The hypothetical that we're 8x as productive but the work isn't as fun isn't "society becoming shittier".
We are very well paid for very cushy work. It's not good for anyone's work to get worse, but it's not a huge hit to society if a well-paid cushy job gets less cushy.
And presumably people buy our work because it's valuable to them. Multiplying that by 8 would be a pretty big benefit to society.
I don't want my job to get less fun, but I would press that button without hesitation. It would be an incredible trade for society at large.
Software devs jobs getting less cushy is no biggie. We can afford to amp up the efficiency. Teachers jobs got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. Doctors jobs got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. Even waiters/ check-out staff, stockists jobs at restaurants, groceries and AMZ got "less cushy" -> not great for users/consumers or the ppl in those jobs. at least not when you need to call someone for help.
These things are not as disconnected as they seem. Businesses are in fact made up of people.
So I mean... Yeah
Is software more comfortable generally than many other lines of work? Yes probably
Is it always soft and cushy? No, not at all. It is often high pressure and high stress
I've seen plenty enough people try, really try, to get into software development; but they just can't do it.
1. Efficiency measures as written to benchmark this coupling with economic productivity overall
2. Monetary assessments of value in the context of businesses spending money corresponding with social value
3. The gains of economic productivity being distributed across society to any degree, or the effect of this disparity itself being negligible
4. The negative externalities of these processes scaling less quickly than whatever we're measuring in our productivity metric
5. Aforementioned externalities being able to scale to even a lesser degree in lockstep with productivity without crashing all of the above, if not causing even more catastrophic outcomes
I have very little faith in any of these assumptions
