Is it more moral?
100 families eat tonight vs 10 families eating really well.
That’s not the right approach to this problem. The moral thing to do is is to redistribute that added productivity increasing the beneficiaries of this increased added value
Re:CEO of Uber: Gig Workers Deserve Better
by seanmcdirmid on Monday August 10, 2020 @01:25PM
(#24111702)
You don't solve that problem by creating pretend work or paying above market rate for work, instead that is what social safety nets are for (everyone should be able to eat, work just means you can eat better). Especially these days, and moving forward as automation takes over more lesser skilled tasks.
The contradiction (higher productivity = fewer jobs) has been an issues since the industrial revolution at least, but we’ve seem to have gotten by so far with creating new kinds of jobs coupled with a increasing social safety net. The next step might be some kind of UBI, but we should avoid the other routes (de-focusing on higher productivity, or directly paying people more without higher productivity) as unsustainable in the long term. Some mechanisms, like a rising minimum wage, imply higher productivity with each increase, so those work out as well (though increase the need for social safety nets as some people are forced out of the work force).