The Robots, AI, and Unemployment Anti-FAQ
14th May 2017
An interesting point of view.
The problem with automation that might take it out of the general trend over recent centuries is that, unlike semi-skilled agricultural work being replaced by simi-skilled industrial work. semi-skilled industrial and service jobs are being eliminated but the newly-created jobs are highly-skilled service jobs that more often than not incorporate an education credential that the newly-unemployed don’t have and arguably won’t be able to get.
I love free markets as much as any man whomsoever, and I certainly hope that we survive this process as we have survived similar processes in the past, but I don’t see how we get from Point A to Point B.
May 14th, 2017 at 17:56
Death panels. It’s the only viable option.
May 15th, 2017 at 13:02
I’m also quite concerned about this. The first industrial revolution led to a lot of bad German philosophy from the 19th century while eliminating a lot of menial manufacturing jobs and was a contributing factor of the American Civil War. The second revolution in the early 20th century (along with Herbert Hoover’s progressive meddling) contributed to the Great Depression and the rise of fascism in much of the world but most consequentially in Italy, Germany, and the US.
Many people have observed that we appear to be living in Heinlein’s Crazy Years and noted humanist Camille Paglia references Oscar Wilde on the matter of sexual excess and cultural decline. I fear that my views match rather strongly those of John Wright and I simply don’t see a reset option without significant societal disruption.
As more unskilled labor is rendered extraneous and some skilled labor becomes superfluous it is difficult to imagine that we will not observe more aberrant behavior from those who no longer have positive contributions to make to society. On the bright side since the jobs eliminated by this will almost exclusively be the hard physical (agriculture) or unskilled (restaurant) labor that constitutes so many of the ‘jobs that Americans won’t do’ this should pretty much end the illegal immigration concern.
http://www.lipstickalley.com/showthread.php/947694-Feminist-Goddess-Camilla-Paglia(love-her)-%E2%80%98Transgender-Mania%E2%80%99-is-a-Symptom-of-West-s-Cultural-Collapse-quot
http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/01/the-crazy-years-and-their-empty-moral-vocabulary/
May 15th, 2017 at 13:34
‘Progressives’ appear to think that it won’t be a problem. Robots Will Save the Economy
May 16th, 2017 at 11:29
Again I say, Death Panels.
Face the truth; most humans are being rendered superfluous. And there are more and more superfluous humans being born every day.
The dividing line will not be rich vs. poor, or white vs. black; the divide will be skilled vs. unskilled, with the gap ever widening.
And as longevity keeps being extended, skilled positions aren’t going to open up. Those who have will continue to hold onto their positions, leaving fewer and fewer opportunities for even the skilled, if they are young.
I don’t think we’ll have to worry about it very much longer, though…these things have a way of balancing out, if catastrophically. Resource wars or some new pandemic will thin our numbers, even nuclear war.
As I heard George Carlin once say, “Save the Planet? What hubris! What unmitigated arrogance! The planet will get along just fine–it’s PEOPLE who are fucked!”
May 16th, 2017 at 15:07
Fine. When you volunteer, I’ll cheer. Until then, it’s just the same ‘do what I say, not what I do’ that we always get from the Left.
May 17th, 2017 at 04:33
*shrug* We’ll all be ‘volunteered’. It’s just a matter of when.