Comment by jameslk
7 months ago
Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure. Instead, we chose consumption, and helicopter money gave us bullshit jobs so we could keep buying more bullshit. This is fairly evident by the fact when the helicopter money runs out, all the bullshit jobs get cut.
AI may give us more efficiency, but it will be filled with more bullshit jobs and consumption, not more leisure.
Keynes lived in a time when the working class was organized and exerting its power over its destiny.
We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.
> Keynes lived in a time when the working class ...
Keynes lived in a time when the working class could not buy cheap from China... and complain that everybody else was doing the same!
He was extrapolating, as well. Going from children in the mines to the welfare state in a generation was quite something. Unfortunately, progress slowed down significantly for many reasons but I don’t think we should really blame Keynes for this.
> We live in a time that the working class is unbelievably brainwashed and manipulated.
I think it has always been that way. Looking through history, there are many examples of turkeys voting for Christmas and propaganda is an old invention. I don’t think there is anything special right now. And to be fair to the working class, it’s not hard to see how they could feel abandoned. It’s also broader than the working class. The middle class is getting squeezed as well. The only winners are the oligarchs.
> progress slowed down significantly for many reasons
I think progress (in the sense of economic growth) was roughly in line with what Keynes expected. What he didn't expect is that people, instead of getting 10x the living standard with 1/3 the working hours, rather wanted to have 30x the living standard with the same working hours.
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There’s no middle class. You either have to work for a living or you don’t.
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It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda. If anything, the internet up to 2015 seemed open for discussion and swaying by real people’s opinion (and mockery of the elite classes), while manipulation and manufactured consent became the norm after 2017.
> It is very possible that foreign powers use AI to generate social media content in mass for propaganda.
No need for AI. Troll farms are well documented and were in action before transformers could string two sentences together.
Italian party Lega (in the government coalition) has been using deep fakes for some time now. It's not only ridiculous, it's absolutely offensive to the people they mock - von Der leyen, other Italian politicians... -
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This is a pre-/post- Snowden & Schrems, which challenged the primary economic model of the internet as a surveillance machine.
All the free money dried up and the happy clapping Barney the Dinosaur Internet was no more!
He also lived in a time when the intense importance and function of a moral and cultural framework for society was taken for granted. He would have never imagined the level of social and moral degeneration of today.
I will not go into specifics because the authoritarians still disagree and think everything is fine with degenerative debauchery and try to abuse anyone even just pointing to failing systems, but it all does seem like civilization ending developments regardless of whether it leads to the rise of another civilization, e.g., the Asian Era, i.e., China, India, Russia, Japan, et al.
Ironically, I don’t see the US surviving this transitional phase, especially considering it essentially does not even really exist anymore at its core. Would any of the founders of America approve of any of America today? The forefathers of India, China, Russia, and maybe Japan would clearly approve of their countries and cultures. America is a hollowed out husk with a facade of red, white, and blue pomp and circumstance that is even fading, where America means both everything and nothing as a manipulative slogan to enrich the few, a massive private equity raid on America.
When you think of the Asian countries, you also think of distinct and unique cultures that all have their advantages and disadvantages, the true differences that make them true diversity that makes humanity so wonderful. In America you have none of that. You have a decimated culture that is jumbled with all kinds of muddled and polluted cultures from all over the place, all equally confused and bewildered about what they are and why they feel so lost only chasing dollars and shiny objects to further enrich the ever smaller group of con artist psychopathic narcissists at the top, a kind of worst form of aristocracy that humanity has yet ever produced, lacking any kind of sense of noblesse oblige, which does not even extend to simply not betraying your own people.
That a capitalist society might achieve a 15 hour workweek if it maintained a "non debauched culture" and "culture homogeneity" is an extraordinary claim I've never seen a scrap of evidence for. Can you support this extraordinary claim?
That there's any cultural "degenerative debauchery" is an extraordinary claim. Can you back up this claim with evidence?
"Decimated," "muddled," and "polluted" imply you have an objective analysis framework for culture. Typically people who study culture avoid moralizing like this because one very quickly ends up looking very foolish. What do you know that the anthropologists and sociologists don't, to where you use these terms so freely?
If I seem aggressive, it's because I'm quite tired of vague handwaving around "degeneracy" and identity politics. Too often these conversations are completely presumptive.
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Oh the prized Asian magic, more civilized, less mixed, the magical place.
Capitalism arrives for everyone, Asia is just late for the party. Once it eventually financializes everything, the same will happen to it. Capitalism eventually eats itself, doesn't matter the language or how many centuries your people might have.
Keynes didn't anticipate social media
If you work 15 hours/week then presumably someone who chose to work 45 hours/week would make 3x more money.
This creates supply-demand pressure for goods and services. Anything with limited supply such as living in the nice part of town will price out anyone working 15 hours/week.
And so society finds an equilibrium…
Presumably the reduction to a 15 hour workweek would be much the same as the reduction to the 40 hour workweek - everyone takes the same reduction in total hours and increase in hourly compensation encoded in labor laws specifically so there isn't this tragedy of the commons.
Unless the law forbids working more than 15 hours per week, the numbers will shift around but the supply-demand market equilibrium will remain approximately the same.
If minimum wage goes up 40/15 = 267%, then the price of your coffee will go up 267% because the coffeeshop owner needs to pay 267% more to keep the cafe staffed.
The 40 hour work week is something a cultural equilibrium. But we've all heard of doctors, lawyers, and bankers working 100h weeks which affords them some of the most desirable real estate in the world...
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I think something Keynes got wrong there and much AI job discussion ignores is people like working, subject to the job being fun. Look at the richest people with no need to work - Musk, Buffett etc. Still working away, often well past retirement age with no need for the money. Keynes himself, wealth and probably with tenure working away on his theories. In the UK you can quite easily do nothing by going on disability allowance and doing nothing and many do but they are not happy.
There can be a certain snobbishness with academics where they are like of course I enjoy working away on my theories of employment but the unwashed masses do crap jobs where they'd rather sit on their arses watching reality TV. But it isn't really like that. Usually.
The reality of most people is that they need to work to financially sustain themselves. Yes, there are people who just like what they do and work regardless, but I think we shouldn't discount the majority which would drop their jobs or at least work less hours had it not been out of the need for money.
Although in democracies we've largely selected that system. I've been to socialist places - Cuba and Albania before communism collapsed where a lot of people didn't do much but were still housed and fed (not very well - ration books) but no one seems to want to vote that stuff in.
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What percentage of people would you say like working for fun? Would you really claim they make up a significant portion of society?
Even myself, work a job that I enjoy building things that I’m good at, that is almost stress free, and after 10-15 years find that I would much rather spend time with my family or even spend a day doing nothing rather than spend another hour doing work for other people. the work never stops coming and the meaninglessness is stronger than ever.
I think a lot of people would work fewer hours and probably retire earlier if money were absolutely not in the equation. That said, it's also true that there are a lot of things you realistically can't do on your own--especially outside of software.
Well - I guess you are maybe typical in quite liking the work but wanting to do less hours? I saw some research that hunter gatherers work about 20 hours a week - maybe that's an optimum.
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Meanwhile your examples for happy working are all billionaires who do w/e tf they want, and your example of sad non working are disabled people.
Not to undercut your point - because you’re largely correct - but this is my reality. I have a decent-paying job in which I work roughly 15 hrs a week. Sometimes more when work scales up.
That said, I’m not what you’d call a high-earning person (I earn < 100k) I simply live within my means and do my best to curb lifestyle creep. In this way, Keynes’ vision is a reality, but it’s a mindset and we also have to know when enough wealth is enough.
You're lucky. Most companies don't accept that. Frequently, even when they have part time arrangements, the incentives are such that middle managers are incentivized to squeeze you (including squeezing you out), despite company policies and HR mandates.
I am lucky. I work for a very small consultancy (3 people plus occassional contractors) and am paid a fraction of our net income.
The arrangement was arrived at because the irregular income schedule makes an hourly wage or a salary a poor option for everyone involved. I’m grateful to work for a company where the owners value not only my time and worth but also value a similar work routine themselves.
40 hours/week is of course just an established norm for a lot of people and companies. But two 20 hour/week folks tend to cost more than one 40 hour/week person for all sorts of reasons.
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Which is a shame because I bet most knowledge workers aren't putting in more than three or fours hours of solid work. The rest of the time they are just keeping a seat warm.
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I'm working hard on this one. I'm down to a three-day week, and am largely keeping the boundaries around those other four.
It came about late last year when the current employer started going getting gently waved off in early funding pitches. That resulted in some thrash, forced marches to show we could ship, and the attendant burnout for me and a good chunk of the team I managed. I took a hard look at where the company was and where I was, and decided I didn't have another big grind in me right now.
Rather than just quit like I probably would have previously, I laid it out to our CEO in terms of what I needed: more time taking care of my family and myself, less pressure to deliver impossible things, and some broad idea of what I could say "no" to. Instead of laughing in my face, he dug in, and we had a frank conversation about what I _was_ willing to sign up for. That in turn resulted in a (slow, still work-in-progress) transition where we hired a new engineering leader and I moved into a customer-facing role with no direct reports.
Now I to work a part-time schedule, so I can do random "unproductive" things like repair the dishwasher, chaperone the kid's field trip, or spend the afternoon helping my retired dad make a Costco run. I can reasonably stop and say, "I _could_ pay someone to do that for me, but I actually have time this week and I can just get it done" and sometimes I...actually do, which is kind of amazing?
...and it's still fucking hard to watch the big, interesting decisions and projects flow by with other people tackling them and not jump in and offer to help. B/c no matter what a dopamine ride that path can be, it also leads to late nights and weekends working and traveling and feeling shitty about being an absentee parent and partner.
Most of the people are leisuring af work (for keynes era standards) and also getting paid for it
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks, with the rest of the time used for leisure.
I suspect he didn't factor in how may people would be retired and on entitlements.
We're not SUPER far from that now, when you factor in how much more time off the average person has now, how much larger of percentage of the population is retired, and how much of a percentage is on entitlements.
The distribution is just very unequal.
I.E. if you're the median worker, you've probably seen almost no benefit, but if you're old or on entitlements, you've seen a lot of benefits.
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks
Most people with a modest retirement account could retire in their forties to working 15-hour workweeks somewhere in rural America.
The trade is you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate. Avoid spending it all on VHCOL real estate.
And then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere”, possibly before your kids head off to college.
Most cannot meet all those conditions and end up on the hedonic treadmill.
> you need to live in VHCOL city to earn enough and have a high savings rate
Yes to the latter, no to the former. The states with the highest savings rates are Connecticut, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachussetts and Maryland [1]. Only Massachussetts is a top-five COL state [2].
> then after living at the center of everything for 15-20 years be mentally prepared to move to “nowhere”
This is the real hurdle. Ultimately, however, it's a choice. One chooses to work harder to access a scarce resource out of preference, not necessity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_savings...
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Some countries are still trending in that direction:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/21/icelan...
Policy matters
Keynes also convinced us that high unemployment and high inflation couldn't happen at the same time. This was proven wrong in the early 1970s.
It's more likely 15% of the workforce will have jobs. They'll be working eighty hour weeks and making just enough to keep them from leaving.
Now one has to work 60 hours to afford housing(rent/mortgage) and insurance (health, home, automotive). Yes, food is cheap if one can cook.
> Keynes suggested that by 2030, we’d be working 15 hour workweeks
Yeah, I'd say I get up to 15 hours of work done in a 40 hour workweek.
> Instead, we chose consumption
instead, corporations chose to consume us
It's still not 2030 yet. It could still happen.
"Bullshit jobs" are the rubbish required to keep the paperwork tidy, assessed and filed. No company pays someone to do -nothing-.
AI isn't going to generate those jobs, it's going to automate them.
ALL our bullshit jobs are going away, and those people will be unemployed.
I foresee programers replaced by AI and the people who programed becoming pointy haired bosses to the AI.
I for see that when people only employ AI for programming, it quickly hits the point where they train on their own (usually wrong) code and it spirals into an implosion.
When kids stop learning to code for real, who writes GCC v38?
This whole LLM is just the next bitcoin/nft. People had a lot of video cards and wanted to find a new use for them. In my small brain it’s so obvious.
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Ha-ha, this is very funny :) Say, have you ever tried seriously using the AI-tools for programming? Because if you do, and still believe this, I may have a bridge/Eiffel Tower/railroad to sell you.
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> "Bullshit jobs" are the rubbish required to keep the paperwork tidy, assessed and filed.
It's also the jobs that involve keeping people happy somehow, which may not be "productive" in the most direct sense.
One class of people that needs to be kept happy are managers. What makes managers happy is not always what is actually most productive. What makes managers happy is their perception of what's most productive, or having their ideas about how to solve some problem addressed.
This does, in fact, result in companies paying people to do nothing useful. People get paid to do things that satisfy a need that managers have perceived.
AI is going to 10x the amount of bullshit, fully automating the process.
NONE of the bullshit jobs are going away, there will simply be bigger, more numerous bullshit.
Keynes was talking about work in every sense,including house chore. We're well below 15 hours of house chores by now, so that part became true.
Washing machines created a revolution where we could now expend 1/10th of the human labour to wash the same amount of clothes as before. We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash.
I don’t know if it’s induced demand, revealed preference or Jevon’s paradox, maybe all 3.
> We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash.
OK, but I doubt we're washing 10 times as much clothes, unless are people wearing them for one hour between washes...
> We now have more than 10 times as much clothes to wash.
Citation needed.
I saw some research once that the hours women spend doing housework hasn't changed. I think because human nature, not anything to do with the tech.
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We've got 10 whole hours left over for "actual" work!
(Quotes because I personally have a significantly harder time doing bloody housework...)
Clearly you don’t have children!
Life pro tip: teach your children to do chores.
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I was thinking it's a function of the social setting. Single bloke 1h/week. Couple 5h/week. With kids continuous. Or some such.
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Source? Keynes was a serious economist, not a charlitan futurist.
John Maynard Keynes (1930) - Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren
> For many ages to come the old Adam will be so strong in us that everybody will need to do some work if he is to be contented. We shall do more things for ourselves than is usual with the rich to-day, only too glad to have small duties and tasks and routines. But beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!
http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf
https://www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/files/cont...