Will there be Affirmative Action Quotas of Human Employees, vs Robots 'Having It All'?

Aug. 21, 2014 | lee martell

[cynwoody]

The more automation the better!

Automation is how humans prove they are smart.

Machines should work. Humans should think.

Over time, the boundary between working and thinking will shift in the direction of thinking. Thinkers will accelerate the shift.

[ken5050]

Have you ever read R.U.R..the 1920 sci-fi play by Karel Capek?

[Migraine]

Will there be affirmative action in Heaven?

[lee martell]

Interesting. Even back then, there was trepidation about the March of The Robots. RuR, shows clone like robots created from organic matter.”They seem happy to work for humans at first, but that changes, and a hostile robot rebellion leads to the extinction of the human race”.

[cynwoody]

Heaven will sort itself out. First, we have to solve earth’s problems.

[lee martell]

There might be ‘Pet Sinners” kept in glowing glass cages, Made to act out their sins, for the entertainment of the morally pure, force fed meals, like a fine fatted goose, then placed on a hamster wheel to burn off the fat. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

[Hillarys Gate Cult]

Just a hair split but a local Mcds near me closed due to the Obama minimum wage hikes on gov’t contractors. Was on military leased property with civilian access and had good service and quality as far as a McDs can go. They warned the employees that if Obama signed the bill that they couldn’t afford to pay $10.10 an hour. He signed it so they closed.

The employees were able to get jobs at other area stores but all are now several miles away. Most of their people were military dependents and able to walk of bike to work before it closed.

[MaggiesPitchfork]

Then you will have a room full of people who only live in their heads and not have the experience of “doing”. “Doers” understand how things work in the real world. What happens when the machine breaks down? Computers or machines go down and everything comes to a stop.

[DaveA37]

I can just imagine the chaos when the machines asks, “Do you want pickles, mustard or katsup with that” after you have already hit the order button and changed your mind.

At least the machine may be able to speak English. (Oh, I imagine any language could be programmed for you to select so the machine could speak to you.)

Fun times a coming.

[rbg81]

hen you will have a room full of people who only live in their heads and not have the experience of “doing”. “Doers” understand how things work in the real world.

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Concur. The best thinkers are the ones who are also doers. The ones that don’t have that grounding are downright dangerous. My strong hunch is that Mohammad and Marx were not doers.

[Pearls Before Swine]

It will be (Affirmative Action)**squared. A certain number of humans, and within that subcategory, racial sub-quotas. /S

[backwoods-engineer]

Maggie, Of course machines break down. People have to fix them. But you need fewer people, and since these people have to be skilled, in general they are more responsible than the people they replaced. How do I know these things? My company has a highly-automated plastics production line, and because of this is the last company of its kind that manufactures our type of goods in the US. So, maybe people would rather all our manufacturing go to China?

Companies do not exist to give people jobs. They exist to make a profit, and jobs are a side effect.

[ctdonath2]

Sheetz is a deli/sub/convenience chain that uses touch screens for ordering. Very nice to just pick stuff off a menu when all you want to do is pick stuff off a menu (like, say, every fast-food place).

[9YearLurker]

The simple answer is to deport the current illegals and only allowed killed immigrants to join us in the future.

We have more than enough low-skill and low-ability folk already.

[tbw2]

Here’s another view on the jobs that robots either cannot take or won’t be allowed to take.

The Great Shift Toward Automation and the Future of Employment
http://tamarawilhite.hubpages.com/hub/The-Great-Shift-and-the-Future-of-Employment

[tbw2]

There are over a billion people without regular electricity, two billion without sewer.
There is serious demand for infrastructure for them, whether pee powered fuel cells, solar, biomass or natural gas power is TBD. Clean water sources and waste disposal is another matter.
To say we need to create more unemployed people and use electricity to run the robots while you don’t get power is a recipe for disaster. Same is true to say the wafer fab gets clean water but the barrio doesn’t.

[tbw2]

If unemployment is high enough, we could see a rise of servants again. It becomes a type of charitable act to provide paid employment as well as a status symbol.

[Pearls Before Swine]

True, but unless you don’t declare the employees and with-hold, they’d be employed, in the US gov’ts statistical sense of the word.

[lee martell]

Good article. The author made similar points but developed them fully. She has good insight.