Bernie Sanders says that if AI makes us so productive, we should get a 4-day workweek
By: Amanda Silberling (TechCrunch)
Sanders wants to give a certain class of worker preferential treatment? That sounds more like Milton Friedman than Karl Marx.
What about truck drivers, construction workers, barbers, and food service workers? What about policemen, firemen, emergency services, and health care workers? What about power utility techs, solar panel installers, auto mechanics?
A four day work week sounds great but let's get real. AI won't drastically change the jobs of those who society depends on the most.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
As AI companies rave about how their products are revolutionizing productivity, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wants the tech industry to put its money where its automated mouth is.
In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Sanders argued that the time saved with AI tools should be given back to workers to spend with their families.
"Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said. "You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I'm gonna reduce your workweek to 32 hours."
It's a concept that would be a relief to most people, and an abject horror to anyone who has ever been to Davos. What's the point of life if you don't take every moment you can to drive shareholder value?
For the tech elite, the promise of AI-driven increases in productivity means that companies can do even more, since their workers will be freed up to take on even more tasks — or, they can save money by just slashing their headcount. But for workers, this boost in efficiency could mean completing their existing workloads in less time with no loss in pay, so maybe if they're lucky, they can make it to their kid's Little League game.
"And by the way, not a radical idea," Sanders said. "There are companies around the world that are doing it with some success."
In the United Kingdom, for instance, 61 companies (around 2,900 workers) piloted a four-day workweek in the latter half of 2022. Out of 23 companies that shared financial data, the revenue from the beginning to the end of the trial remained about the same, rising by 1.4% on average.
Kickstarter has operated on a four-day workweek since 2021, while Microsoft Japan piloted a four-day workweek in 2019, which led to a reported 40% increase in productivity.
"Let's use technology to benefit workers," Sanders said. "That means give you more time with your family, with your friends, for education, whatever the hell you wanna do."
Tags
Who is online
204 visitors
Sanders is throwing a lot of blue collar workers under the AI bus just to pander for votes. Isn't this type politics a growing problem for Democrats?
The net reduction in available jobs is inevitable. We (and the rest of the heavily developed world) will need to adjust to a new paradigm for how our economies work. We cannot sustain the work-to-live model of the industrial age.
This could turn out to be good (more leisure time) or very, very bad (substantial increase in paycheck-to-paycheck, poverty, etc.). This is a seriously complex problem and the paradigm shift will be messy.
I'm not sure I completely agree with that. As people become marginalized (and obsolete?) they will be forced to work for their own comfort and survival. I conjecture that the homeless and street people would provide insight into how that shift in paradigm would work but wouldn't necessarily provide insights for outcome. The homeless are already marginalized and much of their time is spent on directly working for their own comfort and survival. As more people become marginalized they naturally reposition themselves outside of the modern industrialized model of working for money to buy comfort and survival.
The shift in the industrial work-to-live model may fundamentally alter our institutional market based economics.
Over time, the transfer of higher paying jobs to the AI sphere is of great concern to me. Millions of people who are currently employed in very good paying jobs will be replaced by AI unless steps are taken to ameliorate and contain AI. As this seems a fruitless task from the widespread adaptation of AI already, I do not see this intervention occuring. So the question arises: How do we deal with ourselves?
And do not fool ourselves that shuffling papers is all that AI can do. When combined with robots, AI can and will be trained in the physical trades, also. We could rejoice and say that our lives of toil appear to be almost over, but Big Money has a different idea.
"Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose."
This is another indicator that overpopulation is a big problem. In addition to other things there won't be enough jobs to go around
Maybe so. But I, for one, kind of like being part of the surplus population.
That has been a problem in big cities for quite some time. People flocked to them for opportunity initially, but many ended up barely scraping by or on the street when they couldn't compete for the good jobs. Rather than providing education and training for a changing labor market, and adopting policies that encourage more affordable housing for blue collar workers, we just keep raising taxes and handing out more free stuff, and then people keep coming but for a different reason. It isn't a matter of overpopulation in the aggregate, especially when the modern workforce can be and is productive from remote locations, it is a matter of overpopulation density in specific areas and historically addressing that issue in unproductive ways.
Good summation.
What you are describing would be somewhat analogous to water following the path of least resistance, wouldn't it? Water flows to a low spot and then stagnates. That natural phenomena can be addressed with planning and practices to increase resilience and sustainability. But if nature is allowed to run its course, the problem of stagnation won't correct itself.
Well yes and no. It is human nature I think to seek the most efficient way to survive, and humans have generally found their way to adapt to their surroundings and not stagnate per se. Historically, nature itself provided the challenges required to nurture the human instinct to adapt, survive, and advance. We are no different than any other animal that has roamed this earth when it comes to the struggle to adapt and survive, except now we have the mental capacity to tinker with nature, or at least build the structures/societies we need to keep nature (including human nature) at bay.
But we have advanced to a point where we have replaced parts of our natural environments with those of our own making, have we not? Rather than creating real opportunity in our cities, sharing our knowledge, offering education and encouragement and incentive to continue our adaptation, work ethic, and advancement, we have dug ever deeper holes in which the water accumulates and have compounded the stagnation by creating a sort of growing dependency on those in power that replaces the human instinct to adapt, survive, and especially to advance. What possible reason could there be, for example, for so-called "sanctuary" cities, counties, or states already plagued with massive stagnation, to keep digging the hole deeper and encouraging more water to flow in and stagnate?
It is a short-sighted path and quite honestly unsustainable in the long run. In the end, when in our efforts to make our lives easier we have conceded more and more power to our Federal Government and grown our bureaucracies and unnatural policies to their breaking point, our primal human nature will kick back in and that adaptation is not going to be pretty. Few will likely survive, but hopefully they will have learned something.
Sorry to sound so defeatist, but at this point I don't see an end to our deficit spending and growing debt that doesn't end in a global disaster. I don't see an end to the ever growing bureaucracy and power of the State and Federal governments, and the polarized two party power struggle therein. Do you? And the ones who will suffer the most will be those at the bottom of the holes we've continued to dig who were lulled into a false sense of security by those claiming to be looking out for their best interest.
Jesus! I'm depressing even myself at this point! End rant.....please.
What is the most efficient way to survive in a market based economy? What is the path of least resistance? Animal subsistence and survival is certainly not a transactional economy.
Isn't the problem that labor migrates to urban centers where it becomes over abundant and stagnates? That stagnation becomes an impediment to survival in a transactional market based economy. The introduction of AI is intended to increase the abundance of labor and contributes to stagnation because of the constraints of a market based transactional economy.
At some point people become marginalized, as with homeless and street people, and experience increasing difficulty participating in a transactional economy. The homeless begin working for themselves; using their labor to directly obtain comfort and survival. That type of subsistence lifestyle harkens back to our agrarian history.
So, urban planning is going to need to accommodate both a transactional economy (as we currently have) and a subsistence economy (from our past).