> the notion that unemployed people should starve because otherwise no one would work to produce food
I don't see where anyone is making an argument based on any such notion.
I think the reason most people are suspicious of those who don't work for a living is fairness: we all benefit from the many goods and services that our society produces, so we all should contribute our fair share to producing them.
I agree that the market for jobs in our society is very inefficient, which means that many people are unemployed not because they are unable or unwilling to do productive work but because of our inefficient process for matching people to jobs that will actually be meaningful for them. However, no one has any more efficient process for doing that; there are processes that lead to less unemployment in the sense of fewer people not having a "job" on paper, but those processes (as shown by the Soviet Union and China) don't care about the actual job satisfaction of individual people, so they don't solve the problem we are discussing here.
I also agree that industrialization created many "jobs" that actually aren't meaningful at all; the only reason people were used to do them is that nobody (yet) knew how to build machines that would do them. I agree that those jobs should be automated. What should happen as a result of such automation is that the necessities of life--food, clothing, shelter, basic transportation--should get cheaper over time. The main reason this hasn't actually happened in developed countries (or hasn't happened as much as it should--there are areas in which it has) is governments artificially keeping prices high to serve special interests (for example, the US government paying farmers not to grow crops). That is a political problem, not a technical problem.
Even if all the drudge work is automated, however, people will still need to design the machines, make sure they are doing what they're supposed to do, take care of any malfunctions, and update the designs as conditions change. Plus, there are many services that only humans can provide. So I don't think we are anywhere close to having a shortage of work that people will pay other people to do.
> I think the reason most people are suspicious of those who don't work for a living is fairness: we all benefit from the many goods and services that our society produces, so we all should contribute our fair share to producing them.
This implies that an employee of a firm like Renaissance Technologies should have the same social status as an unemployed welfare recipient; I do not believe this is the case in our society.
> This implies that an employee of a firm like Renaissance Technologies should have the same social status as an unemployed welfare recipient; I do not believe this is the case in our society.
No, rather it implies the opposite because the employee is working whereas the unemployed person is not.
The grandparent of your comment suggested that unemployed people are shamed because they don’t contribute meaningfully to society, in that they don’t produce anything or provide any services. Similarly, a hedge fund employee contributes nothing of tangible value to society. Sure, they use pension money to make money for themselves, but pensions don’t depend on that.
> Similarly, a hedge fund employee contributes nothing of tangible value to society.
Thats your opinion, but it's not something that can be assumed to be true. Its equally likely that you just don't have the education and experience to perceive their contributions as valuable. Lots of people say the same thing about professions they don't respect such as artists, educators, police officers, mental health professionals, dog walkers etcetera. It says more about the person holding the opinion than the profession itself.
> Its equally likely that you just don't have the education and experience to perceive their contributions as valuable.
This is a common dodge used by professions that don't want to admit how much of what they do is not making any net contribution to society.
It is true that hedge funds contribute to making stock and bond trading markets more efficient, and that is a genuine net contribution.
It is also true, however, that in the course of doing this, hedge funds siphon lots of money from other people's pockets into theirs in zero-sum trades. Not to mention that many very smart people who could be making much greater genuine net contributions in other fields are attracted to hedge funds because of the money-making potential.
The question for society as a whole, as with any profession whose genuine contributions have not so nice side effects (which is just about any profession), is whether the genuine contributions are worth the not so nice side effects. One way society as a whole expresses its judgments about such questions is social approval or disapproval of particular professions based on people's estimate of the tradeoffs.
> The question for society as a whole, as with any profession whose genuine contributions have not so nice side effects (which is just about any profession), is whether the genuine contributions are worth the not so nice side effects. One way society as a whole expresses its judgments about such questions is social approval or disapproval of particular professions based on people's estimate of the tradeoffs.
People's estimate of the value of a particular profession is dependent on their understanding of the profession and how it provides services to other people/professions. However familiarity/understanding is not a prerequisite to expression of social sanction.
> It is also true, however, that in the course of doing this, hedge funds siphon lots of money from other people's pockets into theirs in zero-sum trades.
There's an agent-principal problem here where a trader managing other people's money necessarily understands more about the field than the person whose money they are responsible for.
> Not to mention that many very smart people who could be making much greater genuine net contributions in other fields are attracted to hedge funds because of the money-making potential.
This is probably a sign that entry into this field is artificially limited. When the market rewards people for activity, it is supposed to indicate that activity is in demand. It may be the case that there are structural limitations that prevent the entry of new firms who would then drive profits to the marginal level.
I don't see where anyone is making an argument based on any such notion.
I think the reason most people are suspicious of those who don't work for a living is fairness: we all benefit from the many goods and services that our society produces, so we all should contribute our fair share to producing them.
I agree that the market for jobs in our society is very inefficient, which means that many people are unemployed not because they are unable or unwilling to do productive work but because of our inefficient process for matching people to jobs that will actually be meaningful for them. However, no one has any more efficient process for doing that; there are processes that lead to less unemployment in the sense of fewer people not having a "job" on paper, but those processes (as shown by the Soviet Union and China) don't care about the actual job satisfaction of individual people, so they don't solve the problem we are discussing here.
I also agree that industrialization created many "jobs" that actually aren't meaningful at all; the only reason people were used to do them is that nobody (yet) knew how to build machines that would do them. I agree that those jobs should be automated. What should happen as a result of such automation is that the necessities of life--food, clothing, shelter, basic transportation--should get cheaper over time. The main reason this hasn't actually happened in developed countries (or hasn't happened as much as it should--there are areas in which it has) is governments artificially keeping prices high to serve special interests (for example, the US government paying farmers not to grow crops). That is a political problem, not a technical problem.
Even if all the drudge work is automated, however, people will still need to design the machines, make sure they are doing what they're supposed to do, take care of any malfunctions, and update the designs as conditions change. Plus, there are many services that only humans can provide. So I don't think we are anywhere close to having a shortage of work that people will pay other people to do.