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.
Related Stories
Tyler Cowen reviews Geoff Calvin's new book Humans are Underrated in an article at the Washington Post:
"Humans Are Underrated" serves up two different books in one, each interesting in its own right. The first offers an overview of recent developments in smart software and artificial intelligence. The reader learns about the bright future of driverless cars; IBM's Watson and its skills at "Jeopardy" and medical diagnosis; and the software of Narrative Science, which can write up stories and, in some cases, cover events as well as a human journalist. The overall message is a sobering one: The machines are now able to copy or even improve on a lot of human skills, and thus they are encroaching on jobs. We won't all have to join the bread line, but not everyone will prosper in this new world. That material is well argued, and those stories are becoming increasingly familiar ground.
The second and more original message is a take on which human abilities will remain important in light of growing computer efficacy. In a nutshell, those abilities are empathy, interpersonal skills and who we are rather than what we do. This is ultimately a book about how human beings can make a difference and how that capability will never go away. It's both a description of the likely future and a prescription for how you or your children will be able to stand out in the world to come.
Here is another bit from the review:
My favorite parts of the book are about the military, an area where most other popular authors on automation and smart software have hesitated to tread. In this book you can read about how much of America's military prowess comes from superior human performance and not just from technology. Future gains will result from how combat participants are trained, motivated, and taught to work together and trust each other, and from better after-action performance reviews. Militaries are inevitably hierarchical, but when they process and admit their mistakes, they can become rapidly more efficient.
Coupland is talking backstage at Konica Minolta's Spotlight Live event on the future of work in Berlin this week where he was a star speaker. He says the collapse of the idea of a job for life means his generation, Generation X, and later ones think very differently about work than those born earlier. "They don't perceive [a job] as being a guarantee of long-term security – that's the profound difference, he says. "There was a point when the idea of the job for life disintegrated. Now no one has any expectation of lifetime employment."
Work as we know it is coming to an end, he told the audience in Berlin, as cloud-based technologies and ever-faster download speeds are making the office obsolete. Our working days are becoming interspersed with leisure and home activities. We will need to learn to adapt to a freeform schedule, which will present a psychological challenge to those who crave structure. But Coupland believes we should not mourn the loss of the traditional office routine.
"The nine to five is barbaric. I really believe that. I think one day we will look back at nine-to-five employment in a similar way to how we see child labour in the 19th century," he says. "The future will not have the nine till five. Instead, the whole day will be interspersed with other parts of your life. Scheduling will become freeform."
Nine-to-five sounds great to people whose employers expect them to work 80-hour weeks...
https://www.hpcwire.com/2017/06/29/ai-end-game-automation-work/
This week, we're reporting on a startling, scholarly white paper recently issued by researchers from Yale, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and the AI Impacts think tank that adumbrates the AI world to come.
The white paper – "When Will AI Exceed Human Performance?", based on a global survey of 352 AI experts – reinforces the truism that technology is always at a primitive stage. Impressive as current Big Data and machine learning innovations are, they are embryonic compared with Advanced AI in the decades to come.
High-Level Machine Intelligence (HLMI) will transform the life we know. According to study, it's not just conceivable but likely that all human work will be automated within 120 years, many specific jobs much sooner.
[...] The study asked respondents to forecast automation milestones for 32 tasks and occupations, 20 of which, they predict, will happen within 10 years. Some of the more interesting findings: language translator: seven years: retail salesperson: 12 years; writing a New York Times bestseller and performing surgery: approximately 35 years; conducting math research: 45 years.
The researchers point to two watersheds in AI revolution that will have profound impact. The first is the attainment of HLMI, "achieved when unaided machines can accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers."
The researchers reported that the "aggregate forecast" gave a 50 percent chance for HLMI to occur within 45 years (and a 10 percent chance within eight years). Interestingly, respondents from Asia are more sanguine about the HLMI timeframe than those from other regions – Asian respondents expect HLMI within about 30 years, whereas North Americans expect it in 75 years.
AI research will come under the power of HLMI within 90 years, and this in turn could contribute to the second major watershed, what the AI community calls an "intelligence explosion." This is defined as AI performing "vastly better than humans in all tasks," a rapid acceleration in AI machine capabilities.
Silicon Valley celebrates artificial intelligence and robotics as fields that have the power to improve people's lives, through inventions like driverless cars and robot carers for the elderly.
That message isn't getting through to the rest of the country, where more than 70% of Americans express wariness or concern about a world where machines perform many of the tasks done by humans, according to Pew Research.
The findings have wide-reaching implications for technology companies working in these fields and indicates the need for greater public hand-holding.
"Ordinary Americans are very wary and concerned about the growing trend in automation and place a lot of value in human decision-making," said Aaron Smith, the author of the research, which surveyed more than 4,000 US adults. "They are not incredibly excited about machines taking over those responsibilities."
Once robots are perfected the 99% can be eliminated so they stop bumming the 1% out.
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...
Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Jacque Fresco spent decades building a life-sized model of his ideal city. The central idea? If we want the Western world to overcome war, avarice, and poverty, all we need to do is redesign the culture.
[...] This civilization would be created through "sociocyberneering," a radical form of social engineering where automation and technology would bring about "a way of life worthy of man." 171391-02-223
Throughout the interview, Fresco brandished full-color sketches of the future: white domes perched on the surface of the ocean and arranged in concentric circles so as to resemble the structure of an atom. Serving as the city's nucleus was a central computer, which would monitor the ecology of the region—measuring crop yields in farmland, controlling irrigation, and overseeing hydroelectric power grids. Expanding outward were civic centers, museums, and universities, all of which would operate like public libraries in that any cultural artifact would be available for temporary loan. The next largest ring of the city consisted of a residential area, where denizens would dwell amid opulent gardens and manicured parks, in built-to-suit developments. These elliptical abodes would contain every amenity imaginable (at one point, Fresco predicts the invention of entertainment software that sounds breathtakingly similar to Netflix). The city's enclosure—the crust of the circle—would house a massive recycling center to which all trash would be ferried via underground conveyor belts. Once there, automated machines would sort the refuse for proper salvaging.
Fresco was gruff and humorless throughout the interview, wholly immune to King's attempts at playful banter. At one point, he pronounced, "Sociocyberneering is an organization that is probably the boldest organization ever conceived of, and we're undertaking the most ambitious project in the history of mankind."
Source: https://psmag.com/magazine/waiting-for-fresco-social-engineering-technology
Robot growing pains: Two U.S. factories show tensions of going digital
President Donald Trump has put bringing manufacturing jobs back to the United States at the center of his economic and trade agenda. But when jobs actually come - as they have here in southern Indiana - many factory workers are not prepared for them, and employers are having trouble hiring people with the needed skills.
U.S. manufacturing job openings stand near a 15 year high and factories are hiring workers at the fastest clip since 2014, with many employers saying the hardest-to-fill jobs are those that involve technical skills that command top pay.
In 2000, over half of U.S. manufacturing workers had only high school degrees or less, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Today, 57 percent of manufacturing workers have technical school training, some college or full college degrees, and nearly a third of workers have bachelors or advanced degrees, up from 22 percent in 2000.
Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the digitalization sweeping the economy is forcing employers to hunt for a different mix of workers - and pay more in some cases for workers with technical skills. A new study by Muro found those with the highest digital skills saw average wage growth of 2 percent a year since 2010, while wages for those with medium skills grew by 1.4 percent and those at the bottom by 1.6 percent.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:38AM
A kind man. A merciful man. The type of man who would smile even at the sow he's violating. Such a man discarded the woman's corpse out of his truck window as he was driving by a house, as though what he was doing was no different from a minor act of littering. Indeed, there is no difference.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by crafoo on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:49AM (47 children)
Middle class still existing by the end of 2020? I think not. A select collection of Masters and a servant class, conveniently divided and expertly played against each other. The systems used to mislead and control us are being automated as we speak. It turns out enough people can be fooled reliably by insidious, automated systems to effectively be convinced to advocate against their own best interests and to divide and conqueror any feeble resistance.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:20AM (7 children)
Right now the middle class is being systematically drained through a combination of real inflation in double digits, near zero returns on savings, and engineered investment markets.
The question is what happens when the middle class run out of funds to drain.
Right now the powers that be are happy to print money (because inflation helps their cause) and inject it in to the lower tiers, as it bubbles up quickly enough to the top and gets stored by the people making the decisions that they are in effect inflation proof. How long that can continue will be interesting.
The problem comes when the system starts to positively feedback, and normal work cannot sustain peoples position in society (and by people, I mean the 90% that fill its wide-band middle section, the silent masses).
There is little doubt that some of the people at the top are trying like hell to work out a plan for stability, but does that entail a positive society, or a military junta.. only time will tell.
What is obvious right now is there is a LOT of work being done to turn the masses to blame themselves (by creating rather stupid but widely accepted 'issues' to separate the middle classes into tribes) rather than looking at those pulling the strings.
IMHO the single most important steps right now are to actively push back against political corruption, and tribalism. Ignoring the false separation of 'left' versus 'right', and instead focusing on pushing back against the steady push by governments towards totalitarian control. People who try and whip up support for 'causes' are the puppets of totalitarian control.
However, most of that is impossible, panem et circenses - the bane of 'democracy'.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:23PM (6 children)
Dont forget demographic replacement via invasion and energy in your list.
If you move the residents of Cancun to Mexico City, then they remain the same, which doesn't change much. The propaganda insists if you move the same people from Cancun to Texas, the magic dirt somehow transforms them into tanned white people in terms of low crime rate, high education, high productivity. Oddly enough a near infinite number of experiments seem to prove otherwise. Did the magic dirt of Australia turn the English into native aborigines, LOL? I live in former indian country in the USA, did magic dirt turn invading Scots and Germans into native Americans a century ago? No? Huh, how bout that...
The real world of course is not like that, and Scandinavia and various parts of euro-land already have more than 50% of their child population from invaders. Germany in 2040, for example, isn't going to be Germany from 2000 with a tan, its going to be North Syria in aspects of life including economic activity, or lack thereof. Eastern Europe at present course will remain successful and prosperous but "former NATO" in general is going to be an islamic "north north africa" in all factors of demographics. Which affects them a lot, but their total collapse also affects the rest of the world. For similar reasons the USA is unlikely to remain united under current boundaries for much longer.
Another discussion is middle class requires low cost cheap energy much more than either extreme. Which has been / is going away, so the middle class will likewise disappear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:26PM
SN is being invaded by nazis!! We gotta kill em' all or deport them back to the moon asap!
(Score: 3, Touché) by julian on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:55PM (1 child)
We now take you back to the 19th century, where an entitled and somewhat dim-witted Protestant nativist, himself a son of immigrants from England and in a land only recently stolen from its original (non-white) inhabitants, is nailing a poorly argued and printed screed to a pub bulletin board,
"New England in 1865, for example, isn't going to be New England from 1845 with more potatoes, its going to be Ireland in aspects of life including Papism, economic activity, or lack thereof."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:27PM
Are you saying we have a real vampire on SN? Or maybe its another immortal cave man like from that one movie? VLM care to explain your longevity? Are you still protestant?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:32PM (2 children)
It usually takes a couple of generations for assimilation to complete, yes. What's your point? Are you still asspained over Cheddar Man being a nice shade of cherry wood rather than "so white he gets capsaicin headaches from afternoon sunlight" or what?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:32PM (1 child)
Seriously? Does anyone non-ironically believe my great grandchildren are going to magically turn into members of the Cheyenne Native American culture? Invasions don't work like that.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:47PM
Ah, so you're worried about being genocided then. Karma's a bitch isn't it?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:35AM (5 children)
If it doesn't, some 0.1%ers will get their heads hacked off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:53AM (2 children)
No, the rich will come in guise of saviors of humanity and restorers of order as the poor slaughter each other with manufactured causes in the chaos.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:57AM (1 child)
Initially perhaps, but eventually they figure out who the enemy is and heads roll.
That's why some f the wealthy are building bunkers and safe rooms, but they forget that a few yards of concrete will solve the burial in place problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:15AM
Never underestimate the vastness of the universe and of the human stupidity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:44PM (1 child)
If the middle class is destroyed, all chance of revolution goes with them. The lower classes don't have the time, education, or resources to stop what they're doing and revolt. A middle class person has something to lose, they have free time to think, they have the education to to see solutions. Without the middle class, there is no revolution.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:16PM
this is the main reason why it has been targeted. too much like the ruling class for comfort.
(Score: 1, Troll) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:42AM (14 children)
Let us note that the middle class in the US dwindled [reason.com] in the US from 61% in 1970 to 50% in 2015. Upper class grew in absolute numbers by more than the lower class did during that time period. So anything that would destroy the middle class in two years is going to give us a lot more to worry about (like survival during a harsh nuclear winter, for example) than that.
So what? I feel that there's a large portion of humanity ill-equipped to be anything other than servants.
And it turns out you agree.
The thing I find interesting, yet again, is how people are willing to make these very negative predictions about the future, but can't get basic facts about the present right.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @09:56AM (5 children)
Now the climate change denial makes sense: Actually they know quite well that it gets hotter, but they hope it will counteract the nuclear winter, so they can't allow people to stop it!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:55PM (4 children)
You do realize that a large part of the imaginary "climate change denial" thing are lukewarmists - people who agree that there is anthropogenic global warming, but disagree that as a result we must act right now in costly and ineffective ways?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:29PM (3 children)
Not to hear the various bullshit you've spewed the last few years. On so many occasions I have pointed out that the warming trend may result in global cooling due to more clouds causing a higher albedo, but fools like you only clung tighter to the propaganda. Now that we've had a few years of dramatic evidence you want to try and come out with a more middle ground approach? Fuck off you disingenuous twat.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:29PM (2 children)
Then you haven't been listening.
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Here. [soylentnews.org]
Notice a pattern? Moving on...
Ok... so cloud cover increases, Earth cools a little, and then we reach a new equilibrium point warming than where we started with some increase in cloud cover.
Why don't you try digging up that dramatic evidence? I'll note that the Earth isn't actually cooling, so you'd be wrong already in that part of your assertions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:36PM (1 child)
Oh good, glad I'm wrong about you. Must have been all your conspiracy level pushback that gave me the wrong impression.
As apparent here your basic grasp of scientific deduction is still shaky, should've taken more general-ed and science courses. If cloud cover increases enough to plummet temperatures then we could end up with massive snowfall. Snow is quite reflective, so enough snowfall and you no longer need cloud cover to keep the albedo up and you can get a runaway snowball earth. Perhaps we'd just reach an equilibrium and not go to either hot/cold extreme, perhaps not.
If you want to see the dramatic evidence just look up weather patterns around the globe, the average global temp increase, etc.
Oh, I wasn't gonna nitpick but oh well. All your posts are from the last year, with 2014 being the earliest but "Ok, where's the demonstration? Sure, I grant that global warming could be a really serious problem. But I'd expect actual evidence of this problem to be out there, not merely the usual assortment of talk and confirmation bias gimmicks." So you understood the potential for a problem but at that point you were still in the process of coming to grips with it. Did a few years really give you the data you needed? Or was that merely the time it took your brain to work past the conservative targeted propaganda?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:29AM
It wouldn't because as you claimed, cloud cover would decline, if temperatures dropped. You can't have it both ways.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by therainingmonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:19PM (7 children)
You make a good point regarding the exaggeration of the rate things are changing, but
has lead to some pretty nasty societies, historically. Those who advocate dividing people into "better" and "worse" categories always think they'll be in the "better" class for some reason...
John Rawls' Veil of Ignorance [wikipedia.org] seems to me like a good way to think about the changes we'd like to see in society.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:51PM (6 children)
Well, yes, human nature isn't perfect.
People who would most benefit from that approach, aren't interested. Lot of people want a strong leader to think for them. Lot of people will cower before some pretty mild threats, real or imagined. A lot of people think that being a good leader is like a zero-skill job that anyone can do. That's all servant thinking. I'm not saying they will always be that way (the "classes" of crafoo). But that's the way they are now.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:35PM (3 children)
You somehow think you'd come out on top in that kind of shakeup. It's obvious as the sun. Well have I got news for you, Bobbeh: the elite see you and the poorest blackest gayest disabled-est immigrant-est women *precisely the same.* You got that? To the elite whose shoes you seem to love the taste of so much, you and here are BOTH "n*ggers."
Remember that when you're dying slowly wondering why your gods in the temple of Mammon betrayed you. You are a consumable item to them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:06AM (2 children)
Human nature is not a "shakeup".
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 15 2018, @03:10AM (1 child)
Oh, but the application of bare, bestial human nature to this fragile illusionary castle in the air we refer to as civilization would be, Mr. Hallow :) And you would be just as dead as all the people you mock, if not deader, and all your classcucked ass-kissing would make not one whit of difference. You are somewhere between expendable and invisible to the elite whose boots you shine with your tongue.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @04:43AM
My point here is that there's only so much we can do even in a well-run democracy. People who choose to make themselves into uncritical followers will be a problem no matter how much theatrical angst we spit out. Going way back to the beginning of this thread, there was this complaint about two classes of people servants and masters. I pointed out that some people are going to be firmly part of the less desirable "servant" class by choice or nature. I get that abandoning democracy because humanity is imperfect is a dumb idea, but I also get that democracy is always under threat precisely because humanity is imperfect.
Good thing I never cared, isn't it? I'm not here to curry favor. I am however here to remind people that we will always have an elite and we'll always have people who need someone to tell them what to do. The present system of private businesses does a good job of matching "servants" to "masters" in a way that allows for a) fluid flow between the two categories, b) movement between businesses when one gets sick of working for a particular business, and c) fair compensation for playing the game.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:44PM (1 child)
You shouldn't use such absolutes all the time. People change and grow. Sometimes they change for the better, sometimes the worse, and sometimes they don't change much at all.
Being a "leader" doesn't make someone better or worse either. Our society a large number of roles, and good leaders are often bad engineers etc. Classist thinking is antiquated and it saddens me to see it proposed as some kind of "natural order". Social darwinists (you khallow) are the WORST!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:20AM
I don't. I only use absolutes when appropriate. Other people, such as the ones using the "servant thinking" I mentioned earlier, have more trouble with this.
I agree.
Then don't do that. Note that crafoo was actually doing the classist thinking and he doesn't pull any crap for it.
Worst at what? I'll note here that social darwinism is very different from genuine darwinism. In the latter case, adaptation is survival. If you can't adapt, you're dead. But in social darwinism, one can refuse to adapt and only have to make sacrifices, some which can be quite minor. For example, I have refused to join Facebook and my sacrifice is that I have somewhat greater difficulty in keeping in touch with friends. My lack of adaptation has not resulted in my death.
An example of servant thinking is the idea that one deserves a certain standard of living or a certain number of ponies. That's an attempt to make society fit their personal whims rather than adapt to the realities of what their societies can attain and provide.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 14 2018, @11:23AM (17 children)
I dunno about you but I'm planning on staying middle class for the rest of my life. And there's not a damned thing the rich can do to prevent it because I have valuable skills and I'm willing to use them in exchange for my keep.
Now the poor, they can prevent it. All they have to do is keep up their blaming of everyone else for their lots in life and continuing us on the path we're currently treading towards communism. It won't harm the very rich because corruption absolutely thrives under communism but it will utterly destroy the middle class.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:46PM (14 children)
Ah. yeah... "the poor"...
Even if they crawl out of their misery and learn a (some even will learn your) valuable skill they will cost you (part of) your keep.
Seems to have something to do with supply and demand...
Even TMB just can't seem to get a break these days :-)
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:30PM
I'm perfectly okay with supply and demand dictating who gets paid what. If I need to increase my skills pool to continue in the lifestyle I desire, I will. Because I know clean to my bones that the world owes me nothing that I don't earn. Neither communism nor crony-capitalism allow supply and demand to rule though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:52PM (12 children)
But will they? They'll also create the need for more jobs to provide goods and services to the no longer poor. That's what happened in the developed world in the first place.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @06:18PM (11 children)
No, this developed world you mention, developed itself mainly by raping Africa. Asia and (mainly South) America lock, stock and barrel.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:34PM (10 children)
So how many Africans were raped in order to develop C, penicillin, or world-class universities?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:50PM (3 children)
"developed itself mainly"
Keep up Khollow.
The US made many advances, go science! However if you think the US empire was the result of hard work and rugged capitalism; well then you really need to educate yourself.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:26AM (2 children)
I'll just note here that the African economy is far smaller than developed world economies. For example, the GDP of Africa was $3.3 trillion in 2017 compared to California's $2.4 trillion. Basically, the economy of the entire continent is roughly a third larger than the biggest state in the US (subject of course, to the weaknesses of the GDP metric).
Sorry, but Africa's economy would be bigger, if it really were so instrumental to the rest of the world.
(Score: 1) by therainingmonkey on Thursday February 15 2018, @09:18AM (1 child)
Many of the vital resources which underpin the rest of global capitalism are extracted in Africa.
Glencore (probably the world's largest mining and mineral extraction firm) operates throughout the continent, but uses "tax avoidance" techniques or outright bribery and state capture to ensure they can do so without contributing to the countries they operate in. After laundering the value through their different arms and subsidiaries, Glencore in fact contributes to the GDP of Switzerland, not African nations.
This story is repeated time and time and time again at least since colonialism "ended" in the 1960s. It remains to be seen how Chinese firms will operate in Africa, but it looks as though they'll be just marginally better for African people; enough to be hailed as "saviours" from western exploitation while exploiting almost as hard.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @11:21AM
So what? Vital resources don't magically turn into modern day goods and services. There's a lot of parties that have to cooperate to make it happen. My view is that the relative amounts of GDP are a fair indicator here of the relative contribution of each region. Resource extraction in particular is a notoriously low value operation. There needs to be an incredible amount of processing to turn raw ore and minerals, basic foods, and other resources into finished goods. And the poorest parts of the developing world just don't contribute that much to the process.
Even if you assume every bit of revenue generated by Glencore is tax avoided GDP that should go to Africa, you're still only looking at roughly $150 billion.
I get that this story gets repeated over and over in academia. But how about real life? How exactly is the African worker supposed to feed, clothe, better themselves, if they aren't being "exploited" by wealthy foreign employers? Remember the alternative is to be exploited by the poorer, local talent instead. At some point, you need to recognize that one needs more than just resources in order to prosper and the usual, near universal way to get there is by emulating the highly successful current developed world.
These anti-colonialist fairy tales obscure an important fact. Everyone, everywhere is doing better than they were in 1950 with the exception of some war zones. That includes Africa, Asia, and South America.
I get that Africa in particular has a tough time. That's why I think they'll be among the last to attain developed world status this century. It's very easy to forget that most of the developed world was pretty damn poor even as late as the Great Depression. The route is marked. One merely needs to follow it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ewk on Thursday February 15 2018, @02:00PM (5 children)
10? 100? 1000? Your guess is as good as anybodies, but does it matter?
It's not as if the Europeans (Brits, Dutch, Belgians etc.) were known for the their compassion while extracting the goods/wealth (from India, Indonesia and Congo respectively) that helped them to move on in the developed world.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @07:05PM (4 children)
Zero is a pretty good number too. Presumably, you had a reason for writing those words about "rape" in the first place. Or are you merely a poo-flinging monkey?
So what? Nobody assumes modern man has a surfeit of compassion (which incidentally is a good thing, because you'll never be disappointed). And resources don't automagically turn themselves into a developed world society. It's quite inaccurate to say as you did that modern societies were built "mainly by raping" the resources of the poorer parts of the world. Those resources have existed for the entirety of human occupation of Earth, but it is only recently that we could use them. Sure, it is to some degree happenstance that Europe happened to take over the technological lead after 1500 and become the exploiters of the world, but it is also infrastructure of both the physical and social sorts that they built. It most certainly was not resources!
(Score: 2) by ewk on Friday February 16 2018, @12:47PM (3 children)
"And resources don't automagically turn themselves into a developed world society."
No, but getting them cheap and using them 'back home' instead of where they originated, does.
In fact because of the vastly increased (material) wealth, the way for the other stuff like infrastructure for paved well enough.
'Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.'
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 16 2018, @02:12PM (2 children)
You miss the point of your own writing. Those resources had enormous value "back home", but not where they originated. This has been enormously valuable for regions that otherwise would remain as they've been for thousands of years.
And if things were so wonderful in the developing world in the long ago past, then why did the populations surge upwards by a huge amount over the past two centuries? Looks like increased life span and reduced infant mortality to me.
Good saying. But perhaps we should do more here than just type words without understanding? The developed world figured out how to feed itself - infrastructure. Now it figures out morality via law (which I might add really has been sorted out a while ago) - infrastructure of a different sort.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Monday February 19 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
So maybe it would have been a good idea to 'pay' properly instead of getting them cheap.
Because, then the originating location could do something with that 'pay', like figuring out how to feed itself... oh wait, that's what we call development...
As for the not understanding: It's German... maybe that will help you.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 19 2018, @07:28PM
So many unexamined assumptions in this sentence. Let's start with the scare quotes around "pay". Are we talking about paying poor people for work or not? If we aren't, then use the right words. Just be aware that my "give a shit" goes down once we stop talking about concrete things like payment for work or resources and start talking about woo that can mean whatever I feel like at the time.
Then there's the weasel wording of "pay properly". What does that even mean? Then add on that it's supposed to be a "good idea". What makes you think that's not already the case? Let us also keep in mind that a lot of the work they do isn't worth a whole lot, like the previously mentioned resource extraction else they would be getting paid more for it.
Moving on, "cheap". Africa is the go to place for cheap resource extraction and other relatively low skill, low infrastructure industries, because it is desperate and poor. It will become even more desperate and poor a region, if we make those industries too expensive to operate in Africa.
The problem here is that tribal morality has no place in economics. What barely works for a tribe of 50-100 clueless people doesn't work for 6 billion people who aren't part of the developed world, but are building that world in their own countries. Feed them then develop a sensible morality.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Saturday February 17 2018, @04:30PM (1 child)
Why pay you when they can just point a gun at your head?
"Fuck you, I'm getting mine" isn't going to work as a long-term strategy when everyone around you is kneeling in a ditch waiting for the bullet.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:12PM
I'm confused. Did I take you to raise while I was drunk and forget? Are you going to start calling me Daddy and asking to borrow the car? Well in that case, fuck off to your room. You're grounded. And no electronics for the entire week.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:27AM (1 child)
I'll believe these predictions when I finally get my jetpack that I was promised forty years ago. I want my jetpack, dang it!
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:55AM
And I want my flying car! But surely you realize, capitalism can provide none of these things. It is incapable of actual technological progress, and instead is driven by market progress. This is why Facebook is valued more highly than SoylentNews, even though SN provides more actual value than that other place.
But the worm has turned. Despite khallow, and other reprobates, the capitalist model is gone, replaced by the Web 2.0 model. Likes will eventually replace monetary units, and respect and kudos for those who can actually, as the Cable Guy says, "get 'er done!", monetary compensation will fade. In the future, khallow will be worth nothing, judging by his posts here. But, on the other hand, TMB may survive the transistion, as long as we are willing to buy him gas and beer, for his fishing boat, in exchange for his excellence in coding the SoylentNews.
Aristarchus, however, will have to rely, as always, on the charity of the few, and not the totally wacko few, like Peter Thiel or Bill Gates, to support the work of philosophy, which never ends, and in fact becomes more essential in these times of fake news and personal facts.
The second installment of "Ethics for Soylentils" is in the pipe! Look for it soon.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:14AM (12 children)
Just today, there are two articles on Soylent about inequality/inequity. The past several years, it has been a steady drumbeat.
Stepping back, it's really a purely psychological problem. By any standards you care to apply, the world is making massive strides against poverty [ourworldindata.org]. The poorest in the West would be viewed as unbelievable rich by historical standards, or by comparison with non-first-world countries. we are actually doing really, really well.
But it doesn't matter, because everyone compares themselves to their neighbor. Somehow, it doesn't matter that your standard of living is massively higher than your grandparents. What matters is that you can't afford a McMansion, and the neighbor drives a nicer car. The poor have plenty to eat, a roof over their heads, and can afford smartphones, television and internet. But they feel oppressed, because they aren't living as well as the people in the suburbs.
Humans are really weird creatures.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @08:54AM
So, Bradley, if that is your real name, we need to have a talk about your earnings while overseas. Did, perhaps, you not pay your fair share to the rest of your citizens? It is not a matter of relative poverty, so much as it is a matter of comparative affluence. And perhaps you are uppity in this regard. No doubt you think you have earned it, and perhaps you have, but the fact that you think that means that you have not. I suggest you read a couple of Works by Thorstein Veblen:
http://www.conspicuousconsumption.org/Thorstein-Veblen.html [conspicuousconsumption.org]
And then we can talk, if you can make it back to the USSR!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:31PM (2 children)
Not entirely disagreeing but don't forget permanent downward mobility in the west. Dad's uni tuition was $250/semester and the house i grew up in cost $85K for a pretty fancy house in a fancy neighborhood in the 70s and paying for medical insurance was never an issue nor was buying a new car every two years. Of course shitty Detroit products rusted out in three years so you needed a new car every two years, but the point is we could easily afford it... With a vastly better education and far higher career arc I should be living vastly better than my dad did at my age, but I'm only about the same. An average dude must be in hell when thinking about how much better off their ancestors had it. Of course it doesn't help that instead of a great quality of life we have endless world war and invaders ruining communities and massive corruption. I'd mortgage my kids future for something worth it, colonizing the solar system perhaps, but what we got for our destruction is just bullshit.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @09:11PM (1 child)
Perhaps we shouldn't have shut down our education funding, we should have kept taxing the rich instead of making it possible for multi-national corporations to pay zero tax.
Perhaps idiots like you should stop voting for morons who repeatedly show they only want to steal from the public and give to the wealthy. But oh noooo, you just blame immigrants or "invaders" as you like to call them. You are the world's most amazing sucker, seeing the problems yet being dumb enough to believe the cause is some fantastical bullshit. Or you're not dumb and just a bigot, thus your emotions override your logic.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 16 2018, @02:14PM
If you're speaking of the US, that never happened. What did happen is that the funding was squandered, such as on buildings, shiny tech, and administration.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @01:35PM (7 children)
"your standard of living is massively higher than your grandparents"
Now try that again with your parents... Not so much eh?
Where my parents (high school education) managed to raise 3 kids from one (somewhat less than average) income from my dad, my wife and I (both university education) need both our incomes (somewhat above average).
Same thing I see with the other couples in our social and physical surroundings. At the moment one income just isn't enough anymore to do anything more than just "surviving".
This standard of living you mention surely does not equate to more freely expendable income (a.k.a. choices).
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday February 14 2018, @02:58PM (6 children)
Yeah, you notices that I said "grandparents" and not "parents. In the course of history, one generation is nothing. But it's definitely true: we don't really want to compare ourselves to our parents.
I have a lot more education, and in raw currency I earn a lot more than my Dad did. Yet he managed to support our family on a single income, and we had a comfortable middle-class life. Same for my wife's parents - heck, her dad even managed to put aside a good-sized college fund for every kid. Whereas both my wife and I work, to achieve the same qualitative standard of living. We seem to be more stressed and less happy as well, though it's hard to really know how our parents felt, since we saw them through the eyes of children.
But that's not important, in the big picture. Overall, human standards of living are increasing. If this generation, in a few countries, is slightly different - that's small change compared to the overall picture. Plus, we have access to things (the Internet, for example), that our parents couldn't even dream of.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Wednesday February 14 2018, @03:19PM (1 child)
In the (really) big picture nothing is important...
We (as a species) are not going to leave this rock anyway, so this is where we (as a species) will end.
That some of us might enjoy (or not) their individual moves on the board does not make it a zero-sum game any less.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:35AM
Unless, of course, we do.
Actually, it does. It is fulfilling a want that doesn't require someone else to lose something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @04:16PM
Amazing. This is so many of my neighbors. Stressed to the max. And two trying to make what one used to make.
And if the reports on higher credit card debt are true and it is deeper debt in the south then it will hit that region like a ton of bricks
On top of that the psychological battle of work gives makes you valuable. Work gives meaning. You are worthless if you don’t work. Unemployment is bad. Only the worst would be on welfare. This is a powder keg. High debt as the robots come and the wrong story to prop up you already stressed out life. Oh and kids moving out?
There will be blood. Who knows maybe Jim Morrison was right. There’s blood in the streets it’s up to my ankles.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:07PM (1 child)
Well great! So long as we're slightly better off than the depths of the Great Depression I guess we're totally fine.
Here I was worrying about nothing!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 15 2018, @01:36AM
Is that a problem? I'm not even close to Great Depression levels myself.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 14 2018, @07:10PM
I have a lot more education, and in raw currency I earn a lot more than my Dad did.
Yep, countries that embrace the good parts of socialism can brag about that. From what I recall Bradley lives in one of those.
We're talking about the US though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Wednesday February 14 2018, @12:43PM
From TFS:
Seeing as they just blatantly ripped off one of my comments [soylentnews.org] from a few weeks ago. Except I wasn't dumb enough to put actual date ranges on my prediction.
Hell, I'm not even charging you folks US$700/hour.
Lucky you.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 14 2018, @05:48PM
They will decide it's in their best interest for governments to combat inequality at the expense of their competitors but that they themselves should be exempt. IOW, governments will be asked to guarantee that there are customers to sell to, but not that the most powerful have to contribute.
It'll be a wonderful time to finance a campaign as donations pour in to arrange the right exemptions.