There seems to only be a shortage of jobs for stupid people.

Fahrenheit 451 ?

 

No, it was a short story, not a novel. Farenheit 451 was about burning books, this story was about the world after technology takes over and kills all humanity.

 

1984, maybe... but that was george orwell

 

It's called objectivism, and a bad writer came up with it first.

I do well and I'm not worried about it. People who say things like that often are the first to get their heads hacked off in a revolution though.

 

I dont dish out what I can't eat myself.
I post things like this to be torn apart. If everyone displayed there screwed up trains of thought to the entire world for everyone to dissect I think we'd be in a much better.

 

Scratcho, Tyronswood, and Gyro have pointed to a flaw in your argument that I don't think that you have responded to yet.

Replacing human labor with machine labor might in principle produce benefits for humanity if the replaced workers were the beneficiaries of their own replacement or if enough more desirable jobs existed for them to take instead.

There just aren't 50 million programming jobs available for the 50 million unemployed people in America, even if everyone could program and would prefer to program.

There is something that I think you should understand and seem not to understand, which is that the system is controlled by evil people. People that care nothing about human lives, people that are perfectly happy to steal peoples homes, people who are perfectly happy to enslave or exterminate people if doing so yields material gain for themselves.

You are a servant of that system. Should you be so proud? Are you really better than those who refuse to participate in that system, or who the system has discarded? Are you really better than those who are doing "robot" jobs, while you are contributing to a system of eliminating jobs that concentrates more wealth and power in the hands of ruthless people?

I'm sure you're very smart. Why not use that lovely brain of yours to try to fix the system rather than perpetuate its evils.

 

You just used up all my benefit of the doubt.

 

Theres no reason to believe any of that.

You do not know that people in control are evil.

Furthermore you do not know that there is really any 'one' in 'control'. I personally think the notion that someone is in control of a 'system' is just an illusion of some sort. Some people would LIKE you to think that. But really no one is in control. The whole of reality is ruled by the dynamics of chaos.

Certainly there are individuals with ALOT of money and they could push things a certain way within reason. But do they have absolute control that is inescapable, or not overcomable? No way. With the advent of the internet, and the creation of the media being now something the people themselves will do, not the elite 'mainstream media', we are really in one of the most opportunistic times in history to usurp any hierarchical control systems that have held people down in the past.

Aside from that, the purpose of building robots to take our place wouldn't be just to flow money into a few select places. It would be to essentially make the resources needed for living free. If we can come up with sustainable method of automatically, and robotically growing food, that needs no human intervention, or very little, you basically have free food, wherever such a system can be built.

Once we finish the transition to a robotic society, the issue of millions of people sitting around doing nothing won't be an issue, because we will have constructed automated facilities which will be able to sustain such people without the need for money. But right now at this early phase of this transition, it seems horrifying, because we're right in the begin, in just looks like people are falling on their asses without anything to hold them. Because literally, thats whats happening. But it doesn't have to be like that. Instead of standing around rich peoples houses complaining, if people instead learned something useful to help this transition and start build the systems necessary for a resource based economy, then this transition could be much less painful. But no we have people sitting on the streets, living out in useless communes "not participating" because what? There just waiting for the intelligent people to create this new technological world for them? Or there just going to work cash registers, pump gas, and stock store shelves because the system isn't to the point they want and they won't "participate" in order to get it to where it needs to be? To me that is literally like when a toddler holds his breath until his parents buy the toy for him.

 

Just a suspicion. . . . .your real name isn't Sheldon Cooper,by any chance?

 

the "people" "in control" aren't people.
they/it are an economic theory called corporate capitalism.
that a few imagine themselves to be bennifitting from at the expense of the many.
while enough more to let them get away with it vainly imagine timeselves finding a way into and among them.

its not the little green pieces of paper that are unhappy.
economics is a way of talking about political ideology while pretending not to.

if you want full employment, simply create a shorter maximum work week. thus requiring what work actually needs to be done to be distributed among everyone willing and able to do it.

better yet, just stop ragging on people not being employed. let them find and enjoy constructive hobbies. tools and materials provided by fully or nearly fully automated mechanical production.

let what needs to be done, be done by those who enjoy doing it, and eliminate needless makework entirely.

and again. its NOT the little green pieces of paper that are unhappy.

if that were done, no one would have to work more then 16 hours a week, leaving them another 16 or 20 to persue their continuing education, and or hobby interests.

imagination is what makes us human. not hierarchies, nor indenturing ourselves to totally gratuitous prevailing cultural assumptions.

 

themnax, that post matches your signature very nicely, and I don't mean this in a negative way.

B-b-b-b-but that would be socialism, to let everyone do a reasonable amount of what they're good at, and to not let some people own more money than they could spend if they spent a lifetime trapped in a mall (or a luxury car dealership, for that matter) while others starve, for want that they should not even have to concern themselves with......

 

As I've said in the past, I have no objection to feeding trolls

Let's take the example of China. Are they sponsoring genocide in Darfur? Yes. Are they sponsoring brutality and oppression in Burma and Tibet? Yes. Are they poisoning the environment? Yes. Are a handful of billionaires raking in the cash while Chinese workers get 50 cents and hour? Yes. Are they willfully manipulating their currency to gain unfair advantage? Yes. Have they carried out cyber attacks on groups critical of China throughout the world? Yes. Are Chinese political dissidents executed? Yes. Is the Chinese government rising in economic and military power, perhaps one day becoming the dominant global superpower? Yes. Are US companies completely in bed with China? Yes. Is the entire US economy deeply interconnected with (and increasingly controlled by) China? Yes.

I think that you are most likely a troll. If not a troll, you would have to be willfully blind to the degree to which evil people hold wealth and power.

Let's take the example of sub-prime mortgage lenders and those who securitized those mortgages. Did they know that, as Warren Buffet put it "the whole thing was going to turn into pumpkins and mice at midnight"? Yes. Did they know that millions of people might lose their homes? Yes. Did they know that the overall economy would be seriously damaged? Yes. Did they do it anyway because they knew they could make obscene short-term profits for themselves? Yes.

Did they then and are they now paying vast amounts of money into campaign coffers to keep themselves from being brought to justice? Yes.

And these are only part of a vast array of industries that are making profits by willfully poisoning and harming people.

Are oil companies willfully manipulating supply in order to increase profits? Yes. Are they manipulating the political system to be paid billions in subsidies? Yes. Are they acting to suppress efforts to stop global warming? Yes.

I could go on. Do I really need to supply more evidence to anyone who isn't blind that evil people are running rampant in our society, and that continuing to serve the trends of our economic and political system will lead to ruin?


So even if you want to argue that it has not been proven that the system is in the control of evil people, shouldn't we make for damn sure that the system is not evil before even more wealth and power are concentrated in a few hands? You are, after all, endorsing a model of society where a very, very few people will hold all power. What if it so happens that these people decide to be not as charitable as you imagine they will be?

You seem to want to argue that the existence of the internet negates the fact that six companies control 90% of the media in the US. And that 1% own half of the wealth, and that the trend of wealth concentration is accelerating.

The internet is a lovely thing, but it too is largely controlled by mega corporations. I don't think that the existence of the internet alone means that we can blithely ignore the trends of society.

Hopefully the people will be able to fight back and we will be able to reform the system. And quite a few wealthy people might be interested in reforming the system too. I think it should be abundantly clear though that the super rich have a much greater influence over politics and society than the poor, and that that influence is being used to add to their power.

Once we finish the transition to a robotic society, the issue of millions of people sitting around doing nothing won't be an issue, because "we" will have exterminated them. What good are all of those people if they produce nothing of value for their masters? Aren't all of those shiftless masses just a potential threat? Why give them anything at all, when they may be more cheaply and efficiently eliminated.

After all, the purpose of humanity is to travel the universe, to be hyper efficient, to develop power and knowledge, to ourselves become robots. There is no inherent value to human life in your model. It seems you are saying that the only thing that makes people valuable is that they produce things which are valuable to those who hold power.

I wouldn't be surprised if in the evolution of your political thinking that you yourself decide that the "useless" masses need to be exterminated. That is, until your masters come for you too.

 

oh noes; "SOCIALISM"! help help, the sky is falling ...

jk yes, ty. i recognize and appreciate the compliment.

 

all of which is true, except for a couple of relatively minor quibbles. well one miner and one a little less so.

myanmar/burma, from what i've heard is american oil interests, although those could be partially controlled by chinese interests, being as how its all interlocked anyway.

the less minor is that evil isn't something anyone IS, its a way of acting. which could be called willful thoughtlessness. and it isn't just the people in possitions that look like control, that both those in them, and most everyone else who doesn't look that close, seem to think are.

but also, there are things that everyone else does, most everyone else, again who doesn't look that far, as most people don't, that makes their possisions and harmful policy decisions possible, and those include indenturing themselves to an automobile, a mortgage, using credit in general, and buying stuff at places like off the wall mart, knowing perfectly well that half the reason its cheeper there is because its made by slave labour half way around the world. of course its not just the wally marts either. but it is those things that make those we can point fingers at, and what we can point fingers at their doing, possible.

not that those "at the top" arn't willfully neglegent and therefor culpable. of course they are. but just as america and other powerful nations can stop supporting tyrannies they exploit, so too, the average person can also to some degree, stop supporting the corporate mafia, by avoiding the use of credit, and using public transportation instead of a car as much and as ever possible.

ps: i've got to add, for giggles and grins, while typing that in, i must have hit some of bingo card with the verious names and concepts i was pointing out the negativity of. a popup appeared, looking a bit "phishie", offering some sort of survey to fill out, with the inducement of a wall mart gift card.

lolzers.

 

This is a mythical creature in that it has two heads and they go in different directions like a push me pull you from dr. doolittle.

Must we invent monsters so that we can preserve the concept of evil?