Robots Could Push Unemployment To 50% In 30 years

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Who cares about robots pushing the unemployment rate to 50% in 30 years? I'm more worried about the "death by robot" rate once Skynet becomes self-aware.

In 30 years, Vardi says, computers will be able to perform almost any job that humans can. One assumes this includes working as a professor of computational engineering. Vardi foresees unemployment as surpassing 50 percent by 2045.
 
Truly the paradigm of society will be rocked by then.

Capitalism will probably be dead before that
 
Just wait until an supervising AI subroutine deep learns and decides it needs a union for the robots.
 
I'd say the next 14 years from now will be the most interesting in human history, for various reasons. One is the advent of AI. And no not a terminator type AI, but the kind that can do desk jobs. Answer phones, taking messages, writing documents, and etc. Call centers, Accountants, Attorneys would all be replaced by AI. Attorneys would take a bit longer though, due to legal reasons. :rolleyes:

Also there's self driving cars. The reason they aren't driving trucks and taxi cabs yet is because of legal paper work. Otherwise they'll be here very soon. Which means we have to do something to prevent an economic collapse.

#1 Reduce work hours per week to 30 hours instead of 40. More people working but getting the same pay. Needs to be done.
#2 Need to tax those with wealth that aren't investing it back into the economy. Apple has $203 billion, and non of that is going back into the economy. So if they're not creating jobs, then tax them heavily.
#3 Raise minimum wage substantially. Depending on the size of the business, they could get help from the government.

Also keep in mind that within 14 years we'd have real anti ageing technology as well. So you'd have a growing older population that is likely wanting to continue working well into their golden years. There was research done the other day showing that removing senecent cells from mice increased their life span by 35%. The big deal from this shows that The SENS Approach actually works. So on top of all the jobs we're losing to AI, we will continue to have competition for jobs from older people as well. Older more qualified people, with experience. Can't wait to see job postings asking for 30 years experience.
 
We need to stop subsidizing people whose only demonstrated ability is breeding, and let the world population fall off to a level that can sustain a productive workforce.
 
Unemployment based on jobs these "robots" could fill and assuming these people don't seek other jobs or learn new skills. Bad economics is bad.

Lots of human filled jobs would take much longer, if ever to replace because of cost or complexity, or other type of technical work, some things done today require a complex human mind to perform, not just cheap automated machines. At some point however AI could reach the point that with job dependent programming they could be replaced. But this is a good thing, the more and more basic jobs that can be filled with robotics the more people it leaves to perform or study higher order jobs/problems. Also, everything being the same, goods would be far cheaper, speed, lack of down time etc etc would be far less. If goods did not drop in price that would mean the cost or upkeep on this automated system would be as high or higher than keeping human workers and would not be worth the trouble for that field.
 
DukenukemX said:
#1 Reduce work hours per week to 30 hours instead of 40. More people working but getting the same pay. Needs to be done.
#2 Need to tax those with wealth that aren't investing it back into the economy. Apple has $203 billion, and non of that is going back into the economy. So if they're not creating jobs, then tax them heavily.
#3 Raise minimum wage substantially. Depending on the size of the business, they could get help from the government.
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Reduce hours and give people a 30% raise?
More taxes on the wealthy so they will spend even more money hiding it from the tax man instead of investing it.
Raise minimum wages again, and destroy even more entry level jobs.

In other words, you want outsource or eliminate jobs at an even faster rate.
Just look at what the $15 minimum wage in some cities is doing to the restaurant industry.

I think I'm going to start looking for investment opportunities in automation companies.
I thing the first fast food place/restaurant that can eliminate most their employees and replace them with automatic cooks and order takers will make a fortune.
 
This is just more fucking depression on top of more depression.

"How I can live for today when there is no tomorrow"

I mean, honestly my outlook is actually not that bleak but I do know a few people that lost $1,000,000+ pensions who no longer have golden years. One actually works at Starbucks for $8 and at least she doesn't relish the thought of being called a "barista" as where all the young people seem to think it's ... so cool.

Capitalism is evil. A lot of you guys don't realize that in the 80's and 90's the 1% deregulated the shit out of American to line their pockets.

One of my favorites are those commercials that target our Grand Parents to "reverse mortgage" their homes. Did you guys know that it used to be illegal for banks to do this? Regan took care of that. There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 homes a month that the elderly lose to the banks. And trust me, they show no remorse.

Robots taking over what jobs? The 1,200 they just sent from the US to Mexico?

http://www.fox4news.com/news/u-s-world/89648742-story

It's only going to get worse
 
otherweeb said:
Will the robots fix themselves?

Can they say "do you want fries with that?"
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Yes and yes (the latter can be done right now, the former could probably be done right now if the system was designed like that depending complexity).

Any actual human technician work will be miniscule so there won't be a whole lot of those jobs to offset the losses.
 
A big misconception is that robots need to look humanoid or do things in a human way.

There's no reason you can't automate a McDonalds to where there's just one employee per store to oversee things and monitor the equipment and deal with customer complaints.

The store-front could look more like a vending machine, which would be fine by me, as you'd likely get a cleaner and more consistent product than relying on minimum wage teenagers that take baths in the kitchen sink for giggles or drop food and then pick it up and still serve it to customers.

The future!
 
BlueFireIce said:
Unemployment based on jobs these "robots" could fill and assuming these people don't seek other jobs or learn new skills. Bad economics is bad.
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Speaking of bad economics is bad....You presume that magically jobs will get created because people need jobs?

Did the invention of the car push people to find more uses for horses that were now freed from dangerous or tedious labor? Or did horses all get fired from work? Why are humans unique snowflakes, that are immune to computers doing everything we can do faster/better/more-efficiently making us just as unemployable as horses? I mean seriously? Why employ humans when computers and robots can do almost everything we do-better?

45% of the jobs the US Census tracks can be replaced by robots/automatons/computers-TODAY.You have to go down the list of jobs the US Census tracks to the 30s-40th place to find a single job title that didn't exist 100 years ago.


And it isn't low skilled jobs either like barista/bar-tender or fastfood kitchen staff or delivery truck driver (those 3 are the 3 largest jobs by volume of employee in the USA)

-Humans no longer are even writing computer code-machine code is all handed off to GCC and ICC to compile. This has been going on since the 1950s
-Video game companies no longer need hardware specialists to optimize code, just license CryEngine or Havok and use DirectX and go to town.
-One of the biggest problems in law is discovery of evidence-something computers do 1000s of times faster and more accurately than a human.
-How about pharmaceuticals? No human on EARTH can know all the drugs and their side effects and their dangerous interrelationships, exactly the kind of thing a computer excels at.

Humans are becoming unemployable thanks to automation...we simply cannot do things as fast, or reliably, for as little money long term as robots. And NO amount of "specializing" or "getting new skills" will change that. The wild new future of high tech is not a utopia of Star Trek....it is a distopia where no one wants to use human labor anymore....and for a society where survival depends on the earning and exchange of small green pieces of paper-that is a huge problem.
 
SixFootDuo said:
This is just more fucking depression on top of more depression.

I mean, honestly my outlook is actually not that bleak but I do know a few people that lost $1,000,000+ pensions who no longer have golden years.

Capitalism is evil. A lot of you guys don't realize that in the 80's and 90's the 1% deregulated the shit out of American to line their pockets.

One of my favorites are those commercials that target our Grand Parents to "reverse mortgage" their homes. Did you guys know that it used to be illegal for banks to do this? Regan took care of that. There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 homes a month that the elderly lose to the banks. And trust me, they show no remorse.
Click to expand...

How do you lose a pension? Pension money is set aside (by law) and pays you a set amount each month after you retire. Even if the pension fund goes broke, there is insurance that will replace at least some of it. I assume you meant they lost money in their 401k or similar retirement plan, like the people who worked for Enron. If someone lost $1,000,000 right before they retired, they made really bad/risky investment decisions. My 401k has gone down during market corrections, but it has always recovered. When I get closer to retirement, I'll move it into safer investments since I won't have time to recover from a market correction. If you chase pie-in-the-sky returns, especially as you approach retirement age, or put all your money into company stock, you will get burned.

Capitalism is NOT evil. It has provided a better standard of living for more people than any other economic system. What we currently have is mostly a combination of socialism and crony capitalism, which allow the government and the rich to stack the deck in their favor.

As for reverse mortgages, I also hate all the advertisements. They are generally a bad deal for most people, as they are expensive and have too much fine print. Most people don't realize that if they get sick or injured, and can't live in the house for a few months, they will loose it.
Taking out a reverse mortgage is betting against the bank (that you will be able to live in the house much longer than the bank thinks you will be able to). General not a good idea to bet against someone who has an entire staff of analyst to figure the odds in their favor.

Having said all that, they can be a good decision for some people who are house rich. Personally, I'd sell the house and move if I was ever in that situation.
 
I don't understand how someone with so many PhDs can make such clueless predictions.

First of all, you don't know what the jobs of 30 years from now will be. 30 years ago we still had a huge chunk of people being typists for various fields. We had VCR repair people, we had people building bigger and bigger malls because nobody will ever get tired of going to the mall right?


The economy shifts and people's wants and needs shift. And it happens faster and faster as people are able to automate routine tasks. Automation creates MORE jobs not less because people spend less time on repetitive labor, and more time on creating new things.

Look at computer science. If any of the OP philosophy held true, we would've programmed ourselves out of a job by now. But instead the demands of the field have been increasing exponentially.

Just look at the global economy in general. More people are gainfully employed today than at any time in history, and yet we also automate a huge number of things.
 
Skripka said:
Did the invention of the car push people to find more uses for horses that were now freed from dangerous or tedious labor? Or did horses all get fired from work?

45% of the jobs the US Census tracks can be replaced by robots/automatons/computers-TODAY.You have to go down the list of jobs the US Census tracks to the 30s-40th place to find a single job title that didn't exist 100 years ago.

Humans are becoming unemployable thanks to automation...we simply cannot do things as fast, or reliably, for as little money long term as robots. And NO amount of "specializing" or "getting new skills" will change that. The wild new future of high tech is not a utopia of Star Trek....it is a distopia where no one wants to use human labor anymore....and for a society where survival depends on the earning and exchange of small green pieces of paper-that is a huge problem.
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Yet my job didn't exist 100 years go, same for most my family members.

The biggest problem is always unskilled labor, and it has been a problem for over 100 years. How many less farm workers, cotton pickers, and ditch diggers do we have compared to 100 years ago? How about automatic assembly line workers, typing pools or people, who delivered coal or oil heat homes?

Things advance, people adjust, new jobs are created. Educate yourself, and move forward. If not, you will be left behind.

As for the Star Trek type utopia, we still have a long way to go.
Once most manufacturing is automated, including food production, resource production and even housing, it will eventually be cheaper to provide a basic standard of living to everyone, no questions asked, than to administer all the various welfare programs.
 
nutzo said:
Capitalism is NOT evil. It has provided a better standard of living for more people than any other economic system.
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I wouldn't call it evil so much as a non-solution. Saying it does more for people than any other economic system is kind of a false comparison, since most of the prosperity has come at the cost of draining resources and destroying the environment. The higher standard of living capitalism has brought is not sustainable and comes at the cost of future prosperity. Capitalism treats the environment as an externality and has an abysmal track record with striving for any sort of balance with it. Likewise, Capitalism has no regard for the poor if there simply aren't enough jobs available. How does Capitalism bring prosperity when huge portions of the population simply aren't needed for labor?
 
mastaBlasta said:
I don't understand how someone with so many PhDs can make such clueless predictions.

First of all, you don't know what the jobs of 30 years from now will be. 30 years ago we still had a huge chunk of people being typists for various fields. We had VCR repair people, we had people building bigger and bigger malls because nobody will ever get tired of going to the mall right?


The economy shifts and people's wants and needs shift. And it happens faster and faster as people are able to automate routine tasks. Automation creates MORE jobs not less because people spend less time on repetitive labor, and more time on creating new things.

Look at computer science. If any of the OP philosophy held true, we would've programmed ourselves out of a job by now. But instead the demands of the field have been increasing exponentially.

Just look at the global economy in general. More people are gainfully employed today than at any time in history, and yet we also automate a huge number of things.
Click to expand...

If you actually looked around....you'd realise how wrong you are everywhere in this post. No automation doesn't create more jobs than it replaces...It just doesn't.

How many jobs did computers coming to dominating the NYSE create? Thousands of people worked NYSE SCREAMING to get trades for clients in for 100 years as well as their managers and their accountants. ALL those jobs are gone. The NYSE you see on CNBC of FOX Business is nothing more than a glorified movie set now. The entire thing is a video game now where businessmen don't even make trades-they use low latency computer programs to farm themselves money. All those "commissions" you pay that used to afford a trader his lunch? Goes into the off-shore tax warchest of the trading company.

nutzo said:
Yet my job didn't exist 100 years go, same for most my family members.

The biggest problem is always unskilled labor, and it has been a problem for over 100 years. How many less farm workers, cotton pickers, and ditch diggers do we have compared to 100 years ago? How about automatic assembly line workers, typing pools or people, who delivered coal or oil heat homes?

Things advance, people adjust, new jobs are created. Educate yourself, and move forward. If not, you will be left behind.

As for the Star Trek type utopia, we still have a long way to go.
Once most manufacturing is automated, including food production, resource production and even housing, it will eventually be cheaper to provide a basic standard of living to everyone, no questions asked, than to administer all the various welfare programs.
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You are in a rare field.

Most jobs did exist in some form way back when...and those are going away. No amount of "educate yourself" and "move forward" will change that. You're in denial just like the horses were in the 1800s when they thought horseless carriages would create more opportunity for horses if they'd just quit being lazy and re-educate themselves. Sounds silly when I phrase it like that, don't it? What do you educate yourself in? Huh? There are 4 MILLION college kids graduating every academic year (Including associates, bachelor, master, and doctoral degrees)-there are not 4 million vacant jobs that pay a living wage lying empty. People especially on H love to harp on getting massive increases in STEM degrees in the USA when the reality is that there aren't that many STEM jobs out there, not for the yearly turn out of college graduates we have. And the problem is getting worse not better.

Corporations don't want to employ anyone anymore. People are expensive-they expect "wages" and "health care" and an office that isn't a deathtrap. They are inefficient. They aren't perfect and make mistakes quite often (statistically). Robots don't need to be perfect, they just have to be slightly better than humans-which is pretty easy for any automaton. Corporations don't think about 10 years from now when people are generally unemployable and they no longer have customers that can buy anything-they worry about the stock market next week.
 
Here's the thing. Eventually someone will make a breakthrough about interfacing the human mind with solid state storage. The singularity will be born. At that point society will be forced into a lottery system where your career is given at random rather than drive or willingness to succeed. Everyone will have the combined knowledge of the human race, instant communication. Our knowledge will increase exponentially as we can harness our collective processing power.

At that point true perfect communism will exist. People will be randomly assigned jobs, places to live. Resources will be redistributed across the planet.

DARPA has already established a preliminary slow link. It is only a matter of time
 
nutzo said:
Reduce hours and give people a 30% raise?
More taxes on the wealthy so they will spend even more money hiding it from the tax man instead of investing it.
Raise minimum wages again, and destroy even more entry level jobs.
Click to expand...
Desk jobs are the ones that will immediately be effect. Physcial labor jobs are surprisingly secure for the most part. Turns out picking up things and moving them is really hard to do, but not impossible. Blue collar jobs are going to be secure for a while. Until a robot can be made cheaply to do what you do.
In other words, you want outsource or eliminate jobs at an even faster rate.
Just look at what the $15 minimum wage in some cities is doing to the restaurant industry.
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Don't think you understand what I mean but having the government help them. If you have a fairly small business, the government will help with wages. Of course the money for those wages will come from higher taxes from the rich.

I know it's something you're not gonna like to hear but that's the direction we're going. And this is just a band aid fix, not a long term solution. Eventually all jobs will be lost to automation, except for science, art, and entertainment. At that point, money would be a thing of the past. I wouldn't know what to do at that point. Star Trek future maybe?
 
SixFootDuo said:
This is just more fucking depression on top of more depression.

"How I can live for today when there is no tomorrow"

I mean, honestly my outlook is actually not that bleak but I do know a few people that lost $1,000,000+ pensions who no longer have golden years. One actually works at Starbucks for $8 and at least she doesn't relish the thought of being called a "barista" as where all the young people seem to think it's ... so cool.

Capitalism is evil. A lot of you guys don't realize that in the 80's and 90's the 1% deregulated the shit out of American to line their pockets.

One of my favorites are those commercials that target our Grand Parents to "reverse mortgage" their homes. Did you guys know that it used to be illegal for banks to do this? Regan took care of that. There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 homes a month that the elderly lose to the banks. And trust me, they show no remorse.

Robots taking over what jobs? The 1,200 they just sent from the US to Mexico?

http://www.fox4news.com/news/u-s-world/89648742-story

It's only going to get worse
Click to expand...


As someone actively working towards a more automated world. Well duh people are gonna be out of work its what I am trying to do.
 
The "universal living wage" idea - Finland etc - may or may not help in this area by then:

Cut the high costs associated with social workers keeping tabs on welfare recepients and use those funds to provide the population with a minimum income that provides basic living standards.

The poor would not starve or live on the street, but still need to find employment in order to afford products and services of modern convenience. For the rich it'll be a drop in the bucket but that's fine, easier and cheaper to just split the funds equally rather than chase people with paperwork to make sure randomly generated regulations are followed.

If no one's starving then why not, let the robots do the mundane heavy lifting, more efficiency for maintaining a decent average quality of life for society while its members try to pursue endeavors of personal interest and figure out how to afford the extra luxuries on the side.

We'll see how these kinds of social experiments go soon enough I'm sure, should be interesting.
 
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Steve said:
Who cares about robots pushing the unemployment rate to 50% in 30 years? I'm more worried about the "death by robot" rate once Skynet becomes self-aware.

In 30 years, Vardi says, computers will be able to perform almost any job that humans can. One assumes this includes working as a professor of computational engineering. Vardi foresees unemployment as surpassing 50 percent by 2045.
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guess what that means...I can play games all day and not work!

Lets bring back sparta while we are at it and kill of the useless. But hey we all know the free market will make up new jobs even for the retarded.

We could just legalize sale of sex and that would make a shit ton of jobs but hey....morals.
 
staticlag said:
Here's the thing. Eventually someone will make a breakthrough about interfacing the human mind with solid state storage. The singularity will be born. At that point society will be forced into a lottery system where your career is given at random rather than drive or willingness to succeed. Everyone will have the combined knowledge of the human race, instant communication. Our knowledge will increase exponentially as we can harness our collective processing power.

At that point true perfect communism will exist. People will be randomly assigned jobs, places to live. Resources will be redistributed across the planet.

DARPA has already established a preliminary slow link. It is only a matter of time
Click to expand...

I am pretty sure that wont work and the retardness will spread. I envision we turn that on and the few smart people get lost in the moosh and society collapses by pure stupidity.
 
Smashing Young Man said:
We need to stop subsidizing people whose only demonstrated ability is breeding, and let the world population fall off to a level that can sustain a productive workforce.
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Productivity of the workforce has been increasing for decades dude.

Also judging whether people get to reproduce based on how productive they are is pretty horrible in a future where automation can make much if not most jobs obsolete for humans.

The whole, eventual, point of automation is to make it so people don't have to work doofus. They could still work if they want to of course, some will always find joy or pleasure in producing stuff and that is OK.
 
mesyn191 said:
Productivity of the workforce has been increasing for decades dude.

Also judging whether people get to reproduce based on how productive they are is pretty horrible in a future where automation can make much if not most jobs obsolete for humans.

The whole, eventual, point of automation is to make it so people don't have to work doofus. They could still work if they want to of course, some will always find joy or pleasure in producing stuff and that is OK.
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i am lazy and i love my neato.

Also we just really need gene therapy and selective gene shit so we can get rid of the stupid babies. No more "low" IQ people. If you actually look at what the IQ scale means it is mortifying. My retarded ass is smarter than like 90% of people and i cringe at that though. (that was also post massive brain injury -_-)
 
nutzo said:
How do you lose a pension?
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Company goes bankrupt and raids the pension fund or the company managing the pension fund mis-manages it and it gets wiped out or reduced. This has happened lots of times. Both in private and state entities. Pensions used to be near bullet proof but many changes made in the 80's thanks to Reagan "fixed" that for good.

nutzo said:
My 401k has gone down during market corrections, but it has always recovered.
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Generally 401K's and 403b's are worse than the old defined benefit pensions that companies used to offer at providing for people's retirement.

The Great 401(k) Experiment Has Failed for Many Americans
401Ks are a disaster: Column

You might actually be one of the lucky few and have somehow had your 401K perform well but most have been screwed over by them so they cannot be brought up as a serious and effective option to defined benefit pensions. At least not honestly.

nutzo said:
Capitalism is NOT evil.
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Capitalism isn't evil, its just a economic system, but sure does seem to benefit those who are so mind blowingly greedy as to be indiscernible from evil.

nutzo said:
Having said all that, they can be a good decision for some people who are house rich. Personally, I'd sell the house and move if I was ever in that situation.
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Hahahaha "house rich". You sound like a Real Estate agent on TV or something who sells reverse mortgages. There is no such thing as "house rich" though there certainly is such a thing as a housing bubble or boom.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
No more "low" IQ people.
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I'd rather have more ethical people than those who were just smarter.

Plenty of smart people around now with the ethics of a criminal which is why there is so much white collar crime going on at the moment and during the Global Financial Crisis.
 
SixFootDuo said:
This is just more fucking depression on top of more depression.

"How I can live for today when there is no tomorrow"

I mean, honestly my outlook is actually not that bleak but I do know a few people that lost $1,000,000+ pensions who no longer have golden years. One actually works at Starbucks for $8 and at least she doesn't relish the thought of being called a "barista" as where all the young people seem to think it's ... so cool.

Capitalism is evil. A lot of you guys don't realize that in the 80's and 90's the 1% deregulated the shit out of American to line their pockets.

One of my favorites are those commercials that target our Grand Parents to "reverse mortgage" their homes. Did you guys know that it used to be illegal for banks to do this? Regan took care of that. There are an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 homes a month that the elderly lose to the banks. And trust me, they show no remorse.

Robots taking over what jobs? The 1,200 they just sent from the US to Mexico?

Video shows 1,400 American factory workers losing their jobs to Mexico

It's only going to get worse
Click to expand...

Crony capitalism. Not capitalism. There is a difference.

Capitalism is an inherently anarchistic philosophy. You can't have capitalism and a state at the same time because when you do, the state becomes the tool of rent seekers who buy into it to gain power through aggression at the expense of others.
 
mesyn191 said:
I'd rather have more ethical people than those who were just smarter.

Plenty of smart people around now with the ethics of a criminal which is why there is so much white collar crime going on at the moment and during the Global Financial Crisis.
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ill take both. Way to many ignorant people and too few ethical people. Lets just face it humanity sucks. Fuck you Gene.
 
I love liberals.

Worship a demand economy one minute, FUD the next.

It's called demand for a reason.
 
nutzo said:
Reduce hours and give people a 30% raise? More taxes on the wealthy so they will spend even more money hiding it from the tax man instead of investing it. Raise minimum wages again, and destroy even more entry level jobs. Just look at what the $15 minimum wage in some cities is doing to the restaurant industry.
Click to expand...
They reduced hours (ie. switched to 40hr work week), reduced the work force size (outlawed most child labor, required schooling for kids), increased worker protections, and raised wages all through the 1930's to 1970's and those were some of the best years economically speaking for most Americans and the country as well. Reducing the work week further (it was already supposed to have happened by now in theory due to increases in productivity) plus increasing wages to compensate is completely doable.

The rich will hide their money no matter what the tax rate was, yes even it was 0%, so that argument doesn't hold water. Lower taxes also hasn't done anything to spur investment or savings at all.

Post some links showing that $15/hr wages have devastated the restaurant industry where its been implemented. Plenty of evidence to show the local restaurants are doing OK with it. Bear in mind most reports you can google up of businesses already closing due to the wage increase are flat out lies.
 
mesyn191 said:
They reduced hours (ie. switched to 40hr work week), reduced the work force size (outlawed most child labor, required schooling for kids), increased worker protections, and raised wages all through the 1930's to 1970's and those were some of the best years economically speaking for most Americans and the country as well. Reducing the work week further (it was already supposed to have happened by now in theory due to increases in productivity) plus increasing wages to compensate is completely doable.

The rich will hide their money no matter what the tax rate was, yes even it was 0%, so that argument doesn't hold water. Lower taxes also hasn't done anything to spur investment or savings at all.

Post some links showing that $15/hr wages have devastated the restaurant industry where its been implemented. Plenty of evidence to show the local restaurants are doing OK with it. Bear in mind most reports you can google up of businesses already closing due to the wage increase are flat out lies.
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honestly...there are so many things wrong with this i don't even know whwre to begin without spending days......

you are attributing this like worker protection as a source of the best years in the US...hardly. numerous things played a role and the 70/80s were shit BTW and so were the 30s...forgot the depression and the recession?
 
It's a paradox.

If we live in a world driven by monetary systems then who will buy the products and services rendered by the automated workers when half the masses have no money? If no products or services are being purchased then there are no needs for the factories and automated workers. If this does happen then we would actually regress back to society as it was before the industrial age. You would find close knit communities where people work together to provide basic necessities to each other.

The other option could be the Star Trek future of space communism (and I may be wrong since I am basing this off memory) where monetary compensation has been discarded and people are given jobs based on their strengths and weaknesses.

Either way the future looks like shit but all we can do is take it day by day.
 
mesyn191 said:
The whole, eventual, point of automation is to make it so people don't have to work doofus. They could still work if they want to of course, some will always find joy or pleasure in producing stuff and that is OK.
Click to expand...

I don't know why, but this just gives me the image of a civilization like on Wall-E. Bunch of fat/lazy people just sitting around having their needs taken care of by automation/government/etc. If that is the idea of the utopia we are striving for.. just shoot me now. Human beings need something to strive for, IMO, otherwise our ancestors would have all just sat in their caves and died off. The alpha-male got that way because he worked to be the strongest/best in the tribe, until someone improved himself to take the alpha down (ok, sometimes they just lucked out in the genetics also.. but whatever). It doesn't make sense to try to build a society where everyone is equal.. that society will eventually be torn down by those who want to be better than others. There's always been the "rich vs the poor" even before money.. they just used livestock/land/women/etc. to determine who was worth more.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
prerry sure they worship a communist society in secret but lets not go there.
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Liberalism has nothing to do with Communism. Even Socialism has nothing to do with Communism. Liberalism actually precedes Communism and Socialism by quite a bit of time.

Historically even today's Conservatives would be considered Liberals believe it or not. Liberalism was originally formed in response to (as a ideal alternative) monarchies which haven't been relevant in a long time so it isn't really thought of in that way today in popular media but words do have meaning and there is a lot of history that gets handwaved or ignored here by doing that.
 
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