; lower thresholds to business creation, growth, and shrinkage; lower taxes; and reduced mandatory benefits.

One notices a striking component of these work reduction proposals. The employer is the enemy often labeled as "human greed" (as in meustrus's comment) or as the impersonal "investor". Somehow it's not human greed to pass laws to force employers to pay you the same for less work (on top of all the other wealth extraction ploys out there) even though you're pursuing your own benefit at the expense of the employer and threatening the viability of the whole system. But it is human greed just to be an employer. So of course, throwing bones to employers is unthinkable and we are left with this dysfunctional spiral.

Who's more important? A horde of underemployed workers who can't do stuff for themselves? Or the relatively few employers who keep everything going? Sure, you need workers, but when you're in an underemployed situation, there are too many of them and not enough employers.

And of course, the idea of forcing this change on everyone, the unspoken iron fist in this discussion, is completely ignored. In a free society, we certainly should have the choice to work harder to better ourselves and circumstances.

So here's my take on the whole matter. Breaking work further will not make it better, particularly in a world which already has attractive substitute goods for your labor: developing world labor and automation. The perverse and stilted ideology behind this proposal will not consider the obvious alternative, making employing people more attractive.

The proposed benefits of labor reduction are laughable such as income equality (devaluing labor hurts the poor far more than the rich making income inequality worse), inflation prevention (making stuff that people pay money for is deflationary so forcing people to make less stuff is inflationary), better quality of life (why do I need to work less to make your life better? Perhaps, you ought to unilaterally work less? I'm not holding you back), and of course fighting the good fight against human greed (human greed has always been with us, why is it suddenly more of a problem now than the past?).

So how about we fix what actually is broken or do something positive rather than entertain proposals that aren't even pointed in the right direction to fix anything or help anyone?

Omagerd I can't even.

Some developers dropping Oculus support to protest founder’s politics [Updated]

Indie developers Polytron (best known for Fez) and Kokoromi (makers of the intriguing VR puzzle game SuperHyperCube), have joined in the developer protest against Oculus. Last year, SuperHyperCube was announced as a PlayStation VR exclusive "at launch," but today, the companies made it clear "we will not be pursuing Oculus support" for the game after that exclusivity expires.

"In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform," they wrote (and announced via tweet). "If you are a voting citizen of the United States, please remember to register and make your voice heard this Nov. 8. Do not let bigotry, white supremacy, hate, and fear win."

Instead of making it so that any dumb VR headset can view our game, we will take a stand against bigotry (and having political opinions) and work only with Sony VRDRM.

Palmer Luckey, Millionaire Founder of Oculus Rift, Loves Donald Trump and Dates a Gamergater

It’s been an open secret for some time that Palmer Luckey, the 24-year-old founder of VR company Oculus Rift and heir apparent to the future of gaming, is a strange guy—the type who argues with his customers on Reddit and casually cosplays as My Little Pony characters. Turns out, he also appears to be an active supporter of Donald Trump and the alt-right, and in a long-term relationship with an avid Gamergater.

Rags-to-riches nerd dates a hottie, gets called out for it. No pussy for anti-social white nerds, EVER.

It's all a conspiracy to derail anti-social VR technology! Everyone who is anti-social will be exterminated! You must buy the upcoming Apple augmented reality product, which is pro-social! But not Google's, because that one is just as anti-social as VR, you problematihole!

I'm sure these articles would do "well" on the front page, but I don't want to put them there.

Maybe we need some new options for journals. For example, an option to nest journals (from friends only) between stories on the main page, or an RSS feed that lists all of the journals (if this one exists, I haven't seen it).

https://soylentnews.org/submit.pl?op=viewsub&subid=15915%ACe=&title=8+Things+to+Look+Out+For+in+Red+Dwarf+XI/

This should have been posted the moment it went up, you smeg head editors!
Smeggin' hell!

Who are these 'smeeeg haaads'?

Oh Dog (oh Cat?)... i just went into the woods for a poop and discovered i, as well, was in the Backwards world.
Don't ask how it went :(

The FBI could not review all of the Hillary Clinton emails under investigation because: The Clintons’ Apple personal server used for Hillary Clinton work email could not be located for the FBI to examine.

• An Apple MacBook laptop and thumb drive that contained Hillary Clinton email archives were lost, and the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• 2 BlackBerry devices provided to FBI didn’t have their SIM or SD data cards.
• 13 Hillary Clinton personal mobile devices were lost, discarded or destroyed. Therefore, the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• Various server backups were deleted over time, so the FBI couldn’t examine them.
• After State Dept. notified Hillary Clinton her records would be sought by House Benghazi Committee, copies of her email on the laptops of her attorneys Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson were wiped with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review them.
• After her emails were subpoenaed, Hillary Clinton’s email archive was also permanently deleted from her then-server “PRN” with BleachBit, and the FBI couldn’t review it.
• Also after the subpoena, backups of the PRN server were manually deleted.

Notice the "after the subpoena" stuff at the end of the list. That's destruction of evidence which is likely yet another felony for whoever did that. After that, the report lists all classified information that was discovered from what emails the FBI investigators were able to reconstruct; a list of Clinton players involved in the scandal; and a timeline. The timeline repeatedly lists concerns raised about the email setup, security training for Clinton and her staff, events like destruction of evidence, and hacking attempts, some which were successful, into State Department affairs and personal email accounts of State Department officials and Clinton associates.

Thus, we have strong evidence for gross negligence, which is a felony even if it is not intentional, evidence of coverup of something, and a presidential candidate with a remarkable disregard for the responsibilities of her duties.

Right now I'd like everyone to think about this and since I have this journal I'll put it to good use:
        Sometimes not doing anything is the only correct answer and thus also the only optimal answer.

Is talking about not doing anything not doing anything? If more people become aware that not doing anything is an option and can be crucial then the total of beneficial inaction has increased and one ends up in a situation with fewer and/or less bad outcomes.

Anyone remember any examples of when not doing anything saved their ass? If you do then it's probably something dramatic, we tend to ignore it otherwise despite how crucial it is in all decision-making. For one thing it's the only way not to be purely instinctive; it's the only way to assess and learn and reconsider. In short it is what made us humans what we are.

In extreme cases the opportunity cost of deciding something is the (perhaps hidden) cost of removing all possible solutions. This might happen a whole lot more frequently than anyone thinks and is likely to always be the reason why people (and problems) get stuck. The greatest fictionalizing of this might be in the movie WarGames and the line "the only winning move is not to play".

The procrastinator's alibi is also very Wally :)

And just to point out how great Wally is there's this comic strip :)

Since the Great British Public voted by a narrow margin to show its un-wiped bare backsides to our closest, friendliest, most valuable trading partners (Brexit) in order to pursue potential trade deals with the economic powerhouse that is Australia, and to make TTIP easier to get done, I've had much less time and inclination to be interested in technology, unfortunately. Instead, I've been incubating a nervous breakdown playing at slapping the Kipper on the web sites of some national newspapers. My country (the UK) may be on the brink of disintegrating, after all.

We've suffered from simplistic right-wing ideology in government, and our social care systems and National Health Service (you know, that filthy commie thing we have where we pay money to have a free-at-the-point-of-use medical service for the benefit of us plebs and everyone else with no profit motive for corporations and the aristocracy) are. perhaps deliberately, being allowed to atrophy due to mismanagement and under-investment, so that they can be turned over to for-profit companies...

So here's my paranoid-delusional discourse. It applies to PHBs as well, so is relevant to the technology sector.

You have to think like a Tory (Conservative or UKIP) to understand the predicament the NHS and social care organisations are in.

To a Tory, the only thing with value is material wealth and anything that distracts from the maximisation of realising wealth is at best frivolous and at worst evil.

Little People (those not wealthy enough to live off their capital) are a danger to that if they are not work-producing units operating at maximum efficiency. So we have the phenomenon of the Useless Eaters. IDS, Gove and Osborne did their level best to reduce the number of Useless Eaters to protect the wealth.

However, sociopathic the Tory may be, he or she is not entirely stupid. They realise that amongst the population there are bleeding hearts and wooly-minded liberals who have an intrinsic irrepressible compulsion to value their fellow human being for no "rational" (wealth-related) reason.

Two things are implied here. The Tory realises that the "lefty" has a vote and influence on the political process and direction of society and, in order to maintain power, must pay lip-service to this. Hence, the NHS and welfare state is not quite dead yet, and is given almost enough money to limp along.

Secondly, the Tory knows that the "lefty" values the Useless Eater above wealth and so is intrinsically motivated (no money necessary) to provide assistance to said Useless Eater. Therefore the Tory knows that funding can be cut continually because the "lefty" will work itself to death out of this empathy for the Useless Eater.

Your PHB and its superiors may frequently say things like, "You're all professionals, so I know you'll be on board with this. We have to tighten our belts and redouble our efforts. We have to be grown-up about this. The market may be going through some difficulties, but we have to look after our investors." The PHB knows that your Little Person brain that feels intrinsic responsibility to your fellow human being can be used to produce more wealth for Righty with less expense.

Two cheeks of the same behind, as it were.

I don't fit in here. In fact, I don't fit in anywhere. Life's more fun that way. Wouldn't it be boring if we were all god-fearing, gun-toting "free-market" corporate lackey Libertarians?

Something amusing has turned up in my messages today. Someone called Coniptor has made me his/her/its foe. It's quite a list.

Let the games begin.

Rick & Morty co-creator sits with Ars, shows us what Accounting looks like in VR

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