Should “Work Ethic” be a timeless measure of human worth?

The idea of “work ethic” as a timeless measure of worth, the impact of automation on the job market, the role of economic growth, and potential strategies—such as a universal basic income—to ensure human flourishing in a radically automated future.

Should “Work Ethic” be a timeless measure of human worth?

As automation increases alongside advances in AI and robotics – there will be significant decreases in ways in which people can economically compete. The writing is on the wall – it’s not hard to imagine, at least in principle, the idea of ‘reward for hard work’ becoming less meaningful and useful as time goes on.

Imagine an automated age of abundance where everyone’s hardest work at providing economically competitive value is far outstripped by the efficiency of (physical and intellectual) mechanization – there would be no reward for human labour. It seems probable that ultimately even the rent-seekers would loose out.

If the sole measure of a successful economy is economic growth, where human well-being is useful only insomuch as it is instrumental to economic growth – where do the dividends of economic growth go?

Not (by default) towards the well-being of those who are unable to compete, and in the long term that likely means everyone.
Perhaps we are too comfortable with sitting atop of the food chain that it makes it hard to see a future where we are no longer economically important, or the most efficient means of economic progress. 

Imagine a future where an increasingly efficiently automated economy generates unending mountainous vistas of abundance that no one can afford to touch. What’s the use of an ultra efficient economy where no one can afford to enjoy it?

We need to seriously explore basic income guarantee – at least as a transition to a long term strategy where persons don’t just get a basic income, but one in which they can flourish with regardless of their ability to competitively contribute to the economy.

Some transhumanists suggest going full cyborg and merging with the machines – this idea is worth exploring too – but it isn’t without it’s problems. If the degree to which one can merge with the machines is based on ones economic output and ability to compete this too becomes a problem – in the long run the ‘human’ component in the merger may be the bottleneck.
I hope neo-darwinism/survival of the fittest ideology goes away completely. And while useful today, I think in the long run the idea of “work ethic” may need be retired.

This post is in response to a great FB post by Stuart Armstrong, and a survey on Robots:

Capitalism benefited immensely by hitching itself to the “protestant” work ethic, but it’s probably time to break that link. Markets are extremely effective at generating wealth and efficiency, but are very counterintuitive. By hitching themselves to the work ethic, they acquired a moral dimension that made them more palatable: “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” (we’re supposed to be a greedy species, but the “this will make you all rich!” message has never had a chance compared with “this will make the morally deserving people rich!”).

And people have criticised this connection throughout the ages. The criticism is correct. Markets are about efficiency and wealth. While it’s true that, everything else being equal, a hard worker is more likely to succeed in a capitalist society, that doesn’t mean that hard work is the principal or even a major component of capitalist success.
But by and large it kinda worked. Regulated capitalist markets generated vast wealth, governments creamed off part of that for various social security and other redistributions, and the work ethic kept a lot of people on board with the whole project.
But there are strong signs that more and more people may be becoming surplus to requirements, economically.

As automation takes over certain jobs, people who don’t have the skills to retrain are going to find it hard to retain any employment, no matter how hard they work. And hence they won’t work, and will be branded as lazy, and will suffer from that, or will go looking for scapegoats.

Economically, the challenge is moderately difficult: capturing the economic surplus from automation and redistributing it without unduly damaging innovation. But culturally it’s more challenging, as it’s very hard to find yourself redundant, in a world where your worth is so closely tied to your work and income. And where others may thing you’re not “worthy” of receiving “charity”.

So I’d recommend starting to slowly unravel the whole work ethic ethos. Not completely – we don’t yet live in a post scarcity world where robots do everything. And we may never live in such a world; there may always be a need for human competition at some level. But we’d make a lot of progress, and make the world better for many people, if we could keep “rich people are successes” without “poor or jobless people are failures”. After all, automation may come for any of us, one day.
– Stuart Armstrong