Regret Rule

tech advancements are converted to company profits rather than worker profits. What CEOs try to do with AI (but fail) is a proof of that.

From the wiki article you cited:

Two studies found that Graeber's claims are not supported by data: while he claims that 50% of jobs are useless, less than 20% of workers feel that way, and those who feel their jobs are useless do not correlate with whether their job is useless. (Garbage collectors, janitors, and other essential workers more often felt like their jobs were useless than people in jobs classified by Graeber as useless.) The studies found that toxic work culture and bad management were better explanations of the reasons for those feelings (as described in Marx's theory of alienation). The studies did find that the belief that one's work is useless led to lower personal wellbeing.

The reality is, almost no jobs are actually bullshit. After all, whether you are a giant corporation or a homeowner paying for a plumber to fix their toilet, no one wants to pay someone money to do nothing useful. Of course, there is slack in the system and sometimes you'll end up in a sort of sisyphean job. But most jobs exist because someone, somewhere needs or wants something done. And most of the needs and wants of the world, ultimately, come from normal people.

Of course, it is easy to make the argument that what people want is wrong. They could live in smaller houses, ride bikes instead of cars, not eat meat, and stop buying fancy watches.They could repair things instead if throwing them out, learn to be happy living in their neighborhoods rather than travelling around the world, and have fun by spending time with friends instead of going to music festivals.

But the fact is "we are going to solve malaria in Malawi by ending Bonaroo, steak, and shopping malls" is not a line that will play well with... like... anyone.

I mean, we couldn't do that very well even when we had strong families and strong communities, and unions were more common.

The last 30-40 years has seen individual independence grow alongside digital sequestration, communities disappear, families shrink, and unions almost fully evaporate.

What is required is a new revolution where luddites are given control and digital tools are eschewed, so that real community can grow again and total control of digital spaces ceases not because benevolent IT folks take control, but because digital spaces are eradicated entirely until an equitable way of using them without the current totalitarian bent can be agreed upon.

That's basically fiction at this point. Zero chance that happens. So then what is the option to combat the paradigm of establishing super convenient and useful digital worlds that have real strengths and usefulness, only to then use that strength and usefulness to create dependence and leverage that into data mining and total control of those who rely on the useful digital spaces?

The best hope at this point is a generation where totalitarianism and greed is completely rejected and the current philosophies of the uber-wealthy few are completely abandoned in favor of a decentralized system that uses the same algorithms designed to chisel every last dollar into upward-flowing profit to achieve actual, complete and mathematically-verifiable equality of resource across all people.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk

For the clothes, yeah 6 gens might be stretching it, but definitely multigen. Think of all the fast fashion in the landfills. Think of your average department store of what's just on the shelves. Think of how often we dispose of perfectly good clothes out of our own closets. It adds up.

But people hugely overestimate how many of these jobs exist. We went from 90% farmers 150 years ago to like 1-2% now.

Rowcrops like corn and potatoes is one of those things that is heavily automated.

first of all, picking crops isn't a shitty job. i did it two times in summer, it was fun. what sucked was the low pay and the bad quality of working colleagues that it caused.