Sufficient Human Labor Involved
It is a sensible demand, to ask that people have to spend enough time on the work
A few years ago, I was consulting a hyper-scaling quick delivery company (on how to unbreak the technical mess they overclocked). The delivery guys there, call them "dashers", they’d need to run quickly, to deliver products, lunches, some coca-cola. Hyper-scaling means a lot of sweaty commotion, hyper-scaling means KPIs: those little numbers that must go up, or in this case most importantly down: the delivery time must be as fast as it could be, for some reason.
Romantic as I am, I would be thinking a lot about the dashers, probably in the same way other, also often stupid, romantics from the 18th century were discovering “the people”. Remembering that famous ancient dasher who died after running 42km. Remembering the Thorn and Taxis, I mean the Crying of the Lot 49. I was playing as Sam Bridges in the truly majestic Death Stranding, from around the same time. I was trying to remember if the ultraviolent 90s’ videogame "Postal" was connected to deliveries at all. I also remembered Newman from Seinfeld. I thought how “Angel” used to be a word for a postman, but now it’s about a very small-time investor. I thought about postmen going through the most crazy hurdles to deliver letters to the most distant places.
Now those “dashers”, I see them all the time on the street, running like crazy. They somehow mostly don’t hit anyone as they run red lights on the bikes. Huge square bags on the shoulders, the worst thing in public transport. They actually die a lot. They are the image of misery. It’s truly insane, a sad look.
Couldn't it be kinda cool, beautiful, romantic, dignified — to be a postman, a courier, a delivery guy? Is all of this just fake nostalgia? Is there any exit? Is this what the economy somehow dictates?
There were a bunch of alternative delivery services in the city, worker-owned, “ethical”. They died, they couldn’t compete. Also the “dashers” unionized there, which I think was cool. They got a bit more pay. But look, I don't think simply paying more money would be enough (I'm definitely not against that). Pay more money, there's more competition, there would be more demand to do more per hour. The race to the bottom will become more comfortable, but will continue.
Here’s a solution I kept thinking of throughout. Simply a downward limit on the time spent. Say, delivery of 1km currently takes dasher 10 mins (I have no idea, I won’t ask, there’s probably NDA anyway). I think an interesting idea of a law, or a union contract clause, is to forbid deliveries faster than 15 mins per kilometer. Simply forbid! The couriers can walk, or run like crazy if they want, then loiter, whatever, it's their time, but they have to allocate that much. (Probably best in several-hour batches, so they can compress them a bit if they want and then chill, but they can’t take more work for the same batch, and they can’t take more than 8 allocated hours a day.)
Taking one's time, speaking slowly, walking slowly, it's a status thing, and that makes a lot of sense. It's essential for human dignity to have a bit of time to work one's own way. More time spent on something is a good thing. Having more time allocated for something is a good thing. You recognize the truth of it for studying. Some people even recognize it for eating, traveling, reading. I recognize it for working, when I have such a luxury.
In most cases, the customers should understand, as we're not talking about an excessive delay here. We can be patient, because we can recognize the massive social costs imposed by people running like crazy. The scheme will also likely lead to a much more predictable delivery time, which helps planning much more than ordering at the last moment and hoping for a quick one. As for the people who simply can’t wait a few more minutes for their groceries, there's nothing that the obnoxious men-children need more than very hard limits to the expectations.
Now I am pretty sure there’s a union that has already negotiated something like this. More power to them. But I want to generalize this.
Seeing what is going on, what kind of crap we're expected to put up with, as customers, as readers, automated crap, accelerated crap, AI-generated crap, I think this rule could generalize really well. "Sufficient Human Labor Involved". Some things in life already work like that. You more or less have to pay (or get paid by someone instead of you) for your lawyers’, accountants’, doctors’ time and undivided attention. Many people would happily save on all this, and society would be much worse off. Now, isn’t this the case for many other kinds of work?
There was an article in the New York Times, called Human Contact is now a Luxury Good. It was about rich people wanting to get real people, not computers, as doctors and teachers for themselves and their kids. This is quite understandable, I think, (though I do remember a few miserable years as a teen when I’d dreamed of a fully automated future when I wouldn’t have to contact anyone but my computer).
I think that Sufficient Human Labor Involved is the best demand in the face of the pressures of AI and automation, insane KPIs, and stupid economies of scale. I think that would be a cool label, like those labels on chocolate that no slavery was involved. Not “No AI involved”, as people like to say now, which I think is quite weak. AI should be involved, it’s all great, helpful technologies. But there needs to be a person not just looking at stuff, but having enough time to look at it.
I would love the translations to have Sufficient Human Translator Labor Involved, while I’m definitely not against them using AI translators during that time. I would love illustrators to use Midjourney but still allocate some time.
Won’t it lead to some “lazy” people pretending to work, but simply signing off on the AI-generated stuff? Sure, why not. But they won’t be cheaper, because they won’t be able to bill a lot of hours (we should forbid overtime for this stuff). So why not hire a real person, same price, better quality? Such a rule can make quality competitive, by allowing people to compete on something other than time.
Is there too few people for so many mandatory hours? Oh, lucky us then, with all the recent layoffs. We should hire more of those people instead of killing the ones we still have. You could call this a Mandatorily Slow Society, though I don't think it would actually be that slow. (I, for one, would likely be more productive if I didn't have to spend time on the excessively automated/accelerated bullshit. Wouldn't you?)
Sufficient Human Labor Involved as a demand makes, for me, much more sense than UBI as a response to AI. No amount of money will help us live in the world where no good is produced, no service is provided with any sensible human involvement.
Excellent idea 💯