Sam Altman, of OpenAI fame, has been "internet condemned" for saying that if your job can be replaced by a computer, it probably isn't real work. And I agree with him. and I have agreed with him since before he likely thought this thought, because I am older than him and since I was young, I have questioned the value of much of the work we do.
It is not that our jobs aren't work in the sense that they don't require effort on our part, but my question is whether they are work that needs to be done. For the most part, I believe that the majority of the jobs we currently do in the world today, are "busy work" positions that don't need to be done. It isn't just about survival either, like a farmer who grows food for us to live, it is about our advancement as a species.
As I understand it, while we need certain conditions to survive (food, shelter, relationships), we also have the skills to evolve our species, not just replicate the species. We aren't tied only to the conditions we have, we can create conditions ourselves. I see this as the work of the species, where we could be doing tasks that advance us. Obviously, this should raise questions about what advancement means, but a great deal of what we currently do is pretty valueless toward our advancement, or at the most, highly ineffective to advance us as a species. Instead, it is just part of the supply chain for economic wealth creation, even if it doesn't generate wellbeing for the species.
And again as I see it, wealth creation doesn't automatically mean wellbeing creation. Instead, I would suggest that in the last several decades, wealth creation comes at the expense of wellbeing creation, where there is a net cost to wellbeing, instead of a net gain. Again, this is obviously debatable in terms of what advancement is and what wellbeing actually means for our species.
But since I was a kid, rather than the mechanisms of industry to generate wealth, I have idealistically believed that we should be building our work roles around generating wellbeing within society. The current capitalistic model is one that drives wealth based on demand of goods and services, even if those goods and services are harmful to our wellbeing and advancement as a society. But, the system flexes just as well if wealth was generated from wellbeing supply instead.
Many anarcho-capitalists will talk about abundance, yet most of them err on the side of tokenisation as the measure. The problem is that the token is not the thing and what we should be doing is creating an abundance of wellbeing, which has no ceiling on its level.
We can always be better.
And ideally, that is what all of our work roles should be organised around, where they can all be diverse, but they are all pointing toward a common goal of human excellence. There really is no point in doing tasks that don't take us toward that goal, but the current economic practices are not aligned with human excellence, they are aligned with token maximisation. And what this means is that while automation will replace a lot of roles that a "computer can do" instead, because society isn't aligning itself to the pursuit of human excellence, new roles aren't necessarily created. Instead, the computer models just replace the busy work we are currently doing, in order to satisfy the only metric that companies care about - increasing shareholder wealth.
And it is because of this approach that we face so many issues in the world globally, whether that be degrading environmental conditions, or geopolitical conflict, or energy concerns. Because industry is built around maximising the many forms of token, rather than toward human excellence, industry will always look to create more efficient ways for wealth creation, whether that be through environmental cost, war, or reducing innovation to maximise wealth. The entire economy is about maximising wealth, rather than the moving toward increased wellbeing, and as such, it is about maintaining illness, rather than finding cures.
As said, I am idealistic and I believe that if the entire world stopped its current practices and trajectory and shifted toward a goal of wellbeing and human excellence, we would make incredible leaps and bounds as a species, with absolutely amazing advancements that we cannot even imagine at this point. However, that is not in the interest of those who believe they are benefiting from the token maximisation model, who are also the ones driving policy, practice and influence over the system.
And idealistic as I am, I know that the majority of people will firstly never spend much time thinking about what is actually valuable in this world, let alone change their behaviours toward creating a better world based on what is actually valuable. Instead, we as a majority will find all kinds of ways to keep supporting what we know, because we have been conditioned to believe that this is the only way the economy can work, and that all those smart people who make the decisions for us have our best interest at heart, even as we suffer more and more unnecessarily.
I do not know if we will ever grow up enough as a species to stop infighting for the sake of maximising tokens for the few, and start improving toward a common good of human excellence. I do not believe I will see it in my lifetime, nor will my daughter. But perhaps one day, we will get to some kind of point where we just can't ignore our own active ignorance anymore, and will make a shift toward what is actually valuable for humanity.
Human excellence comes in many forms, but perhaps the highest of which is observable through the relationships we have and our ability to love. But again, I reckon most people don't think through what either healthy relationships or love actually mean in ,context to their daily behaviours, or the impact on the larger community and global population.
Because if we did, we would change.
In terms of advancing human excellence, the work we do is probably counterproductive.
Ready to quit?
Taraz
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