5d ago

What should be done with the unemployable people?

I started to notice a intense automation and Artificial Intelligence Investments from companies and that made me wonder, what would happen or what should be done with the people who can't be trained for a new job and can't use his current skills to to get a job.

How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?

58 comments

If you're a sociopath, let them suffer and die slowly, homeless.
If you're not a sociopath, and decent, tax the rich and give them a good UBI so they can play and do art or music or video games or what the hell ever.
Easy peasy lemon squeezy.
- Agreed, honestly. Because if you eliminate 60% of the workforce you also eliminate 60% of your customers. And if people aren't spending money the economy isn't moving.
  
  In theory, the rich can just continue paying off each other spending money on rich people stuff. 80% of the economy consisting of activities like robot-staffed billionaire-owned construction companies making and selling super-yachts to oil billionaires, who made their fortune selling fuel to space tourism companies ferrying billionaire designer bag heiresses to the Moon. The rest of us can starve to death and the economy won't even blink.
- Suffer and die slowly? Where's the profit in that? Now organ farms, THERES a moneymaker!
- If you make them comfortable how do you recruit people for the army?
  
  Make federal service required for anyone to obtain "full citizenship".
  
  ~~Robots~~
  Terminators

Unemployed people are not a negative on society. People don't have to be employed. That's a capitalist misconception.
Assholes are a negative on society. They actively reduce the experience for everyone else. Even productive assholes are a negative on society.
- I prefer someone who gets shit done and changes the world for the better while being impolite to courteous inhibitors of progress.
  
  I don't trust competent assholes. They're less likely to consider they're wrong. So when they do fuck up, they fuck up hard and refuse to listen.
  Source: I work in IT and see it all the time

Tax the rich people so the unemployable people can live the comfortable lives they deserve
- UBI needs to happen at some point.
  
  It's basically that or communism. Nothing else deals halfway serviceably with a large population of people who can't be employed.
  
  I lean more on the Universal Maximum Income where everything above a threshold is taxed, and instead of a basic income make sure all basic needs are covered without the need of any money.

Basic Income.
Now someone always has to ask how to pay for it.
Years ago a study was done about basic income in Canada. It was determined that the country would save billions by discontinuing most of the government handouts (there was 60+ at the time) and replacing those with a single payment. Consider how many offices are in each major city for welfare, employment insurance, etc. Save money with reduced wages, rent, power, insurance, so on and so forth.
- The End of Policing.
  Statistics backing the value of socialism.

This post is based on a false premise. These people aren't unemployable, they're being actively rejected so that the available labor pool remains sizeable and desperate. The automation hype is just that, hype. Just like the gig economy, it's merely a way to devalue labor and exploit it while selling the idea as innovation. Some evidence: if automation was really going to make so many people unemployable, then why is the news freaking out over the declining birth rate? Surely if automation is going to take over so much work, we wouldn't have to worry about who will take care of the elderly.

Wtf is this question??? You about to drop your own rendition of A Modest Proposal? The answer is the same as we should do with anyone else: they should be housed, fed, clothed and provided with any other practical necessities to participating in modern society. What they do with that is their own fucking business??
Useless eaters rhetoric has no place on the fediverse.

Life itself has value. We are not here to have the maximum value extracted from ourselves. Things can be discarded but people should never be. Universal Basic Income.

public execution

How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?
Are you a tool, or an object yourself? Can I throw you away because you're broken, or because a newer version of yourself has been released, or because I don't like the way you age?
Probably not because, at least in your own eyes, you don't consider yourself a tool or an object. You're not something, right?
Why is that? Because you're a person. You're a human being.
Well, good for you and, also, nice to meet you my dear fellow human being.
The thing is that with or without skill, we all are human beings too. We're persons, we're not tools at the disposal of some 'owner' who is free to break it and throw it away when not needed.
Given that, one realize that the fact of being alive is not about being 'employable' or 'useful'. It never was. Believers would say it's a miracle or a gift, I'm not a believer myself but I kinda understand that idea: it's... so much more than all we can understand.
Sure, each of us may need to be able to get food and shelter, true that, but then your question instantly stops being about 'what should we do with unemployable people' to become the, imho, much more interesting 'why is that civil society (aka, all of us) is allowing a handful of its own members, the billionaires and corporations, to decide they have the right to destroy the way society works for all of us and to render a lot of us unable to earn their living, just so that handful of billionaires and corporations can make more money? And why is that we should not object to their decision?'
Now, since I answered your question, allow me to ask you mine.
Why do you think people should be categorized by their 'usefulness'? And, if we were to accept your premise (which I obviously don't want to), would you happen to consider yourself one of those 'useful' that would still deserve a place in that new AI and robotic-powered society?
edit: typos + my usual poor English
- Agreed wholeheartedly. We are a corporate dystopia waiting to happen if the younger people don't find a way to push change soon. See The Twilight Zone "The Obsolete Man". Luckily there are still governments that actually work for the people, so a blueprint is out there for rebuilding.
- Just bookmarking this for when OP answers

Ignoring the odd idea that this hypothetical person is somehow completely unemployable regardless of industry or upskilling, why do you assume that that immediately makes them a negative to society? Is a person's entire value predicated on their ability to earn money?
- It's not necessary about their "value" to society. People need to eat in order to survive. That means having a way of supporting themselves. Having no way of supporting themselves means a lot of people are going to die.
  I'd say that's a net negative to society.
  And the problem runs deeper than "retraining" or "upskilling". With the emergence of technologies that replace human workers...there will simply be a massive excess of unemployed workers hitting the market. Period. Skills or not. Where are they going to work, when there are now ten people applying for every available job?
  
  Why do they need to work, though? If AI can replace so many people that there aren't jobs for them all, wouldn't that also mean AI is producing enough to sustain those people, jobs or not? At that point, why must society continue to expect everyone to support themselves if society's developments as a whole make that unnecessary?
  OP's question seemingly indicated that they felt someone who couldn't earn money was immediately a net negative to society. I don't believe that's true now (stay at home parents are a good, but far from only, example), and I can't see me believing it's any more true in a future where AI can replace large segments of the workforce.
- Not OP, but it can be very detrimental to people's mental health if they don't have a role in society. Not a job, but a purpose where their labor provides a benefit to others, like being a caregiver or volunteer. Depression is commonly cited among those who are unemployed, on disability, or recently retired.
  You are also going to see a lot of classism surrounding UBI. After all, I can see a lot of people who are able to work becoming bitter at a portion of society that don't need to work.
  
  The thing is, if working isn't tied to capitalism, then it's actually easier to find work because you don't have to worry only about what provides enough money to survive. Someone "unemployable" may be perfectly suited to be a caregiver, artist, odd-jobber, or anything else that would not be able to financially sustain them because of low pay or a limitation on the hours they are able to work. I think UBI would lead to more societal engagement, not less, because people would be able to choose how they engage without worrying about whether it would pay the rent.
  To your second point, I'm not sure I understand. If it's a universal basic income, does that not mean that everyone has their basic needs met? Those who would like more than that and have the capacity to do so could still seek higher paying jobs in order to have the lifestyle they want above and beyond basic needs. Why would they be bitter about other people getting those same basic needs covered but not earning more money?

Prepping a little bit of "undesirables" rhetoric.
Lemmy is fucking swimming in shit propaganda

UBI/freedom dividends is a solution well before mass AI driven unemployment. It disempowers rulerships/oligarchy towards empowering people. It eliminates crime. Gives people the opportunity/time for education and entrepreneurship.
It is far better than corrupt hierarchy that fights over centralized socialism vs corporatist supremacy.
to make him useful
Your question is horribly ugly and disgusting. Some people are unemployable due to dissatisfaction with society, or a tax structure that encourages investment instead of employment. When you consider "making people work" you are considering enslaving them/their time to eat this week without letting them use their time to contribute to their/social prosperity over their lifetimes. People need a money guarantee. Not a job guarantee. The former is even more productive for successful tax payers.

And the same goes for all the freeloading animals. They say there are species still left undiscovered in the rain forest, if that is true then surely the fact we dont know they exist means they are not contributing and don’t deserve those trees they live in that could provide real tangable profit. Getting rich by cutting them down that is real value /s
Seriously the notion you need to earn to live, especially in the context where that only means economic labor is toxic and the true negative.
I will remind you that “the economy” itself is increasingly negative towards society, destroying the future for a profit. And that people without jobs still provide plenty of positives if not, less negatives then “successfull” people like board directors and ceo
- people without jobs still provide plenty of positives if not, less negatives then “successfull” people like board directors and ceo
  ...
  How so?
  
  For one by being family and friends supporting those that do have official roles in society. Like a grandma tanking care for grandkids. Or a disabled men always being there to cheer people on at the local sport field.
  In another by having freedom to do what they find valuable for their communities, like creating a shared community garden, helping to organize free local events.
  And even if they do decide to just sit on the coach and do absolutely fuck all and wait for others to prepare their food, which is scientificaly known to not be what anyone wants to do and cause depression, they still aint doing as much evil and damaging as Bezos is right this moment.
  Go watch some star trek, it will help you understand.

Why do humans have to have a job to be useful?
Post scarcity we can just live.
The AI job crash is not going to be handled well so I assume we all will starve.

Three Words:
Universal Basic Income.
Why: If this generation builds a machine that forever generate resources, then their decendant (meaning, all humans from this point forward) should deserve to have the results of the machine that their ancestors have built using their hard work.
Maybe if the machine break, people then take turns to fix the machines, but then everyone should just enjoy existence.
People under Capitalism dread automation.
People under (Democratic) Socialism will embrace automation.
- If basic income is in the shape of money I don't agree. Instead I would make all the basic stuff freely available and with time cover more stuff beyond the basic needs.
  I feel that if I give money to people someone will find a way to scam them out of that money.
  I guess that what I'm trying to say is that I would try to make people get used to not need money.

Take out back and sh--
--own a great time with a BBQ cookout and given a big plate of delicious food while friends brainstorm how to help get them back on their feet!

Ideally, transition away from determining the value of a human life based on whether they can perform labor.
Realistically, slow degradation of quality of life while increasing stress to a boiling point until either some form of revolution is attempted, or Orwellian "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."

For me the big question is self-driving vehicles. No one seems to worry about job losses anymore, but that was one of my big takeaways from when that was hot. I seem to recall them giving 3million as the number of people who drive for a living in the us. Imagine 3 million people suddenly out of work, jobs gone. Where else could that many people go? Driving doesn’t require college, so I have to imagine that few of these people do, so where else can they even get hired?

That's when the Soylent Green factories open. Are you hungry?? Mmmmm... crackers.

Build indexes on countries and allow the public to rate their accuracy based on how well they care for their elderly, children, temporarily and chronically sick, prisoners, minorities and social outsiders, etc comparing lifespan and medical outcomes and then shove it into politicians faces every time they try to talk to anyone with a microphone while also boycotting their own PR attempts. I want those old fashion press passes sticking out of hats but with the country's rating and who is better. Or just go with some form of UBI.

High-protein slurry.

What's if we look at it like a lottery,
If the job you go into as a trained professional is automated away after 10 years in industry, your wage is covered for the rest of your life by the company that replaced you.
Plenty of problems here with my idea, but it's a great solution if the kinks are worked out.
- There is no world in which legislation will pass mandating companies pay you your salary for the rest of your life for simply replacing your role with automation/AI/etc lol. And if they somehow pulled off that miracle, lobbyists would just get them to change the definition of what it means to “replace someone with automation.”

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