I live in the valleys of south Wales. Walk through old coal mining areas and you’ll occasionally find lumps of it on the ground.

Lots of people are talking about this in terms of money… And we do live in a strongly capitalist society.

UBI or similar could be useful.

But… Money was created to find a way to compare one workers “value” to real world goods. When the worker doesn’t need goods (no AI needs 4 chickens and a bushel of grain a week) the workers value doesn’t need to be compared. There is less foundational value in money.

We could move away from net worth measured in hoarding money, and start taking about attending currencies such as social worth. Someones worth could be earned in being useful/helpful to society and we as a society could choose to give more resource to that person. Just an example, but a line of thought to go down

A totally separate area for discussion. I believe (most) people have a general need for purpose. Without “work” as we know it, lots of people could find themselves devoid of purpose. I have a feeling some of the ills of today’s world are because people are not finding social purpose in the work we do. Who really deeply cares about being the middle manager of a packaging company? I believe some of today’s mental health plagues are linked to this.

Remove even more “work” and do people find purpose in other things? Does that help or hinder?

Lots of people think with UBI we’ll all turn to art and culture. But frankly there’s only so much art each one of us can look at in a lifetime. What happens when too many people are sitting making boobs in clay? Do sculptures loose their artistic and cultural value? Is art and culture alone, enough to provide the whole of society with purpose?

Which is the greater of two evils? People being required to slog through monotonous work, or people having nothing to do at all?

I’ve worked for companies backing up 100s of petabytes a year on tape. This is audit and log data they are required to keep as well as business data.

If these discs are significantly cheaper than tape, then there’s your use case.

I’ll bite …

crushing the productivity of these workers

What “crushing” of productivity are you delusionally on about?

https://assets.weforum.org/editor/HFNnYrqruqvI_-Skg2C7ZYjdcXp-6EsuSBkSyHpSbm0.png https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/productivity-workforce-america-united-states-wages-stagnate/

I can find any number of sources showing that productivity has been on the rise for decades, and has continued to rise as Millenials and younger entered the job market. There is no “crushing the productivity”.

The rise of the internet and social media has led to a culture of instant gratification … This sense of entitlement

Millenials and younger have gone through their entire school life being told “you need to do well this year at school, to get into the top set next year, to get into a good university to get a good job”. We/they have been told this by every generation above them, for their entire lives. The have followed this, listened to their elders, worked hard through school, sat meaningless exams, gotten good meaningless grades, they have gone to university. They have worked hard their entire lives …

Just to be told, “culture of instant gratification” “you’re entitled” “you’ve not done the grunt work”. It’s selfish of the previous generations to not recognise this.

Your entire comment rings as “needs evidence” to me. To the point I’m not sure if it’s satire or not. You’ve failed to put in any grunt work, evidence anything or source it as anything more than conjecture.

They expect to be rewarded simply for showing up, rather than for producing quality work.

This is the opposite of how I see the world, as it stands. Look at the people calling for maintaining or increasing working hours. Look at the people calling to work in office. It’s the previous generations expecting people to turn up, in office and sit there for hours so they can be paid. They are expecting people to be rewarded simply for showing up.

Look at the people calling for unlimited holiday and reduced workhours, where failure to deliver is a disciplinary issue. Look at the people calling to work from home, and have the quality of their work assessed, not their dress sense or punctuality. Look at the people driving quick delivery, rapid review and peer appraisal of work. These are the people who are focussed on delivering quality, and not getting paid simply for showing up.

I personally welcome my always was Chinese overlord