The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Robots will do your job by 2045

Expound. At least on why I remind you of Greenspan somehow. Honestly not sure what you are trying to attack. Im not really in a combative mood today, so instead of just blasting you im gonna ask really nicely wtf are you talking about.

Every scenario I can think of to try and fit what you are saying into the context at hand has us being on completely separate pages. Even if your assertions about cooperation hold true, which is a different topic and I think there is some truth there, that doesnt create any context for your Greenspan comment.

Greenspan recently published a book, in this book he is trying to defend his position. All his ideology runs into the wall of empirical evidence of what actually happened.

And your point? Btw in Greenspan book he ate crow and said he made a mistake, that he was looking at it wrong. I have read some summaries, and while I think he is still wrong on some things he has eaten some crow on others.

My point, is you have lost the topic at hand. If you find it, and can put some context to your comments instead of repeating yourself please feel free to add to the discussion.

Digital Networks Efficiencies and Employment



Interesting read.

I said this before, but if Industrial Revolution is accurate predictor, we have a couple generations of displacement, poverty, and social unrest until future generations find equilibrium point for Information Age.

Short term (our lifetime) we can look forward to unemployment, wealth inequality, social unrest, police state, revolutions... "interesting times".

If you arent paying for it, your not the customer - you are the product being sold.

Anyhow I think you might be right, though for somewhat different reasons. After all, directly replaceable products like Kodak/film only account for a very very small overall percentage of the economy.

A better way to put it, is that humans are creatures that evolved in small communities, and human societies then proceeded to evolve to enable humans to function in larger communities. Now with the social underpinnings that enabled stability in large groups largely undermined, what we are left with is creatures that evolved in small groups living in a super-community/global community and thus completely out of their depth.

So especially people in groups without a particularly strong social structure , unless they are particularly lucky or abnormally able are left rudderless and overwhelmed.

I recall a article recently (perhaps was even you that linked it actually) regarding poorer people, intelligence and how some studies are finding the correlation exists in large part because they are literally too mentally/emotionally overwhelmed to make good decisions.

Having come to a similar conclusion myself some years ago, (though my observations dealt with political choice and awareness as opposed to finances and standard of living) I found the (very liberal leaning) study findings as highly plausible. In fact I would hypothesize that it should be taken a step further, and the effects are felt well beyond the lowest socioeconomic tiers and well into the "Middle Class" to various degrees.

Its a dangerous negative feedback loop.

I don't think there is any negative feedback loop, that is I don't buy that poverty makes one dumber. I think link is elsewhere - dumb people correlate with poverty and violence. Anyone, when sufficiently desperate, will turn to crime but dumb people are more likely to get caught. I am willing to bet that intelligence study comparing violent offenders to college-educated population would show significant difference.

Going back to the main topic - what is there to do but service when "robots are doing what used to be your job?"

I recently traveled to India and observed first-hand what overpopulation (not automation, but effects - oversupply of 'general' labor - are the same) would do to labor market.

General poverty and 9 'servers' for each producer. I had driver with a car, maid, chef, bodyguard and a guide/translator assigned exclusively to me while living out of hotel suite that was excessively large. I certainly did not need or ask for any of it, but US-priced contract allowed for the expense and locals arranged based on that $ value.

So service there was great. And cheap. And everybody was poor.

The same is coming to US.

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/poor-people-arent-stupid-just-overwhelmed-study-finds-8C11030890

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beau...what-you-think/

Poverty may not make you literally dumber, just you may act like you are. According to the studies anyhow. I think this is an important point, when looking for points of failure on a macro level.

Also, yes more people may be in service in the future. However just because the service people in India are currently poor does not necessarily mean that all service people and all service oriented societies are doomed to the same dynamic.

In US they certainly are, just look at attitudes toward McJobs.

I consider this another market failure point. Just because systematically it might be more efficient to congregate money in a few highly-skilled hands and throw everyone else into poverty, does not mean that such solution corresponds to the optimal well-being.

Not all service jobs are fast food jobs. Quite a few service jobs pay very well. Even McJobs holders in the US likely have greater purchasing power than the Indians you mentioned.

Not sure why you would consider McJobbs to be a market failure though. I cant see any reason why people who serve inexpensive, unhealthy convenience items would be financially valuable in almost any context.

The systemic failure is lack of other opportunities resulting in more people needing to seek lower skilled, higher turnover (more opp to get hired) work. That seems like where the focus should be. Not on why fast food pays so little and what to do about it in the limited microcosm of fast food, but the larger picture that sees too many people needing to rely on that level of employment.