Posted on 08/18/2015 5:41:12 AM PDT by Salgak
So question du jour (and I'm asking it in several places today: it was set off by the attached link and its' discussion here on FR. . )
Replacing low-skilled workers with automation, and now robots, has been an accellerating trend for over a century now, and really looks like we're soon going to hit the point where the curve goes hyperbolic. (especially with the push for $15/hour for minimum wage. . .)
Given that, as more and more skilled jobs are automated out of existence. . . .what do we do about the now-unemployed, and likely permanently unemployable?
So what do we do with these people ? Science fiction has shown some possible ways: Frederick Pohl's "The Midas Plague, the "welfare islands" of Jerry Pournelle's Co-dominium universe, the "terrafoam" of Marshall Brain's "Manna". And, of course, there's ALWAYS Soylent Green. . .
What do you see as the likely future ? Because we're already starting to see the bow wave of this problem. . .
We sit home, watch tv, eat bon-bons, ask people to take care of us....pretty much of what is going on today....
They go on the Welfare
That is, until their value to the 4th Reich evaporates...
Automation has been replacing workers, not Nafta. US manufacturing output is higher than it has ever been, it just takes a lot fewer workers to do it...
Automation has been replacing workers, not Nafta. US manufacturing output is higher than it has ever been, it just takes a lot fewer workers to do it...
And what happens when we no longer have the money for that ?
Which is why I mentioned Welfare Islands and Terrafoam: you move the Permanently Unemployed out of sight, and give them subsistence, bread, and circuses.
Do you get sterilized if you want Welfare for over a year ?
Is the Military your only way out ?
Easy. Export them to Mexico.
Personally, I welcome our robot overlords.
They get everything free, paid for by the only people still working: Indians and non-Americans in H1b visas.
What follows? WWIII.
As with anything, the cost of robotics will eventually fall. Wouldn’t surprise me to eventually see robots making robots.
Consequently, the labor component of the cost to produce many goods will also fall - and eventually (if not tinkered with) the price of those goods to the consumer will fall too.
If it weren’t for the value of the dollar continuing to fall due to government manipulation, we might see an overall deflation of prices after the “robot revolution”. Or the amount of deflation might be enough to match the inflation due to the fed.
It’s possible that the cost of living could drop enough that some people wouldn’t have to work as much, so more people could then work those remaining jobs that require humans. Or maybe not.
It’s a near certainty that, eventually, robotics will change the economy in foreseeable and unforeseeable ways, much as the computer and Internet revolutions have.
Still a bit too early to welcome our robot overlords though...
Soylent green?
They will have negative economic value. And what happens then? They will disappear, as will many other people. The remaining people will be genetically engineered superior beings.
Low skilled workers have largely already been replaced by low wage workers in third world countries.
Agenda 21 is aimed at massive depopulation. One way or another. If the riffraff serve no purpse, who needs ‘em?
Difficult as it is we need to have some faith in the human spirit.
There was much dislocation when humanity shifted from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Many clothing workers were left redundant when automation caught on. Farriers were left behind with the advent of the automobile. I do not think anyone could say that the life circumstances of the average person have not been improved in terms of opportunity, and access to goods and services.
It may be a blessing in disguise. With machines able to do more complex tasks the real thing that humans will have to sell is their brain power. If economic realities reinforce the need to improve concentration and develop logical thinking to suceed we could see a revitalization of our culture. Perhaps not in the present generation but in coming ones.
then I guess we have to become ‘preppers’ would be my next answer....but that worries me because I could survive being brought up in an era that had to work to get money, to buy things, if you didn’t have money you went without...
Can you see the kids of today, using a stream to bathe in, or boil water over an open fire to make it drinkable, or shot a squirrel or hook and gut a fish to eat?
I don’t think so....
The people replaced by robots will go to work for the “government” in make-work jobs. As many already do now.
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