You don’t need one worker per old person. The best care homes in the world still do 10-1. Most care homes get by with minimal incidents at 20-1. Heck you won’t even get investigated for neglect in the US until you’re at 30-1 or higher (depending on the state.)
As someone who was a CNA for a short while – either the old people are doing fine, in which case they mostly take care of themselves with ‘reminders’ and ‘structure’ provided by the carers, or they’re REALLY not doing fine in which case they’re going to the hospital and statistically will not need constant care for much more than a few hours.
Old people are shockingly self sufficient, almost like they’re people, even in terrible condition; one good nurse and a CNA can handle a 20-odd crowd from breakfast (including wiping) to settling in for bed (including wiping, so much wiping). Technically a nurse can do it alone if they have no overweight or PITA patients to oversee.
Okay, let’s assume it’s 10-1. How many other people, in a perfectly efficient system, would it take to provide a decent quality of life for that caretaker and the 10 elderly people? Growing and transporting food, building and maintaining infrastructure, researching and providing medical care, producing electricity and clean water. Nothing extra.
Way, way less than you think. 2+2++1+3%. That is the entirety of food workers and food transportation, packaging, and sales, respectively, as a percentage of population for the united states, which produces twice the food needed by the population.
Water workers? maybe 5%. and that’s a hard maybe because that includes all plumbers, not just infrastructure. Electricity? As long as we don’t go with coal and oil it’s an average of 1 worker per GW. admittedly line workers and electricians make up a decent chunk approaching 3 whole % of a population, but let’s be honest here, we’re fine on that front still.
And that’s the great thing about economies of scale and automation and mechanization. It’s not the 1700s anymore. We don’t have to have 98% of the population in food production. We don’t have to waste productivity. We are, and this isn’t a joke, on average more than 10,000 times more productive as individuals and as a species than our ancestors.
That’s nice kiddo. Statistics do not lie. Period. The sole reason you and everyone you have ever or will ever know is not a farmer, is exclusively because of mechanization and automation. The reason you have clothes that do not cost a month’s pay check is exclusively because of mechanization and automation. The reason you have the technology to type this sentiment on is because of mechanization and automation.
That’s nice, and genuinely good for you if that’s your calling, but that is something you choose, not something that you need to do. Again the total number of people on the planet contributing practically 100% of the food grown for sale is 2%. Down from 98% less than two centuries ago.
The reason people are able to do things other than farm for 6-9 months out of the year, is because productivity in that field is so incredibly high we can feed the world off the labor of 2 people in a hundred. And this is already, currently, true for nearly all production fields. A single textile worker produces more textiles than a 1,000 could have a century ago. Similar increases in productivity are true for nearly every field save for incredibly niche (but still important) industries.
Automation is just going to keep increasing this over time. We will never completely eliminate human labor, at least not while we resemble anything close to human, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have already dropped the 40 hour work week down to 10 hours (we’d still have more production than at any point in human history) and that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to eliminate work to the furthest extent possible so we can actually enjoy life; even if that enjoyment for people like you is spending your time farming manually.
You don’t need one worker per old person. The best care homes in the world still do 10-1. Most care homes get by with minimal incidents at 20-1. Heck you won’t even get investigated for neglect in the US until you’re at 30-1 or higher (depending on the state.)
As someone who was a CNA for a short while – either the old people are doing fine, in which case they mostly take care of themselves with ‘reminders’ and ‘structure’ provided by the carers, or they’re REALLY not doing fine in which case they’re going to the hospital and statistically will not need constant care for much more than a few hours.
Old people are shockingly self sufficient, almost like they’re people, even in terrible condition; one good nurse and a CNA can handle a 20-odd crowd from breakfast (including wiping) to settling in for bed (including wiping, so much wiping). Technically a nurse can do it alone if they have no overweight or PITA patients to oversee.
Okay, let’s assume it’s 10-1. How many other people, in a perfectly efficient system, would it take to provide a decent quality of life for that caretaker and the 10 elderly people? Growing and transporting food, building and maintaining infrastructure, researching and providing medical care, producing electricity and clean water. Nothing extra.
And how many people to support these people.
Probably more than we’d have available to work.
There’s a reason China started taxing condoms.
Way, way less than you think. 2+2++1+3%. That is the entirety of food workers and food transportation, packaging, and sales, respectively, as a percentage of population for the united states, which produces twice the food needed by the population.
Water workers? maybe 5%. and that’s a hard maybe because that includes all plumbers, not just infrastructure. Electricity? As long as we don’t go with coal and oil it’s an average of 1 worker per GW. admittedly line workers and electricians make up a decent chunk approaching 3 whole % of a population, but let’s be honest here, we’re fine on that front still.
And that’s the great thing about economies of scale and automation and mechanization. It’s not the 1700s anymore. We don’t have to have 98% of the population in food production. We don’t have to waste productivity. We are, and this isn’t a joke, on average more than 10,000 times more productive as individuals and as a species than our ancestors.
Having worked in technology for a quarter century I do not have the rosy view of it that you do.
That’s nice kiddo. Statistics do not lie. Period. The sole reason you and everyone you have ever or will ever know is not a farmer, is exclusively because of mechanization and automation. The reason you have clothes that do not cost a month’s pay check is exclusively because of mechanization and automation. The reason you have the technology to type this sentiment on is because of mechanization and automation.
Counterpont: I have been and endeavor to be again a farmer
That’s nice, and genuinely good for you if that’s your calling, but that is something you choose, not something that you need to do. Again the total number of people on the planet contributing practically 100% of the food grown for sale is 2%. Down from 98% less than two centuries ago.
The reason people are able to do things other than farm for 6-9 months out of the year, is because productivity in that field is so incredibly high we can feed the world off the labor of 2 people in a hundred. And this is already, currently, true for nearly all production fields. A single textile worker produces more textiles than a 1,000 could have a century ago. Similar increases in productivity are true for nearly every field save for incredibly niche (but still important) industries.
Automation is just going to keep increasing this over time. We will never completely eliminate human labor, at least not while we resemble anything close to human, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have already dropped the 40 hour work week down to 10 hours (we’d still have more production than at any point in human history) and that doesn’t mean we can’t strive to eliminate work to the furthest extent possible so we can actually enjoy life; even if that enjoyment for people like you is spending your time farming manually.