Because we have a two party system where one of the parties treats Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum as serious adults.
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PoliGAF 2012 Community Thread |OT2| This thread title is now under military control
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Because we have a two party system where one of the parties treats Herman Cain, Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum as serious adults.
But I thought Mitt said he isn't a business
His timing is as poor as his positioning.
No.
We need to be moving toward a society that is ready for a laborless artificial workforce, so that when tens of millions of people are displaced by advancements in AI and Robotics over the next few decades, we have the social infrastructure in place to support such a society.
As a stop gap, we should start by lowering the retirement age and shortening the work week.
I'm assuming this is a joke post.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Automation of labor (and moving labor overseas) caused us to shift from a labor economy to a service economy. Now technology is also working to automate our services as well (as well as services going overseas), where do we go from there? Service driven to what?
No. It's going to be a gigantic, gigantic problem when tech advances and makes more and more people in labor and things like retail obsolete. I have a feeling America's response to it will be *shrug, let em die poor and sick*.
Oh dear, what did he do now?
You do realize that right now in the United States there is a shortage of capable factory workers, right? In the most automated production economy in the world they've got too few people.
The days of being a mouth breather who can work a rivet gun are over. Now people need to be able to do a wide variety of technical trouble shooting on the machine that does the riveting.
Unless you think we're going to be Matrix-esque battery cells for our A.I. overlords someone needs to manage the power plant, oversee the manufacturing floor, trouble shoot the mechanical problems, install new systems, update old systems, etc., etc..
The notion that we're going to get to a point where the majority of our planet will just not work and live off of government assistance is one of the more loony things I've ever heard. This is literally the opposite end of the spectrum from the Tea Party.
And that's the problem -- because there are thousands of Americans who were trained to work rivet guns, but not to fix robots, and they're completely screwed through no fault of their own. With no unions, and no safety net, how do you expect them to survive? Retraining is not a practical solution.
I think the majority of people will work regardless -- it's kind of a fundamental human drive that you want to feel useful. But that doesn't mean they should HAVE to work.
NullPointer
Member
Seriously.
The promise in our technological developments lies in living longer healthier lives, needing less human powered mechanical labor, and better understanding our world. We can't let outdated notions of economics restrict us as a species from what we are capable of.
Angry Fork
Member
I can't wait until this comes, the sooner the better. Then communism can be properly implemented (at least without needing people who would volunteer for collectivization and menial labor).
And we're going to a fully automated society next year are we?
The advancement suggested here will require plenty of manual labor on the road to it.
For example, in this super-automated theoretical but given our current energy infrastructure we would quickly see the cost of electricity skyrocket past the cost of human labor doing the job instead, preventing the turnover to automation.
Or the delivery of goods, even those purchased via an automated merchant system. At some level we need a human to either manually deliver it or every person needs their own automated conveyor into their home. As it stands now we need real humans to load those packages, drive them to their destination, unload them, and deliver them (in fact its more like a half dozen loads/unloads per delivery).
And good luck convincing people to board a fully automated plane. Pilots are safe for a century or more, even if a large part of that is them just tugging on their dicks while a machine does all the work.
I could go on, but the current labor force will do just fine for another few decades. The important issue is preparing the next generation of workers for the higher demands of the next generation of economic development.
I think it should be. If you aren't willing to do something to give back to the collective then what right do you have to take from it's product? That defies every cultural model except feudalism, and even then that only allowed complacency by the nobility (who ended up having their heads chopped off as a consequence).
Further, we shouldn't even get to that point because as you said it is a basic human drive to want to do something. We need to be fostering that to the point where lacking that drive makes you as much a social pariah as being a kleptomaniac or pathological liar.
A society where people don't have to work and live off production they have absolutely zero role in? Sounds like an expressway to societal collapse and anarchy.
"Menial labor" is a moving target that will never be eliminated.
Angry Fork
Member
They will work on things they're interested in and will no longer be chained to necessary responsibilities. That's the entire point of the dream of robotics/AI doing production.
It already has been eliminated dramatically as technology makes things easier and it's only going to get better. The moment robots are able to act and be as mobile as humans is when we'll be past the point of no return.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I don't think anyone is saying that in the next fifty years we'll make the transition to 100% automation. Just that advances in automation are going to drive unemployment to levels where a robust welfare system becomes a moral necessity. If unemployment even hits 15-20% that's probably enough.
And who in this thread has advocated that?
I'm just pointing out how this little fantasy of machines doing all our work is a fallacy. Some portion of the population will need to be at the wheel to keep everything working. The smaller that portion of the population gets the faster we'll hit a point of societal upheaval in some fashion.
Human nature has shown what liberties people will take if their product is just highly valued by consumers. So what do you think happens if you're the only guy who knows how the water purification system works? Neo-Feudalism would be an accurate guess.
Overpopulation and non-renewable resources.
Angry Fork
Member
You make it sound as if people will still be thinking like capitalists at that point. The advancement in technology and education will also completely transform the way people think towards each other. The humans of the future will be a different species than the ones of today through cooperation and understanding.
The future will likely be military style where people can choose what complex jobs they want based on what they're interested in and be trained in it, but for self satisfaction rather than necessity. People will still work they just won't be on the corn fields, in the factories, at garbage dumps etc. (unless they're fixing the machines that run these facilities, and there are bound to people interested in managing such technology).
Planet terraforming/colonization and we will have nuclear fission/fusion by then which could double as a means to space travel.
NullPointer
Member
I didn't say anybody in this thread did, but this topic has come up from time to time on GAF, usually in the midst of other conversations, and is usually considered loony ;P
I think what holds us back is the notion that most people must engage in forced labor in exchange for cash, to survive as a society. Others are worried about the effect of these changes on our economy. Great. Lets learn something from our historical mistakes and come up with new ideas to organize society.
You obviously don't know many people.
I can't even count how many people I grew up with who used the excuse "I don't like to read" for why they couldn't do well in junior high or high school English class. That includes people who have since graduated from college.
Not "I don't like to read fiction" or "I don't like to read novels". Just "I don't like to read". Converting the visual representations of letters into meanings based on context and attaching all those different meanings into a cohesive whole was just more trouble than it's worth for some people.
Good luck with them finding interesting things to work on. They'll just sit in front of their TV with an IV drip of Brawndo.
Really? Because its been largely automated as it stands already and people still view a lot of those jobs as "menial labor".
Like ditch digging. Its all done by a guy running a mini-excavator. But it's still viewed as menial labor. Today's laborer does maybe 20% of the actual physical work of their predecessors of just 20 years ago and people still act like they're busting their hump to work a shovel for 5 minutes every 8 hour day.
All you're talking about is a time when someone will bitch because he's the guy who as to go push the button this year.
Not if we educate people appropriately.
If we do that all advancements towards automation will do is increase the R&D base to further our advancement as a culture. Why give welfare to people when you can instead direct those funds towards public and private research, expanding THAT segment of the economy to off-set manpower needs in the production sector?
So that people who refuse to be productive members of society can still take advantage of all it's benefits? Again, you do that and the workers are going to ask why they should have to work and the non-workers will begrudge any advantage you give to the workers.
the declaration of independence said:
People have a right to life, even if we happen to think they're lazy. If we have a surfeit we have no right to withhold it. That's a basic moral value.
This is a disturbingly creepy perspective. Why does it matter? Are you afraid that everybody is suddenly going to get sick of working and society will collapse? Because that seems bizarrely paranoid to me.
...people will work because they get more than others for doing so, and people who don't work will make less. People will make straightforward economic decisions regarding the perceived marginal value of their time. Life will go on.
But even in the most Utopian of social fiction, Bellamy's Looking Backward, the people unwilling to contribute require treatment.
The model only works if every person works in some fashion.
Angry Fork
Member
Gonna respond to drek's post tomorrow I'm too tired now but I'm not letting this one go, there's no way someone's going to try to convince people a post scarcity robotic/AI driven society will be a bad thing lol. edit - I have a legitimate answer btw to the question of 'lazy' people, those who aren't 'productive' etc. and so on but don't feel like writing paragraphs of shit right now.
NullPointer
Member
I'm not demanding utopia, only evolution, and a thoughtfulness towards the future and our fellow man. And on that note I'm optimistic, as we will evolve, its just a matter of how much kicking and screaming will have to occur before we make some fundamental changes.
I don't think you quite got what a bunch of slave owners who engaged in terrorism to reduce their tax rates meant by "right to life".
What with these same dudes holding duels against one another and having excessive wealth while starvation was still a real societal issue.
So you can come up with all the historic prose you want, human society has never seen an abundance of charity towards those who refuse to help themselves.
How is it paranoid? We're already seeing the early signs of self entitled non-contributors. Hell, one of them is even running for President of the United States and gets REALLY defensive when people question him on any of his "work".
So who gets to determine what each job gets for reward? How big will these divides be?
If its a governmentally assigned reward there will be corruption unless you can bring the electorate much further along than it currently is (a bigger miracle than anything else suggested to this point). If it's free market generated then it's basically capitalism.
If the divides are significant the non-workers will complain that they're blocked from reaching that level. If it isn't wide enough the motivation to be a worker bee won't be great enough for most. In either model we're on the brink of revolution.
Yeah, obviously. I wasn't suggesting it did, but that it should. You asked what right people had, and I answered that people have a right to life regardless of their labor. Admittedly it is rarely respected, but that's kind of the point.
This is wild. We're not on the brink of revolution now, and people are starving in the streets, but you think that they'll suddenly be brandishing pitchforks because we give them slightly less nice free stuff than the people who make the free stuff? Historically revolutions have resulted either from lack of freedom or lack of food. If both are available, what makes you think they'll be motivated enough to take up arms?
Eventually we will need fewer men and more robots. Some sort of energy singularity is the number one most important step. For a utopia, with finite resources, you also need to eject or streamline religion, especially as it is now, based in a tribal need to expand. So you could actually have more god, but necessarily less begat.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but that it simply won't work as a "everybody gets what they need, work is entirely optional" model. You will create a greater divide between the haves and the have nots than feudalism could ever achieve and do it twice as fast.
How do you tell the guy who provides you with clean water that he isn't entitled to whatever he wants when without him you die within the week?
And by "kicking and screaming" I hope you mean violent and bloody revolt. Because that's what you're actually going to get.
I'm not saying that in a 100 years when a 90% automated production economy can be established that it shouldn't be viewed as a major boon to humanity. I'm just saying that we can't have a system of writing checks for no contribution as a truly valid long term options for large portions of the population. It will result in some form of societal collapse or cancer in one direction (anarchy) or another (neo-feudalism).
Its a myth. The very viable alternative, as I said previously, is a push towards greater R&D and societal advancement. A society where not just the top 10% in a field work on researching the next wave of advancement but instead the top 30-40% do so would be a societal evolution built to last. Especially because that rapid R&D advancement would keep the rest of the workforce very busy updating each stage of production and infrastructure to keep up with the rapid pace of technological advancement.
NullPointer
Member
Of course. Its inevitable.
I'm with you on this, absolutely. Religion won't be ejected but will transform itself to keep its utility.
This assumes that there will be a shortage of trained labor, but it seems much more likely that there will be a surfeit of it, in which case its value will remain low. There's nothing stopping you from learning to run the water treatment plant yourself.
but you'd have fewer people. And unlike say, the Middle Ages where you needed a population to expand and expose excellence, let's say the renaissance is part of that, even with a small population would have the necessary analytical tools, biological and technological tools, to expose and expand human excellence. of course, we have 500 years of Trumps and Kardashians to live through before this even looks possible, but it's nice to dream.
NullPointer
Member
I assume that's shopped? It wouldn't surprise me if it were real tho.
For the 3rd time, an economic system built heavily around R&D.
Also, no automated system is indestructible and free of failure. Someone will need to be at the wheel for all these various systems and have the means to shut down and repair them as issues arise.
What should happen and what has happened repeatedly without fail throughout human history are two different things. Hope for the best, plan for the worst, as the adage goes.
The society you describe has an inherent lack of freedom at it's core. People would not be free to achieve their own goals due to a lack of demand for people at that pay scale or doing the job they want.
Also, where exactly in the U.S. are sane, healthy people starving in the streets? In the places on this planet where that is happening the choice facing the impoverished is slow death via starvation or fast death via a better armed opponent. So unless your ideal future government is also a dominant police state you'd have a problem.
And lastly, what someone sees as disenfranchisement is, as with all things, a moving target. To that end I'll reference a Louis C.K. bit:
Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy
Now how much disenfranchisement does it take before someone takes up arms is the real question. I'd bet it's a lot less than you think if the society you're suggesting doesn't have a strong police body to crack down.
In fact, that's been proven by Occupy Wall Street. A bunch of people who live in a society that currently takes care of them like you're suggesting engaging in disruptive protests based on a sense of disenfranchisement that they never even coalesced into a real model for reform other than "we don't like that those guys got so much!".
Or if you want more obvious examples how about the 2010 UK student protests (because the cost of tuition was going to potentially go up) or the May 1968 protests in France where the government realistically feared civil war, including Charles De Gaulle fleeing the country.
Sure, at first. But give it a few generations and see where you're at. Wouldn't take too long before we're living in a Foundation-esque society where the technology people once took for granted appears to be magic to the uneducated "leach" class.
Then why do humans exist?
What you describe would require a fully sentient robot society capable of advanced thought. Why do you think that they would want to be our slaves in this scenario?
Wait what? Are you kidding? How do you know?
What's so funny, ez?
cartoon_soldier
Member
Transvaginal Ultrasounds
I think it's the Weekly Standard who are saying it's Ryan.
Wanting to destroy Medicare seems bigger or at least as big a handicap.
cartoon_soldier
Member
http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns...ly-standard-its-looking-like-ryan-131712.html
CHANGE THE NARRATIVE!
CHANGE THE NARRATIVE!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/romney-prepares-pick-ryan_649722.html
the weekly standard said:
It's not about self-preservation, it's about the ring in Romney's nose, and proving to the GOP that it's still attached.
You can't hold a political event on a military installation, let alone a ship.
Are you seriously questioning the decision making of Romney's campaign? He has yet to prove they have sound judgment in anything.
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