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To: DannyTN
all that paper processing, that goes on in government should be put on the internet at light speed

A lot of it has been. It's rare that one has to go down to the gov't office to get a form or a plat or to research a piece of real estate. The number of employees has been reduced in that area. But that isn't robotics, it's just digitizing paper records. Office procedures have also been streamlined considerably since the info the bureaucrats need every day is right on their desk in fairly good format for search and compiling. Half the researchers now do ten times the work. It's still not robotics, just GIS and database and spreadsheet organization. Without the digital revolution this gov't would cost 10 times as much and still wouldn't be at all productive, speaking of productivity in the modern way when nobody actually produces anything anymore.

74 posted on 02/04/2004 2:43:53 PM PST by RightWhale (Repeal the law of the excluded middle)
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To: RightWhale
Agreed, those are forms of automation not robotics. And while many areas of government have been automated, I think there are many that have not been. But there are many areas of automation that don't require robotics. And the market seems to be doing a good job of pursuing these. I think robotics could use a push.

I still think the key to the robotic age, is making the robotics standard enough that everyone can afford one and everyone who wants to can program them.

And then if robotics can be made intelligent enough to do low level worker jobs, from farm economies to cleaning personnel (there is an automated janitor that has been developed), then what do we do? Do we all become entertainers in the dream society?

If the free market can not put the labor to work fast enough, I hate to say it, but government may need to identify and fund key areas of research in order to keep the workforce busy. That means higher taxes and a higher percent of income going to the government, but if we are all getting rich of a completely automated economy, is that so bad?

Normally I'd abhor government interference, and wealth redistribution, but if the labor dislocations become bad enough, I think government should step in. But they should do so in a way that government can disengage as the free market discovers additional opportunities to employ labor. Disengagement has never been government's strong suit, but I don't see any alternative.

77 posted on 02/04/2004 3:02:28 PM PST by DannyTN
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