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Sandra's avatar

The problem here is that there have to be a significant number of level 0 businesses and people working in them because otherwise all of the infrastructure that the level 2 & 3 people need to be able to work would not exist.

If doctors would film themselves performing operations and then publish it for others to follow, we'd have a lot of dead people...

If everybody would turn to digitized work, there would be no hotels, bars and restaurants, means of transport etc.

I know we are very far from that, but advocating a change of paradigm in this direction has to take into account the chance that your advice could be followed by many.

Plus - education is better with at least some direct contact. Home educated children also have groups they join to practice some of the skills they learn independently or they take part in businesses as apprentices to learn the tasks and solutions. Children benefit from growing up in a fairly consistent environment as they learn relationships - disrupt that and there will be a lot of clients for your psychologist friend to deal with later in their life.

You are talking about a type of existence which will ever only apply to a very small minority of people - and which is essentially about tax evasion when you are not one of the ultra rich who can do it with money.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea, I'm a sociologist and I know that one way to test social solutions (including public policies) is to assume they will fully work and to see what the possible consequences might be in that case.

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Sandra's avatar

Not everyone will want to be a firefighter after a passionate presentation about their work and life, but if the list includes a few hundred professions alongside firefighter, you're talking about a completely perspective. That's the thing I've referred to when mentioning sociology: individual examples don't explain societal changes.

If you can't thing of large categories of people from various backgrounds being involved and of social consequences broadly speaking when you are attempting to describe social realities, you're not conceptualising your topic correctly.

Technology has definitely and always been a significant factor in processes of change in the fabric of society, but the fact that (young) people spend more time on electronic devices and this affects their mental and physical health may be arguably more relevant than the fact that 6% of the population in SOME developed countries chooses to develop digital businesses and travel the world in the process.

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