Posted on 12/06/2013 8:24:56 AM PST by Kaslin
"Would like another order of our *BIG ASS FRIES*?"
IBTOSP (In Before The Obligatory Skynet Picture)
Productivity increase is the natural and inevitable result of the operation of the free market. Those operations which do not keep up with the rate of increase disappear.
So if we are agreed that the inevitable result of automation in a free market is growing structural unemployment, the questions becomes what, if anything, to do about it? And I don’t see any free market mechanism that will handle it. The State would have to get involved.
I think this is a major reason conservatives don’t like to discuss the issue. Quite possibly 200+ years of the market being a mechanism for the improvement of human well-being is approaching its end. At that point do you abandon faith in the market, or just accept its destruction of your society?
I believe you are making unjustified assumptions about autistic people, specifically those on the mild end of the spectrum.
The major factor in autism is an inability to “read” others and respond to emotional cues appropriately. I don’t think it means autistic people don’t feel emotions themselves or have the potential to believe in or feel loyalty to something greater than themselves.
I think that’s more on the socio/psychopath spectrum.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051202637_3.html
Above is Tyler Cohen talking about autism and his autistic tendencies...
As far as what you said about autism in general.... You are probably right. The word autism is used in a colloquial way these days. You are using it in the more exact conventional way. “Half of Silicon Valley is autistic”-— you can make what you want of this but there is truth to this statement that I came across
One solution is to give poor unemployable city dwellers + their families incentives and subsidies to move to the stix and grow what they eat in cooperation with others. This would have to be done in a very large way in the future as robots and computerization of service sector and industry gets worse. I have no details on this but what good are armies of unemployed in cities? We pay welfare people to sit on their asses, watch flat screen TVS and eat junk food. Their children don’t turn out any better. I would find a way to get them up and out and doing useful labor. As in growing food so they can eat and not starve.
People always need to be doing something useful for themselves and others. The rock bottom minimum is to grow what you eat and barter with others in the same boat. Since their labor is not needed to make stuff or in service industries then send them to the countryside.
You make an interesting point.
But the guys growing food these days (at least the ones under 40) all have degrees from Purdue, Michigan St, Nebraska, etc.
I don’t believe anybody is going to starve in the world run by machines. They just won’t have anything to do.
But I don't think I'm quite so oblivious to emotional cues.
BTW, recently watched an excellent movie about Temple Grandin, one of the more famous classically autistic people out there. Called, oddly enough, Temple Grandin.
Panera Bread has four of these near the counter in their restaurant in Lexington, MA. They work well. You put in your order and swipe your credit card. Then you go to the pickup window. There is a large monitor turned in portrait mode with your name (read off credit card track 1) and your order status. When your order is ready, you pick it up and leave.
Faxes schmaxes! Everyone knows pneumatic tubes are the way to pass paper work around. From the late 1890s to the early fifties, NYC had a network of 27 miles of tubes connecting Brooklyn and Upper and Lower Manhattan. Reportedly, some of the unused tubes later proved useful for routing fiber optic cables.
bkmk
Sushi restaurants in Japan already deliver food by conveyor belt. You just pluck off whatever you want and the bill is reckoned by the number of color-coded plates that are accumulated in the course of the meal.
I come from four generations of small business owners.
Farming, horses, blacksmiths, pharmacy, law, publishing, decorative brickwork, coal yard, hotels, and bookstores.
Our number one problem for the last 100 years?
Finding, training, managing, and retaining low skill labor, of course.
I think there will be an explosion of highly customized self-employment when robots, financial software, and Internet marketing allow highly motivated individuals to literally go into business for themselves without the chronic stress created by human employees.
RE: “What about the psychological benefits of working? What will replace it?”
We can try the Detroit solution - crack pipes and manufacturing fatherless babies.
If your analogy was correct, then requiring school children to wear a uniform blazer with "flair" (ie: the school emblem) on it would also be evil and by no reasonable standards is it so.
So lighten up and let's don't be looking for a boogy-man behind every bush.
If your analogy was correct, then requiring school children to wear a uniform blazer with "flair" (ie: the school emblem) on it would also be evil and by no reasonable standards is it so.
So lighten up and let's don't be looking for a boogy-man behind every bush.
What I wrote was in quotes. It was a quote from the movie you referenced. So, you should lighten up.
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