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So, I came across the following video that has me concerned.
It's a long video, but worth watching (it's quite convincing). Basically, the video states that with the current trends in automation (We already have automated drivers, store clerks & food service providers that work at an equal or better level than humans), there is a large portion of jobs where we have the technology to make humans unnecessary. Currents trends are also reducing the need for humans in more professional jobs (like lawyers). Past trends show that there are no known recourses to protect large numbers of jobs from automation. The author estimated that 45 % of jobs could potentially be lost today with full-scale application of automation. The whole idea is that these people would become unemployable "through no fault of their own", since machines would be better, more reliable and (in the long term) cheaper than humans.
The author also notes that the "creative" jobs are also threatened. On this point I dont quite agree with his argument since he focuses on the craftsmanship of art, but I'm sure there's some coder out there trying to create a true artist AI.
The author ends with the question: WTF do we do to deal with this? It's a bit frustrating that he doesnt really point the discussion in any direction (or propose any solutions) so I decided to post it here and get feedback from paizonians.
So, assuming automation is as much of a threat to jobs as the author of the video indicates, what can we do? Here are a few ideas, and I would like to hear from others.
1) The evil answer: destroy all peasants. Basically, with no need for "poor" people involved in production, the rich would wipe us out. They would use the machines to provide for their own lives of excess & luxury. Unlikely, but might make a good plot for the next James Bond villain.
2) The capitalist circlejerk: Basically, the rich decide to give those below them a "fixed salary" that they would then spend on products the rich have produced by the machines. A sort of "closed cycle" capitalism.
3) BUTLERIAN JIHAD!: The masses of the people revolt against the thinking machines, and we become like the "dune" universe.
4) Wall-E utopia: if all the needs of humans are provided for at super-low cost, we all become fat, lazy bums. Class differences might dissapear, if only because production costs are so negligible.
5) Anihillation: The robots realize they have no need of humans and destroy us all. What they do afterwards is a mystery.
6) ?
As you can see, none of my ideas are particularly palatable. I may be over-estimating the risk involved (for me anyway), seeing as I am in a creative field (Optical Engineering), I am nonetheless convinced that we (as a species) need to reflect on this before we lead to our own obsolescence.
4) Wall-E utopia: if all the needs of humans are provided for at super-low cost, we all become fat, lazy bums. Class differences might dissapear, if only because production costs are so negligible.
As you can see, none of my ideas are particularly palatable.
What's unpalatable about a eutopia? Why is it a bad thing to have your needs met?
Or, to put it another way, if you're fat, that means that you have more than enough to eat. If you're fat and lazy, then that means you not only have more than enough to eat, but you don't need to do hard physical work to get that food. You have time to do what you want to do.
4) Wall-E utopia: if all the needs of humans are provided for at super-low cost, we all become fat, lazy bums. Class differences might dissapear, if only because production costs are so negligible.
As you can see, none of my ideas are particularly palatable.
What's unpalatable about a eutopia? Why is it a bad thing to have your needs met?
Or, to put it another way, if you're fat, that means that you have more than enough to eat. If you're fat and lazy, then that means you not only have more than enough to eat, but you don't need to do hard physical work to get that food. You have time to do what you want to do.
I guess I see that as a "brave new world" (aldous huxley) type dystopia (which I would qualify as a false utopia). I dont want humanity to stop striving to be better, and a lot of people are quite satisfied if they only have their basic needs met.
Though I will admit, it is by far the most palatable of the ideas I mentioned.
I guess I see that as a "brave new world" (aldous huxley) type dystopia (which I would qualify as a false utopia). I dont want humanity to stop striving to be better, and a lot of people are quite satisfied if they only have their basic needs met.
As you can see, none of my ideas are particularly palatable.
What's unpalatable about a eutopia? Why is it a bad thing to have your needs met?
So,... you want to inflict suffering upon other people because you don't want them to be satisfied? Are you also going to withhold medical care from people because otherwise they might not be subject to crippling and disfiguring diseases and suffer from vanity?
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As for your "false utopia" and "stop striving to be better", I'm not sure the way to make sure people keep striving to be better is to keep the majority striving just to get those basic needs.
People are inherently competitive, and there are too many things that simply can't be produced cheaply and in an inexhaustable supply. While limitless rivers of free food might be able to solve the problem of Charlie Brown's hunger, there's still only little redhaired girl at the next desk, and he's going to have to up his game if he wants to catch her eye. While we may be able to pave Nebraska with prefab housing and make sure everyone lives indoors, I'm still going to have to strive if I want a beachfront condo. And the omniavailability of recorded music hasn't hurt the ticket sales for the limited experience of a concert where you get to hear your idol in the flesh.
But beyond that, striving is generally bad; it's poor for your health, it promotes social unrest, and is, by and large, worse for human experience than the smallpox virus.
When someone says "we need to stop doing this, or else we will eliminate striving," I hear "we need to stop doing this, or else we will eliminate Ebola."
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I suspect the term is used pejoratively now as a result of an intense propaganda campaign by our industrial masters to suppress any thought that people should actually be engaged in productive labor on their own terms rather than being at the mercy of the industrial masters.
Well, you're welcome to your own suspicions. I think the reason that the term is used pejoratively is because the verdict of history is that the Luddite movement was stupid, short-sighted, and would have been extremely harmful to human well-being in the long-run.
I'd type more on my computer and post it to the Internet, but I'm late to a meeting with my optometrist to get some prosthetic eyeware that enables me to live a normal life. She's a day's walk away, so I need to go get in my modern transportation system so I can get there quickly, easily, and cheaply. On the way there, I may stop by the supermarket where I can pick up a wide variety of food quickly, easily, and cheaply.
But who knows. Since I don't need to take a day to walk to the doctor's, and since I don't need to spend all day in the field harvesting my tomatoes, maybe I'll work on my detective novel later tonight. Which I can publish quickly, easily, and cheaply,.... if I can just get Mike Screwdriver out of his current predicament. (I know, "just have a man walk into a room with a gun in his hand.")
I'm not so convinced that it's a fallacy. That techonological improvement that displaces workers will always lead to enough more demand to re-employ those workers and give them more cheap goods at the same time. Not in the absence of some kind of intervention, whether that's government regulation or driven by social unrest.
Phrased in those terms, of course it's not a fallacy. The technological improvement that displaced blacksmiths more or less destroyed the horse-shoeing industry. If all you know is how to shoe horses, the rise of the automobile is a dire threat to your way of life as you'll never be re-employed shoeing horses. I wasn't planning on taking a hansom cab to my optometrist, and I couldn't if I wanted to.
If John Weaver is unable or unwilling to find a job as a cooper's mate, and can't work as a weaver, he's hosed when the mills open.
But on a larger scale than the merely personal, more jobs opened up in the factories than were closed in the home industries; the average standard of living rose substantially through the Victorian era, and it was the factory workers who reaped the lion's share of those benefits. The problem is that economic pressure operates very slowly, and to a thirty-year old weaver with a wife and family, it may not make sense to wait fifty years until the economy resettles into a new equilibrium.
.
You missed what is really going to happen (and I understand why).
Reality: The humans who live and work in a fully automated economy will
*be* highly educated. All the fields will be represented from the Arts
down to Engineering, and of course Science. Your job today will be
gone, because it's a monkey-job.
We will pass through a "Transition Stage", of course, in which all the
dumb people will be sad and thump about crying, "Oh no, I hate school.
I don't want to learn." But once the equilibrium is established (i.e.
the herd is culled) it will be business as usual for the human race (that
means sex and politics).
All this whining, "Oh no, scarce resources will reduce us to the lowest
common denominator ...," etc., is done only by the uneducated of today.
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Ummm... We Westerners live lives of luxury. Compared to the dark ages, we live lives that kings would dream of. We have food. We have running, clean water. We have education, transportation, money, dental care, other health care, and when we die one day, there are cemetaries for our corpses. We usually don't have to fear for our lives. Our children usually grow up. And so on, and so forth.
All this requires energy. Energy today comes from oil and nuclear power and coal, and thus many people draw the conclusion that since these things are bad for the environment, we must all conserve energy to... Something. It is unclear where that line of thought goes, to me. It seems pretty much shot down that we will be able to conserve our way out of this particular conundrum. "No carbon dioxide pollution" is surprisingly a popular idea. Well, it would mean shutting down every single energy expenditure. Heating, city lights, transportation, electricity. We are indeed talking about a post-apocalypse here. The proponents say it is just a question of changing a few things, not our whole lives. This is the currently dominating idea for the future.
I say b!*$++~!. Solve the problem instead. The universe is full of energy, so let's go get it. We live in a miserable little 1 G gravity well. For a species that can do what we can, it is time we used that ingenuity to expand further. Start colonies. Launch spaceships. Build space elevators. We won't be able to forever, so we need to go while we can. Not to mention the risks of having a little vertical "hello!" from a big rock one day. In such a scenario, there will be absolutely no lack of jobs.
Let me add the "seek a glorious future in the colonies" scenario to the list.
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I guess I am using a very poor argument. I agree, we are reaping a ton of benefits of past advances. I cant deny the benefits of technology and advancement. I just don't know how well (or even how) we can adapt to current advances. This specific thing resonates strongly with me personally.
I guess it's the usual "I cant know what the future will bring, so I fear it" response. The notion of a place where people's work is unnecessary greatly worries me, because I have no frame of reference of how I can feel like I am contributing to society (regardless of wether it's material, psychological, artistic, etc.) without it. I know if somebody came up to me and said "Your work can be done better by a machine, you are no longer necessary" it would break me, no matter what material goods I had. And that's all I feel that the modern advances have provided us: better, cheaper material goods.
And despite the existence of a lot of internet things that try to do "more" than material goods (like social media), they have not provided such for me.
I hate to seem like a ludite, but I am not comfortable with certain kinds of change. The elimination of the need to work is one that I personally find very alienating.
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Ummm... We Westerners live lives of luxury. Compared to the dark ages, we live lives that kings would dream of. We have food. We have running, clean water. We have education, transportation, money, dental care, other health care, and when we die one day, there are cemetaries for our corpses. We usually don't have to fear for our lives. Our children usually grow up. And so on, and so forth.
All this requires energy. Energy today comes from oil and nuclear power and coal, and thus many people draw the conclusion that since these things are bad for the environment, we must all conserve energy to... Something.
Make sure we still have some, as well as mitigate the long-term effects of our energy (over)usage.
Peak oil is more or less confirmed at this point. Other than oil industry shills deliberately telling lies, and the people duped by those lies, everyone who has looked into the issue recognizes that we're on the downside of oil production, and possibly of fossil fuel production generally. We don't have any readily available substitutes at the moment, and the transition period will be unpleasant. Delaying and softening the transition period is a good plan.
Similarly, no honest and rational person questions anthropogenic global warming or thinks that it's not going to have unpleasant consequences in the long run; the question is simply how negative and how long.
I say b*@+*~$*. Solve the problem instead. The universe is full of energy, so let's go get it. We live in a miserable little 1 G gravity well. For a species that can do what we can, it is time we used that ingenuity to expand further. Start colonies. Launch spaceships. Build space elevators. We won't be able to forever, so we need to go while we can. Not to mention the risks of having a little vertical "hello!" from a big rock one day. In such a scenario, there will be absolutely no lack of jobs.Let me add the "seek a glorious future in the colonies" scenario to the list.
You're more likely to find a glorious future in Narnia. That "miserable little 1 G gravity well" costs something like $20,000 USD/kg to get out of.... well, out as far as geosynchronous orbit, which isn't actually very far out. To make orbital power generation practical, costs need to go down 100-fold, and while this is possible (your space elevator would help, except what the hell would we be bringing down from geosync?), it's not likely to happen quickly.
And, ironically, in order to get the kind of productivity enhancements necessary to make space colonization practical, we'd already need the kind of skilled workforce and the availability of excess labor that the OP fears. Basically, once people have nothing else to do, they might as well build Star Fleet.
Let me add the "seek a glorious future in the colonies" scenario to the list.
I agree, Sissyl, that there is plenty of energy out there (though it may become very hard to get to soon, check out "kessler syndrome" if you ahve the chance).
But the problems of automation exist regardless of the amount of energy we have, so I dont think the addition is necessary. It's more a social issue than a ressource one.
To Grand Magus:
As I said in my original post, I am highly educated (Optical Engineer, & working on a graduate degree to top it off). But machines (including programs) are getting surprisingly good. It's really hard to say at what point they will stop getting better (if at all). So I cant quite agree with your belief in what the future will be. Your evaluation also seems to be looking several generations away, and as thejeff said "There will be jobs after you're dead" is not gonna make anyone happy. We HAVE to devellop a way to deal with all those people who will be losing their "monkey jobs" as you say and not have the ability to obtain those highly educated jobs. It's a good recipe for violent revolt.
(I keep waiting for Comrade Anklebiter to chime in his communistic POV on the advances of automation). (Though I wish people read the OP sometimes)
Honestly, that was uncalled for, OQ. The point of my post was that the idea of a Sustainable Future is not much of a vision to aim for. What is the goal? Keep doing what we do here on Earth? Is that as far as we can dream today? Pitiful. And, no, I am not saying space-based solar power. I am not saying we should lift up every little gram of weight we need from Earth. When we do go out into space, we will make an infrastructure for it. Zero-gee production facilities, mass driver networks, railgun launches, new materials, all of it. You make a whole lot of assumptions and call me on things I did not say. Simultaneously, we need to reshape things on Earth, with truly generative innovation fueled by a severe slashing of copyright and other IP laws. Our politicians have no reference beyond the early nineties and still think music comes on plastic disks. They are also victims of this neo-luddism, and need to be replaced by people able to think further.
I guess it's the usual "I cant know what the future will bring, so I fear it" response. The notion of a place where people's work is unnecessary greatly worries me, because I have no frame of reference of how I can feel like I am contributing to society (regardless of wether it's material, psychological, artistic, etc.) without it.
Well, let's start by asking why you feel you need to contribute to society. Society managed to get along perfectly well without you for millennia, and there's a very good chance it will manage to limp along somehow after you're no longer there. Even today, the world is full of people who do not contribute to society in any meaningful way, and instead do some sort of demeaning make-work job only because it's the only way they can contribute to their own society.
I know if somebody came up to me and said "Your work can be done better by a machine, you are no longer necessary" it would break me, no matter what material goods I had. And that's all I feel that the modern advances have provided us: better, cheaper material goods.
Well, let me turn this around. Instead of someone saying "we've replaced your job by a robot," you get a call from the MacArthur Foundation, and they're writing a check to you that will eliminate your need to ever work again for the rest of your life. (They do this, by the way.)
If you like what you're doing, you don't need a salary to enjoy doing it. And if you don't need a salary to eat, then you might as well do what you like. And if society really felt that you should do something that you don't like, then society damn well ought to pay you enough to have you contribute to society rather than your own happiness.....
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There is no way to do that NOW, no. Give it time, thejeff. The point of technological advance has never been to do precisely what the next advance makes possible. The point of antibiotics wasn't to cure one specific infection. The point of the electric calculators of the eighties was never to sum up 2+4 or writing 5318008 upside down. When people asked Maxwell the point of his equations, he said "what is the point of a newborn child?" You are right, in the first phases, we would not be able to transport people off planet fast enough. That doesn't mean we never will, though, and it is quite possible that an increased standard of living in the poorer countries will solve this issue by itself. However, prevent that increase of standards because you want to conserve energy and it won't happen. As for it being a utopia, I much prefer working toward such a world to dooming us all to a "sustainable" dystopia. Oh, and the problem with the AGW alarms is that they always claim we will all be dead in exactly fifty years. In 2007, that was set to 2050. In 2010, it was instead 2060. In 2020, it is a fair bet it will be 2070.
If you like what you're doing, you don't need a salary to enjoy doing it. And if you don't need a salary to eat, then you might as well do what you like. And if society really felt that you should do something that you don't like, then society damn well ought to pay you enough to have you contribute to society rather than your own happiness.....
I do enjoy what I like; I chose my work because it's what I want to do (and it's pretty cool honestly), not a salary issue.
But self satisfaction doesn't come from production alone. If told my work has no value to others it looses a lot of it's worth. Am I doing this entirely for others? No. But loosing that feeling of contributing, that feeling of helping to build a better ( or at least cooler) world is a hell of a lot.
Note: I know optical engineering does not seem like a job at risk, but I know some folks who would very much like to entirely automate the process of optical engineering, and have been trying for decades with limited success. All fields have been trying to do this type of stuff, and it's the basis of the MASSIVE productivity gains in science, engineering & medical research in the last few decades.
Unrelated note:
We are dealing with potentially millions of people (and I know in the US & Canada, the ethic that ties work with self worth is still very strong) who wont necessarily have the ability (much less the resources, considering the cost of life & education). to adapt. We need to find solutions for them.
One possible ( part of a ) solution: free higher education. All undegraduate studies should become free if it is essential to be educated in the new economy.
On larger scale, we may still need to rethink the way we've adjusted in the past. We've attempted to adjust to the increase in productivity with both industrialization and ppost-industrialization by making and consuming enough more stuff to keep people working at roughly the same rate. There was a change in the mid-twentieth century as most developed countries went to something around a 40 hour work week, but that's actually been shifting backwards of late - particularly as we've shifted production to the third world.
That's the "let the econonmy resettle" model. We've kept it up with massive advertising driven consumption, but is that really a good thing? Is always making more and more stuff and working just as hard even though we can make more with less effort actually a reasonable way to run an economy? Why can't we step back again and work a bit less, have more leisure and more time and maybe a few less things? Spread the work among more people, with less time each.
Sure it'll cost a little more, but we're richer than people have ever been in history. We can afford it.
That could be worth it thejeff. I honestly think that in the long run, the develloped world will probably end up getting poorer (or at least the middle classes) if we want to establish some kind of equilibrium. It's astonishing to notice that wealth redistribution seems to be working between the develloped & develloping world... seemingly at the cost of the middle class.
It is for anyone who says "zero emissions".
As for moving people, how many traveled by plane in 2013?
As for cheaper alternatives to energy production methods, we have seen biofuel production take up food production land, ethanol be abandoned due to engine damage, wind power surviving because of tax subsidies... Colour me not all that impressed so far. One day, you will undoubtedly be right, of course.
Wal E Utopia or bust. I'll get my saddle.
It is for anyone who says "zero emissions".Even there.
But I'm not going to go any farther into that with you here.
Fine with me.
This is one way to deal with all the surplus people.
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1) The evil answer: destroy all peasants. Basically, with no need for "poor" people involved in production, the rich would wipe us out. They would use the machines to provide for their own lives of excess & luxury. Unlikely, but might make a good plot for the next James Bond villain.
2) The capitalist circlejerk: Basically, the rich decide to give those below them a "fixed salary" that they would then spend on products the rich have produced by the machines. A sort of "closed cycle" capitalism.
3) BUTLERIAN JIHAD!: The masses of the people revolt against the thinking machines, and we become like the "dune" universe.
4) Wall-E utopia: if all the needs of humans are provided for at super-low cost, we all become fat, lazy bums. Class differences might dissapear, if only because production costs are so negligible.
5) Anihillation: The robots realize they have no need of humans and destroy us all. What they do afterwards is a mystery.
6) ?
6) The Gamma World option/Aka - "Idle Hands"/reset button
The premise behind the early Gamma World editions was that prior to the final war, Earth and the outer systems were a utopia.
Due to advanced robotics Man didn't really have to work, so he was given time to pursue other endeavors - science, philosophy - Man also started expanding out into our solar system and beyond. Everything was automated.
Well, over time all Man had to focus on was his beliefs -after all at the end of the day that's all he had. People became heavily politicized and fanatical about their beliefs.
As the inner and outer systems begin to fight for independence from Earth, the people on the planet began to bicker and fight. Those who were pro Earth formed a large and powerful faction and those were pro colony independence did the same. Soon people began to create weapons as governments and private groups sponsored terrorist actions to undermine either faction (based on their interests pro/con colony or if they were pro/con a strong united Earth).
Everyone went to war against everyone - attempts to wipe out people and databases was the norm. Men began to fight alongside their robotic war machines, weapons technology that had been researched but never developed began to be manufactured in earnest. Due to the advancement of manufacturing technology, individuals, companies and small groups had tremendous power to do damage.
After around a decade of this (The Social Wars) they finally blew themselves all up - even the outer colonies were hit.
Hey, a man can dream - right?
Exactly. Once you define people as problems, whether immigrants, men, handicapped people, people in poor countries, Westerners, or whatever, you become something you really don't want to be. The point is not to transport enough people off Earth to make things okay on Earth, that's stupid. Giving them incentives to move, however, that would work brilliantly and enrich both those who went and those who stayed. And, to be honest, I am uncertain about whether Columbus' expedition or the first moon landing was more expensive relative to the whole economy at the time. I know that from the Wright brothers' flight, passenger airlines took a few decades only. We already did the first space flights, it's time for the next steps.
snip
I like it (not)! But it's an interesting possibility.
BTW, love your name, I'm stealing it for a vilain in my campaign this autumn.
(I keep waiting for Comrade Anklebiter to chime in his communistic POV on the advances of automation). (Though I wish people read the OP sometimes)
I'm feeling pretty unambitious today, Citizen Oak, and have merely assembled three of my favorite books that touch on the topic:
The Right to Be Lazy
The Other America: Poverty in the United States
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
Yours for the revolution,
Doodlebug Anklebiter
Chairman of the Commonwealth Party of Galt (M-L)
And, to be honest, I am uncertain about whether Columbus' expedition or the first moon landing was more expensive relative to the whole economy at the time.
I'm fairly certain that the moon landing was more expensive. Columbus' expedition was one carrack and two caravels, about 1-2% of the force amassed later for the Spanish Armada. More importantly, it was launched in an era when ship losses were to be expected, and the loss of 3 ships would not especially be missed. In fact, Diego Columbus has pointed out that the voyage was expected to be a total loss (Ferdinand and Isabella didn't expect him to return, and indeed the Santa Maria, the expensive one, didn't), and Columbus' pay was structured accordingly -- minimal upfront and then a leprechaun's pot of gold if and when he came back.
By contrast, the Apollo program cost about 2% of the US 1970 GDP, or about 5% of the 1970 military spending.
But this example also shows one of the problems with space exploration. Columbus was expected to show a profit on his voyage. In fact, that was one of the terms of his exploration contract: 10% of the proceeds from that or future trips.
No one expected Apollo 13, or indeed any of the Apollo missions to show a profit. No one really expected moon exploration to turn a profit within the lifetime of the first group of astronauts, as indeed it didn't. Similarly, there's no practical way that a colony to Mars could show any sort of economic return within the lifetime of anyone involved in the establishment of such a colony.
The simple argument-from-the-economics-of-a-gravity-well shows why. What can we expect to find on Mars that's worth paying $100,000 per kg to ship back? Sailing ships were actually very cheap to operate, as they were largely self-supplying (land somewhere and take on food, water, and spare timber). Colonies in foreign continents were even more profitable. Colonies on other planets?
ETA: and that's why I suggest you're more likely to find a glorious future in Narnia. I can at least imagine what the Narnian colonies could send back (Intelligent animals? For the cost of a Google engineer?) I also know that sending me to Narnia might cost twenty million dollars, but at least I'll be able to eat and drink once I'm there, we're not looking at periodic infusions of cold pizza at a quarter million dollars plus tip.
As romantic as space colonization is,.... you're not going to get around energy physics with romance.
Maybe we can oppress the martians and force them to mine gold for us...
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This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
Exactly. And that's a political issue.
Because the people with the money are quite happy with the "You don't work, you don't eat" approach and aren't really concerned about those who fall in the "don't eat" category.
Which circles back to the williamoak's "kill all the peasants" option.
Let's just hope we never make the robots... intelligent enough? Is that the right expression? Maybe "desirous enough" is a better one...
Anyway, let's hope the robots never get "X enough" to want what we have, IE lives without toil. Mind you, most of the robots used today are less creative than animals, so it's hard to say what kind of robot that would be. Much symbolism might be found by future robo-philosophers by the fact that their term of identification comes from a word meaning "drudgery, servitude"... It's likely to be considered a slur if anybody ever makes sentient robots.
Ok, so possible aspects of a solution:
1- Minimum guaranteed income: so that even if there is no work, everyone can eat & be lodged. This might even be (rather than money) housing, food & sundries provided by the government/corporate overlords/...
2- Free university: if we need to get people into the "creative" fields, we need to make them more accessible. Free university becomes important so that people can reach that point.
3- Better family planning (as per Grand Magus suggestion): basically, we try to make sure that people dont dig themselves into poverty by having too many children. Make sure that those kids that are born are strongly pushed towards the creative work.
Well, most of these ideas are too left-wing to be accepted in north america for a while. Some european countries seem to be doing something similar (I've heard about cheap university & high minimum wages in scandinavian nations, even Danemark paying folks to go to university... Any commentary Sissyl? I know you're swedish, but you're likely better informed about scandinavia than me in canada).
I honestly dont know what "right wing" solutions there would be. The market seems to favor short-term profits over long term viability, so I wouldnt be surprised that corporations might (inadvertently) destroy their own markets by making them too poor... but that's merely conjecture.
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Which circles back to the williamoak's "kill all the peasants" option.This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
Exactly. And that's a political issue.
Because the people with the money are quite happy with the "You don't work, you don't eat" approach and aren't really concerned about those who fall in the "don't eat" category.
Which makes it incredibly important that the peasants can shoot back.
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You're more likely to find a glorious future in Narnia. That "miserable little 1 G gravity well" costs something like $20,000 USD/kg to get out of.... well, out as far as geosynchronous orbit, which isn't actually very far out. To make orbital power generation practical, costs need to go down 100-fold, and while this is possible (your space elevator would help, except what the hell would we be bringing down from geosync?), it's not likely to happen quickly.
And, ironically, in order to get the kind of productivity enhancements necessary to make space colonization practical, we'd already need the kind of skilled workforce and the availability of excess labor that the OP fears. Basically, once people have nothing else to do, they might as well build Star Fleet.
If you understood what a Von Neuman machine was, and what the implications would be if used to industrialize space, you would understand why none of that will matter in another few decades.
Pay for and launch 1 Von Neuman factory ship. The resulting exponential growth curve will outstrip human demand overnight. No human labor necessary.
Which makes it incredibly important that the peasants can shoot back.Which circles back to the williamoak's "kill all the peasants" option.This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
Exactly. And that's a political issue.
Because the people with the money are quite happy with the "You don't work, you don't eat" approach and aren't really concerned about those who fall in the "don't eat" category.
Why do you think that the police in the U.S. are being so heavily militarized?
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Why do you think that the police in the U.S. are being so heavily militarized?Which makes it incredibly important that the peasants can shoot back.Which circles back to the williamoak's "kill all the peasants" option.This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
Exactly. And that's a political issue.
Because the people with the money are quite happy with the "You don't work, you don't eat" approach and aren't really concerned about those who fall in the "don't eat" category.
Because the people supplying the police are idiots who didn't learn their lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Because the people supplying the police are idiots who didn't learn their lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan.Why do you think that the police in the U.S. are being so heavily militarized?Which makes it incredibly important that the peasants can shoot back.Which circles back to the williamoak's "kill all the peasants" option.This is something I'm greatly concerned by. I'm truly do believe that scientific progress can accomplish a great deal, but we're reaching the point where we need to have a very serious conversation about what to do when automation makes large segments of the work force completely unnecessary.
Frankly the idea of toil being necessary has always been nonsense, but now we're starting to run low on toil. The idea of "If you don't work, you don't eat" is absolutely going to have to change.
Exactly. And that's a political issue.
Because the people with the money are quite happy with the "You don't work, you don't eat" approach and aren't really concerned about those who fall in the "don't eat" category.
I have a different theory. The people in charge (the 1%) did learn from history - the French Revolution to be exact. So, they are doing two things to suppress the coming revolt.
-- Militarize the police.
-- Separate the Police and the Military from the general population.
Thus the military and the police will be strong enough and willing to crush the uprisings from the starving masses. This goes back to allowing the then unneeded workers to die off since there is no work, but if you don't work, you don't eat.
Cause war, sell stuff, profit. I think Iraq taught them their lesson well. Don't do bad stuff and get hundreds of thousands of people killed or you'll make huge profits!
Now they need to gear up for the civil unrest! Your cops can't handle the horror of todays water-bottle throwing crowd without an armored personnel carrier. Buy now while they're only 3 million dollars!
It is also a question of how the state has handled the principles of Rule of Law. In a state where people get locked up with no explanation why, where people are sent to other countries for torture, where the state tortures people openly, where everything of interest to the public is classified, where people are subjected to intrusive searches and radiation when traveling, and so on... why should the police act any better? The police force in every country is always an area that bears watching for misuse of power - but they aren't going to do a better job than those above them demand. This situation isn't going to change unless some very high-level orders and policies are publicly investigated, torn up, and restitutions are made.
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The point of my post was that the idea of a Sustainable Future is not much of a vision to aim for. What is the goal? Keep doing what we do here on Earth? Is that as far as we can dream today? Pitiful.
Why is the idea of finding a way (probably through innovative technological solutions combined with some social readjustment) to make Earth a stable place that can sustain an ever evolving human race pitiful? I don't get it. You seem to be talking more about some philosophical notion that because humans are so magnificant and smart, they should spread to the stars or something. But economically, why is that vision so much more promising? The only thing I can think of is that more humans can be sustained that way.
A professor of economics once told me something interesting about the subject. He said that environmentalists keep themselves busy with locating the most current natural crisis caused by humans and explaining how it will ruin everything - have been since they were saying London will eventually be covered in horse manure. Economists, however, just work and project on the future assuming that any natural difficulty would be eventually solved by humanity, so their models for future economic development rarely acknowledge any supposed change brought by natural disasters (such as global warming). So far, the economists had the better of the environmentalists in that regard. That is not to say that understanding the changes humans cause to environment is not important - you need to understand the difficulty in order to overcome it. So far, however, assuming a solution will be found proved to be a safe assumption.
The point of my post was that the idea of a Sustainable Future is not much of a vision to aim for. What is the goal? Keep doing what we do here on Earth? Is that as far as we can dream today? Pitiful.Why is the idea of finding a way (probably through innovative technological solutions combined with some social readjustment) to make Earth a stable place that can sustain an ever evolving human race pitiful? I don't get it. You seem to be talking more about some philosophical notion that because humans are so magnificant and smart, they should spread to the stars or something.
It's pitiful because it lacks scope.
If the best I can do when expressing my goal in life is "not die in an apartment fire tonight," that's pretty pitiful and displays a tremendous lack of imagination on my part. A life-goal should probably take more than eighteen hours to achieve.
On the other hand, if I do die in an apartment fire tonight, then it doesn't matter what my goals were, because I'm not going to be able to spend more than eighteen hours on anything. So while "not dying in a fire" is pretty pitiful, it's also necessary, and it's why I spend money not only on my music lessons (so I can be an Emmy-winning rock star), on tuition (so I can get my Nobel in medicine), and on training (so I can win an Olympic gold in fencing), but also on a fire extinguisher for the kitchen.
Similarly, a sustainable future is a necessary condition for whatever else you want to human race to accomplish, since for the human race to accomplish anything, it must still exist.
Economists, however, just work and project on the future assuming that any natural difficulty would be eventually solved by humanity, so their models for future economic development rarely acknowledge any supposed change brought by natural disasters (such as global warming). So far, the economists had the better of the environmentalists in that regard. That is not to say that understanding the changes humans cause to environment is not important - you need to understand the difficulty in order to overcome it.
But in addition to this, you need to take appropriate actions, and you need to take appropriate actions in time -- and many times, the longer it take before you decide to take appropriate actions, the more drastic the actions are, and the worse the transition is.
So far, however, assuming a solution will be found proved to be a safe assumption.
A safe but not pleasant assumption. In the long run, humanity has not managed to wipe itself out yet, but, of course, if it had managed to wipe itself out, there wouldn't be any economists around to point out that it's NOT a safe assumption.
More worrisomely, though, is that there have been a number of instances where predictable crises were not dealt with, and the consequences in the short to medium term were not good, or pleasant. Easter Island stands out as a marvelous example of an instance of that. Yes, there are still people living on Easter Island, so they didn't manage to wipe themselves out -- but the Rapanui culture wiped itself out.
On a larger scale, the fall of Rome ushered in a dark age that lasted for nearly a thousand years. I don't know what grand ambitions Sissyl would have been offering in 400 CE, but I'll bet it didn't include "watch barbarians overrun the Eternal City."