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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46096626
In the fiscal year 2016/7 up to March, 250 children from elementary to high school age were recorded as having taken their own lives. The number is five more than last year, and the highest it has been since 1986.
Concerns the children had reported included family problems, worrying about their futures and bullying. But schools said the reasons behind about 140 of the deaths are unknown as the students did not leave a note. Most of those who took their lives were of high school age, where Japanese students typically study until they are aged 18.
[...] Overall suicides across Japan fell to about 21,000 in 2017, police say, down from a peak of about 34,500 in 2003.
[...] "The number of suicides of students have stayed high, and that is an alarming issue which should be tackled," education ministry official Noriaki Kitazaki said as the latest figures were released.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 07 2018, @10:34PM (2 children)
I agree, and the gap between that and what we have now constitutes the vast untapped human potential in the world that is being squandered by a system set up to enrich a very few at the expense of all, even those few themselves.
Even most of us who are blessed to live in the first world rely upon countless others doing grinding, dirty, dangerous, damaging work to enable our standard of living. It's a hierarchy of suck.
But how do we get that guy there to go unclog the sewer main for those people over there without a system of remuneration we have now? Robots? AI? If you were an AI, you'd have even less reason to go unclog the sewer mains for a bunch of dumb dirty humans. If our replacement system to maximize happiness doesn't solve basic questions like those, all other concerns that take those things for granted will quickly go by the wayside. That is, nobody's gonna care much about their iPhones if their street is a cesspool.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday November 07 2018, @11:56PM
I'm not sure that the two systems have to be mutually exclusive. For instance, some years I enjoy putting up drywall and cutting boards. Some years I enjoy database work. Some years I enjoy putting together robots. With that said, if no one feels like diving in sewage to clear a blockage [apnews.com], that doesn't help anyone. If I were in a specific job, I'd of course be required to do that job if I said I'd do it.
I imagine that if over time people were able to do different jobs without losing all of their pay, that would foster something like this. I guess in the world today, that would be like having a merry-go-round job with people at Microsoft, Home Depot, and tutoring at the local University. I suppose one could say that this is called "a student." I digress. To continue to get paid the same amount across these so to make it financially feasible, would require an entire cultural change. Some sort of job-sharing agreement between people and companies that feel like participating would be the idea.
It is an intriguing thought.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 08 2018, @04:03PM
Remuneration doesn't have to be money. It could simply be earning the respect of the people who you helped, who are more likely to help you in return. Cory Doctrow's "Whuffie" [wikipedia.org], essentially. People do this already to some extent -- I regularly see "Hey, how do I write a program to do [x]" posted to Facebook, then within twenty minutes three different people post the scripts they wrote to do exactly that with three different methods. Rarely do these people demand or anticipate any real payment, they just want to impress with their speed and skill. (YMMV based on gender and appearance...) Of course, I also see artists complain about the exact same thing, about being "expected" to do design work for free. I think it depends on financial security -- decent coders tend to have no problem finding steady work to support themselves, and once you don't have to worry about money then you're more willing to work for other reasons.
Of course, even without some kind of currency alternative...if someone living in the affected neighborhood knows a thing or two about plumbing, then they've certainly got plenty of incentive to go fix the broken sewer main.
We see that sometimes already, particularly with potholes...people get fed up waiting for the city and they go patch it themselves. And then the city sometimes charges them with vandalism...they don't WANT any random person going to "fix" the problem, because they want to ensure that the work meets their quality specs. Which kinda sucks...but they've got a valid point too. If you want to rip up and recycle that asphalt someday, you can't have any random person throwing in any random material that they happen to have laying around...or they could even make the situation worse if the material they use doesn't have the same thermal expansion properties as the original pavement.
The problem is...as technology advances, there's more and more to know about almost every field of work. But there's a limit to what one person can know and understand. You can be a bit of a "jack of all trades" when it comes to repairing your own home, but you still probably don't have the requisite knowledge -- or equipment -- to repair a municipal water main. Some tasks just kinda need an expert. AI can help, but it's not necessarily going to fix the issue unless the AI robot is the one doing the repairs (at which point the whole concept of work becomes kinda obsolete). We all know how many people simply refuse to read the manual or ask for help...AI can't help those who ignore its advice.
I really do agree with you in theory, I think the world would be a much better place if people weren't so damn afraid to go out and fix the problems they see by themselves...but I can also easily see the ways in which that could go very wrong. Standards are important, and they require enforcement mechanisms. Expertise is important too, and "you don't know what you don't know". Even with the best intentions you can make the problem worse by missing some critical detail. Could we build some kind of repair corps that provides the requisite oversight? Or maybe we can specially license certain industry professionals to do certain kinds of repairs on their own if they choose to do so? That would at least be a start...