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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Bain consultants' macro trends department have released a report examining trends in demographics, automation and inequality to produce a set of predictions.
This kind of report seems to be all over the place these days, but this one seems more detailed and perhaps a little less optimistic than most.
In the US, a new wave of investment in automation could stimulate as much as $8 trillion in incremental investments and abruptly lift interest rates. By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting middle- to low-income workers the hardest. As investments peak and then decline—probably around the end of the 2020s to the start of the 2030s—anemic demand growth is likely to constrain economic expansion, and global interest rates may again test zero percent. Faced with market imbalances and growth-stifling levels of inequality, many societies may reset the government's role in the marketplace.
They predict that governments will assume a larger role in markets to combat inequality and boost demand, but will our corporate overlords decide that's in their interests, or continue to squeeze the lower and middle classes forever?
Related: Humans Are Underrated
Douglas Coupland: "The Nine to Five is Barbaric"
Survey Says AI Will Exceed Human Performance in Many Occupations Within Decades
More Than 70% of US Fears Robots Taking Over Our Lives, Survey Finds
The Future of Work Is Uncertain, Schools Should Worry Now
The Venus Project and the Quest for a Socially Engineered Future
Skilled Manufacturing Workers in Demand in the U.S.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:51PM (5 children)
Starving in the gutter? Do something else! But never stop coding for free.
Living in poverty? Get a retail job! But never stop coding for free.
Learned to code but still can't make a living by coding? Live on government welfare! But never stop coding for free.
What's that now? The GNU Manifesto [gnu.org] has become reality? Too bad! Richard Matthew Stallman is a raving communist lunatic who sold your future to make the tech billionaires rich.
Never stop coding for free.
Believe in GNU.
Die poor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:32AM (2 children)
Don't blame RMS, put your effort where it will do some good. It's simple, follow the money and you will find the country club, "upper crust" class who have bought and cheated their way to riches at your expense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @08:11AM (1 child)
Get over your irrational hero worship and recognize that RMS HAD NO LONG TERM PLAN for how his free software movement would affect the future. The upper crust tech moguls are billionaires now because they built their empires upon the slave labor of naive volunteers who were paid nothing for their work.
GNU and Linux have not freed the downtrodden masses yearning for free software. The tech giants took free software and used it to enslave the masses. RMS convinced the downtrodden masses to contribute to the very software that would be used to enslave them.
Every programmer who is starving today is starving because of the GNU Manifesto and RMS himself is to blame.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18PM
I don't have an answer to your points - working only on free-as-in-freedom software does screw the software developer's chances of making a great living.
However, I have a counter point: everyone that isn't a software developer. Why can't you play Atari, Intellivision, Nintendo 64, or Sega games on a Playstation 3 or Xbox 360? Because Sony and Microsoft say so. Why can't your television service DVR stream Kodi content from your own media server (even if that Kodi content is a family home movie and completely legal)? Because Comcast and Verizon say so. Why can't your AT&T phone transfer to the Sprint network? Because AT&T says so. Why can't you put a newer version of Android with the latest security fixes on many older Android devices or for that matter on iPhones that no longer get hardware support? Because the Android vendors often lock down the boot loader and Apple always locks it down. Why can't you use Facebook without them bombarding you with ads and using clickbait tactics to try to addict you to the site? Because you have no control over what they do, and that's how they maximize profits.
So proprietary software makes developers rich, and more importantly makes the employers of developers rich. But it screws consumers with locked devices, unwanted features that only benefit the vendors, and planned obsolescence that increases consumer costs and wastes perfectly fine devices.
And to be clear, I'm not advocating socialism here. Lowering consumer costs and giving them more freedom to use things they bought is still completely compatible with capitalism.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday December 15 2017, @04:20PM
The GNU philosophy is a good, possibly great philosophy. Just not for making money. Personally, I wish all code was forced into the public domain after 20 years. 20 years should be plenty of time for you to capitalize on your initial creation. With the pace of technological innovations, a 20 year-old piece of software was outdated 3 or 4 generations ago, if not more. Even Windows XP which was supported for 13 years would have fallen well within that time period.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by pipedwho on Thursday December 14 2017, @11:53PM (44 children)
There seems to be an assumption that people that can code will be immune to the impending doom of an AI or robot apocalypse. I don't think this is true. Yes, there are some easily automated tasks that don't require much thought. And there are some repetitive manual jobs that can easily be automated.
But, just being able to code with some basic logic thought processes seems to me to be something that is just as likely to be automated.
Things on the harder to do list will be the old school tradesman like plumbers, electrician and handymen. Maybe some 'professional' careers, like doctors, lawyers, bankers, accountants, and other high end 'sales' and 'business development' positions. Then of course, there's the ownership class. Beyond that, positions of leadership and government, and other bureaucratic nonsense. These types of jobs will have all sorts of 'political' pressure maintaining them.
But, IMO, random 'learn how to code' programs in schools aren't going to help transcend this problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:00AM
I expect the vast majority of legal work can and will be replaced by computers soon enough.
Things like document notarisation might still warrant a human professional...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:03AM (5 children)
Twenty years ago tech nerds who installed linux in their basements predicted a world dominated by nerds.
Ten years ago tech bros kicked the nerds to the curb as social media conquered the world instead.
Tech bros are next to get fucked.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Friday December 15 2017, @12:50AM (4 children)
hmmm.... let me know when the hot lesbian lingerie models get into programming, because I need to be in the following wave that
fucreplaces them.cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:09AM (2 children)
Unless you're a vibrator or something similarly genderless, I don't think any lesbian is going to want to fuck you. Sorry. It's a dictionary-definition sort of thing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @04:47AM (1 child)
Do you know DECbot's gender?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Friday December 15 2017, @12:04PM
Well, if DECbot has an RS-232 port, it should be a male DE-9 connector.
Does that count?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday December 15 2017, @11:47AM
You mean that you're the one that wants to fill that hole!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by crafoo on Friday December 15 2017, @12:12AM (15 children)
Yes, exactly.
Procurement, supply chain, sales will be automated. Machine learning systems are collecting massive datasets right now to build these systems. It's coming in 10 years.
Tasks that require 10-20 years of training and domain knowledge will be the last to automate. Plumbing, electricians, gutter installers, epoxy garage floor installers. Things that are physically complicated and have many many failure modes that impact quality, but which are not really documented or easily trained for.
Everyone else is getting fucked ASAP. The rest are going to get tossed into a human compost pit.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Friday December 15 2017, @12:38AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday December 15 2017, @12:06PM
Installing gutters in Klondike might be a gold mine...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Friday December 15 2017, @02:47AM (12 children)
I believe much of health care is safe for the next 30 years at least. The elderly, and the soon-to-be-elderly, prefer being waited on and treated by younger human beings. IBM's Watson will definitely be able to diagnose disease better and give more accurate advice, but people will still prefer a flawed human with good bed-side manner. As with most things this is at least partially a cultural preference. However, the desire and need to be cared for by other living, breathing, humans is an evolutionarily-ingrained drive. It's a two-way street, also. As hard as health care can be it's a source of great meaning and reward to many people. It's why they tolerate the terrible working conditions and the immense stress.
The future for humanity is more people taking care of other people, taking care of the environment, and taking care of themselves; all while machines and algorithms take care of the economy. That's one path, the other is the pursuit of open-ended wealth accretion because a small percentage of humans are born as sociopaths who cannot derive joy in life without dominating other human beings and causing them discomfort through enforcing a hierarchy of relative deprivation. These people *need* to immiserate others (relatively to themselves) to fend off their own ennui.
Those people have to lose.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @11:18AM (9 children)
Amen. I don't know if it has been verified by scientific peers, but there was a researcher who used MRIs to identify sociopaths.
It seems to me that being rated as one ought to disqualify you from any kind of position where you might have power over other people.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday December 15 2017, @11:51AM
Amen indeed!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @12:05PM (7 children)
Wow, guilty by association much? There might be a correlation between impaired empathy and antisocial behavior but that doesn't make all such people antisocial. What you are proposing is de facto persecuting thoughtcrime.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @02:58PM (5 children)
You won't let a blind person drive a car. You wouldn't hire a quadraplegic to be the center on your basketball team. But you would put a sociopath in charge of a company or polity upon which thousands of normal, healthy people rely, because you trust his judgement?
Me, I think that's a big part of the breakdown we're seeing now, which is that the seats of power in our society have accumulated too many sociopaths. But maybe you got yours already and don't think there's a problem, as the other 99% of the population does.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @07:34PM (2 children)
Apples and oranges. A blind person is incapable of driving. A sociopath is capable of reasoning and determining what is amoral.
I didn't say that, what I disagree with is (a) your assessment of the root of the problem and (b) your proposed solution.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
Not apples and oranges at all. Both are examples of impairment that preclude the performing of their respective functions; that is why I chose them. In neither case is it their fault, but they are impaired. A sociopath is impaired in that he cannot understand the empathy required to make moral decisions. Test: Would you leave your infant in the care of a sociopath? If not, why not? If not, why would we leave a thousand infants in the care of a sociopath? Why would we trust one to hold the power of life and death over any of us?
Me, I'd much prefer leaders who are humans, not sociopaths. A leader should understand very well the morality of his decisions and carefully weigh their impact upon citizens.
Is it that you think politicians, MBAs, and bankers are moral humans who are doing the absolute they can for humanity, and that concentrating all wealth and power into the hands of an extreme minority is a good thing, or something else like the result of their decisions and policies just accidentally concentrate all wealth and power into the hands of an extreme minority of them?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Friday December 15 2017, @10:43PM
This is objectively false. If you instruct a blind person to drive a car, he would be physically incapable of following the road. If you instruct a sociopath not to harm a puppy, he would be able not to kick it. Were you for example to present me with a blind person who through some means is capable of demonstrating the ability to drive at the same proficiency we expect from everyone else, I will be more than happy to drive on the same roads they do.
Your assumption that people with impaired empathy will necessarily commit atrocities is factually incorrect, although a sociopath is specifically defined as a person who exhibits antisocial behavior, that doesn't mean that people who have the same fundamental brain condition are incapable of acting morally of their own volition. It is just as bigoted to assume that everyone who matches your thoughtcrime detector will exhibit antisocial behavior, as it is to assume that everyone who matches a certain skull shape would.
No, I think we shouldn't allow for the existence of power structures in which runaway power accumulation is possible. The greatest failure of modern politics and economics is the fact we don't have a negative feedback effects into them, and thus the second million is just as valuable as the first million. If the laws of physics worked like our laws of economics, the universe would spontaneously combust. Is it any wonder that we keep seeing one economic crisis after another?
(Score: 3, Informative) by t-3 on Friday December 15 2017, @09:11PM
A sociopath may be the best person for the job. Leadership generally requires some sociopathic tendencies to be effective (and this is why I will not be surprised when sociopathy is shown to be an epigenetic adaptation in response to social/population cues similar to homosexuality) Being nice and caring about others is a crippling flaw in many hard-choice situations.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:38AM
I certainly wouldn't put you in charge. There is worse than sociopathy at work here. Sociopathy doesn't make someone unfit to run a business. But people who get the idea that poorly understood medical tests can find thoughtcrime should be removed from such responsibilities quickly before they destroy something.
Create incentives that reward sociopathic behavior and you get more sociopathic behavior.
(Score: 1) by i286NiNJA on Friday December 15 2017, @08:55PM
Fuckoff these people ruin the whole world for everyone and then scare the peons into giving them more power. They'd be the first in line to tell you life isn't fair if you were the one getting fucked and not them.
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday December 15 2017, @03:02PM
Yes, health care is an activity that will continue to need doing, but who is going to pay for it? and with what exchange medium, because what are THEY getting paid for? And similarly how are the tools and consumables (sutures, bandages, medicine) to be paid for, if most people aren't working? The situation is normally seen in terms of locality: a tourist destination depends on outside money coming in to pay for lodging and services; a commodity location depends on outside money coming in for food or harvested/dug natural material going out. But if other people don't have money either, how is ANY of the system supposed to work? The "Star Trek" ideal of not needing money, or even to make money, because energy is so cheap and matter replication is so cheap that everyone can have everything, is not the same as capitalists borrowing money at interest to buy production robots (meaning any kind of machinery, not humanoid robots!), which replace "lots of people getting paid" with "bankers getting paid so that robot manufacturer gets paid" - a net narrowing of the scope of money circulation. The logical problem, that there's no reason for the production robots to produce as much because not as many people can pay for the products, doesn't happen until well after lots of people have been laid off and lots of money is owed to the banks for having replaced the people with robots. The cycle of money flowing is as necessary as water flowing back into rain; money doesn't help anybody sitting in a mattress, any more than electricity in a battery, it's all about money MOVING.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Friday December 15 2017, @05:31PM
What people want, what they can afford, and what is available as the next best alternate are all different things. The elderly may want to be waited on by the generations that they robbed. They may get something much, much different instead.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Friday December 15 2017, @12:13AM (7 children)
Exactly This.
People who speak like this have never set up a CNC machine to do something as simple as drill a hole.
Clue: coding is no longer necessary.
Teaching coding is probably a waste of time. The skill sets needed to manage robots are probably being ingrained into kids with joy sticks and game controllers in their hand. It sure as hell won't be written in C.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DECbot on Friday December 15 2017, @12:56AM
It's not. It's mostly carol, but the robot operators don't need to write that--just a few of the robot vendors that program the cabinets. Once sold, the carol code isn't touched. The customer just jogs the robot to the next point on the path the robot has to make and then saves a coordinate. Where the robot has to make an action, like following a curve or picking an object, you use the appropriate command and program that point. It's easier than training monkeys. Motoman has a new(ish) robot [youtube.com] where you don't even have to know how to jog the robot. You put it in a kinetic teach mode and physically push the robot arm to the next teach point.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:40AM (3 children)
Have to disagree with you there, even with modern CAM software calculating tool paths, the best setters will still tweak gcode on the machine itself. Just as the best computer programmers still tweak assembly.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @04:54AM (1 child)
Not if the programmer did their job right. Maybe quick write a main that calls all the programs to run over night, but everything else should post without any need for edits. This is especially true with five axis and dynamic/HFM paths.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @02:21PM
Code generators (compilers, CAM) can only ever be optimised for the general case. A valuable skill is being able to shave a microsecond off a tight loop in a program or being able to save 5 seconds on a 2 minute CNC program running 50,000 parts. We are so far from being able to automate the design and preparation required for these tasks that the skills will remain useful for the foreseeable future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:47AM
Still the disagree mod, from someone doesn't realise they're ultimately disagreeing with Autodesk. Anyone who 'disagree's can ask autodesk how to offset both the toolpath and the job to cut a spiral flute because their kernel simply cannot do it. TopSolid may be able to but who care's when an engineer can build a solution themselves for a fraction of the price of their software? Human ingenuity is the job that cannot be replaced and if you're an engineer that is what you are selling.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by HiThere on Friday December 15 2017, @01:48AM (1 child)
It's worse than that. Teaching coding when kids are young is a cruel waste of time, unless it's something like Logo Turtles. You shouldn't even try to program in a computer language until you're ready of elementary algebra, since the thought skills required are about the same.
This isn't to say that things like Scratch are a bad idea, but don't try to push them. A few kids will be able to take it and run with it, and let them. Most kids won't have a clue, and will just get turned off. A bad math teacher who tries to coerce kids to do math they aren't ready for is behind much of the hatred of math. Programming could go the same way.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by Adamsjas on Friday December 15 2017, @02:42AM
A computer language is nothing like elementary algebra.
98% (number from ass) of programming is get it here. change it this way. put it there. count it. rinse. repeat.
Maths departments have fucked up more good programmer/analysts than than they can count.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Friday December 15 2017, @12:39AM (6 children)
I agree that the trade skill jobs are going nowhere and likewise with doctors, bureaucrats, owners, and investors. Bankers, lawyers, and accountants can all be replaced with software and data entry specialists. There will be a few software people to write and maintain that code, but nothing on the scale as what is being replaced. You are right, a 'learn how to code' program in a school won't benefit the many. There needs to be a 'this is critical thinking' program along with 'this is what is currently happening' plus 'this is the trend' program in our schools. With that, the child should be able to use their new critical thinking skill to determine what is dead end career within their lifetime and what skill will provide a lifetime of employment. Our education system's failure is to (1) not provide them the necessary critical thinking skills and (2) deluded them about the real job market and the education required. Tell me again why everyone needs a college degree to do paperwork and the most routine of office duties?
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:52AM (1 child)
Nor do you need a college degree to learn mathematics or computer science at a very high level. This is the 21st century, where people have access to massive amounts of high quality information that they could use to educate themselves, yet our view of education comes from the metaphorical dark ages. Employers require degrees even when it's not necessary just so they can filter out candidates more easily and avoid doing any actual work, which is the same reason why they utilize ridiculous personality tests ('I fear you're too introverted to be a team player, Bob.'). Then they turn around and complain about a lack of talent. You end up with losers who have a myriad of degrees and yet can't even write a simple fizzbuzz program.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @06:36AM
Just gonna point out that access to that information doesn't make learning it easy. Learning modalities matter. Some people learn MUCH better with a teacher, or doing problems, or so on - generally (geeeenerally) the more active, the better.
But yeah degree inflation and pumping out incompetent bachelors for CS and engineering indicate MAJOR problems coming down the line. The engineering fresh grads really, really scare me.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Friday December 15 2017, @05:30AM (3 children)
Except for fairly simple cases, no software will be replacing lawyers anytime soon.
Any non-trivial case involves:
If an algorithm could apply the law, it would not only replace lawyers but also judges, juries, appellate judges and the Supreme Court at the same time. It would simply adjudicate in favor of one party or the other, or dictate a sentence, which could not be appealed as it would be clearly superior in judgment to any human being and flawless. And at any rate, you would be appealing a computer-generated sentence to another computer, probably running Windows ;-)
So lawyers, like cockroaches, are here to stay.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @06:40AM (1 child)
Really strongly disagree with your examples:
- in some cases, plea bargaining
Negotiations are a particularly strong algorithmic suit. Very heavily studied in the abstract.
- appealing to human emotions (i.e. juries) and explaining or discrediting (to the client’s advantage) expert testimony
Jury trials are a tiny minority. Contextualizing to prove/disprove is a challenge but well within Watson at present.
- in some cases, the intent (mens rea) of the person is crucial to the case and if it is hard for humans, it will be near impossible for a computer to determine the intent of a human
Intent is literally impossible to know, but we can infer. But indeed, cases involving intent will be later to fall.
- interpretation of the law and the applicability (or not) or precedents or case-law to each particular incident, looking for loop-holes, mitigating circumstances or other aspects to advance a claim. In other words, applying human experience and judgment to each case.
Oh man... if you think this isn't an area in which "expert systems" are making huge strides, well, you'll be strode past, and sooner or later you'll notice.
(Score: 2) by t-3 on Friday December 15 2017, @09:21PM
Catch a case that could land you in prison then tell me you want a computer to be your lawyer. I'll go with the slick talker every time, until we replace judges with computers, then I'll take an EMP.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @06:45AM
Progress is being made...
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/03/19/technology/lawyers-artificial-intelligence.html [nytimes.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Interesting) by fliptop on Friday December 15 2017, @02:54AM (4 children)
I'll add to that list. I doubt a robot will be able to change a tire or diagnose and repair a chassis noise. Being a mechanic doesn't (always) require any special schooling or certification. The ones I know make between $13 and $16 an hour and typically work 50 hours a week. Those jobs aren't going anywhere soon, unless people stop driving cars.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Unixnut on Friday December 15 2017, @10:45AM
But cars are becoming locked down "black boxes" not unlike mobile phones are.
30 years ago cars were mostly mechanical, and much simpler, so it was not hard to do mechanical work on them if you were not the OEM. Even ignoring people who spent their weekends tinkering with the car, people not into that would easily find a local independent garage to do work on them.
However as cars get more electrics, more computerised and digitised, you are finding the barriers to investment getting bigger. In the 90s it was still ok (but you had to know the secret button combos to enable diagnostic mode, which, if you didn't have the internet, was hard to find out), in the 00's you started needing to buy $5000 "diagnostic computers" (which were basically XP tablets with the company software reinstalled), and now, in 2017, you need always on connected to the manufaturer machines if you want to do diagnostics.
To put it into perspective, if you want to diagnose a fault with a certain German make, you have to buy their "Diagnostic computer" for around $2000, however after that, you have to pay yearly licences for things like "Transmission diagnostic", "Airbag diagnostics", "Engine diagnostics", etc... If you wanted to be able to diagnose any fault on the car, you would have to spend around $20,000 a year.
That is ok for a big garage who can absorb the cost over a large number of cars per year (especially if they specialise in that manufacturer), but a small independent garage is unlikely to afford it, let alone an individual paying for it just to work on their car. And it gets worse, with licensing, the OEM can place all kinds of demands and restrictions, with all the extra costs involved. So individuals and independents get locked out.
There is a trend slowly to make cars DRMed black boxes, and it will only get worse as cars start getting "AI" or self driving capability. OEMs want this because they found they can make a lot more money that way. Not unlike inkjet printer manufacturers, the big money is in the DRM cartridges. That is why servicing costs for new cars get more and more expensive (but car owners rant at "rip off garages" rather than realising it is the manufacturers increasing servicing costs)
I fully expect cars one day to be glued together pods, which are rented by the trip or leased for a set period, then returned for recycling or repair any massive automated service station. People interested in just getting from A to B would not have a need for car ownership (you see it more and more in cities, as "millenials" don't bother getting cars or driving licences). There will not be much demand for human mechanics, and they won't be able to do much on the cars anyway. There will most likely be a sizable "Classic car" minority, but they will most likely work on their own cars, or have a few specialist garages to cater to their needs.
So I don't see much of a future for intrepid car mechanics (unless they are good enough to be hired into one of the future big repair stations, doing whatever the robots can't, or make it as classic car mechanics/restorers). Quite frankly I think there will be more of a future for plumbers. No matter what happens in the future, humans will still need piped water and sewage systems, and those require going to the premises, interacting with humans, and dealing with a range of systems from victorian era plumbling to the latest eco-solar-combined-heat-magic-whizz-bang systems.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @11:22AM (2 children)
They won't go away entirely, but they will largely go away because electric cars require much less maintenance than internal combustion engines.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Friday December 15 2017, @01:47PM (1 child)
Perhaps, but chassis parts will remain mostly as they are today. These are the parts that need much more attention in terms of maintenance. The parts I'm speaking about here include: tires, brakes, wheel bearings, tie rods, ball joints, control arms, bushings, axles, wheel studs, lug nuts, and any ABS parts like sensors and tone rings. Wheel alignments too.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @09:27PM
And in any cold climate, salt corrosion and rust will degrade electrical connections and wire casings. Have fun getting your whole car torn apart looking for the bad ground, then replacing all the chips that got fried. Not to mention, electrical failures will be catastrophic as less and less mechanical control is available to the driver.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @12:07PM
Supply and demand loosely dictates the value of any career. Being a plumber, electrician, or mechanic is great until there are five hundred of them in two blocks (in the city) or within three miles (in a suburb). Likewise, in my particular suburbs owning a pizza shop, sandwich shop, or coffee shop was probably a good idea twenty years ago but today I can't throw a rock now without hitting one. They pop up and fold all of the time.
If my kids want to be plumbers I won't stop them, I am sure it's still better than getting a job in retail or fast food or hotel cleaning. But I suspect a good plumber in 2030 won't make the same living relative to inflation that a good plumber in 1990 did.
I'm trying to push my kids into code and robotics. I'm a moderately skilled developer, I've worked at a lot of things in my almost twenty years in the field. But aside from being able to swap parts in a PC I know zip about robotics, signals, and electrical motors. Learning it is on my to-do list, but my top free time priority is keeping active on Github so that employers don't overlook me because of the gray hair.
(Score: 2, Troll) by crafoo on Friday December 15 2017, @12:08AM (1 child)
Predicting and impending employment apocalypse? Better keep importing low-skill labor that doesn't want to integrate into the existing culture.
Ironically, "coding" is far from a protected field. Specifying what task needs to get done and what datasets need to be operated on will be possible from people in every field, untrained in "computer science". AI systems will work out the rest of the mundane details.
The only question left to answer is why the arbitrary and odd push for "everyone has to code" in classrooms? Strange.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday December 15 2017, @01:24PM
> Specifying what task needs to get done and what datasets need to be operated on will be possible from people in every field
Ever seen someone design a database who doesn't know what they are doing? Someone untrained in concepts like "many-to-one", "one-to-many", "array", "set", "hash table", etc etc? This is what computer science (should) teach folks. I agree some of the rest is just syntax. Optimisation is probably hard to do automagically without very good ability to drive optimisation routines (which requires coding for foreseeable future).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @12:18AM (61 children)
Capital Intensification. As capitalism develops, competition forces capitalists to cut labor costs. Early adopters gain some comparative advantage, but eventually a fair market in plant and machinery nullifies that, and eventually profit margins will be reduced to nothing. And worse, Capitalism's one bug that is a feature is that it tends to overproduce, leading to an economic downturn, and depressions. Once the entire demand side of what was the working class is eliminated, either capitalism will fail and be replaced, or capitalists will have to find some way to supply the masses with the means to create an effective demand. But that is just my reading.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by black6host on Friday December 15 2017, @01:42AM
I'm afraid that the curse, "May you live in interesting times", will be lived by my 9 year old.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @01:44AM (35 children)
Smart parasites never kill their hosts. It's not an argument for Marxism but an argument against globalism.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @02:09AM (34 children)
Capitalists are among the stupidest of parasites. Look at the Kock Bros, the Republican Party, Pharma Bro and Papa John's! You never heard of economic depressions in feudalism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @02:26AM (5 children)
Interesting, but... slightly inaccurate [wikipedia.org].
Keep in mind they also had big plagues [wikipedia.org] to... mmm... trim down their 99-percenters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @05:52AM (4 children)
Oh, yeah, plagues, barbarian hordes, famines, years with no summer, and worse. All external causes, not endemic to the mode of production itself. In fact, that what was probably the greatest weakness of the mode of production. Under-production. That, and under-investment. And a lack of innovation. Those, and having to pay 10% to a Lord for protection, and another 10% to a Church, for the same thing. So what did bring about an end to the Feudal mode of production, and why do the Dark Enlightenment alt-night types want to go back there?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @06:29AM (2 children)
Steam
Nothing rational, they just like coal.
De gustibus, magister, de gustibus... can't dispute them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @06:33AM (1 child)
Started collapsing well before steam did anything useful.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @06:38AM
Of course, the collapse of Feudalism started much early.
I'd say it started about the moment it was born, they just didn't know it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @05:57PM
The black plague and the sudden collapse of the supply of labor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday December 15 2017, @02:41AM (13 children)
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.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:13AM (2 children)
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)
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
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)
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)
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)
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
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]
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)
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)
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)
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
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)
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
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
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @05:47AM (8 children)
The alternative to capitalism killed over 100 million people in the 20th century.
Now you can say that that wasn't "true communism" or "true socialism", but so what? If it is what we actually get when somebody claims to be implementing communism or socialism, why should we try again? Every attempt has caused lots of death.
Communism nearly doomed the Mayflower Pilgrims. They rejected capitalism for the first couple years. They instead shared the farming, the harvest, and even stuff like laundry duty. Some people showed up late to work and were lazy. That encouraged the others to do likewise, because why work hard to support the lazy? There was little harvest. Each winter, a large portion of the population died. They were soon facing what looked like the final year, given the amount of death occurring. Despite the previous religious objections to capitalism, the governor decided to try it. That year, people worked. Mothers brought their kids out to work; previously getting a woman to farm was near impossible. The resulting harvest was plentiful. Thanksgiving is really about celebrating the triumph of capitalism over communism many centuries ago.
Today, all around the world, people are still dying from communism and socialism. They die of poverty. They die when the government steps in to enforce communism. Desiring more of this is really stupid... unless you are just evil.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 15 2017, @06:02AM
Fuck you, you libertariantard! I got mine, and you can't have it! So go away! There is nothing for you here, you scavenger!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday December 15 2017, @06:37AM (5 children)
How many millions has capitalism killed? Remember to include the results of the military industrial complex and it's perpetual wars.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:47AM (4 children)
At least an order of magnitude less, and that's including the Congo Free State. Wars aren't particularly perpetual. There's been no wars between developed world countries since the Second World War, for example.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:14PM (3 children)
Never mind, between them Putin and Trump will change all that. You'll have your war sooner rather than later.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 16 2017, @02:09PM (2 children)
If there has ever been a US President who would pull a "Wag the Dog" move, it's Trump. It's crucial that he have little to no authority to just start a war on a whim. Other parts of our government have been made aware of this problem and it seems are actually doing something about it.
Putin strikes me as steadier and smarter than Trump. He's been in power for near 20 years now and has not turned to the nukes. As to the fighting in the Ukraine, the mainstream media takes a simplistic view that Putin's Russia is the evil aggressor, but other information paints a much murkier picture.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:31PM
That's not their job to control a sitting president. It's your job. Autonomy of the shadowy bits of government are far more likely to work against you than for you. Becoming ruled by the parts of government that are not accountable to you is not an improvement. They can start wars as well (and probably have started a number of them since the end of the Second World War).
Funny how you just had to say that about the Ukraine. The picture isn't "murkier". Russia wanted its sea port at Sevastopol so it took the Crimea. Evil aggressor status confirmed. As usual with this crap, people give actual warmongers a free pass. Unfortunately, that doesn't make Trump want to start a distracting war any less, does it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 17 2017, @02:20AM
You're reading something into Trump that just isn't there. He is mildly anti-war. I get it, you hate him for his values and his mannerisms, but he isn't a warmonger.
Our previous president bombed at least 8 countries, and his secretary of state was ordering drone strikes from her insecure Blackberry. She then started a tiff with Russia, the country with more nukes than any other. Now THAT is playing with fire. We were headed to World War III with Hillary.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday December 15 2017, @08:37PM
The? Why do you think there can only be one?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @06:28AM (4 children)
Why would you? No one was keeping track of them and hence, they are invisible. You'd just read about the causes and consequences. Things like wars, famines, disease, breakdown in social order, etc. Those get into the history books.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:02AM (3 children)
There was very little trade, and hence no economy?
Robots, khallow! It's all about the robots!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @04:26PM (2 children)
If trade exists, so does economy. Little economy is not the same as no economy. Plus, a big portion of the economy was through non-voluntary things like taxes and tithes rather than through voluntary things like trade.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:07PM (1 child)
Luxury goods, perfumes, jewelry, weapons, sort of like the economy in yachts today.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @08:25PM
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday December 15 2017, @02:19AM (1 child)
If that would be the only reason.
1970 - high oil prices causes recession
2017 - low oil prices causes stockmarket drops
Why?
- 1970 - the majority of profits are production driven
- 2017 - the majority of profits are driven by market speculations (supported by big finance?) - lower prices, lower profit margin; it doesn't matter if it's production or hairdressing or capital cost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday December 15 2017, @08:45PM
A lot of the problems triggered by the low oil prices revolved around the expense of oil extraction. When it costs close to a hundred dollars to extract a barrel of oil from the tar sands/shale and suddenly oil is trading for less then $50 a barrel, profit margins drop into the negatives.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 15 2017, @03:11AM (7 children)
Marx was a natural-born critic. That means that he's right when he's dumping on something but for the love of Cthulhu DON'T take his advice about what would be better.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @06:10AM (6 children)
Marx never suggested an alternative, he only pointed out the natural tendencies of a Capitalist system. One thing most people seem not to grok is that tech is capital, knowledge and collective expertise is capital. The more workers learn to cooperate, because of the necessary complexity of modern production, the less they need management, and so worker self-government is a natural, cost-effective way for industrial production to go. Parallels the bourgeouis democratic political developments that replaced feudalism. So, not to worry.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @09:40AM (4 children)
?!?!?!?
It may be several decades since I read the Marx/Engels letters, but my memory is that he was *full* of suggestions, most of which were ill-founded, as they were purely speculative and based on nothing but high ideals that assumed humans were non-competitive altruists. Maybe it was Engels who was doing all the suggestions, but in that case, Marx was egging him on and patting him on the back (burping him?) constantly.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @10:02AM (3 children)
So, never actually read any of Marx, or Engels? Trade Unionism, and a central bank, that was the spectre haunting Europe, during the time of the Communist Manifesto. American, I take it? Even if an ex-pat?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @11:44AM
Oh my goodness, it seems like both of you could use a refresher. The central driver of Marx's philosophy was his materialism. The means of production drove everything. That's why production had to be collectivized, to produce a culture that was just, where everyone was equal, and nobody owned or controlled everyone else. That liberated end state was communism, the half-way house from capitalism was socialism where the state undertook responsibility for deconstructing the control structures of capitalism, where the means of production where controlled by the few. For Marx, under communism there would be practically no more need for a polity because Man himself would have been improved by freeing the means of production from the control of the few.
In other words, he did very much have a recipe for something better and wrote about it at length. It's not for no reason that his philosophy influenced so many intellectuals and moved millions for a long time.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday December 15 2017, @04:12PM (1 child)
Given that you're the one claiming that stuff that's clearly written about at length in those letters isn't in any of Marx's works, it's you who looks like the one who's not read them.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Friday December 15 2017, @07:22PM
Perhaps a bit harsh. What I meant to say was, "possibly read, but definitely did not comprehend". How could you possibly have come to this conclusion?
(Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday December 16 2017, @01:23PM
And that might explain one of the many reasons that PHB-types don't like self-organising teams, and they prefer to manage in a command and control way. They feel threatened.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday December 15 2017, @06:43PM (2 children)
My expectation (and fear) is that they'll try to keep it alive through charity.
"We own the robots, so we get anything you want, and you get whatever scraps we so generously decide to give you!"
Likely tied to religious institutions or some other ideology factory, so they can make people jump through hoops and compete to be the most "deserving", thereby maintaining their divide and conquer strategy. That way they get to go around talking about how noble they are for helping the less fortunate, while simultaneously enslaving all of humanity.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 15 2017, @08:59PM (1 child)
People do work for more than money, and that is a part that Marx did get right when he talked about "alienation," ie. that workers in a capitalist system become divorced from the meaning in the objects they are producing, whereas making those things as artisans were previously meaningful works, expressions of their spirit and genius. As such the objects they make become meaningless and so too they become meaningless.
Take that in a case where robots are making everything and everybody lives and dies on the charity of the masters. The deep spiritual hunger for meaning Man has will still be unfed and lead to them overthrowing that system (per Marx).
"Man does not live by bread alone" sort of thing.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday December 18 2017, @02:25PM
That's part of what makes private charity as a stopgap measure so dangerous though. Firstly because it can demand work of some form as a kind of payment -- there's a pretty strong religious idea in the US at least that work is "good for the soul", so you might get something where the church gives you work in exchange for food -- sure the work could be done by robots, but inefficiency doesn't matter much when you're trading work for someone else's donations. It could even be intentionally inefficient -- some homeless advocacy group decides they won't use robot labor because robots are what's putting people out of a job, so they end up creating jobs looking after people who don't have jobs. Doesn't even have to be so well organized -- there's a lot of groups lately pushing for food gardens instead of lawns, so you could end up with wealthy robot owners setting up community gardens where the poor can work to feed each other.
Then the people who do work end up both distracted and feeling morally superior to anyone who can't or doesn't, and they'll get some small salary from some wealthy donor supported non-profit which means you could end up with people fighting over those few jobs rather than joining to topple the ownership class...along with support jobs building/repairing the robots, and maybe some jobs in entertainment and such...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday December 15 2017, @09:07PM (10 children)
For that I had the almost year old observation:
Moving on to something you wrote later in this thread
compared to when you wrote [soylentnews.org]
My response applies just as well now as it did then:
And I then quote directly twice from Das Kapital where Marx does this very thing:
and
Perhaps you should learn from these discussions, aristarchus, rather than continue to make the same mistakes again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @12:32AM (9 children)
The obvious rebuttal, my dear and fluffy khallow, is that I, unlike some others here with their "multivalent" dictionaries, do not change my position to appear to be "winning" a discussion.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:11AM (8 children)
Who would those be? I've occasionally run afoul of the English language, but I've improved since I more routinely consult dictionaries. But I have noticed that Marxists have unusual problems adhering to standard definitions. Further, the errors I brought up go well beyond mere semantics. Capital intensification is simply a matter of technology development. It's not at all particular to Capitalism. Nor is it a matter of semantics what Marx's opinion is on Capitalism versus Communism. He quite clearly shows one-sided support for the latter.
Then why are you posting now? It's certainly not to discuss anything, else you would have gone beyond half-hearted innuendo.
As for me, I have no problem with competition in debate. It sharpens the wits and gets people thinking harder. Further, that's a huge part of the Greek tradition of philosophy, with which you should be familiar. If you aren't willing to own your beliefs, then why should we care? I own my opinions even when I'm trying out a devil's advocate argument. You don't have to be that way - a lot of people aren't and that's fine.
But when people make a strong claim and then post passive aggressive nonsense when challenged? You're a grown up, you should act like it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @04:58AM (7 children)
And I, in turn, cannot help by notice that you have said nothing other than what you said before: that you disagree. Your objections are noted, but since you drag in quotes that were meant to establish quite another point (Marx as moralizer, I believe it was? Those repugnant, deplorable capitalists!!), I see no reason to address them here. Robots, khallow, it's all about the robots! And in Slavic Languages, the word for "slave" is
"otrok" or "раб" or "рабыня". See?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @05:07AM (6 children)
Even if that were true, and it's not, you don't even go that far.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:18AM (5 children)
khallow! You slippery eel in debate! (There is a Sanskrit word for this.) Do you, or do you not, agree that the increasing automation of industrial production under a capitalist system will provoke a crisis of demand for the products of such automation? Simple question, answer yes, or no. We will wait.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:26AM (4 children)
I don't agree. Some nuance needs to be made here. A temporary issue, which we could choose to call a crisis, does indeed happen in that more of such products are produced resulting in a drop in price and a modest amount of turmoil in the industry sector in question. Then demand increases as people figure how what to do with the greater supply of the products and life goes on.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday December 16 2017, @06:57AM (3 children)
You are a fool, khallow. What are the basic principles of economics, as a social science? Yes, the study of production. But then you say something as ignorant as this!
Can you not read, khallow? Are your ideological blinders on so tight that you are unable to understand those who constern you? This is not a temporary issue, according to Marx, it is a systemic and endemic feature of capitalist economics, one beloved by bone-headed conservative economists, because they only see that competition (theoretical, ceterus paribus) will lower costs of production, and thus prices, and thus social value. But we are considering only one part of that, the distribution of effective demand (money, wages) that supports the entire system. So when you say:
Are you deaf, khallow? Do you even know what discussion thread on SoylentNews you are in? Is your location app from the mothership working? People figure out what to do with the greater supply by not buying it. Capitalists then cut back on production, to avoid losses. And then even fewer workers have ready cash to take advantage of the surplus, and so more are laid off, until some enlightened Keynsian says: Prime the ferking Pump!. That is a short-term problem, and a short-term solution. Marx is talking about something else with Capital Intensification. The greater the percentage of production that is done by capital, the less margin there is to make profit by paying the working class less than their actual contribution to the productive process. No a problem, because of the savings on labor in production. But systematically, this will in fact undermine the entire system of production and consumption, by removing wage-labor from the system. Do you understand, khallow? Of do we need to write a bot that can do your job on SoylentNews better than you do, at 1/35 of the cost?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @08:01AM (2 children)
As a science, our answers should be driven by empirical observation not 19th Century feelz.
Doesn't matter. What matters is what sort of issue it is, according to reality. And according to reality, oversupply is indeed a temporary thing. We have numerous examples throughout the industrial age where something was temporarily in excessive production and then people figured out what to do with the excess.
Such as agricultural products, steel, electricity, art, etc? Didn't happen that way. It's a cool story, bro, but reality isn't following the script. Among other things, rather than having massive levels of unemployment, we're presently about 5% [stlouisfed.org] of the population shy of the highest employment rate in the US ever. Wouldn't have happened that way, if your story was true.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Saturday December 16 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
Finally someone mentions the industrial age. Fun though that discussion about medieval serfdom was, I was thinking the Industrial Revolution is a better parallel to circumstances today. Medieval times was very much "it's good to be the king", a member of the nobility, while terrible for everyone else, the 99%.
In the early 19th century, people could be independent farmers, scratching a living from the land. They were very self sufficient. Grew their own food, even made their own clothes, aka homespun. But wow, was homespun a massive labor sink. Grow your own flax or cotton crop, then women spent hours and hours at the spinning wheels to turn the plant fibers into individual threads, which were then woven into usable bolts of cloth with more hours of labor at a hand loom. The Industrial Revolution ended all that. Mechanized clothing manufacturing and a whole lot of other things. Took a while longer to replace the horse, but that eventually happened too.
Formerly independent farmers were forced into taking factory jobs and worked mercilessly. Had stuff like 12 hour work days 6 or even all 7 days of the week. Manufacturing upended the economy, driving prices down on things the farmers could produce. The ones who tried to stay on the farm were then unable to produce enough to afford the services and goods they still needed, and to pay taxes and raise a family.
More wealth was being produced than ever before, but the lion's share was going straight into the pockets of a few wealthy industrialists. Our capitalist system doesn't have really any policies at all to rein in the irresponsible and destructive greed, arrogance, and contempt of the super rich. Workers were driven to organize themselves into unions and go on strikes. It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to get these foolish owners to see that it wasn't good for anyone, even them, to have such wealth inequality, and to acknowledge that 40 hours was about the maximum a work week should be. The 40 hour work week is backed by scientific studies that show that workers pushed to work longer hours than that are so much less productive that they accomplish less than if they'd worked only 40 hours. But now we seem to have a new generation of super rich who don't know that and if they do hear about it, don't believe it.
The robot apocalypse could easily go the same way as the Industrial Revolution. Just when we need policies to keep society and civil norms from being shredded, the greedy super rich are hell bent on tearing apart everything they see as an "unfair" restriction on their ability to ruthlessly exploit the masses, if not outright liquidate them.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday December 16 2017, @05:27PM
In other words, as labor became more valuable, workers had more power to get the things they wanted from employers. Perhaps we should think about ways to make labor more valuable rather than less? It's working for the rest of the world.
Currently, it is. The majority of people throughout the world are becoming more prosperous, knowledgeable, and healthier, just like in the industrial revolution. But that isn't the narrative you wish to spin, eh?