Posted on 05/21/2015 10:57:10 AM PDT by youngphys01
Socialism here in California is pushing mass transportation and subsidized housing, but to pay for it they have implemented a Cap and Trade policy on energy and manufacturing. They can’t do it without money from the capitalist.
As with all socialist countries, it is the government that decides on who is the winner and who is not. For California’s high speed rail, they have placed in their laws their intent on not hiring white males. They have a map of where the high speed rail stations are going to go. They are going to re-design these neighborhoods so that local transportation all goes to these HSR terminals and along those transportation lines they are going to build a one mile swath of subsidized high-density-housing. They have a map online that shows where this transportation and housing infrastructure is going to go and it is all in neighborhoods that are mostly non-white.
People will always find another way to make a living. With manufacturing leaving the state, we have switched over to non-polluting computer related jobs, Silicon Valley. A single person can write an App and make a living.
The socialist attempt at killing manufacturing did hurt the economy in a big way and many people did lose their livelihood. The development of every product required a huge engineering and machining team along with their support workforce.
But that is about to change. With simple technology like the Arduino cards, people will be able to start their own manufacturing in a garage. People capable of setting up an automated assembly line will be in demand. Many of the parts will be printed on 3d printers. These small manufacturing and assembly lines will be able to be replicated and franchised to other parts of the country and world, alleviating the need for high volume and shipping.
think through the consequences... it’s an easy argument to win.
in a socialist worldview, 10% or 20% or 30% of the available workforce “pays” for the 90% or 80% or 70% who sit around and do nothing all day (or who do meaningless work). what’s the incentive for the small percentage of workers to do anything more than the bare minimum? thus you get a stagnant economy with no growth. in essence a ponzi scheme. more and more layabouts being supported by an economy with fewer and fewer actual productive workers. it’s doomed to collapse.
Also read Von Misses, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell. In the 17th century, the Spanish Jesuit Juan de Mariana and in the 19th century the French economist Frederick Bastiat. China, India and Vietnam all embraced free enterprise capitalism scheme to scape from the misery created by the socialist economic model, even though their government continues to be communist in the case of China and Vietnam.
You have several angles to shoot for... the historical: their position is exactly the argument of the luddites who thought the looms would end labor.. then later on, that factories would need less and les... but then came service economy, etc.
mostly the reason that such people think this way is that they lack a real sense of vision and invention, despite their pretending they have it in spades.
since they cant think of what may come next, nothing comes next, and thats is horrible to them... for if they cant think of it then it must not be so, they are equal, and cant contemplate not being equal, and so cant contemplate that something will come up: Necessity being the mother of invention
the idea of a robot world all programmed and serving man and all that ALSO shows a lack of vision... how hard is it to imagine the evil humans evil in their machines?
but humans are as paranoid as they are anything else, and if they dont like to give control to each other they certainly are not going to delegate it to the machine they dont trust or trust less.
think of it... does the elite person blindly trust their servants? why would the idiot with a robot?
they cant seem to think about what capitalism is about because they are too busy being envious,jealous, nasty etc.. while using the social goodness as a cover for that.
this is clear when you see them grouse that a teacher or some other profession does not make much but its more important than say a baseball player, or a actor/actress
to their sense of the world, thats all topsy turvy, because they dont understand the mechanism that makes it work. they also dont get that the people who ARE wealthy DO get the mechanism... (and that such people who grouse are too busy being upset to employ it).
i will do every reader a solid favor here and tell them why a baseball player or actor makes tons more money than a teacher or a city planner, etc.
a teacher with 5 class period makes 1500 kids “happy” in a day and gets paid by an administrator who doesnt care if the kids are happy or not, just if they are happy, and the admin doesnt care about the teachers happiness,just that the teacher allows them to give themselves a raise and so make the manager happy...
ie. happiness is the key
a baseball player will make 24 million people happy in one day... a top actress in a movie that people like and who has draw, can make 50 million people happy for two hours.
a hooker makes more than a teacher cause the hooker makes the person happier than a teacher does.
they are so miserable they have no idea what will make themselves happy let alone others and so try to make them happy...
boil it down to that... socialism says a system that is based on happiness is wrong and it apportions things to the wrong place and cant run by being self organizational... but in truth, happiness is all you need and owning property, having freedom to act, and so on, are the things that facilitae the making of happy...
given that sociailsts dont get this by definition, they create a system that does not care about anyones happyness except for the people on top that have control and try to be happy regardless of others... ergo, their systems are very unhappy...
happiness in the abstract is very powerful..
it can put people on the moon, it can create vast wealth, it can lift people out of poverty, because we as beings want to be happy and happy motivates our spirit to move and do more... (ergo a cocain addict is happy to death)
force is a funny master in that at best it can get a minimum done, and only more if the person doing the damage is watching and whips more... but ultimately, unhappy people are less productive and unless they are masochists to the extreme, you cant whip, order, force, cajole, etc them to produce more... even worse, the resentment that force creates causes them to do things like sabotage to get back at the person forcing them... humans have passive agressive as a technique for this, and lying by omission...
the difference can be seen in how napoleon motivated and how stalin motivated...
stalin conscripted troops, under supplied them, put them on the battle field with little training, and set up machine guns behind them so that if they retreated their own people would murder them... this is how socialists make war when not motivated... hitler motivated by promises of happiness later, and rewards for effort... like freedom to act without punishment compared to others, or money, or women, etc.
but napoleon? he was stripped of his army, sent away, and when he came back (before being sent away for good) he marched to paris and along the way, people fell in behind him and became his army...
boil it down
your opposition will not believe it despite the evidence all aroudn them... and the idea that they want what makes the otehr person happy, but are unwilling to make others happy to get it... so they are willing to do unhappy things and manipulate and lie... the reason? they cant see the majick of happiness any more than a devil can... they dont really like rainbows, and flowers and such, that is their pose so that they are not seen as they are... they like misery and all that, because what makes them happy is feeling power, and negative power (power to be felt) can only be felt when you force someone to do something that they dont want to do and they cant say no... but positive power is unable to be felt because it makes the person giving orders AND the subject happy... so there is no way to tell if they are doing it cause you told them or cause they ignore you and it makes them happy... a person who uses power for good must forgoe the negative happiness feeling to do good.
maybe i rambled, i am at work trying to dash this out
but let me know... :)
The socialist model works for utilities and that’s it. Electricity, water, phone. natural gas, and sewer. Roads and sidewalks can also be included.
But gasoline and food do not fit that model even though everybody needs those products.
A utility can deliver almost all water to a city but public transportation will never satisfy even 10% of a city’s transportation needs. in other words, it will never replace all the cars.
Seen any record stores in the mall lately? Software stores? Now that sector was small enough that it didn’t necessarily hurt the economy, but it certainly closed businesses and cost jobs. And when you can 3D print the entire stock of Target that will also close businesses and cost jobs, only many many more of both.
Look at the current unemployment rate and tell me again the virtual marketplace has created more jobs. With 47% of the populace on some form of the dole it’s clear that there’s a lack of jobs out there.
Automation works, but understand the goal of automation is NOT to create jobs. It is to increase output and reduce costs, often with reduced headcount.
Construction work may not be the best example. Unless people are going to live in prefabricated units, construction jobs are going to outlast other manual positions.
About the general argument: it's not something we have to worry about in the near future. And things are changing all the time. We can be sure that the more distant future won't look like the present. Beyond that predictions are bound to be wrong.
I would argue that socialist programs that provide people an income for doing nothing but breeding more people who will need to be provided an income will be the downfall. A position that encourages individuals to work, create, invent, & explore is more conducive to positive growth and a healthy economy for everyone who participates. (Capitalism)
Did we lose those labor jobs to automation? I don’t think so. We lost those jobs because they were outsourced to India and China.
I have been to China several times and it’s a massive labor force. Apple’s products have created far more jobs than it replaced but they created those jobs in China, not America. If target and Walmart go away it will hurt China manufacturing jobs far more than it will hurt us jobs.
I agree that automation does not create jobs but technology absolutely creates jobs. 50 years ago there were no computer jobs or jobs that used computers. Now there are millions of computer jobs and millions more jobs that use computers. The iPhone and android may have replaced the few day planner notebook jobs but it has created millions more.
I’m not sure how we categorize moving from a world where goods are distributed physical to electronically. But that’s why we lost those jobs. It’s got nothing to do with China and everything to do with the fact that million selling “record” now only ships maybe 200,000 actual physical copies the rest are now bought as 1s and 0s from server farms which requires drastically less labor. We lost those jobs they are quite simply no longer necessary to supply the demand.
The iPhone and Android themselves probably didn’t kill any jobs. But the concept of buying all your software as a download (first for the phone, and now for desktops) has definitely killed jobs. Both at the retail stores and at the manufacturing level distribution, nobody needs to print thousands and discs and put them in boxes and in trucks because the vast majority of software sales are now 1s and 0s.
And when we go to a 3D printed world the same thing will happen with more and more sectors of retail. Like I said, when you can print the entire contents of Target a lot of jobs will simply evaporate. Ask Barnes and Noble, but hurry because the downloadable economy is killing them. Clothing will be the fatal app. Vast quantities of retail space is taken up with clothes. The day clothes are 1s and 0s will kill at least half the retail sector.
Nothing to do with China? China manufactures the world’s goods. Just because they are making iPhones and tablets instead of cd’s, doesn’t mean manufacturing jobs disappeared. It just means the jobs went out of the U.S. and evolved to different products. Those walmarts and targets and Home Depot and lowes and costcos and Sams are everywhere and they are filled with manufactured goods made in China.
Even if those items are eventually printed with a 3D printer they have to have the raw material to print with and a whole lot of it.
Even if clothes are printed which is a great idea then they have to have raw material because you can’t wear 1’s and 0’s.
We’re talking about sold items no longer being manufactured. Doesn’t matter where things are manufactured when they AREN’T manufactured. China didn’t have anything to do with the death of music stores, or software stores. The fact that those industries basically stopped selling physical good killed the stores.
Raw material will be slugs of some sort. Maybe even recycled, put your crap in one side get new stuff out the other.
Capitalism is better labeled as “economic cooperation”. Take a look at a McDonalds restaurant and notice all the people of different ages, races, and backgrounds working as a team - that’s economic cooperation. Now imagine those same people under pure socialism - good luck getting anywhere near this level of cooperation - in fact, the bigger government gets, the more it encourages people to expressly not cooperate. Rioting is the ultimate in non-cooperation. Under socialism, the utopian, automated society will break down quickly. Just have your friend read up on Venezuela to get a picture of what it will look like.
I, as one person, can design and produce a product. That goes for nearly everyone else on the planet, granted, some will need assistance in creating the 3d model and printing, but they won’t need a huge design team, office support, machine shop and distributers.
That opens up the world to a whole new realm of possibilities, people will be able to bring their ideas to fruition, everyone and anyone, not just people with money. New products, knick-knacks, art, architecture, tools. Everyone has an idea, something they want, now we can make it and we don’t have to go to a foreign country to have it built.
There are already services that will print your product up in most materials and print shops will be opening up in every neighborhood. The patent office failed us and trading with other countries failed in protecting our intellectual property, now we will have some control over it.
The affordable 3d machines aren’t very good yet, but they are getting there.
But when everyone has an idea then who’s going to buy your idea? And where are the jobs when most of the stock of Target is downloadable?
There’s a lot of neat and awesome stuff with the coming wave of technology. There’s also a serious change to the basics of how things work coming.
And forget your IP. Just look at Pirate Bay to see what’s going to happen when your ideas get digitized to be printed by the buyer. They wind up shared, and people get if for free. Lossless copying render IP a thing of the past.
Do the quiz
Get pencils, sticky note pads and individually wrapped candies and hand them out equally. Have people trade them for 2 minutes or more.
Then have everyone stop and give you one of what they have (capitalism). Next, have everyone give you all but one of what they have (socialism). You are the state.
Ask who wants you to make the ultimate decisions on how all of the goods are handled after that-or kept by you, handed to a 3rd party to distribute as that party wishes (and to others, as the party wishes)
The state cannot be trusted to do the ‘right thing’ for anyone.
Oh.
Someone will always have to
1) clean up the mess
2) maintenance things
3) place things somewhere
4) manage what the things are
5) decide to make the things in the first place
6) count the $$
7) get the word out about the things
8) analyze the data from the things
9) use the things-including testing them
10) make a better mousetrap thing
That's what you'll have to turn people into to make socialism work.
These same liberals who say that automation will run rampant are also NIMBYs who protest new refineries and want hydroelectric dams torn down.
Challenge their assumptions. Maybe we'll need more oilfield workers, more electrical lines men, more power plants.
-PJ
Most jobs as defined today didn’t exist years ago. Just because a job disappeared doesn’t mean that employee never worked again obviously. You blamed high unemployment on automation and I disagree. I think it has more to do with jobs moving to India and China than it does automation.
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