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shminux comments on The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ - Less Wrong
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Both Q and A seem to be treating unemployment as intrinsically bad, which is a case of lost purposes, a confusion between terminal and instrumental goals.
It's not a confusion by the technological unemployment people, at least: most of them seem to come to conclusions like 'this is irreversible and reversing it is undesirable anyway, so what we need to do is de-link employment with being able to survive using something like Basic Income'.
Involuntary unemployment is bad. Not having to work is good.
Unemployment is bad if there are things that should be done, but are not done. Does this description fit our society? I think it does, because I can imagine a few things that should be done... for example cleaning the streets.
When we'll have enough cheap IQ-100 machines able to do all the work of IQ-100 people, I will not consider unemployment of people under IQ 100 a bad thing. It will be still bad if a IQ 200 person remains unemployed, while the cure for cancer is still not found and people are dying. Again, when all IQ-200 work is done, I will be okay with that person being unemployed, too.
Provided that doesn't happen before some measure to allow such people to still make a living is implemented.
You mean "to still live" since presumably the making of it will be the machines job.
Because of the complexity of human psychology, unemployment probably is intrinsically bad, in the sense that it's a terminal goal to be 'employed'. I can imagine being 'self-employed' were I provided with a minimum (and satisfactory) income without needing to be officially employed, but large numbers of people already doing this don't seem to be satisfied or happy doing so.
I'd argue that unemployment fundamentally is a good thing.
In past times, children - even quite young children - had to work, as did the elderly. It is one of the achievements of modern technology that these people don't have to work anymore and can instead grow up happily and go to school or retire and live the rest of their lives without having to work, respectively.
These aren't mutually exclusive: one hedonic function that work performs is giving a person a sense of place, purpose, and contribution.
Granted, most currently available forms of work don't offer much of this, but at least they provide something one can use as a prop in rationalizing that one is doing something meaningful in providing for one's family or whatever.
(Also granted, "work" does not necessarily require "job", and IIUC it's only been in the 20th century that most people's work is as an employee of someone else.)