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Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
The kitchen assistant, known as 'Flippy', was designed by a startup called Miso Robotics which specializes in "technology that assists and empowers chefs to make food consistently and perfectly, at prices everyone can afford."
[...] Flippy uses feedback-loops that reinforce its good behavior so it gets better with each flip of the burger. Unlike an assembly line robot that needs to have everything positioned in an exact ordered pattern, Flippy's machine learning algorithms allow it to pick uncooked burgers from a stack or flip those already on the grill. Hardware like cameras helps Flippy see and navigate its surroundings while sensors inform the robot when a burger is ready or still raw. Meanwhile, an integrated system that sends orders from the counter back to the kitchen informs Flippy just how many raw burgers it should be prepping.
Source: http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/burger-robot-flipping-meat-0432432/
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:24PM (56 children)
Merely a natural consequence of discouraging employment.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday September 14 2017, @04:46PM (5 children)
Maybe it's a natural consequence of the poor quality of employees.
Back in the late 1970's when I was in high school, I swept the floor, collected and burned trash, cleaned restrooms, reloaded pop machine, etc at a factory that made dual chamber smoke detectors -- before these things became consumer items. I did a good job and took pride in my work.
In about 1980-ish in college, there were a couple of summers when I worked at one of those interstate novelty shop, restaurant, filling station highway robbery places. When I left, I had become friends, and a favorite of the owners and they expressed their disappointment at whoever would ultimately replace me.
I've written code for decades now, and still take pride in my work, as I did when I was the low man on the totem pole.
Since the early 1990's, it seems to me like minimum wage workers have no interest in the business they are employed by, or the job they do. They just want to get paid. Or maybe I've just had a poor sampling.
My point: I'm not a bit surprised McDonalds would want to replace the low paying, low quality jobs with robots. Whether it's good or bad, whether I like it or not; irrelevant, but it doesn't surprise me why they would look forward to automation.
Raise your hand if you've had customer service people who looked at you like something they would scrape off their shoe, and had no particular interest in serving you.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:09PM
I think the low quality of service is more tied to the shitty wages. Crappy jobs are OK when you're actually gaining something from it, but the minimum wage is so low that people rightfully feel offended at being paid shit. The US is/was the economic powerhouse, yet millions of citizens are stuck working shit jobs for shit pay.
It is not useful to compare to developing economies to try and tell people to suck it up. Inequality brings about unhappiness. People know they are getting shafted, and frequently that goes along with shitty scheduling and managers who aren't very pleasant to work with.
TL:DR systemic issue with society, possibly some amount of "too good for such work" after being sold the American Lie (Dream)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:27PM (1 child)
What happened between then and now that explains this difference? Are we going through a bad batch of people? It strikes me that poor quality employees is in part a significant consequence of society's efforts to keep people out of the work force. For example, I see some people who've manage to go through college without holding down a job. They're not going to be ready for the real world when they haven't had a job before.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Friday September 15 2017, @12:38AM
Pay peanuts, get monkeys.
(Score: 3, Informative) by deimtee on Thursday September 14 2017, @06:29PM (1 child)
As the AC above me said, shitty wages are part of it. Real income has gone backwards, and the increasing GINI coefficient makes it even worse for those on minimum wage.
But another really big part is the change in attitude of employers. I've been in employment long enough to have watched the change. Most managers no longer have a staff they encourage, they have a bunch of disposable cogs that they treat like shit. There is now, in most low level jobs, zero chance to climb the ladder. Doesn't matter how hard you work, take courses, anything you do. I don't know why but companies now seem to have a real aversion to promoting from within. No surprise that pride in your work has turned into an attitude of screw the boss and the company, they're doing everything they can to screw you.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by PocketSizeSUn on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:43PM
Yes this is a lot closer to what happened.
The social contract of mobility within the workplace has evaporated ... somewhere in the late 80s.
There was time when you started at the bottom, worked hard, got recognized rewarded and worked for the same company until you retired.
Now that kind of loyalty is not reciprocated and in fact management is generally hostile to all employees below the C-level. Everyone is replaceable.
If you become irreplaceable the company panics and hires dozens of cogs until you are replaceable and promptly removed.
Another strategy is to simply move the entire company somewhere cheaper, coaxing a few 'key' people to move ... hires dozens of cogs until key people are replaceable, rinse, repeat.
Given the broken contract finding people that do work hard and go the extra mile implies that such people do so for other less clear reasons. For myself it is pride in my work, regardless of my client / employers expectations. I suspect that is more a production of the time in which I grew up and I still want to believe that social contract exists (even though I have more than enough experiences showing me that it does not).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:19PM (31 children)
Actually, it's partial fulfillment of one of humanity's dreams. For over a century we've dreamt of getting machines to do the work for us. The more, the better.
Unfortunately, you and your regressive buddies are working hard to turn the dream into a nightmare.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @12:36AM (30 children)
I'm no more responsible for the dynamics of the current system than I am the existence of gravity. And I didn't promise you a pony. You'll have to find someone else to blame for inadequate dream fulfillment.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Friday September 15 2017, @12:50AM (29 children)
I and many others are well aware of the dynamics of the current system. That's why we see the need to change the system to one with better dynamics. After all, the economy is supposed to work for people, never the other way around. I didn't say you promised a pony, I'm just saying you need to get out of the way so the rest of us can get on with the wish fulfillment.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @05:15AM (28 children)
Googling around, I see the following demonstrations of your awareness:
My view is that the underlying economic problems in the US are of two sorts. First, increased stress from globalization, particularly, labor competition with areas vastly cheaper than the US. And second, very ineffective policies for dealing this stress that tends to make a host of problems worse.
Did you get that promise in writing? And if everyone is just getting stuff from the economy, then who's doing the work? I gather from your earlier utopian scribblings that you had this impression way back when that automation would save the day. But we see the fatal flaw. Working is more than just an unpleasant chore to hand off to automation as soon as possible. It's also a powerful manifestation of our ability to control or "express" in our environment to use the biology-side terminology. So when we stop working, we lose a great deal of control over our lives.
That depends on what you fuck up when you get on with the "wish fulfillment". A huge problem here is that it's wish fulfillment fantasies, not a plan with some sort of track record. For example, a recent item in the news was the plethora of failed attempts [reason.com] to implement US state-level single payer systems. The link describes several that made it to voters with predictable consequences. Sure, people want cheaper health care, but they don't want cheaper health care that more than doubles their state budget with respective tax increases (as was the case with proposals in California, Colorado, New York, and Vermont).
Wishes aren't free and I hope you at least bother to look at the price tag first.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday September 15 2017, @05:53AM (27 children)
It's called looking for a solution rather than sitting in a mound of runny shit with your thumbs up your butt. You should try it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @06:22AM (26 children)
We have an amazing civilization now because people worked hard for centuries to make it happen. Automation and capitalism, both slighted in this discussion by various posters, made that possible.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday September 15 2017, @12:51PM (25 children)
And as we automated, the work day was reduced, and child labor and slavery were eliminated entirely, ushering in a new era of prosperity. FDR headed off an American Communist revolution by making significant concessions to the working class. Concessions that are being steadily walked back such that people are again starting to give socialism and communism a good long look.
Living in caves, wearing animal pelts, and hunting one's own food with spears and clubs brought man a long way as well at one time, but for some reason nobody's up for that lifestyle today. As I think about it, one might easily get arrested for even trying. What really got us going was when we took a big step to the left and formed tribes and then nation states bound together with codes of law.
The very idea that our current economic system is once and for all the best possible is frankly silly. You'll never improve anything if you spend all your time insisting that even trying to make the economy serve people more evenly can only lead to disaster (and may be immoral as well).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @06:02PM (24 children)
Labor power did that, not FDR. FDR is more notable for making the Great Depression (and the Second World War) worse rather than successfully fighting off American Communism. A key property of automation then and now is that it created more demand for labor. Similarly, with the massive increase in labor available for global trade, labor power has declined a little in the developed world (though it's growing stronger everywhere else).
As to the "good long look" at socialism and communism, there are aspects of those that don't suck so badly, but I keep hearing about the stuff that does. A common component of such ideologies, especially when taken to the extreme, is a rejection of history. For example, a glance at history plus some reasoning skills would have told us that Venezuela was going to go down the drain after Chavez implemented a variety of socialist policies (such as fixing the price of a bunch of goods and nationalizing the oil fields). But people in the developed world were praising away in complete ignorance of how these policies worked in the past. While those voices are for the most part silent now with the dire situation in Venezuela, it's still painfully clear that there's a bunch of people out there who can't learn from real time failure much less the past.
The thing that gets me about this is why should we expect better? If this had been a national-scale disaster, such as Yellowstone blowing its top, we'd have more rational priorities. When a third of the US is evacuated and most of its agriculture is wiped out, it isn't the time to talk about $15 per hour minimum wage or 5 to 10 hour work weeks. We certainly would consider anyone dangerously insane who complains that it's unfair that they have to deal with several meters of ash fall when their parents didn't have to.
While it's not a disaster and in fact is a great thing, the globalization of the world has resulted in a modest decline of labor power in the developed world. I think it's fair to expect developed world voters to adapt rather than screw up their societies. I certainly don't care for fantasies that we should expect the economic conditions of the 1960s (which were great for the US) to continue unabated. No one promised you that the world would never change.
And the thing is here that there are huge opportunities. When you have billions of people elevated out of poverty, that creates a lot of value that even the developed world can benefit from, should they try. And once those people catch up with the developed world, the pressure on labor will drop a lot. This is all temporary though on a scale that is hard for humans to grasp.
It's worth remembering that in 1950, the developed world was a lot smaller than it is now (basically, the US with some minor countries like Canada and Australia). The world was starting to recover from the Second World War. Population was growing faster than national economies in most of the Third World (particularly China and India) which is a recipe for die-offs in the long term. Globalization (and associated factors like the Green Revolution [wikipedia.org] in agriculture and the fall of Communism) changed that from impending disaster to a far more stable situation today. Almost everyone is wealthier, safer, and more empowered than corresponding people were in 1950.
Since, we've had huge parts of the world elevated to developed world status. First, it was western Europe. Then parts of the Far East (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan). Now, it's China and India making the transition. Once those two make the transition, we'll have more than half the world's population in the developed world with it's great wealth and low fertility. We have a way out of our current overpopulation trap - if we don't screw it up.
It is also silly to suppose that just because something is flawed, that any change is better (particularly, changes based on a myopic nostalgia or rejection of the past).
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday September 15 2017, @07:02PM (23 children)
I find it interesting that you equate deliberate actions taken by humans with uncontrollable natural disasters. And there lies the difference. Yellowstone blowing it's top is a natural disaster, and it would tend to have consequences. It cannot be "held responsible" for it's actions nor punished for deliberately causing harm.
Unlike Yellowstone, economic activity is a creation of man and so can be expected to serve man.
I would consider this to be a fatal flaw in your argument.
It is also quite revealing. Indeed, in spite of the lot of it being entirely under the control of man, you sit around with your thumbs up your butt as if we are powerless in this matter and furthermore, would have the rest of us join you.
When the light goes out, you can either sit and lament that there are dark days ahead or you can get off your ass and change the bulb.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @10:14PM (22 children)
Who are you going to punish for overpopulation or global poverty? And that sentiment works against you as well. Raising taxes on the rich, a commonly advocated tactic harms the rich. What should the punishment be? Protectionism and other related economic barriers harms a variety of parties, both those targeted and those who receive those services. What should the punishment be?
Most of what we do economically harms someone, just due to the opportunity costs. Shopping at one store harms all the other stores that we didn't shop at. What should the punishment be?
Just because we are harmed by the actions of others doesn't mean that punishment is an appropriate response. Macroeconomics is all about large scale human behavior which often has no intent and often little direction either.
I'll note here two things. First, we don't have a lot of control here. One of the more notorious lessons of economics is the tendency of control systems to have various sorts of blowback and unintended consequences. And second, sitting around with thumbs up butts is a surprisingly effective economic strategy. Just look at this story.
Burger flipping robot devised, thousands of burger-flipping jobs imperiled, oh dear! But then when we look at the details, we find that there are already better robotics out there for flipping burgers (those jobs didn't go away, oddly enough); huge unanswered questions about maintaining the robot in a hostile environment (while the problem is licked for humans); and a limited machine that can't do much else other than flip burgers (And similar manipulations on a grill).
So as a replacement for existing human labor, it is a bust. However, it might eventually be useful as a helping hand to a human in an isolated environment such as a food cart or by itself in a food kiosk. That is, delivering more edible food in an environment where people are in a particular hurry and space is at a premium, such as a crowded public space (airport, train terminal, university plaza, etc).
In other words, it doesn't do much right now and could in the near future increase slightly the number of human jobs while providing better food in certain difficult to service areas with lots of potentially hungry people. In all, as usual for this sort of thing, it's a net benefit which leads to a laissez-faire strategy as the appropriate response.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 16 2017, @01:14AM (21 children)
First two rules of water rescue. Don't dive in to conditions you can't handle and under no circumstances let the victim drag you under with them.
Overpopulation is not a problem in the 1st world. Nor is global poverty. (yes, there's far too much local poverty, but by definition not global poverty). Don't you get tired hauling the goalpost around like that?
I suppose in some sense, all of us failing to give 100% of our wealth to Joe Blow "harms" or "punishes" Joe, but that doesn't mean giving him all our wealth is somehow the fair thing to do. All that is just you trying to introduce a sense of problem solving paralysis (that is, an excuse to sit with our thumbs up our butts, your answer to everything).
As for the burger flipper, you don't really expect the fields of robotics and automation to come to a screeching halt today, do you? Your advice for more thumb sitting suggests so. Of course, I note you couldn't wait to shout about that non-news item when you thought it might somehow support your usual do-nothingnon-answer.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2017, @04:05AM (20 children)
So there are situations that can't be controlled. Let's move on to the next.
Your problems aren't my problems either. If we're going to go subjective here, I'll note that I simply don't care about a bunch of your supposed concerns. Neither do a lot of other people. And let's not let spurious accusations dirty your roll here.
In the absence of any sort of reason, any decision is equally valid, including decision paralysis, laissez-faire, or giving it all to Joe Blow. And did you miss the implications of your "drowning victim" story? There are situations you can't control or your attempt to control backfires badly. Economics is chock full of those situations.
What I don't expect is for the fields of robotics and automation to somehow make human labor less valuable. But I can see futile attempts to save peoples' jobs from the machines can backfire badly by inhibiting our ability to learn how to make human labor more valuable with the machines we create.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 16 2017, @02:40PM (19 children)
Sure, but when you allow prudence to become cowardice, people die unnecessarily. The rest or part two to that advice was drag them ashore by the hair if necessary, the armpit hair if available. It allows you to control the rescue and saving their life is sufficient reason. Cowardice is really good at finding excuses for inaction.
There was nothing subjective in my statement. Not sure why you developed a need to go subjective out of the blue. If you don't care about the well being of the country ans society you live in, perhaps you should just get out of the way and go live on an island alone somewhere.
Decision paralysis [google.com] is a disease of the mind. If you embrace disease, it's no wonder you spout such nonsense. Meanwhile, I would consider the well-being of the society we live in to be sufficient reason. If you don't care for that, then again, I recommend you go isolate yourself somewhere and get out of the way. If you truly advocate total surrender of control, I suppose you should advocate for the dissolution of all federal state and local governments forthwith. Or, as I suggested, just leave.
As for the rest, I do not advocate that we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by saving people's menial jobs from automation. I advocate that we make adjustments so that the people displaced need not suffer for our progress. For example, by implementing the basic income. If, as you claim, human labor will go up so much in value, people will continue to be enticed into working anyway based on market value for work. If not, the changes in the employment market will push employers to become more flexible so the existing labor can be spread more evenly in the population. Change is already in play. Your decision paralysis and thumb sitting is already out the window unless we want to sit in our own squalor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 16 2017, @10:18PM (18 children)
Let's not do that then. I'll note that envy, greed, fear, etc seem to be common drivers of the attempts to save human labor. For example, the fear of human labor being replaced outright by machine labor is driving a variety of policies that incentivize replacing human labor with machines. Oops.
Yes, it was a quite objective opinion of your personal viewpoint where your observation that local poverty (local being a common indication of subjective viewpoint) is not global poverty was an implication that you are more concerned about local poverty than the other.
We can nip this in the bud by noting I choose inaction as the optimal choice of what's been presented so far not because I was wavering between two or more choices. Thus, my laissez-faire approach is not decision paralysis. The outcomes are the same, the causes are not.
I don't believe that is a good idea since obsessing about suffering in the present creates greater suffering in the future.
I have mixed feelings about basic income. I think it can be implemented in a way that unites us towards a common, better society, but I also don't see basic income advocates addressing this at all. Just paying people money creates a conflict of interest between them and the future of the society because those recipients can always vote for more money. This is never talked about by supporters. We never have a discussion about how to fix the glaring flaw of the approach.
There are a number of dangerous outcomes that can happen, such as runaway inflation, a zillion people deciding not to work (and becoming quite incompetent and useless in the process - most people aren't going to become DIY prodigies or other useful laymen), and people taking from the wealthier because they can.
There are also a number of positive aspects such as a safety cushion for everyone. I believe there is research indicating that even small amounts of cash flow at critical times can greatly improve a number of near bankruptcy situations which would be helpful for a good portion of society.
I would like to see basic income advocates address the big problems with the concept.
While that was about basic income, this is a common theme with other social programs. Little thought is given to the negative consequences of the programs. Some of these programs are so bad that they are worse than if they never existed (public pension funds being a classic example of this as well as of several of the concerns I spoke about earlier).
I don't believe that we are better served by undermining our future to assuage vague fears of the future. At some point, you have to take risks, you have to allow current suffering, etc. You have to do things that people don't like now in order to have a future that they can be proud of.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 16 2017, @11:10PM (17 children)
Unless you advocate abolishing democracy, there is always the chance that people will try voting themselves more money (and a pony too). That they haven't so far suggests that it's a false problem.
If we've managed not to have runaway inflation by giving banks carte blanche to print money, it seems likely we can manage a basic income. We could also eliminate most of those other programs and their problems in favor of a much simpler system.
But talk about vague fears of the future, you just trotted out a fair handful of those yourself in an effort to talk yourself and others into not taking needed action. Agreed, let's not let prudence become cowardice.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @03:25AM (16 children)
Name the democratic country, I'll point out the ponies that they've already voted for. For example, in the US, Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare are classic examples. Few people seemed to care that future generations would have to deal with the liabilities generated by these programs. Public health care systems and public pension funds are typical landmines in every developed world country.
What needed action? The only countries that are having problems with automation today are the countries that discourage employment. Maybe we should look at the causes rather than the convenient blame targets?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:03AM (15 children)
And yet, we're still here. SS itself is working fine, the only problem there is that the program was forced to loan out all the money it needed in reserve to fund useless wars and tax cuts for the rich. As for medicare and medicaid, would you prefer that the people needing it die in the streets or become an unfunded mandate for hospitals? Perhaps you could at least do the humane thing and shoot them in the head rather than making them suffer before they die of completely treatable disease? Perhaps you'd like to do that in front of their grandkids so they learn what happens when you're not a highly productive worker unit? Or perhaps you misspoke when you called that a pony?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:24AM (9 children)
SS never had money in reserve. It was always transferred via the virtual bond mechanism to the general fund and spent immediately. And we can see from the "useless wars and tax cuts to the rich" that you don't believe that a good portion of the resulting spending was an investment either.
Would you? Medicare and Medicaid are not sustainable in the long term because their costs grow much faster than the economy does and are projected [washingtonpost.com] to continue to do so as far as the eye can see.
Over the same period, GDP is expected [cbo.gov] to grow a little over 2% per year. Dying in the streets and whatnot will be one of the consequences IMHO of these programs if we do give up on the programs later rather than sooner.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @04:20PM (8 children)
I thought you said there are no problems and that sitting with our thumbs up our asses is a virtue? Now you tell me we're heading for people dying in the streets if we don't take action? Gee, which one is it?
You seem confused. Or like you've argued yourself into a corner and would sincerely like for me to ignore the man behind the curtain.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @10:58PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:49PM (6 children)
But it's there now. Inaction didn't give us control over fire either.
I'm not convinced those are a problem. You claim there are no problems, but in the next breath complain that those are problems. You seem confused again. Also besieged by decision paralysis.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @04:34AM (5 children)
You still playing games here. Social Security is not a one time interference with society, but an eighty year old interference with society. Laissez faire strategy would remove Social Security.
So what? The problems are there whether or not you are convinced. US budgets and demographics is not weather prediction.
I think there's a simpler explanation. You ran out of ammunition. Now we're to the perfunctory, ad hominem, pop psychology stage of the argument. So sounds like time for a review of this sprawling thread.
We first start with your nostalgic post about the vapid promises [soylentnews.org] of youth and those mean regressions with their horrible mental failwaves who are toiling hard to hold you back. This would be excellent troll material BTW should you ever go that route.
I guess from that starting point, it's really hard to have a serious discussion here. My message to take home is that economics is not wish fulfillment. It's not magically generating ponies for everyone. It's not preserving 1964 for all time. It's not vapid promises that you'll never have to exert yourself in the future. When we do try to use economics to create these fantasies we quickly find there are consequences. Even the rather minimal, ongoing interventions of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid has resulted in massive liabilities that the US will either pay or more likely, renege on, without a benefit of corresponding stature.
For me, history is a guide to what will happen with these calls to "do something" about automation, globalism, etc. They will eventually fail in a way that threatens society just as these past programs have done for US society. I certainly don't trust you or anyone who favors your viewpoint to manage a successful basic income scheme, for example. It'll just be another screw up in a long lineage of screw ups. At the very least, some consideration of how to prevent failure should be baked into the system from the start.
For example, there's going to be more voters who would directly benefit from raising a basic income arbitrarily than not. That in turn would lead to a lot of harmful economic destruction which is completely ignored by proponents of basic income. I don't want a system that pays people to destroy society by voting themselves more money without limit.
So to conclude, I don't want to hear about how people with different opinions are holding you back or how the economy should be about supporting your magic assumptions. I want to hear how you're going to deal with the inevitable problems that come from taking stuff from some people and giving it to others in order that we're supporting society (particularly its future!) rather than creates a destructive positive feedback loop of economic cannibalism. It's a reasonable thing to ask!
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @04:52AM (4 children)
I did not go ad hominem. I pointed out an inconsistency IN YOUR ARGUMENT. That is completely fair and in bounds for debate. You made two diametrically opposed claims. You, however did go ad-hominem rather than attempt to defend either position. Very telling.
You like sitting in shit with your thumbs up[ your butt, so kindly go off into a corner and do just that with the other degenerates.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @05:38AM (3 children)
And saying something doesn't make it so. I corrected your misimpression by pointing out that my view was not inconsistent. Laissez faire doesn't not presuppose that active interference continues. Thus, it's not out of the ordinary for a laissez faire strategy to involve removal of active interference.
The ad hominem is in "You seem confused again. Also besieged by decision paralysis." Consider in particular the latter accusation. What are the choices that I'm alleged to be paralyzed about? You have yet to come up with it.
Strong indication you aren't ready to think about these things. Perhaps later?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @07:15AM (2 children)
You claimed at one point that things are fine as they are (not as they would be if we undid things) and then claimed we have a problem that requires an action. That certainly seems confused, and such wishing and washing is common to decision paralysis. Your walk-back above really doesn't explain that at all.
If you're going to start using alternative definitions of words, there's no point in talking at all.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @11:33AM (1 child)
Context. I was speaking of different things - for example global labor markets versus unintended consequences of some US feelgood initiatives of the past 80 years.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday September 18 2017, @03:14PM
Nope, my memory is better than that.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @12:25PM (4 children)
Let us also note that Social Security is expected [cbo.gov] under current law to exhaust its imaginary trust funds by 2030. By then, it'll be spending about 30% more than it takes in revenue. That's less than 15 years.
Nor is this something out of the blue. People have been warning about the coming default of SS for decades. For example, we have this bit from the 1936 Republican Party platform:
Wow, a bunch of political hacks from 1936 were able to figure out one of Social Security's little flaws. If only someone had been paying attention over the past 80 years to fix that. Let's add to your list of economic illiteracies, the inability to think 15 years ahead.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @07:27PM (3 children)
Now isn't the first time we've had a republican dominated congress with a republican president, yet somehow the issue never got addressed?
We could easily solve it inflation free by ordering banks to up their reserve to 20% and as they "unprint" money, the treasury re-prints it and pays it to retirees.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:00PM (2 children)
That would only work once, if it works at all. Then you'd be back there again in a decade or two. Cutting benefits is the only long term solution.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday September 17 2017, @11:46PM (1 child)
Nope, after that, we'll be past the population bubble that was the boomers and we'll have foreigners paying in but not elligable to take out later. Or, we could scrap SS entirely once the basic income is in place.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday September 18 2017, @03:44AM
Get them to pay for Trump's Wall while you're at it.
Let us keep in mind the key reason I brought up SS in the first place. That it exhibits a bunch of problems that a basic income scheme would have to surmount in order to be viable in the long run.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Thursday September 14 2017, @09:29PM (17 children)
This has nothing to do with discouraging employment, and everything to do with factors inherent to capitalism.
Basically, people are expensive for as long as you employ them. Machines are expensive once, and then fairly cheap to keep going. So if you are a smart capitalist corporation, you invest mostly in machines. This is the mechanism of economies of scale which lowers your marginal cost of production and by extension your minimum acceptable price of whatever you're producing. This is generally a good thing: It increases overall productivity, leads to the development of new technology, and makes goods or services more available to consumers.
As you invest more and more in machines, people become less and less important to your production line and by extension your profits. Which would be fine, except that if everybody does it, unemployment goes up, and people without income can't afford your products no matter how cheap you've made them. And those people who can't afford basic stuff don't just disappear from existence, they become desperate beggars and criminals who will cause all sorts of trouble for everyone else. And there are only a couple of approaches that can handle this problem:
- Kill them. This has three major drawbacks: (A) it's morally repugnant, (B) they're likely to resist with everything they've got, and (C) you don't have anybody on hand to do the work when a new product line develops that does need a bunch of people to produce.
- Give them some kind of welfare payment. The major drawback of this is that the people who aren't working find collecting the welfare payment easier than working, so when those jobs do open up they aren't likely to take them unless they offer a substantially better life than the welfare payment.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday September 14 2017, @11:52PM (15 children)
Or choice three, employ those people doing something productive. Automation isn't what's killing jobs these days. It's pushing costs of an inefficient society onto employers.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @12:01AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @12:04AM (7 children)
Doing what? People know when they're doing something that's completely pointless. They may keep quiet because they need money for frivolous things like food and shelter, but they know.
Most of the jobs that really need doing are so automated or efficient that we're going to have to start cutting back on hours so people can have jobs. Pushing paper and other busy work aren't good enough when we could just pay people enough that they don't have to work the standard 40 hours every week.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @12:31AM (6 children)
What they'll be doing now and in the future for jobs. The US is near [bls.gov] an all time high in employment (62.5% labor participation versus 67.5% all time high), for example and most of those people work in the private sector which is notorious for not employing useless people. The question has already been answered.
You were just complaining that people are getting paid to do busy work. So what's your solution? Pay people to do busy work.
I'm not interested in wasting peoples' time with this. This is just a recipe for creating a country of incompetent people, which I'll note that several [soylentnews.org] people [soylentnews.org] have [soylentnews.org] complained [soylentnews.org] about this incompetence (in its many flavors) in this discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @03:29AM (5 children)
Oh please, Khallow, have you ever had an actual job? I don't think I've ever worked anywhere that didn't employ useless people. The larger the company, the more there are. Managers are loathe to get rid of them as the number of people under them is a huge part of the influence they have in an organization. It also makes it harder for them to argue for additional budget money.
My solution is to stop paying people for busy work completely. If the amount of work needed is only 10 hours per person, we just pay them to do the 5 hours worth of work, but we pay as if they were working the entire 40 hours. It's not like, we don't have the money to do it. And it would probably be a net gain as there'd be actual incentive to figure out how to get all the work done as efficiently as possible. Most workers aren't able to do much more than a couple hours of focused work a day anyways, might as well not force them to be physically present and mentally checked out in order to make a living anyways.
The downside to that is that it would be harder for the parasites in the system to steal other people's production, but it would make everybody else a lot happier.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @05:45AM (4 children)
They're also subject to a variety of cost restraints which would create incentives counter to the above. There's no point to considering one incentive in a vacuum. Why doesn't one of those middle managers just employ the entire world down to the level of bacteria? That would make their department pretty big.
You can't magically separate the inefficient part of the work from the efficient part. And what business is going to pay their employees for 5 (or was it 10?) hours of the most productive work when 40 hours of work, including those most productive hours, costs the same amount? Even if the other 35 hours of work aren't very productive, that's still marginal profit. It's pointless to even propose this. And I see we've gone from jobs being "useless" to being useful, but a fraction of the time being more useful than the rest.
Then go do it yourself with your money. I don't want my money involved. I bet you'll have to dig hard behind that sofa to find the funding to support your scheme.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2017, @07:51AM (1 child)
First off, cost restraints have very little to do with hiring practices. Businesses fluctuated in size and when there's a cut back in the amount of work being done, that doesn't mean that there's necessarily a cut back in the number of employees. It also doesn't guarantee that when there are cutbacks that those cutbacks come from deadwood. Cut backs tend to come in response to budget and there isn't necessarily the correct number of jobs cut. A large business can carry a surprising number of employees that are technically doing something, but not necessarily something that's useful.
Secondly, of course you can do that. It just requires that you actually provide some incentives to people to go looking. Under the current system where we pay employees by the hour, of course they're not going to be looking for ways of saving time. Saving time either renders themselves redundant or it results in being asked to do more work. But, if we let employees actually go home early if they've finished the work for the day, you'd be shocked at how much less time was spent at the office. And the results would probably be as good as what we're getting. In some cases, the amount of hours the employees work is counterproductive, as in they get less work done than if they had gone home hours earlier.
Thirdly, that's an ad hominem. Collectively, we have more than enough money to make that happen. But, it would require actually taking away the incentives to rack up obscene levels of wealth. Considering that the richest 10% of Americans holds more wealth than the bottom 75% of the households, we could drastically reduce the numbers of hours worked without having any particular issues.
And lastly, that's just right now, there is a massive jobs shortage coming as more and more robotics are brought online. If we insist on this asinine pay by the hour system, we're going to have to invent pointless bullshit jobs in order to justify having people sitting at their desks all week. Or, we could just change the system so that people make a fulltime wage for halftime or less work as things go forward.
If you can't see the train coming, then you're probably the dumbest person on the planet. Paying people to do busy work only works out when there's a small portion of the work. You can't expect people to spend 20 or more hours a week on pointless bullshit without there being consequences. Better to just pay for the remaining time and let them have time off and possibly hobbies.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @07:03PM
I see how we've gone from claiming that every business has useless people to "it doesn't guarantee". I never made the argument that businesses are perfectly efficient at allocating work.
I don't buy this feelgood. Let us keep in mind that businesses already have huge incentives to employ their employees as efficiently as possible. If they're not doing it now, they're not going to do it under your scenario.
Those incentives to rack up obscene levels of wealth also are incentives to rack up obscene numbers of good jobs.
Smart and dumb looks the same to the ignorant. We'll see what actually happens, right?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @02:57PM (1 child)
It depends a lot of the state of the business.
- On the one hand, Joe's Auto Repair is likely surviving on relatively low margins, and Joe has to make sure that he's running an efficient operation and providing good service if he's going to make it.
- On the other hand, Apple doesn't have the same situation at all: They're making money hand-over-fist in a way that isn't really limited by their efficiency. They could be paying 2,000 completely useless employees, costing them an extra $500 million (estimating $250K per employee), and put up with it because that's really not all that big a dent in their bottom line.
Once a business is stable enough that it's closer to Apple's situation than Joe's Auto Repair's situation, the managers and especially middle managers no longer need to be all that concerned about what's good for the business. At that point, the goal becomes climbing the corporate ladder, and that has much more to do with making yourself look important and valuable to your superiors than it does with being efficient or providing quality products and services to the customers. And one way of doing that is to take on essentially useless employees whose real job (regardless of job title) is to back whatever plan you have and talk up your accomplishments in meetings, email discussions, etc.
One of the big mistakes a lot of libertarians make is thinking that Apple is playing remotely the same game as Joe's Auto Repair.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @07:07PM
Then they aren't essentially useless.
I think of this as more of a straw man. I'm pretty sure most libertarians get that there's a difference. It's not necessarily a relevant difference though.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @03:32AM (5 children)
Like what? And who pays for it?
There's substantial unemployment in the world. There has been most of the time between the end of feudalism and today. You have to figure out some sort of way of managing the unemployed. Some things that have been tried in the past:
- Force them to join the army.
- Have workhouses where they perform useless work in exchange for room and board.
- Hire them to do public works projects, at which point they aren't unemployed.
- Send them to a faraway colony and basically saying "Here you are, good luck surviving!"
- Private charity.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @05:53AM (4 children)
There's several billion jobs linked up to the global economy right now. And we pay for those jobs with the products and services we buy.
Or employ them doing something productive. I don't quite think my message is getting through. The global economy has already solved the problem. We just need to get out of the way.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @03:03PM (3 children)
The reason the message isn't getting through is that you're dodging the question: What if there's nothing productive for them to be doing?
And since you brought the "global economy" into it, I should point out that the unemployment problem is far worse elsewhere in the world, and people die and otherwise suffer every day because they or their family members (including kids above the age of 10 or so) can't find work. I mean, what kind of situation do you think somebody is in if they are opting to slave away in an unsafe sweatshop for 16 hours a day with no bathroom breaks or days off for pay that barely keeps them in their illegal shack by the dump on the edge of town?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @07:17PM (2 children)
We have plenty of people economically marginalized for other reasons than automation. They found productive things to do. In the worst case, just find a bunch of people in the same situation and set up your own economy.
Why would they do that? Employment contracts are entered into willingly. There has to be advantage to the person choosing this job else they wouldn't do it. And maybe we shouldn't screw up our economy to the point where people get that desperate? Ever consider that?
I don't think there's a point to considering such alternatives when they aren't happening today or even trending in that direction. The developing world doesn't have this problem. Maybe you should consider what's actually going on rather than some high tech hypothetical?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday September 15 2017, @07:46PM (1 child)
Except when they didn't. As best as I can tell, you're simply pretending that unemployed people don't exist.
Except when they lack starting capital or customers to get things started.
The point I was making is that the reason people do that kind of job is that the alternative is starving to death. Now, how "willing" are you when your options are "do this job" or "starve to death"? Just because there's no gun pointed at your head doesn't mean you weren't coerced.
What exactly do you think the unemployment rates are in the "developing" parts of the world? I'm guessing they bear absolutely zero relation to estimates by the CIA [cia.gov], World Bank [worldbank.org], or IMF [imf.org].
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @09:46PM
Given that we're pretty close to the all-time high for employment participation, which I've already noted before in this thread, indicates that unemployment is irrelevant. People are finding work.
Thus, the reason for finding a bunch of people in the same situation. Pool resources for the starting capital and they are the customers as well.
Yes, I get that your fantasy was about that. Well, if it is better than starving to death, then it is better.
Looks pretty good from the links you gave. Under 6% globally. China was 4% and India was 5%.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @12:45AM
Not everyone does it. We have many new employers as well. Look for ways to increase new employment rather than ways to encourage old employers to get rid of more people. This demand-driven perspective is pointless because it doesn't provide a way for workers to be worth more. But it ignores that employers are also part of the system. Their economic demands need to be met as well. Interfering with the employment transaction in favor of one side is a recipe for getting less and lower quality employment overall.