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The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?"
That story came to mind last week when President Obama linked technology to job losses. "There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers," he said. "You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM, you don't go to a bank teller, or you go to the airport and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate."
In the 11th paragraph of the article, Roberts writes, "Somehow, new jobs get created." All of a sudden, no statistics, no percentages--just a general, unsupported comment implying that everything is OK. It doesn't matter how many people are thrown out of work because of technology, because "somehow," there will be jobs for them. Not a peep about whether these new jobs will pay enough to permit anyone to enjoy the wonderfully higher standard of living all this replacement by machines has engendered, by the way.
Make your observations to someone who's lost a job because they've been replaced by a machine, then come back and tell me that everything is just peachy on the job front.
In the 11th paragraph of the article, Roberts writes, "Somehow, new jobs get created." All of a sudden, no statistics, no percentages--just a general, unsupported comment implying that everything is OK. It doesn't matter how many people are thrown out of work because of technology, because "somehow," there will be jobs for them. Not a peep about whether these new jobs will pay enough to permit anyone to enjoy the wonderfully higher standard of living all this replacement by machines has engendered, by the way.
Make your observations to someone who's lost a job because they've been replaced by a machine, then come back and tell me that everything is just peachy on the job front.
These machines are build by someone, and to build it R&D investments have been necessary = more engineers..etc...
Somehow it's a gaffe when he says something that everyone knows? Yes, technology is good, but yes, jobs are lost in the process, at least temporarily. Eliminating "jobs" in the sense of projects is actually the whole point!
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
10,471 posts, read 15,842,447 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred314X
In the 11th paragraph of the article, Roberts writes, "Somehow, new jobs get created." All of a sudden, no statistics, no percentages--just a general, unsupported comment implying that everything is OK. It doesn't matter how many people are thrown out of work because of technology, because "somehow," there will be jobs for them. Not a peep about whether these new jobs will pay enough to permit anyone to enjoy the wonderfully higher standard of living all this replacement by machines has engendered, by the way.
Make your observations to someone who's lost a job because they've been replaced by a machine, then come back and tell me that everything is just peachy on the job front.
They say it better than me. I swear this was my idea, though. Or maybe I just read it years ago. Yeah, I think I read it years ago.
Back at the turn of the 20th century, the automobile was a newfangled contraption. But even so, it was apparent almost immediately that it was also a revolutionary item that was here to stay. That is one reason why, if you Google the term "buggy whip manufacturer," you end up with zilch.
Why did all of the buggy whip makers go out of business? Because they thought they were in the business of making buggy whips.
Wrong.
Sure, when the automobile supplanted the horse-drawn buggy, the need for buggy whips evaporated, but it wasn't the car that killed the buggy whip maker, it was the buggy whip maker's thinking that did it.
Literary essayist George Steiner once put it this way: Had a buggy whip manufacturer in 1910 rethought things and concluded that rather than being in the buggy whip business he was instead in the business of creating "transportation starting devices," he just might have been able to survive the challenge of the new economy and make the transition into a new era.
Location: Georgia, on the Florida line, right above Tallahassee
10,471 posts, read 15,842,447 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Frank DeForrest
Unions are pretty good at holding back technological advancements in the work place.Now if we can only figure out how to get them installed everywhere
Ain't progressivism grand?!
Tell you a true story. I worked with a fella @ Caterpillar in Georgia, he was a man they sent to "get things done" from out West. He told me he worked in a union factory once, and there was a kind of conveying track system that rotated pieces of equipment around the plant. Sometimes this system would get stuck. In this case, a man would grab a long stick and whack the track/part and make the belt begin to move again. Most of the plant depended on that track moving.
If the men were on break and the track got stuck, he couldn't tell them to whack it. That was against the rules. The men wouldn't move. You couldn't make them move. If they moved, they would face the wrath of the union, for one thing. If they didn't move, it screwed the people they were working for.
The supervisor I was working with held the unions in a low regard.
Apparently when it comes to technological progress President Obama is not that progressive.
^ this
You'll have three castes under an Obama inspired utopia. The ditch diggers, the R&D folks, and the overeducated fru-fru intellectuals who command them both. Your caste will depend on whether you're labeled an alpha, beta, gamma, etc.
Got Brave New World?
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