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posted by mrpg on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the robot-scare-fad dept.

Weep for the future?

Today's 6th graders will hit their prime working years in 2030.

By that time, the "robot apocalypse" could be fully upon us. Automation and artificial intelligence could have eliminated half the jobs in the United States economy.

Or, plenty of jobs could still exist, but today's students could be locked in a fierce competition for a few richly rewarded positions requiring advanced technical and interpersonal skills. Robots and algorithms would take care of what used to be solid working- and middle-class jobs. And the kids who didn't get that cutting-edge computer science course or life-changing middle school project? They'd be relegated to a series of dead-end positions, serving the elites who did.

Alternatively, maybe Bill Gates and Elon Musk and the other big names ringing the alarm are wrong. A decade from now, perhaps companies will still complain they can't find employees who can read an instruction manual and pass a drug test. Maybe workers will still be able to hold on to the American Dream, so long as they can adjust to incremental technological shifts in the workplace.

Which vision will prove correct?

30 years into the Information Revolution and schools are only just now realizing they should teach kids how to code...


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @02:41AM (13 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 15 2017, @02:41AM (#610055) Journal

    Now it comes out - Aristarchus is a feudalist. He doesn't want to keep the darkies on the plantation - he wants to keep EVERYONE on the plantation.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:13AM (2 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 15 2017, @03:13AM (#610072) Journal

    Pretty sure that was tongue-in-cheek, Runaway. You should try it sometime; it would be less painful, I imagine, than your constant head-up-ass posture. And here I thought the Klein Bottle was an impossible shape...

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @07:11AM (1 child)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 15 2017, @07:11AM (#610171) Journal

      WHy think, when you can know? http://www.kleinbottle.com/ [kleinbottle.com] Order your own klein bottle today, to remind you to always check your sources.

      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @09:42PM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Friday December 15 2017, @09:42PM (#610487) Journal

        Right, but...how do you breathe like that, is what I mean. You DO seem to love the smell of your own farts, but that's not exactly breatheable atmosphere. Certainly not at your level of toxicity.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @06:00AM (9 children)

    by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @06:00AM (#610135) Journal

    Do try not to comment when you do not understand what is being discussed, OK, Runaway? Oh, wait, yeah, that would silence you; alright, carry on. But you see, a plantation is capitalist agriculture, with capitalist ownership of the means of production, and slaves or wage-slaves doing the actual work, but with a profit motive in mind. Feudalists want to keep everyone on the land, land they held by right of tenure. Strange that only exists in Academia today. Lords did not own land, neither did peasants since they could not sell it. Nice thing about Feudalism, no damn Real Estate agents, with or without their Gold Blazers and other marketing crap.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @07:13AM (2 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 15 2017, @07:13AM (#610172) Journal

      And, what difference does it make to the guy chopping sugar cane, whether the asshole in the plantation house calls himself a duke, or a landowner, a lord, or a master? You with your airs are in no position to comment on the serfs, or the slaves.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:36AM (1 child)

        by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @07:36AM (#610175) Journal

        I am groping you, right now, Runaway1956, exactly the way Hilary did, in 1982. You feel the tactile lubrication, the governorship of Arkansas, the difference between the explicit extraction of a tithe, and the subfurtuge of a profit makes no difference to you? I am telling you, you idiot, that as a resident of a "right to be fired for no reason state" that you could be fired for no reason. Peasants had tenure. They held the land. Not own, since they could not alienate. But hold. In other words, they could not be fired. They had rights. Workers have no rights. We should shoot them all, when they strike, or when they demand health care, or when they want to elect the wrong person. Kill them, I say. Slaves, Wage slaves, worse off than peasants, even than Polish peasants.

        • (Score: 4, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @10:15AM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday December 15 2017, @10:15AM (#610222) Journal

          Serfs couldn't be sold? At all? Really?

          http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/medieval-serfs.htm [medieval-life-and-times.info]

          Definition of Medieval Serfs
          Medieval Serfs were peasants who worked his lord's land and paid him certain dues in return for the use of land, the possession (not the ownership) of which was heritable. The dues were usually in the form of labor on the lord's land. Medieval Serfs were expected to work for approximately 3 days each week on the lord's land. A serf was one bound to work on a certain estate, and thus attached to the soil, and sold with it into the service of whoever purchases the land.

          The Oppression of Medieval Serfs
          Serfdom represented a stage between slavery and freedom and therefore the oppression of Medieval Serfs. A slave belonged to his master; he was bought and sold like other chattels. Medieval Serfs had a higher position, for they could not be sold apart from the land nor could his holding be taken from him. Medieval Serfs were fixed to the soil. On the other hand Medieval Serfs ranked lower than a freeman, because he could not change his abode, nor marry outside the manor, nor bequeath his goods, without the permission of his lord.

          I see damned little difference between slaves and serfs, really. Do you understand what "freedom" means? I need no man's permission to buy or sell property. I can change my residence to almost any place in the world. I can travel as much as I please (and can afford) and see almost all of the world. I can work at any craft or trade, as a freelancer, or as a hired man. (a few exceptions which require licensing, and/or advanced education)

          I suspect that you have forgotten that serfdom evolved over many years. Early on, there was almost nothing to distinguish a slave from a serf. As time passed, serfs won some meager "rights", then more - but always they answered to a master.

          Also - that on-again off-again droit du seigneur business. Throughout time, "royal" sons of bitches have assumed the "right" to use any woman who might catch his eye, and interest. Wikipedia claims that it was seldom if ever exercised in medieval Europe, but the royal class kept resurrecting it. So, again, no real difference between slaves and serfs. The master may use you as he sees fit, and no court will ever punish him.

          A serf's life was in no way better than the working class in capitalism.

          BTW - when did serfs win the right to vote? They didn't, did they? As long as the class existed, they were born into a life in which the master ruled their every day, and every action. The master decided who they would marry, how much food they could keep, how nice a home they could have, what work they did - everything. No vote, precious little free will, nothing.

    • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @06:35PM (5 children)

      by Sulla (5173) on Friday December 15 2017, @06:35PM (#610392) Journal

      At a loss. You do realize that with Marxism we have to kill all of the lumpenprolitariate or the system wont work, right? At least in capitalism those who refuse to work are still allowed to live.

      --
      Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:06PM (2 children)

        by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @07:06PM (#610403) Journal

        Why won't it work? We have the same technology. It is just that wage labor will no longer be the determinate of income?

        • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @07:57PM (1 child)

          by Sulla (5173) on Friday December 15 2017, @07:57PM (#610423) Journal

          From each according to their ability and to each according to their need does not properly account for those who will and those who will not work. When everyone gets what they need if some people are allowed to refuse to work then they are the new masters. There would be no incentive to continue to work if you can just drop out and get what you need, in addition there is no advantage to working harder as it is not rewarded with additional resources.

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @08:13PM

            by aristarchus (2645) on Friday December 15 2017, @08:13PM (#610428) Journal

            Incentive, inscmentives! Are you a Republican, or a Microsoftie? Pro tip for post capitalist society: all "incentives" are perverse incentives. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Besides, the issue is the demand side, not the desert side. With automatization, no one will be able to "work", even if they want to!

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @08:35PM (1 child)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday December 15 2017, @08:35PM (#610440) Journal

        At least in capitalism those who refuse to work are still allowed to live.

        Wrong. The reason they can survive in our world is precisely that our world is not completely capitalist (not even in the USA), but has some socialist elements in them. In a pure capitalist world, they would have no income, and thus no way to get food.

        Well, unless they happen to own capital. Then they can be lazy as hell, as their money "works for them".

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday December 15 2017, @11:55PM

          by Sulla (5173) on Friday December 15 2017, @11:55PM (#610555) Journal

          The biggest difference between marxism and capitalism for the person who refuses to work is that while capitalism gives him nothing, marxism would give him a bullet.

          --
          Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam