The article comes out of the Australian press, but unless there's something truly unique about the Australian job market, it's almost certainly true elsewhere as well: a recent study shows more than half of young Australians are receiving college education to persue careers that will soon no longer exist. Thank robotics, industry consolidation, and the nature of the markets for the shrinking number of ways you will some day be able to earn a living.
There's a flip side to the debate, of course: there are certainly new things coming that haven't even been invented yet, that will provide job opportunities. But the trick is positioning yourself appropriately to take advantage of the new chances.
The not-for-profit group, which works with young Australians to create social change, says the national curriculum is stuck in the past and digital literacy, in particular, needs to be boosted. Foundation chief executive Jan Owen says young people are not prepared for a working life that could include five career changes and an average of 17 different jobs.
She says today's students will be affected by three key economic drivers: automation, globalisation and collaboration. "Many jobs and careers are disappearing because of automation," Ms Owen said. "The second driver is globalisation — a lot of different jobs that we're importing and exporting. And then thirdly collaboration which is all about this new sharing economy."
How does one future-proof his/her life and career?
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday August 28 2015, @06:41AM
Don't be Australian! How much easier could it be. Not like all the "job prep" educationists are doing the same thing everywhere else, is it? Oh, they are? "Workforce Development", eh! Hmm, maybe it is time for a revolution. Australia has been a penal colony for too long, it is time for the working class to assert their selves as the ones that decide what meaningless jobs the youth should be trained in, for the future. Gum boots, dingos, layered coolers and drop-bears.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 28 2015, @07:46AM
So I try to beat the cow AC, and I get modded Troll. I fear that in the future, there will not even be any jobs making fun of Australians, one of the easiest jobs and one that does not take much training. Of course, the main competition for such jobs comes from Aussies themselfs, who are much better at it due to long practice and lots of training in soon to be obsolete jobs. But at least they aren't Wyomingites!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @12:53PM
Yes, it's nearly as easy as making fun of Kiwis, for whom you need only add "sheep" to any context...
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by gawdonblue on Saturday August 29 2015, @03:50AM
Kiwis - they're a weird mob...
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:02AM
Working cows say moooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Moooooooooooo. Mooooooooooooooooo. Chew that cud, you cows!!
(Score: 3, Informative) by davester666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:43AM
Sorry, this only works if you get FP. Now you just look like a sad loser.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marco2G on Friday August 28 2015, @07:13AM
Somehow, nobody considers the obvious: We will have to get away from having to earn a living. We've done our very best to achieve production efficiency that probably would let us provide for double the population, if we truly wanted to. We keep improving on that further. The logical conclusion is that there won't be enough jobs for everyone.
Now with the current group think, that means unemployment and poverty. However, we could just as well just change the way our economy works and make working optional.
Although I should probably phrase this differently. Most people work in some fashion, whether they're paid for it or not. Doing favors for neighbors and family is productive, just like volunteer work is productive. We might just decide to start honoring that as much as we honor a paycheck and stop thinking we're the only ones contributing to society and everyone else is probably leeching off of us.
If you listen to people long enough, you get the impression that humanity's existence hinges on their individual efforts alone...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:24AM
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
BASIC INCOME
r1t3, d00d?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:37PM
lolcommunism
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:41PM
Now that's a form of communism I've not heard of before. How does it work? Does your income depend on how often you LOL?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:56PM
From each according to his memes.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:31PM
To each according to their snark.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2015, @08:38AM
I solemnly promise to do it as soon as one of the following will happen:
I have a hunch on which of the two will happen first.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday August 28 2015, @03:42PM
I think I know what will happen first too... YOUR DEATH! mUAHAHAHAHAHAHA
(Score: 5, Insightful) by caffeine on Friday August 28 2015, @09:10AM
I've been thinking about this for a while. The way I see it, we have more food, energy, land than we actually need. Scarcity is no longer required.
I think it is time we move to a post scarcity society. To me the logical process is to start paying people some sort of base income that covers the essentials in life. They can choose to work if they want more. Over time as more work is done by machines, the base income can increase.
I'd hope that a reasonable proportion of the free time made available could be used for useful things. Like online education courses, travel, art etc. Personally I've got a couple of software projects that would be in the public interest I'd love to work on if I was free of the requirement of working for a living.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday August 28 2015, @09:57AM
I want a society like that too, I really do.
The biggest problem I can see is that if everyone has the same minimum, guaranteed income what's to stop the prices of essentials being inflated to swallow up all of that income and require people to find extra ways of earning money again to survive?
The answer is that traditional free market capitalism wouldn't work with this. In this theoretical utopia where no work is needed, food and energy could be provided almost for free. The problem is that companies are motivated by greed and individuals by selfish interests. This continues all the way up to the politicians. I can't see that changing, so the only way this could work would be if individuals have the power to effortlessly produce their own food and energy. Also, much more importantly than the guaranteed income, everyone needs a guaranteed patch of land to live on, for life.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Friday August 28 2015, @10:28AM
I think a lack of supply is what really drives up prices. If technology makes it cheaper to produce things and easier to increase supply volumes, prices will be kept in check.
I see this as being a long term transition that needs planning over a 20+ year time span. With the short sighted way politics works, this will need to come from the grass roots to ever be achieved.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday August 28 2015, @11:35AM
The first cordless drill I ever bought, about 30 years ago, cost me half of a week's wages. It was 7.2 volt, nicad battery, 10mm chuck. Now, it would cost half an hour's wages, or less.
When everybody can have all the stuff they want, for practically nothing, the economy has to change.
They* need you (average peon) to spend almost all of your income.
As automation reduces costs, other expenses must rise. Currently, the major expenses are food, healthcare, and accomodation.
I would bet that if you could start a massive trend of people planting gardens and growing their own food, then healthcare costs and land prices/rentals would rise accordingly;
* They being TPTB, the illuminati, the 0.1%, the Rothschilds, who-ever you think controls society, etc. Basically the upper class.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2015, @02:31PM
Another way of looking at it: Good capitalists don't want to pay more for labor than they have to. The cost of labor is equal to the amortized cost of creating a worker capable of doing the job (approximately $500,000 US, spread over a 40-year career, or about $12,500 annually in the US) + the cost of current maintenance of the worker (approximately $20,000 US). That means that any wage over about $33,000 US a year is considered a market inefficiency to be cut away at first opportunity, and absolutely any money spent on the maintenance of retired persons is also seen as a complete waste. If you aren't part of George Carlin's "big club" that runs all the big businesses, you aren't supposed to be able to do anything more than kinda scrape by and then die quickly shortly after you retire.
Oh, and for the many many people paid less than $33,000 a year, what's going on there is that they aren't paying the complete cost of maintenance, which may cost them in the long run but will allow them to take advantage for a while until the medical bills are due, in which case the 40-year career becomes a 25-year career but they can just cut the person that's having health problems and replace them with somebody else.
Now, how do you get those workers to accept this lousy lousy deal? There are basically 3 ways:
- Create an illusion of upward mobility by allowing a few of those who completely buy into the system to join the capitalist class or something akin to it. A few insta-billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, that kind of thing, as an escape hatch. You can do that without threatening the gravy train for the people who are really at the top of the heap, like Sam Walton's kids.
- You tamp down on any entrepreneurial efforts using the power of finance: bank loan terms and venture capital. Bank loans work to make the business not-super-profitable by charging enough interest that most of the work the entrepreneur does goes to the bank. Venture capital / "angel investors" / whatever-they're-calling-them-now works as a control by ensuring that the entrepreneur doesn't control the company - instead the investors do.
- You give everybody else the option of working for barely enough to pay the bills, or not working at all. And you do everything you can to cut back public assistance to below that point, so that not working means not paying the bills means homelessness and hunger (this is absolutely vital: You can use made-up examples to convince those who work that those who are on the dole have it easy to convince them to vote against an increased dole, but never let those on the dole actually have it easy because you want them to be desperately looking for work). You allow for and even fund some private charity, to make those who have a little bit more than enough for themselves feel good by paying for those that do not have quite enough.
This doesn't require a grand conspiracy. All it requires is a system that abstracts away human misery so that those at the top with the power to fix it can't actually see the effects of what they are doing, a middle management philosophy based on sociopathy, and everyone else attempting to maximize their investment returns and/or trying to pay the bills. And I should point out that more education doesn't do what most people think: its purpose is to lower the salaries of the more skilled professions down to that $33,000/year level.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @06:41PM
You tamp down on any entrepreneurial efforts using the power of finance: bank loan terms and venture capital. Bank loans work to make the business not-super-profitable by charging enough interest that most of the work the entrepreneur does goes to the bank. Venture capital / "angel investors" / whatever-they're-calling-them-now works as a control by ensuring that the entrepreneur doesn't control the company - instead the investors do.
I disagree. MOST businesses are not viable. Oh they are lots of work and many times have lots of money. But do not really make much.
Take for example McDonalds. Can not argue they are wildly successful. It is because they do LOTS of things in volume. Mass volume. Their margin on a dinner is probably on the order of 30-50 cents. I bought yesterday a full meal for 3 adults for 10 bucks. There was basically little to no profit there. But there were at least 10 people behind me doing the same thing. Volume.
The margin on most things is tiny. If you misunderstand what margin is you will fail. No matter how much VC you have. Most VC's are looking for non work money. Basically looking to offload something onto some other sucker at more than what they paid before the thing eats itself. Because there is no margin.
Real work is needed. But it does not pay much. Why? There is a massive supply of people to do the work. That is simple economics. More supply usually means less value. One mona lisa painting is worth a lot because there are only 2 of them. A billion of them? Nearly worthless. Scarcity causes value.
If you ignore market realities and try to bend them you will end up on the wrong end of the ledger book. You can 'trick' it by playing with min wage. But then you get companies like Uber which have neatly walked around min wage laws (for now).
I have about 5 different business ideas. Only one is currently profitable. The rest have little to no margin. No matter how much money I borrow will not fix that. That is all VC is a loan with a condition to sell.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday August 28 2015, @07:27PM
I agree that most businesses aren't viable. That wasn't the point of my post though. My point was that the VCs are one mechanism of ensuring that those who are not part of the "big club" and are not among those few allowed to join it don't actually control the businesses that they think they're in charge of.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:35PM
accomodation
There are more empty residences in the USA than there are homeless people.
The reason they are empty is GREED and the acceptance of that status quo.
If municipalities (Richmond, CA is in the vanguard) would declare those empty properties a public nuisance and purchase them under eminent domain and put families in those at a reasonable mortgage payment, that would strengthen the community--in contrast to the downward spiral so many gov'ts have accepted as normal.
Of course (to get back onto the original topic), those people will need jobs.
Again, there are empty commercial properties in every city.
Again, use eminent domain to gain control of those and put workers in them, making money and paying taxes.
Bring in people who have already formed worker cooperatives and have them show the locals how it is done.
.
healthcare
Cuba produces so many healthcare workers that they are known for how many doctors they export and the cash that brings into the country.
With no domestic scarcity, medical care becomes very affordable.
...meanwhile, in the USA, there's the American Medical Association, a lobbying group that does everything it can to LIMIT the number of medical schools in order to maximize the profits of the incumbents.
...not to mention Big Pharma and its massively overpriced products due to "intellectual property" and, again, lobbying.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 28 2015, @11:09PM
I looked for some numbers about empty residences and found a relevant StackExchange discussion [stackexchange.com].
According to Forbes, as of 2013, roughly half [forbes.com] of vacant homes aren't even available on the market.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:27PM
forbes.com
If people are going to link to a site where the TEXT is behind scripts, those folks should specify which ONE script it is necessary to whitelist to see that content.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:44PM
Regulation, duh. Without capitalism as the primary survival method there's no reason for the intentional inflation we've had going on for centuries. Rather than 'motivating people to spend and invest', the reason for the intentional inflation, keeping prices stable would be the goal, or possibly the slightest level of deflation so we could perhaps go back to the gold standard after a century or two.
(Score: 1, Troll) by mmcmonster on Friday August 28 2015, @09:58AM
While the idea of a basic income sounds great to me, I'm worried.
There are a LOT of people that don't want to be productive in life. Who just want to smoke weed or have kids or just laze about.
Now basic income doesn't care about the smoking weed and lazing about ones. Presumably enough people will want to go into the health care industry to take care of smoking-related issues. (And they'll do it to earn money to buy extra stuff.)
My concern is how to stop excessive breeding. I haven't looked at the numbers, but my wife always complains about people on the public dole who have more kids so they can get more money. If this is true, something has to be done to prevent people from gameing the system by having more kids.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by turgid on Friday August 28 2015, @10:08AM
World over-population isn't caused by the "lazy" people on the dole. It's caused by poor education, oppression of women and religious dogma. The lazy people are a tiny percentage and will always be with us.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:52PM
Citation needed. Don't buy Faux News's bullshit, people want to be productive, its human nature. In today's society especially most people can't be because the jobs don't exist and society is set up to fuck over the non-wealthy at every opportunity. Even without well-paying jobs, everyone has hobbies, that is, they work, even though its not considered "work" because it doesn't pay in cash, the sole indicator of a person's worth today.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @04:13PM
If the productivity of a lot of people is no longer needed to keep the economy working and provide stuff for anyone, then what is the problem with those people not being productive?
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 28 2015, @11:29PM
I wouldn't worry too much about the odd person who just smokes weed all day. Basic income may even improve health outcomes, among other things. [wikipedia.org]
I'm in the same boat as Caffeine. I can think of many things I could be doing to make the world a better place and would love to do, but, unfortunately, my time and mental energy are usually completely sapped by the day job.
I have a hunch that a basic income might even do a lot about excessive breeding. I haven't looked into the details, so I might be woefully misinformed, but from what I've heard from some, er, career mothers, as it were, is that there are actually perverse incentives built into the system to encourage them to give birth once every 2–3 years. On the other hand, as others have pointed out, the best way to tackle that problem is through better education and free access to contraception and abortion (and no wacky ultrasound dildos).
(Score: 2) by q.kontinuum on Friday August 28 2015, @10:38AM
I like the idea, but I'm not sure how we could get there without a lot of bloodshed.
The problem is that currently, those robots (and therefore the outcome of their work) is owned by rich companies, thereby by rich investors. To give these products away cheap is to disown these investors. (If you want to keep the prices stable and just want to pay a basic income, it's still the same, as these investors would have to pay the basic income via taxes or by other means.) Basically you want to move property from either rich or employed people to the unemployed. The rich/employed won't stand for it.
Now, the states *could* increase the taxes on produced goods, but in that case the producers would just leave to another country. The ore automated the production is, the less problematic will it be to move production to a different location. Probably they would still need a few highly skilled employees to run the facilities, but they can pay them a bonus for the move and that's it.
The only way around that would be a joined, world-wide effort to make the transition happen. And this won't happen due to corruption etc.
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Friday August 28 2015, @12:01PM
I'd hope we could design a system where we improve the total value in the system so that the rich could still continue to be rich, but not at the expense of the poor.
The rich can still produce stuff and set their own prices, and it will be easier to sell as the system expands the size of the middle class, unlike the current decline.
I see bloody revolution far more likely if we don't make changes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Friday August 28 2015, @02:44PM
I'd hope we could design a system where we improve the total value in the system so that the rich could still continue to be rich, but not at the expense of the poor.
How do you get rich off people with nothing?
The rich can still produce stuff and set their own prices, and it will be easier to sell as the system expands the size of the middle class, unlike the current decline.
Ah - you've identified it. Rich are getting richer and the middle class is declining. Seems wealth is getting transferred not from the poor, but from the middle class. And the poor are expanding as that wealth moves out of the middle class to the rich. The poor, in turn, are worse off since it's the small businesses (the middle class) that creates most of the jobs.
Wealth redistribution in the current system will just do more of the same. Most of the tax revenue already comes from the 1%, which is not some club of a few thousand ultra-wealthy, but a group of about 3 1/2 million people who are currently doing well. Right now. Then there is the 0.0005% - and they are the guys that write the tax code (using the "representatives" they've paid for), and the regulations that are (yes) major burdens for small businesses but not if your corporation is big, or can move stuff around easily (like jobs, and product, and profits). So a lot of regulation works as protection from competition for the larger companies.
I don't know what all the answers are, but a good start would be scrapping the current income tax system that penalizes labor and moving to a personal wealth tax that only extracts your excess liquid capital. The same calculation for businesses can ensure that most of the regulatory burden falls on large companies that can absorb the costs (instead of having to layoff workers or shut down to deal with them).
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Friday August 28 2015, @11:37PM
I think the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich is driven more by easy opportunity than by any long term plan. If anything, it is a short sighted plan as eventually we end up with the majority being poor, no one to buy stuff they don't need, and a lot of money being spent to suppress an uprising.
I'd hope we could come up with a system that the super rich buy into because they see better profits in the future. I don't agree with the political argument that anything that helps the poor has to be at the expense of the rich.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Saturday August 29 2015, @11:16PM
I don't agree with the political argument that anything that helps the poor has to be at the expense of the rich.
So, it has to be the middle class that gets gouged (and eviscerated) even more, huh?
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:23AM
Why does anyone have to get gouged? That is scarcity economics, I think we are ready to move post-scarcity economics.
The way I see it we have more resources, energy and food than we need as a planet. Traditionally labour was limiting but the robotics revolution is already changing that. The only limiting factor is money and as a man-made construct, that can be changed.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Sunday August 30 2015, @02:19PM
Why does anyone have to get gouged? That is scarcity economics, I think we are ready to move post-scarcity economics. The way I see it we have more resources, energy and food than we need as a planet. Traditionally labour was limiting but the robotics revolution is already changing that. The only limiting factor is money and as a man-made construct, that can be changed.
Really? I'm afraid we really aren't "ready". Food, energy, and housing is where most of my money goes, and I work my ass off at 2 1/2 jobs to make ends meet. I buy food locally most of the time, and the farmers that I interact with are barely getting by. I'd love to stop paying rent, but that (and three other renters) is the only income that my landlord has. She's retired and put all her money into rental properties so she had some retirement income, and it's all she has (definitely middle class). The banks still own some of those properties, but even if they gave up their interest, she would still starve without our rental payments.
It would be nice to have this scarcity-free society you speak of. But I don't see a path to get there in my lifetime that does not involve the death of many millions.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:57PM
If you ever want that to happen, capitalism has to become a relic of the past. Capitalism is built on exploitation of the poor, it doesn't work without it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @03:48PM
A lot of the concentration of wealth over the last couple of centuries occurred because you had to be able to afford the printing presses, machinery, etc to create products. We have now the means for orders of magnitude more people to produce what they need for themselves, without suffering any loss to their quality of life. We are already seeing the seismic quakes from near universal access to information; Imagine how it will be like with near universal access to the means of production.
That seems to me to offer an alternative to bloodshed. If one day nobody shows up any more to buy cars, will the government and auto manufacturers open fire on all the people who have not bought cars? Or will the auto manufacturers simply implode? We've had a preview in the form of the RIAA in the era of filesharing. Imagine that happening across most industries at the same time. "Tectonic shift" doesn't begin to describe the effects on governments and societies.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday August 28 2015, @06:08PM
A lot of the concentration of wealth over the last couple of centuries occurred because you had to be able to afford the printing presses, machinery, etc to create products.
???
Are you seriously arguing that we have been moving to a less even distribution of wealth since the days of feudalism?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @06:28PM
No, I'm arguing that the means to produce wealth has always itself been expensive. You had to be the guy with the land (feudalism) or the guy that could afford to build factories or railroads (the industrial age). Now, with information technology, 3D printing, and many other technologies in the offing, real productive power is coming within reach of the common man, and that itself will produce epic changes.
Is that clearer?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Friday August 28 2015, @06:34PM
Perfectly clear. I understood "concentration" to mean that it was being progressively concentrated over time, while you meant that it was in a concentrated state.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @07:17PM
Yes, in a concentrated state, about to become much less so, from the know-how down to the doing.
As frustrating as the retardation (in the sense of "blocking, slowing down") by the power elite is, in many ways it's also an exciting time to be alive. If you have the requisite amount of will, you can do much more now as an individual than at any previous time in history. Watch a DIY clip on YouTube or Instructables, read a wiki, and you're off to the races.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday August 28 2015, @03:33PM
I think it is time we move to a post scarcity society.
You're putting the cart before the horse. You need the post-scarcity resources first. Someone has to work to make that happen, and well, we're the only people around.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 28 2015, @06:01PM
You need the post-scarcity resources first.
I think the claim is that we are already there, and the problem is artificial scarcity produced by such things as market inefficiencies, the profit motive, and intellectual property claims.
(Score: 3, Troll) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 28 2015, @01:07PM
Basic income or a moneyless society will happen when hell freezes over.
You'll never fix the emotional reward people get when they see somebody who is homeless and starving, especially if that person has a different skin color or isn't straight or doesn't believe in their god.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Friday August 28 2015, @02:48PM
You'll never fix the emotional reward people get when they see somebody who is homeless and starving, especially if that person has a different skin color or isn't straight or doesn't believe in their god.
Wow. You must have been through some really rough trauma if that's emotionally rewarding for you. My sympathies to you and your family.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Troll) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 28 2015, @03:27PM
Ah, I was wondering how long it'd take for this comment to show up!
I remember reading some loony business owner from Denmark I think it was that said that a society with people living on the streets is a failed society, but how else can I feel smug about being a temporarily embarrassed, hard-working millionaire in the moral majority? Next thing you know, the government will try to get its grubby hands on my medicare [huffingtonpost.com]!
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Saturday August 29 2015, @11:22PM
I don't even know WTF you're going on about, you butt-hurt little troll. I think this is a clear sign that you need to seek psychiatric help immediately [soylentnews.org]!
I am a crackpot
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:43AM
Oh, good grief! Lighten up!
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @09:38PM
No, you'd only have to be a Republican in today's America.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Friday August 28 2015, @04:20PM
You think the only reason we have an economy instead of a "marxist utopia" is because people like seeing homeless and disenfranchised people making them feel superior?
I don't know what kind of world you think you live in, but I want no part of it.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @05:56PM
I don't know what kind of world you think you live in, but I want no part of it.
Fine! Just go right ahead and ignore reality and live in your gilded fantasy! But when the Revolution comes . . . To paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in reality, but reality is interested in you!
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday August 28 2015, @10:49PM
Da, comrade! The only two possible ways to organize a society are a Marxist utopia or a system such that when your job gets automated, you need to take on a massive student debt even while working a service job (no more than 29 hours per week, not until you have seniority enough to go full time!), and if you can't find a job with your new robot technician degree, you'll either need to take on a 2nd job (which you'll get fired from in a month because of schedule conflicts with your other job) or, well, too bad! Can't pay the student loans back? Garnish his wages! Can't pay the rent now? Too damned bad, bub, no more address or phone number for you! What, do you want to live in a Marxist utopia? Just look at Russia for a fine example of a Marxist utopia!
Oh I can hear it now: “but in Germany…!” Well, buster, if Germany is so great, why don't you just get out of my hair and go there! “But how will I afford to get there?” Ain't my problem! I've got mine, screw you.
Well, we can see the obvious mistake our homeless friend here made. Before he was evicted, he should have bought a gun so that he could go on a shooting rampage and get 3 hots and a cot at one of those maximum security homeless shelters. I suppose if he can find the right contacts, he might still be able to join ISIL. If he can stick it out for a year or two, maybe a spot will open up in a halfway house or homeless shelter somewhere, but he'd better make sure he follows the rules and reads his Bible two hours every day and is never out before 7 AM or after 7 PM and goes to the right church (that other denomination? they're followers of satan!) otherwise we know he's just not really interested in being a born-again, reformed Randian bootstrapper and is just a lazy bum.
See? The just world theory is a scientifically proven fact, like quantum theory or the theory of relativity! Bad things only happen to bad people!
(Hmm, bleeding heart libertarianism [wikipedia.org] is apparently a thing. Count me in with the strong BHLs, tentatively at least.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @07:24AM
They have had strong unions (yes unions are necessary, but they shouldn't have absolute power) for years and with the support of the govt they have a lot of industries ended up in dead ends - mining, car manufacturing to name two. This is only being exacerbated by the current Australian government. Not only has this lead people in to dead-end careers (that never the less paid very well while they were there) but has now dug Australia a huge hole (pardon the pun): mining ain't boom town anymore - digging up more minerals only serves to lower the bulk price (the current plan to save their economy.) Their hugely subsidized car manufacturing was so expensive that they couldn't even compete with imported vehicles that had massive duties slapped on them, and mining is fast following suit. The sooner governments stop propping up non-viable businesses, the better off (in the long term anyway) those countries will become. You can suffer a little at the beginning, or if you prop it up to the dire end and suffer massively when the correction hits. There is one thing for the capitalist ideal: if something goes up shit creek, those who have invested and work there are the ones who suffer. It isn't the governments job to prop up non-viable industries - either let some foolish investor do that or let the industry die. I might feel sorry for the workers, but not the investors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:10AM
They have had strong overseas ownership (yes foreign investors are necessary, but they shouldn't have absolute power) for years and with the support of the govt they have a lot of industries ended up in dead ends - mining, car manufacturing to name two. This is only being exacerbated by the current Australian government.
FTFY
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2015, @09:04AM
Bzzzzt... wrong.
Actually, there isn't any plan for saving anything but the foreskin of a small dhead between largish ears [quickmeme.com]. He's is so busy thumping his chest with the "we are the infrastructure govt" and "jobs and economy, mate" bricks that only the sound remains, in a surrealist melted suspension, a long time after the tree has fallen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Friday August 28 2015, @09:49AM
A big problem with the car manufacturing industries was the high Australian dollar. They could never compete when the AU$ was higher than the US$. If you compare Australia's automotive subsidies of US$1966 per vehicle, to the USA's $2908 in per vehicle it does not really support the position of a hugely subsidized industry.
IMO, the way we got in this position was that for political reasons the government would rather have the young unemployed doing any studies rather than getting unemployment benefits. They really do not care about the future employment prospects of the students, they just want to claim a low unemployment rate.
(Score: 2) by dbe on Friday August 28 2015, @07:56AM
More than 10 years ago I can attest that at the Wollongong Uni, the EE school was full of foreign students at post-grad level. Not a single Australian in my major, the ~30 students were mostly from asian countries and a couple of Europeans. I'm pretty sure the PHDs situation was the same, which was perfect for the university as we were paying the full tuition instead of the heavily subsidized fee for Australian residents. My guess was that they all were in Literature/law and sales careers.
The thing is that unless you want to work for the mining industry or power generation, there is no work in Australia for EE folks, so I decided to not apply for permanent residency.
Cheers
-dbe
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:49AM
Mate, come back and apply for residency. We need smart techies.
I"ll buy you a beer and introduce you to my sister. Promise.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @01:08PM
I think if Australia or any other such pleasant country were to actually invite techies to come work as you have done would get a stampede of skilled Americans, even at the price of having to eat Vegemite.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:36AM
there are certainly new things coming that haven't even been invented yet, that will provide job opportunities. But the trick is positioning yourself appropriately to take advantage of the new chances.
The phenomenon of technological unemployment — people being obsoleted by technology — is very real. There is a certain libertarian strain of thought that says things like "when technology makes your job obsolete, just get new skills so you can get a new job" which completely ignores the fact that new machines are produced more easily than workers can reasonably adapt. That concentrates the cost of productivity gains on the people least capable of handling it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Jiro on Friday August 28 2015, @08:53AM
Read the article. Notice that something's missing--that's right, the article never tells us what the jobs are that they are studying for which will supposedly be gone. Why? Because if the article bothered to tell the audience, there's (*gasp*) the possibility that the audience actually might have something substantial to disagree with.
The article also mentions the old bugaboo of women in engineering. (Translation: companies want to flood the market with too many engineers to drive the salaries down, it's just that by phrasing it in social justice terms, they can get useful idiots on their side.) There is also the irony of mentioning engineering just a few sentences apart from loss of jobs due to globalization.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:08AM
Notice that something's missing--that's right, the article never tells us what the jobs are that they are studying for which will supposedly be gone. Why? Because if the article bothered to tell the audience, there's (*gasp*) the possibility that the audience actually might have something substantial to disagree with.
Oh puhlease. The article doesn't go into those details because its an article on a general-interest news site. Do you honestly think that the source report doesn't go into those details? I am so damn tired of people who decide to argue with strawmen because engaging with the actual facts requires you to do more than a single mouse-click. You in particular have a history of exactly this sort of playing dumb when it suits your agenda here.
Here, I did it for you, [fya.org.au] took me less than a minute with google.
(Score: 5, Informative) by FlyingSock on Friday August 28 2015, @09:30AM
Thank you for this post. I sadly don't have any mod points left.
Although to spare the gp even more effort, the direct link to the report is this one [fya.org.au]. Esp page 24 appears to hold the info gp is looking for "lower-skill jobs, such as labourers, machinery operators, and administrators, will be affected by automation in the next 10-15 years". This is pretty much, what you would expect. Overall it appears to be an interesting report.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:39PM
Wait a tick. According to the report, Austrailians are getting college degrees in physical labour and machine operating? How the fuck can you even get a degree in something that amounts to move this box or push these buttons when the machine goes too fast?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @12:48PM
Because degrees are increasingly thought of as something you get so you can get a job, rather than the byproduct of choosing to increase your understanding of the universe around you because you are deeply interested in doing so.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday August 28 2015, @07:47PM
I think you need to think a bit about that. If administrators are automated away, then so is "empire building", which will result in a lot of not-mentioned jobs not being created. If the tasks that entry level professionals are doing are automated away, then there's no path for new entries. Already the paths up for lawyers are being restricted due to automation on case preparation. I assume that something similar is happening in other professions. Well, you might say "getting rid of lawyers is a good idea", but this doesn't get rid of them, it concentrates them in the hands of the wealthy. It's rather like what happened to doctors when HMOs took over. Everything is much more efficient...and the results are better for the stockholders. There's still room for a very few new professionals at large offices.
So. Among the "soon to be automated" are cabbies, truck drivers, bus drivers, clerical workers, supermarket clerks, pharmaceutical clerks, etc.
Well, it might take 20 years for some of those to be automated away. And what the article didn't mention is that Japan is putting lots of effort into robotic care for the aged. So expect that to be increasingly automated. What about airplane pilots? That's already in process. There's lots of areas that are "already in process" and other areas where the only effect has been reduced availability of entry level positions. And sometimes an area is "automated away" by redesigning things. Anybody remember refridgerator repairmen? Now you usually just replace it, either under warranty or not. Start contemplating what a mix of Siri with robotics only slightly advanced over the current state could do. Nursing might not be a very reasonable career to prepare for. There will (probably) still be a need for some, but the need for new bodies will be strongly reduced. And I'm not convinced that programming is exhempt. Certainly neural computers don't seem to need many programmers. A few, but not many. You may not remember how many programmers "lost their jobs" to VisiCalc (the first spreadsheet). Again, what happened was basically that lots of work that had required programmers no longer did. At that time the demand for programmers was so high that it was hardly noticed, but many companies went from having a staff of 10 or 12 programmers to having a staff of 4 or 5 that also had to double as computer operators. (Previously computer operations had been done out of house on a mainframe.) The cost of using a computer dropped so fast at that time that new jobs were created as fast as old ones were lost, or nearly so. I got through that period unscathed, as did most programmers, but only because of a "perfect storm" of favorable factors (mainly computer time getting so drastically much cheaper). This next time? I don't expect anything quite as favorable. For programming the "low hanging fruit" has largely been plucked. For hardware the "more bang for the buck" curve has drastically flattened.
So I think that these people are drastically undercounting the damages, and overcounting the refuges. But it may be 20 years before the true storm hits. Still 15 wouldn't surprise me, and we are already in the fringes of the storm.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Funny) by c0lo on Friday August 28 2015, @09:32AM
Oh mate, do you realize you just made jiro redundant?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 29 2015, @02:28AM
He can always get new skills and be back to work by Monday.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:32AM
In a market where horse labor is going to go away. Either position yourself into one of the jobs that will still exist, or prepare to be taken to the glue factory. Your owners don't care a shit about you otherwise.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @11:49AM
> Either position yourself into one of the jobs that will still exist, or prepare to be taken to the glue factory. Your owners don't care a shit about you otherwise.
Oh there are a couple more options, like: burn down the barn, burn down the factory, burn up the owners. If you are headed to the glue factory, there is nothing stopping you from sharing the pain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @08:51PM
Same person as the parent.
You can try, but i think that will get you a bullet to the head by the police. At least here in the states.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 28 2015, @09:45PM
Hmm, here in the states police are far from the only ones with powerful weapons. They ought to mind their behavior, lest they find themselves outgunned [wikipedia.org]. That's in a straight-up fight. They might also consider that if they choose to play that way, then the location of their wives and children are also entirely discoverable. They do not exist in a vacuum, no matter how much they might imagine or arrogate themselves to be. They too can be gotten to by irate citizens.
However remote, gun ownership and a revolutionary past are still not forgotten by important swathes of the American people. If the government and its corporate masters press the issue too far, they may become newly acquainted with that heritage.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:46AM
> that will get you a bullet to the head by the police.
What part of glue factory do you fail to understand?
Do you see all those mass shootings on the news here in the states? Those are nearly all suicides. Those people have decided they want to share their pain with others on the way out. Police bullets to the head don't stop them, they encourage them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @03:08PM
They'll never obsolete drug dealers. Even when prohibition finally ends, its the dealers who will best be set up to capitalize and recalibrate their businesses legitimately.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday August 28 2015, @03:24PM
Here in Blighty, those compassionate Christian Conservatives are creating [theguardian.com] a quick, laissez-faire highway to the glue factory.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Friday August 28 2015, @01:04PM
Obviously, these kids all need to be put to work on “Project Australia”:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm [marshallbrain.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @02:42PM
Unfortunately, like "the green place" and "tomorrow-morrow land", Project Australia turned out to be another myth in the pox-aclyptic world of Mad Max.
(Score: 2) by EQ on Friday August 28 2015, @03:13PM
Thats for sure. Go into hands-on medical care, something thats not routinely replaced by automation, where skills matter and there will always be a demand.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday August 28 2015, @05:33PM
a recent study shows more than half of young Australians are receiving college education to persue careers that will soon no longer exist.
Such as proofreaders for the new media, or the word itself [wiktionary.org], I suppose.