Posted on 08/19/2012 7:23:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’m re-reading Asimov’s “Infeno” and it talks about the great benefits of robots and the problems with robots as well.
One good point made is that there will always be a number of jobs that require humans because they’re more than repetitive tasks. Things like deep sea fishing require and ever changing series of tasks that would simply be too much of a hassle to try and build robots for.
Quite agree. Especially for those who are above average but are born to parents who are not already in the elite group.
Exactly. A healthy capitalist economy creates new markets and new jobs. The iPhone market didn't exist 10 years ago for instance.
Robotic assembly is so early 1990’s. With the advent of third world labor markets, robots aren’t worth the metal they’re made out of. Unless that is, if the third world labor build the robots. In that case, we’re all screwed. Oh! Wait a minute, we gave china all of our CNC, robotics, and manufacturing technology, so I guess we’re screwed anyway.
In previous centuries, many people were followers and personal servants of the rich and powerful.
In a modern economy there will probably be equivalent slots, although no one wants to call himself a retainer. They will be walking the dogs, taking care of the kids, and helping the old folks. Robots can’t do that.
Right. They try to control us, we escape.
They come up with a new way to "help us" and oppress us even more. We escape again.
They come up with another, then another, then another, to make sure they get THEIR fair share of the slaves labor.
We work to support the politicians luxurious lifestyles and their special interest groups to keep them in power. We get to keep the scraps left over.
Americans need their right to freely own property back. That way, if there aren't any jobs, they can fall back on themselves and their land to survive.
(Screw the politicians and their support groups. Let them get real jobs to support themselves.)
The “could be” above average students need motivation, as always the self-motivated students will do well regardless You know those guys, the ones who take advanced courses in the summer (not the remedial summer school kids) when the other kids watch TV and play XBox all day. Oddly, many of the advanced class summer students around here look Asian... hhhmmmm
“The Restoration of Property” by GK Chesterton
Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc were big advocates of a truly free market, the possession of property, individual rights and responsibility. Property is the key, and in the US, property rights have dwindled to almost nothing. Bringing property back is the solution.
Quite right. Even the worst school provides the resources needed to become well-educated.
Where the school makes the difference is at the margins. Some students will do well almost regardless of the school, while others will fail in the same way. Some undefined but large percentage of students are significantly affected by the quality of their schooling.
Yep. If people were allowed to own, control, and live off their own property freely, they'd have no need for politicians. They'd lead themselves, and once again be truly, truly, free. This is what our founding fathers were trying to tell us.
Today, they tax and regulate us to stop us from being a free people.
.
Oh, yes they do. I was just over there last month and the level of small entrepreneurship is astounding - far outpacing what we see in USA, these days. The reason is that the Chinese government had to give something up to keep control - so they jettisoned economic communism in favor of fascistic corporatism for the big companies and utter disregard for whatever happens at the low end. The Chinese people are ingenious, and quickly took advantage, developing a wild and chaotic free economy that can not longer be easily regulated or controlled. Plenty of iPhone assemblers have saved enough to start their own businesses and are now driving around in new Audi A6's.
China still has plenty of problems with corruption, fraud, and a stupid, overbearing government - but they are nevertheless becoming more and more economically free...while we are moving in the opposite direction.
some of the students could get just as good an education on their own at a library
That is one of the biggest and most important issues of our time, in my opinion. What does a person do for a living when nobody needs his labor anymore?
Some good news here is that I see a massive growth in an underground economy where government is seen as an impediment at worst, or inconsequential at best. We may end up in a socio-economic climate where we have a "frontier within the nation," as more and more people seek to live their lives outside of any government oversight.
The Chinese move to the cities for the higher-paying factory work because THAT IS THEIR OPTION. Not unlike the mass migrations from the south to the northern factories in the US after the Civil War.
Would you rather have a factory job or continue to do this for a living as your ancestors had done for hundreds of years? I lived in the hinterlands of China for seven months among peasants like this and it is not a good way to live.
I think he can still do that today. Of course, he'd have to accept the fact that he'd have a standard of living that was commonplace 200 years ago, too.
At some point I can see ‘working’ being much more phased out and perhaps it should be like military service. 4 years standard for most to do labor and then the smallest life allowance. Then more the longer you do, with extra ‘combat pay’ style for more dangerous or nasty jobs. Over time technology will automate away more and more jobs and humans can spend their time on education for awhile and then working on the technology for a limited time.
Meanwhile the leftist company Progressive Insurance runs a commercial in which the repeating character Flo, sabotages and disables a robot that is doing her job better than she.
When such an attitude is publicly displayed...... it is ok to destroy robots, America is in trouble. Progressive Insurance has become an American enemy.
Flo needs to be lynched
I think ideology has more to do with it than potential aptitude or even motivation to do a certain job.
Your average liberal hates the words “personal responsibility” and blames Conservatives and others for all their problems but themselves. They will not struggle to finish a college degree or new job training. They’d rather drink the Kool Aid and think guys like obama will save them.
One more thought.
There is a Freeper friend who recently got a job in a brand new factory running a CNC machine. She has a machining back ground and is very computer literate. The CNC machine is a robot of sorts in that it performs several repetitive tasks to perfection and turns out a completed part requiring multiple tools in multiple operations but still needs a skilled person to supervise.
Robots used judiciously can create manufacturing jobs. In her case that is precisely what happened. The company is new, a startup, a manufacturing company making new to the market parts
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