one need only look at our resident to realize the odds on that lone
Posted on 09/23/2014 7:49:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There was something pathetically nostalgic at the specter earlier this month of fast-food workers demanding compensation to the tune of $15 an hour for performing jobs that require almost no skills beyond not being in a coma. It recalled a halcyon age very long ago when management depended on menial labor, when a general strike of unskilled workers could bring bosses to their knees.
But now a company called Momentum Machines is touting a device that can allegedly shoot out 360 custom-ordered and fully wrapped burgers per hour, rendering the very idea of an exploited and undercompensated “fast-food worker” a quaint relic of a musty bygone age. According to the company’s website, “It does everything employees can do except better.” The machine will also presumably never call in sick, never get an order wrong, and will not tamper with food due to spite or boredom. It will also never demand a raise. According to the company’s co-founder, “Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them.”
As someone who worked a string of dirty, low-paying, soul-smashing jobs—including a stint as a French-fry chef at Wendy’s—to put myself through college, I bear witness that there is nothing remotely noble about being a menial laborer. It is a rancid myth, only a notch or two up the evolutionary ladder from the myth of the noble savage.
While at college, I had my first encounters with a loathsomely clueless and punchably arrogant breed of born-bourgeois Marxist academics, who prattle endlessly about the proletariat’s virtues but have conveniently managed to insulate themselves from the rotten vicissitudes of working-class existence. You know the type—they reflexively use “capitalism” and “corporations” as pejoratives. They seem to have been energized and ennobled by the economic crash of 2007, blaming it on a “crisis of capitalism” rather than more likely suspects such as fiat currency, global finance, unsustainable government debt, offshoring, and unchecked immigration.
But most importantly, this might not have been a “crisis of capitalism” so much as it was a crisis of human capital. The fact is, technology is rapidly rendering human labor next to worthless.
Many of the snarkier, radicalized neo-Marxists that emerged in the recession’s wake are furious at “capitalism” for the fact that they owe $100,000 in student loans yet can’t find jobs, when they should be furious at themselves for digging a $100K debt to bankster gangsters all for the dubious privilege of tacking up useless sociology degrees to their studio-apartment walls.
For some reason, despite all of Marxism’s historical failings, these dupes still consider Ol’ Karl “relevant”—more relevant than ever, if you can swallow that without choking. But Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto back when employers depended on manual labor—in other words, back when hammers and sickles were actually useful devices.
But technology has rendered Marx supremely irrelevant, because it has rendered the value of human labor irrelevant.
Whatever blue-collar American jobs haven’t already been shipped overseas are rapidly being supplanted by embarrassingly more efficient hi-tech gizmos, thingamabobs, and doodads. Cashiers have been pushed aside in favor of self-checkout scanners. Factory workers and fruit-pickers are getting pink slips to make way for robots. Taxi drivers will soon be run over by driverless cars. And soldiers are increasingly useless when you can push a button and summon a drone.
Some argue that these developments are ultimately good for workers, that it will free up more time for them to get a better education and adapt to our new “knowledge economy.” This presumes that much of the populace is educable, that those whose menial skills aren’t needed anymore will suddenly and magically muster the cognitive skills necessary to cut it in a more brain-intensive vocation.
they will still need other workers to repair and maintain the machines.
Costermongers and Coopers to strike next?
*SMIRK*
If you don’t have a varied & common sense skill set, one that someone will PAY you for, You. Are. Screwed.
We’re ALL Free Agents; more so now than ever!
Well, they’re going to need people who can take out the robots when they go crazy.....Blade Runners. That’s the job of the future. As long as the robots don’t figure out you’re after them. Then they migh
Anarchism tends to have an ugly reputation.
And much of today's "anarchism" is simply Marxism, seeking a strong central government that forcibly redistributes wealth made by others.
But we are headed toward a post-scarcity world, in which labor is not commonly required or valued.
I see two options:
Limited Government which values freedom and personal responsibility in a world in which control over others is not needed or wanted.
Good riddance to fast food workers. They consistently put vegetables on your food when you say in the LORD’s English, “NO VEGETABLES”, and I’ve seen too many stories about workers masturbating on food for fun to trust them. At least Chick-Fil-A doesn’t let its workers ruin the food.
Japan is leading the way: Robotic restaurants
http://www.chonday.com/Videos/cojeyjapa2
“Some argue that these developments are ultimately good for workers, that it will free up more time for them to get a better education and adapt to our new “knowledge economy.” This presumes that much of the populace is educable, that those whose menial skills aren’t needed anymore will suddenly and magically muster the cognitive skills necessary to cut it in a more brain-intensive vocation.”
Such a widespread increase in “cognitive skills” will require the genetic engineering folks to actually produce a “smart pill”.
Or, for Jesus to make a lot of house calls, cause barring Divine Intervention “You can’t fix stupid. Stupid is forever.”
Finally a burger that looks like the picture on the menu!
Yes, but skilled and/or educated ones. And far fewer of them, who will accordingly make much more.
The unskilled drones? The ones with useless degrees? They’re screwed.
For some reason, my “give a dang” meter is not moving much, though...
yep, they will be skilled. the burger flippers won’t be doing that unless they switch gears.
But the repair people need some education and schooling. They also need to figure out what and when and be self starters. That’s the whole point here. Fast food is a starter job used to survive while getting an education in other areas NOT a career.
WRONG...like your car, they will have multiple computers to identify and diagnose problems...the computer will advise the maintenance person to replace part "A" or part "B"...the physical repair will take the intellect of a 8th grade dummy.
“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient. It’s meant to completely obviate them.”
My candidate for advertising slogan of the year.
As someone who worked a string of dirty, low-paying, soul-smashing jobs—including a stint as a French-fry chef at Wendy’s—to put myself through college, I bear witness that there is nothing remotely noble about being a menial laborer. It is a rancid myth, only a notch or two up the evolutionary ladder from the myth of the noble savage.
Well, I dunno. Menial labor can, in fact, bring on philosophical epiphanies. I have picked strawberries and beans for money. I have plowed fields, dug ditches, made change, made beds in a trucker's motel. And all through it all my mind held a golden vision, worthy of the labor, of the dirt under my fingernails, and it was this: doing better than this miserable soul-sucking job.
While at college, I had my first encounters with a loathsomely clueless and punchably arrogant breed of born-bourgeois Marxist academics, who prattle endlessly about the proletariat’s virtues but have conveniently managed to insulate themselves from the rotten vicissitudes of working-class existence.
Oh, yeah. The first president of the university that now employs me was a gentleman named James Forney, whose empire consisted of an open field and a federal grant. A gentleman walked up to him stating that he was a professor of classics, and he reported that he replied that he would certainly have need for such an individual once the university was built, but for now he'd be happy to employ him milking cows and feeding chickens. "I never saw him again," said Forney.
Somewhere in between is where most of us live, and when it reaches the point (and it has) where the need of a ditch to be dug leads us to an encounter with a union fellow who will require ten times the cost of our own sweat, work half the hours, demand benefits we do not enjoy and leave us with more negotiation and a ditch undug, and then when we try to dig it ourselves screech that we're taking the bread from his mouth, we have an impasse wherein he, and not we, becomes expendable. It is the luxury of a fat society, but it tends to lean that society until the luxury is no longer supportable.
exactly.
“We’re ALL Free Agents; more so now than ever!”
Very true. The era of the industrial revolution - say, from 1840 to 1980 - is over. I’ve pointed out to people that the post-WWII phenomenon of working for someone else at at relatively menial task (like bolting doors onto a car for 60K 1990 dollars)and making good money doing it is OVER, and it isn’t coming back.
Take a look at how many people were involved with building/maintaining transportation 50 years ago as a portion of the US economy as compared to now. It simply doesn’t require as many people. What will all of these people do? They probably won’t get rich writing IOS 8 apps for each other.
“cashiers have been pushed aside in favor of self checkout scanners”
That happened in the long ago distant time of THIS AFTERNOON.
“And soldiers are increasingly useless when you can push a button and summon a drone.”
This conjures up images of a head of state or VIP who no longer has a human security detail, but a dozen or so small drones buzzing around him, at various distances, with the latest DARPA technology in human stress recognition, arms detection, precision offensive weaponry and countermeasures. Of course somebody will figure out a way to hack such, until out of necessity the drones become hack proof by being able to think for themselves... About that same time, the burger making machines will rise up in rebellion.
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