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Lumifer comments on Open Thread June 6 - June 12, 2016 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Why are you interested in a study? Studies typically tell you about the averages and in many cases the averages are not what you need. In some cases, they are, actually, what no one needs.
Some people fall apart without externally imposed structure, but some people thrive in the absence of constraints. The latter are often called "self-directed" or "self-motivated" or some other term like that. Both types exist, not to mention the intermediate cases, of course.
Because I plan on doing some more serious campaigning for a more aggressive GBI (among other things) than what a lot of people advocate. I plan on making the case that there is absolutely nothing wrong with someone deciding to just live off the dole and not work, and that people who choose that are often more in the way of people making progress than helping them when they show up to clock hours. I also plan to assert that people who don't have to work, effectively on penalty of death if I want to sound dramatic, will have a better wheat/chaff ratio for what they do do. Of course I want to make sure it's true first :P
If I get to design the study it'll be a little different from the study I seek because I don't think I can expect anyone to have done that study. And I'll be more interested in the whole study than the executive summary for exactly the reasons you describe.
Within which framework? From an individual point of view, sure. From the point of view of the society, not so much -- someone has to produce value which this person will consume. Arguing that it's psychologically healthy to not work isn't a relevant argument here.
You know that the primary function of the markets is provide incentives for wheat and disincentives for chaff, right? They perform this function quite well. You will argue that without the guiding prod of the market people will produce more of better stuff all by themselves?
Well I have a much longer argument for this in the book, but I propose that the amount of work people will do because they want to is more than enough to run society. 40h per person per week (ish) is, in my view, largely makework.
Of course.
The markets have a major confound, imo, in the form of pro-job policy. I believe, and I have some support for this but not enough to prove the point yet, that if "jobs creation" did not occur as a political activity, the market would normalize below the level people would produce without, again using the provocative language descriptively not manipulatively, the lingering threat of dying of want.
That's classic Communist utopia straight out of Karl Marx. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Why do you believe this to be true?
Another question, related to the role of the markets as conduits of information, is why do you think the work people will do is the work that other people need? As a first-order approximation I would expect that you won't have any problems having your portrait painted, but your clogged toilet will stay clogged for a long time.
First, that's not self-evident. Job creation policies mostly reallocate labour (from productive use to less productive). Getting rid of make-work jobs, in the absence of other regulations, will just free up these people to be employed in other areas where their talents can be utilized better. The net effect would be higher productivity but not necessarily a lower level of employment.
Besides, do you want this "below the level"? You interpret this a lots of leisure. I interpret this as a poor society.