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I came across this piece on Scott Adam's blog and found it quite interesting. Thought others here might find it interesting too:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender-war#_=_
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn't religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I'm not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I'm designed that way. I'm a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.
Now consider the controversy over the Syrian immigrants. The photos show mostly men of fighting age. No one cares about adult men, so a 1% chance of a hidden terrorist in the group – who might someday kill women and children – is unacceptable. I have twice blogged on the idea of siphoning out the women and small kids from the Caliphate and leaving millions of innocent adult men to suffer and die. I don't recall anyone complaining about leaving millions of innocent adult males to horrible suffering. In this country, any solution to a problem that involves killing millions of adult men is automatically on the table.
If you kill infidels, you will be rewarded with virgins in heaven. But if you kill your own leaders today – the ones holding the leash on your balls – you can have access to women tomorrow. And tomorrow is sooner.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 22 2015, @03:28AM
That's my point, just expressed in different words.
No. When I said "increasing demand for more efficient labor" I didn't mean that demand was increasing only for labor that was more efficient, but rather that labor was becoming more efficient due to automation and hence demand for that labor increased as a result of that increased efficiency.
China and FoxConn come to mind immediately.
Exactly.
Already China is looking at Africa as a fallback location for their sweatshops.
Doesn't sound like you get it. Labor isn't just about sweatshops. We left the 19th century behind a long time ago.
Not every operation can be automated yet, so FoxConn is not yet a human-free facility
Again doesn't sound like you get it. FoxConn employs over a million people. They are far away from a "human-free" facility. Foxconn's automation not only replaces human jobs, it enables Foxconn to employ more people than ever before.
Automated checkout stands are showing up in Home Depot, Safeway, and many other places - loss to theft is less than the cost of a clerk.
Once again, in countries such as the US where Home Depot, Safeway, and many other places are strongly discouraged from employing clerks.
So who will be still employed at that time?
That depends. Does your system employ people or unemploy people? Answer that question and you'll answer the question of who is employed. It's worth noting that our modern societies have just over the past couple of decades massively increased the demand for relatively unskilled, high school level education. That's most of Foxconn's workforce, for example. The reality runs counter to the myth.
A human is not good when unwavering attention to millions of details is needed 24/7.
That's never been a human job.
You have stated or implied a number of myths, such as the myth that automation reduces total employment, that the world is transitioning to highly skilled labor only, and that companies are only interested in the very cheapest labor that they can find. There's plenty of evidence that none of these claims are true. Global employment is higher and higher quality than it's ever been before. Even the lowest skilled people find better work than they would have before. Companies can't just be interested in cheap labor because otherwise why employ developed world labor at all? And how are you going to set up a high tech industry in a backwater part of the world? Where does the infrastructure they need come from? Automation has been increasing for centuries, when are we going to stop employing unskilled labor? Once again, these issues are not thought through and reality has been ignored.