For all those that think automation is just a threat for the little people

[Moonbeam]

Folks associate their job and "hard earned wages" with their sense of independence and freedom. If government were to hand them things, there'd be strings attached. It wouldn't be "freedom" anymore.

There is a tremendous amount of fear associated with the welfare state, and with unemployment in general. Restrictions and substandard quality being chief among them.

Why do folks associate their jobs and hard earned wages with independence and freedom? Isn't prison defined by ones definition of freedom which is defined by ones definition of self worth? What if the cost of freedom is met by the exchange of definitions.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

You don't seem to have any appreciation for the economic impacts ahead. It will be extremely destabilizing for us to have to rethink labor from the ground up.

There's no guarantee our political system will be flexible or responsive enough to survive such societal changes as the collapse of labor. We're on the cusp of uncharted economic territory.

And why hasn't this happened with every ridiculously massive upheaval in labor?

 

[monkeydelmagico]

And why hasn't this happened with every ridiculously massive upheaval in labor?

Because other sectors have absorbed some of the fallout. The borg Amelia is clearly targeted at the service sector. Automated mcdonalds, automated fufillment warehouses, automated drilling rigs, automated trains, planes, automobiles, etc. cover many of the jobs that high school diploma holders would compete for.

What's left for folks who may not be the brightest bulb in the room?

 

[Moonbeam]

^ aaaand there's what I mean about the childish, simple-minded view of this.

Newsflash: untalented, unskilled, uncreative and simple-minded people (ie: YOU in many ways) will not have a great time of it in the future- not with increased automation, or just increased competition from the rest of the non-first world spoiled retard world.

Many of the above types will toil away in some form of diminished existence, probably blaming everyone else, shaking fists and frothing at the mouth over cops, robots and "outsourcing err jerbs!!!!" But that's because just being able to do that and *nothing* else that's actually useful to your fellow human beings will NEVER be a sought after commodity- automation or not. Sorry for the wake up call.

Others in society will simply get on with it- using their skills, talents, creativity, problem-solving and inventive abilities to design/create/service/promote/service the things that any robots would be making or building in the first place, because the only purpose of having all the robots you fucking idiotic moron- would be in service of HUMAN industry.

Your irrational, babified fear of tech advances is just because your pea brain has attached an image of a human-replacing "robot" to it, and your childlike mind literally focuses on that and not the fact that even fearing the most advanced of automation is the same as being a blithering chickenshit idiot over a printing press, power tools, automobiles and all other forms of automation.

You're too dense to see that for every advancement, there's simply a shift in what becomes useful to know. There was no one getting paid to be a pilot before there were airplanes. The invention created many brand new occupations, but you're the twit whining about the loss of a few jobs in the passenger ship industry.

You and Bober make a great team. I see both of you as quite alike, both intelligent, both passionate, maybe exceedingly so, about your positions. You both make valid points in, I know, my worthless estimation. For that reason I see no point in the insults you both hurl at each other and others. I feel the problem is that you both have very large egos, which of course to me means a deep seated insecurity of some kind. Sadly I think all the sparks from your flaming each other makes focus on the validity of your points less visible. The reason I don't get so wound up when people call me an idiot is that I've long suspected it's true. So I try to use what little I have for other things. One is just a suggestion that you guys try to be nicer. I don't think the universe will come to an end.

 

[realibrad]

Why do folks associate their jobs and hard earned wages with independence and freedom? Isn't prison defined by ones definition of freedom which is defined by ones definition of self worth? What if the cost of freedom is met by the exchange of definitions.

You cannot cobble together words and expect meaning from them. What does the following mean?

Isn't prison defined by ones definition of freedom which is defined by ones definition of self worth?

What if the cost of freedom is met by the exchange of definitions.

 

[Jaskalas]

And why hasn't this happened with every ridiculously massive upheaval in labor?

How to tell people that the world as they knew it has come to an end...

Yeah, I'll get back to you on that. It's clearly not an easy discussion to start on. May need the assistance of others who see the collapse of labor as inevitable.

 

[BoberFett]

^ aaaand there's what I mean about the childish, simple-minded view of this.

Newsflash: untalented, unskilled, uncreative and simple-minded people (ie: YOU in many ways) will not have a great time of it in the future- not with increased automation, or just increased competition from the rest of the non-first world spoiled retard world.

Many of the above types will toil away in some form of diminished existence, probably blaming everyone else, shaking fists and frothing at the mouth over cops, robots and "outsourcing err jerbs!!!!" But that's because just being able to do that and *nothing* else that's actually useful to your fellow human beings will NEVER be a sought after commodity- automation or not. Sorry for the wake up call.

Others in society will simply get on with it- using their skills, talents, creativity, problem-solving and inventive abilities to design/create/service/promote/service the things that any robots would be making or building in the first place, because the only purpose of having all the robots you fucking idiotic moron- would be in service of HUMAN industry.

Your irrational, babified fear of tech advances is just because your pea brain has attached an image of a human-replacing "robot" to it, and your childlike mind literally focuses on that and not the fact that even fearing the most advanced of automation is the same as being a blithering chickenshit idiot over a printing press, power tools, automobiles and all other forms of automation.

You're too dense to see that for every advancement, there's simply a shift in what becomes useful to know. There was no one getting paid to be a pilot before there were airplanes. The invention created many brand new occupations, but you're the twit whining about the loss of a few jobs in the passenger ship industry.

Your level of thickheadedness is impressive, clearly cultivated over many years of ignoring reality. Bravo.

 

[BoberFett]

You don't seem to have any appreciation for the economic impacts ahead. It will be extremely destabilizing for us to have to rethink labor from the ground up.

There's no guarantee our political system will be flexible or responsive enough to survive such societal changes as the collapse of labor. We're on the cusp of uncharted economic territory.

Zaap hasn't even stopped to imagine what a post-scarcity economy might look like. Currently everything is based on supply and demand. Even in a communist system, supply and demand is at work. It's broken, but it's there. What happens when supply is unlimited?

Except for silly intellectual property laws, ideas are unlimited. We have had to put an imaginary cap on ideas to make sure people still get paid for creating them. Just witness the fears of piracy by the movie and music industries. "People will get our stuff for free! We'll all starve! The world will end!" My guess is that Zaap supports IP laws and the artificial scarcity they create and would scream bloody murder about evil pirates if people were allowed to copy movies and music freely. He fails to see the parallel and understand that labor will have the exact same problem.

So when the supply of goods is unlimited, what then? "Robot Productivity" laws will have to be enacted to make sure robots don't produce too many goods, to make sure people can get paid for spending time working? I suppose Zaap will just tell people that they need to keep working harder and being more creative to produce... something... that people don't need...

 

[glenn1]

Zaap hasn't even stopped to imagine what a post-scarcity economy might look like. Currently everything is based on supply and demand. Even in a communist system, supply and demand is at work. It's broken, but it's there. What happens when supply is unlimited?

Behavioral Sink if you're in the underclass, utopia if you aren't. If you didn't contribute anything of true value except for some fungible labor before then nothing will change as automation continues to increase. Almost every constraint on the modern poor is one of culture and lack of creativity and empathy rather than true existential need. Ghetto dwellers share basically nothing in common with the truly inpoverished in places like Bangaladesh and would die there in quick order.

 

[werepossum]

We're already there. Witness the welfare state.

I agree with the magic monkey that we're not yet there, or near there, but we're certainly seeing symptoms.

I would imagine that it would be better if it were not too sudden. A shock in 1 generation would leave a lot of people angry. Look at the people already posting in this thread. The anger and fear would cause a lot of unrest justified or not.

Yep. If there's a singularity, more than Ferguson or LA is going to burn. Even without a significant singularity, a really major innovation in automation is going to be incredibly disruptive, akin to medieval England's shift from farming to sheepherding. Only this time it will happen not in a time of labor scarcity, but in a time of a labor glut.

Zaap hasn't even stopped to imagine what a post-scarcity economy might look like. Currently everything is based on supply and demand. Even in a communist system, supply and demand is at work. It's broken, but it's there. What happens when supply is unlimited?

Except for silly intellectual property laws, ideas are unlimited. We have had to put an imaginary cap on ideas to make sure people still get paid for creating them. Just witness the fears of piracy by the movie and music industries. "People will get our stuff for free! We'll all starve! The world will end!" My guess is that Zaap supports IP laws and the artificial scarcity they create and would scream bloody murder about evil pirates if people were allowed to copy movies and music freely. He fails to see the parallel and understand that labor will have the exact same problem.

So when the supply of goods is unlimited, what then? "Robot Productivity" laws will have to be enacted to make sure robots don't produce too many goods, to make sure people can get paid for spending time working? I suppose Zaap will just tell people that they need to keep working harder and being more creative to produce... something... that people don't need...

I don't think scarcity is going away. For one thing, raw materials are inherently limited. For another, human nature is to artificially create scarcity as a means of power.

 

[realibrad]

I agree with the magic monkey that we're not yet there, or near there, but we're certainly seeing symptoms.


Yep. If there's a singularity, more than Ferguson or LA is going to burn. Even without a significant singularity, a really major innovation in automation is going to be incredibly disruptive, akin to medieval England's shift from farming to sheepherding. Only this time it will happen not in a time of labor scarcity, but in a time of a labor glut.


I don't think scarcity is going away. For one thing, raw materials are inherently limited. For another, human nature is to artificially create scarcity as a means of power.

Actually, we have been pretty good about finding more supplies. Try and think of a raw material that we have ever run out of, and its been gone forever. In an innovation economy, we seem to always find an alternative.

 

[werepossum]

Actually, we have been pretty good about finding more supplies. Try and think of a raw material that we have ever run out of, and its been gone forever. In an innovation economy, we seem to always find an alternative.

That's a good point. With meta materials, there isn't a natural limit on what we can replace. Except maybe helium, which can be bred.

 

[Zaap]

You don't seem to have any appreciation for the economic impacts ahead. It will be extremely destabilizing for us to have to rethink labor from the ground up.

There's no guarantee our political system will be flexible or responsive enough to survive such societal changes as the collapse of labor. We're on the cusp of uncharted economic territory.

Oh please. Crack a history book. From the dawn of human history, to the start of the 20th century the technology needle barely budged. Then suddenly, we went from horses to cars, from delivery by hand to wireless information empires, from "impossible! sorcery!" to flying around the globe and then into space. From the threat of armed men on horseback to global nuclear destruction falling from space. If ever there was a "destabilizing shift" it started 100+ years ago, not now. It's barely possible to shift things all at once to anywhere near the degree they were in the 20th century from all of history before it.

People are just irrationally afraid of the further continuance of what's already come to pass- ironically, most people are just stuck in a loop of irrational desire to artificially preserve their own little cog in a PREVIOUS automation process that they're too dense to realize that's all it ever was.

Basically, all some are really saying (without realizing it) is an announcement that they feel they are so useless, unintelligent, unskilled, un-creative, and unable to adapt that they can be replaced by the invention of someone else MUCH smarter than them- so much so, that that an individual unit of that person's invention has more value in the world than they do.

It's merely the 21st century equivalent of being a whatever prior-century water-carrier, knowing that you don't know how to do anything else other than that, aren't willing to learn, and being mad at the person who invents hydraulics.

I see it as more of the same- the inevitable result of a nation full of brats who piddled their way through life, were taught they were special little snowflakes and made to feel they're just guaranteed everything. Those more intelligent people should just stop inventing things so the poor poor little snowflakes that only know how to toke up and shout about cops and robots can keep feeling special and have some sort of a role in society that pays them at the outer fringes of someone else's inventions/productions/manufacturing processes, etc. I say too fucking bad. Time is going to march forward whether you're with it or not.

 

[BoberFett]

Behavioral Sink if you're in the underclass, utopia if you aren't. If you didn't contribute anything of true value except for some fungible labor before then nothing will change as automation continues to increase. Almost every constraint on the modern poor is one of culture and lack of creativity and empathy rather than true existential need. Ghetto dwellers share basically nothing in common with the truly inpoverished in places like Bangaladesh and would die there in quick order.

Are you content to continue buying off that poverty culture to avoid riots via welfare? Idle hands are the devil's playthings.

 

[BoberFett]

People are just irrationally afraid of the further continuance of what's already come to pass- ironically, most people are just stuck in a loop of irrational desire to artificially preserve their own little cog in a PREVIOUS automation process that they're too dense to realize that's all it ever was.

Ummmm, duh? That's the whole point. They were previously a cog. Now they're an unneeded cog. Unless you're advocating euthanasia, you need to figure out what to do with that cog.

Basically, all some are really saying (without realizing it) is an announcement that they feel they are so useless, unintelligent, unskilled, un-creative, and unable to adapt that they can be replaced by the invention of someone else MUCH smarter than them- so much so, that that an individual unit of that person's invention has more value in the world than they do.

No shit sherlock, that's what people have been trying to explain to you. There are millions, nay, billions of people in this world who cannot hope to do anything better than a robot or a computer can. What's your solution to that? Again I ask, are you suggesting euthanizing the unemployed?

It's merely the 21st century equivalent of being a whatever prior-century water-carrier, knowing that you don't know how to do anything else other than that, aren't willing to learn, and being mad at the person who invents hydraulics.

I see it as more of the same- the inevitable result of a nation full of brats who piddled their way through life, were taught they were special little snowflakes and made to feel they're just guaranteed everything. Those more intelligent people should just stop inventing things so the poor poor little snowflakes that only know how to toke up and shout about cops and robots can keep feeling special and have some sort of a role in society that pays them at the outer fringes of someone else's inventions/productions/manufacturing processes, etc. I say too fucking bad. Time is going to march forward whether you're with it or not.

You sure think awfully highly of yourself. If there's one thing that never backfires on anyone it's hubris...

 

[Zaap]

Because other sectors have absorbed some of the fallout. The borg Amelia is clearly targeted at the service sector. Automated mcdonalds, automated fufillment warehouses, automated drilling rigs, automated trains, planes, automobiles, etc. cover many of the jobs that high school diploma holders would compete for.

Heh, so high school diploma holders are applying for jobs on drilling platforms, in any area of a train that would be replaced by automation, and to fly planes? I've got another newsflash for such people that doesn't even involve automation...

Ever hear of an auto-pilot? OH NOES, a robot is flying the plane!!! Does it mean there isn't a pilot there also? No one in the tower or crews on the ground?

An 'automated warehouse' isn't devoid of human workers that actually keep everything moving, load and deliver everything going in and out, etc. it just makes it possible to process and ship more stuff than before. So now instead of you sifting through a print catalog, filling out your order, mailing it off, waiting a month for it to be processed and shipped to you, you click the 'buy' button of the online catalog, and get what you ordered in two days. The armies and armies of highly paid worker bees that you imagine populated the previous version of the same thing didn't ever really exist in the droves you may have imagined.

Again, people are jousting at windmills of a "revolution" that's already happened.

What's left for folks who may not be the brightest bulb in the room?

Brighten up? Or just continue to be dimbulbs that want some politician to wave his magic wand and make whining online about cops and robots into highly sought after skills.

Again the irony is blazing- the fact that people can actually survive in the world with tons of leisure time to do nothing but the above, when in the past these same people would have freakin perished or been put to death as excessive useless mouths no one would bother to feed, is actually a byproduct of the luxuries afforded by the very automation said dimbulbs quake in their boots over!

Zaap hasn't even stopped to imagine what a post-scarcity economy might look like. Currently everything is based on supply and demand. Even in a communist system, supply and demand is at work. It's broken, but it's there. What happens when supply is unlimited?

Heh. Wow. So because someone invents a more automated production or sales process- we automatically morph into unlimited raw materials and resources? That's an amazing leap from dumb to dumber, but then... it's you.

 

[Zaap]

No shit sherlock, that's what people have been trying to explain to you. There are millions, nay, billions of people in this world who cannot hope to do anything better than a robot or a computer can. What's your solution to that? Again I ask, are you suggesting euthanizing the unemployed?

I've already addressed this, you stupid shut-in. Nothing about automation is going to change or stave off the fact that people who don't have 21st (and beyond) century skills won't have great and awesome lives in the 21st century and beyond.

What's dumbest about this gripe of yours, is here you're saying that sheer manpower should win out over automation- that the power of billions of humans should become king over doing things better and smarter. Well doofus- there's of course a huge problem with that, that you're too dumb to think through. If sheer manpower wins, then China and India and nations with the most raw manpower win. They have all the jerbs, you get to whine about it. If doing things smarter/better/more automated and effecient wins, then the western world has a better chance of leading the way and taking charge of that.

And again, blazing fucking irony- you WILL be in some future thread whining about "Dey outserced urr jerbs!!!!!" without realizing your pea fucking brain just whined IN FAVOR of it in this discussion. In a sheer manpower game, our 300 million doesn't beat India and China and the rest of the globes billions.

 

[BoberFett]

Heh. Wow. So because someone invents a more automated production or sales process- we automatically morph into unlimited raw materials and resources? That's an amazing leap from dumb to dumber, but then... it's you.

You are quite the insufferable little twat, you know that?

Given the last 100 years of technology, what makes you think things will slow down?

 

[BoberFett]

I've already addressed this, you stupid shut-in. Nothing about automation is going to change or stave off the fact that people who don't have 21st (and beyond) century skills won't have great and awesome lives in the 21st century and beyond.

Go fuck yourself you self-aggrandizing piece of shit.

What's dumbest about this gripe of yours, is here you're saying that sheer manpower should win out over automation- that the power of billions of humans should become king over doing things better and smarter. Well doofus- there's of course a huge problem with that, that you're too dumb to think through. If sheer manpower wins, then China and India and nations with the most raw manpower win. They have all the jerbs, you get to whine about it. If doing things smarter/better/more automated and effecient wins, then the western world has a better chance of leading the way and taking charge of that.

When the fuck did I say manpower should win out over automation, shit for brains? I'm saying that automation will win out. And billions of people will have no jobs. What are you going to do with those people?

Answer this question. It's very fucking simple. Do you intend to euthanize the unemployed? Yes or no.

And again, blazing fucking irony- you WILL be in some future thread whining about "Dey outserced urr jerbs!!!!!" without realizing your pea fucking brain just whined IN FAVOR of it in this discussion. In a sheer manpower game, our 300 million doesn't beat India and China and the rest of the globes billions.

I've got some advice for you, fucktard: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

 

[bshole]

For another, human nature is to artificially create scarcity as a means of power.

Then why is there not a scarcity of stupidity? Think about it, that commodity appears to be limitless.

 

[Zaap]

When the fuck did I say manpower should win out over automation, shit for brains? I'm saying that automation will win out. And billions of people will have no jobs. What are you going to do with those people?

LOL, you're too fucking stupid to even know what you're typing, or else your math skills are just as bad as your 'logic' skills, which are fucking pathetic.

You're simply too dumb to know that "billions" of people means China and India and the rest of the world- there aren't billions of people in the US you dumb fucking twit. Why would it be on me to worry about the populations of China and India and other parts of the world, with their backward assed systems?

It's like this you twit: if automation wins, then WE in the western world stand a chance. We can compete in an automated world, where manpower isn't king, but brains, efficiency, creativity, talent and skill are. ( I should of course add the qualifier, that's only IF we wisen the fuck up, not become even more a society of lazy brat spoiled dipshit special little first-worlder snowflakes that don't know shit from shit. In that case, we lose no matter what.)

If manpower wins, (which is what YOU are lamenting losing, you dumb fucking prick) then China, India and the world with the most sheer manpower wins, and dumbfucks like you get to whine about "DEY OFFSHERRED ERR JERBS!!"

You're just too fucking dumb to even know what the fuck you're arguing for.

 

[BoberFett]

Wow, I should have followed my own advice and ignored that useless twat. He's not even having the same discussion as anybody else, just regurgitating his same stupidity over and over.

BoberFett: Hey Zaap, nice day out isn't it?
Zaap: IDIOT, THE CAR IS RED!
Boberfett: I'm just saying it's a nice day. The sun is shining, birds are chirping.
Zaap: DUMBASS, THE CAR IS RED!
BoberFett: You mean that blue car?
Zaap: WHARRGARBL!

 

[werepossum]

Then why is there not a scarcity of stupidity? Think about it, that commodity appears to be limitless.

Unfortunately creating stupidity is an even better route to power than is creating scarcity. Being the only person or party who can deliver scarce desirable resources is a position of power - but with stupidity one doesn't even have to make something scarce. Simply convincing enough stupid people that it's threatened is enough to gain and hold power.

 

[BoberFett]

Unfortunately creating stupidity is an even better route to power than is creating scarcity. Being the only person or party who can deliver scarce desirable resources is a position of power - but with stupidity one doesn't even have to make something scarce. Simply convincing enough stupid people that it's threatened is enough to gain and hold power.

Hell, we have Zaap here creating near infinite stupidity in just one thread. Imagine the potential stupidity of a world full of Zaaps. It's mind boggling.

 

[Jhhnn]

Folks associate their job and "hard earned wages" with their sense of independence and freedom. If government were to hand them things, there'd be strings attached. It wouldn't be "freedom" anymore.

There is a tremendous amount of fear associated with the welfare state, and with unemployment in general. Restrictions and substandard quality being chief among them.

Corporate America obviously attaches strings to paychecks. That's really the only thing that's scarce in this country, gainful employment.

That reality is something that the conservative headset bitterly denies.

When the leaders of the Jamestown settlement declared that people had to work to eat, they had a job for everybody. Conservative leaders still say you have to work to eat, but they don't offer anywhere near enough jobs for that to apply to everybody anymore. Productivity being what it is, they'd create oversupply & eliminate profit if they did.

The headsets that applied to scarcity don't fit with abundance at all.

Of course there's some trepidation wrt the welfare state. The new boss is the same as the old boss, & he doesn't need you any more, welfare state or no. He just needs for you to believe his bullshit.