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Now imagine the possibility of self-managed work places combined with the latest in automation, cybernation and logistics. Fully automated worker or community owned cooperatives. A basic income might also be necessary to augment the wealth generated locally. The cooperative model might be a way to make the tech work for us rather than just wealthy business owners or corporations.
The problem is workers seem to forget the investment thing that businesses atke.They want it setup for them first by investors. Plenty of self employed but most fail with in first year at huge rates.Why ;majority is lack of management skills.
It is inevitable that technological progress will continue to such an extent that computers and robots will take over not just the brute labor / blue collar work, but also massive swaths of the white collar work, too. They will, quite simply, put most of us out of a job. For the first time in human history, the vast majority of people will simply not be needed for any economic production.
The irony is that we harness capitalism to create this hyper-efficient future state, but once it's here...capitalism will no longer function. At first, what will happen is what we see today: more people increasingly live in poverty while a relative few hoard all the rewards. But soon after that, even the rich will discover that there simply are not enough income-generating humans to consume the goods they produce. The entire construct of "I work for a living so that I can spend money and support the economy" will go out the window; there just won't be a critical mass of people left in the cycle to make it work.
So what will be left? We'll be faced with attempting some form of socialism that has never succeeded on any broad scale. We'll need to find a new way to divide resources among societal members, one that is not based on direct work output...because hardly anyone will be doing the traditional concept of "work."
Of course, humans being what they are, those who hoarded the resources will be violently resistant to such a redistribution, and those who demand the shares will want ever more and more... So this ends poorly. Either we end up with a despot who rules with an iron fist, or else we end up with chaos and massive conflict. Given our technology, we have the capability to make that conflict our last.
I think it is inevitable that labor will rapidly change in the next coming decades but the impact will be hard to pin down. Think how more productive humans will become if/when we starting merging with machines. From neural implants to exo-skeltons to genetic modification to nanobots there is a lot of uncharted territory to go through during the next evolution of man. Hopefully we don't destroy ourselves or each other in the process.
As far as labor, I think we need to do welfare/entitlements better with the mind they are going to increase overall as well think about a basic income. Eventually developing countries will face the same problems that makes less competitive globally.
Yours is a government of the people, by the people for the people.
Quite a fantasy you've retreated to, there. Old platitudes hardly reflect current realities.
Quote:
The government does whatever you allow it to do.
Get over it....
Mircea
The public controls the government about as effectively as you'd control a grizzly bear with kite string. The USA has been owned and operated almost exclusively by and for the benefit of corporate interests for decades now.
And you'd have to have an extreme hatred of children and perhaps people in general to want to subjugate them to the misery and harm of Basic Income.
The only option available to you is learning to do less with less.
Truly not impressed by someone who believes that in a country that has more resources, and wealth then ever before, with a future that is literally going to massively increase those by more then most people can imagine......This persons response is....do less with less, because by god the rich need it all.
Stop being full of hate for your fellow human beings. If its not the poor you are going after, its anyone who is different.
No Mircea, when theres such an abundance, the vast majority are not going to bow down and serve the rich.
OK, I can follow that. I'm curious--did you come up with this, or does it come from some futurist type out there?
I go back to the example of agriculture, which employed maybe 90% of people in 1900, and maybe 2% today. That was a revolutionary change but it did not cause unemployment. At least on my mother's side, all of my forebears were farmers until WWII. Now there is one guy among all my cousins who is still in farming. The others are not unemployed, they're doing jobs that mostly didn't exist in 1900.
That happened gradually over 100 years. Suppose it happens over 20 years with robotics. Perhaps that would be a different story..I don't know.
Thats all me actually-anything from others I tend to pun in a quote box. My day job is very involved in technology. And I agree, if I thought it was going to happen over a period of 100 years I think we could deal with it a lot better, but its going to be extremely rapid at some point, far beyond our ability to cope as a society.
Exactly wrong. Theres a massive difference between mechanization, and automation involving AI at the extreme end, or even very capable expert systems at the low end.
Kinda like how the engine replaced horses. It did not create new opportunities for horses.
Read through this thread, and try to understand WHY this is different. You're repeating platitude without even trying to comprehend why this is different.
Look, buddy ... I wasn't born yesterday, and I'm not stupid either. So quit patronizing me.
The difference here is the TYPE of technology coming up. Old style technological changes replaced a group of people that could move on and do something similiar.
The new stuff coming replaces massive numbers with more generic automation.
Losing 5% of our employment with 5% of new opportunities opening up (of which 5% get automated in some way) is fine.
Losing 40%+ of our employment....not so much. Especially as that same 40% of automation will apply to the new opportunities as well. That help explain it?
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