Posted on 01/29/2014 7:57:04 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Thanks to lightning-speed advances in hi-tech, humanity (or part of it) is close to achieving its dream of prosperity without toil. We are already starting glimpse the awful consequences. As Voltaire said, work is the triple tonic for needs, vice, and boredom.
A Davos vote split 51:49 on whether "technological innovation" will keep displacing jobs – and at an accelerating rate – leaving us with a deformed world where hundreds of millions are left on the unemployment scrap-heap (205m so far).
The waters have been so muddied by the global financial crisis – and the 1930s response to it in some quarters – that it is hard to separate the chronic job wastage caused by "robots" (to use a metaphor) from the temporary effects of scarce global demand.
Phillip Jennings, head of the UNI global labour federation, said it would be a "miscarriage of justice" to blame the 32 million job losses since the Lehman-EMU crisis on the iPad or the driverless car.
"You can't put technology in the dock for 50pc youth unemployment in Greece or Spain. I blame the EU Troika. It was the economic and political decisions taken that have led to the collapse of jobs. In Greece it has gone beyond depression into a humanitarian crisis," he said at the World Economic Forum....
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
A tiny number of very skillful people will do most of the brain-work, and use the internet to publish their work. Here the word "publish" includes the concept of "manufacturing," through 3-D printing technology and other things that will be derived from it.
The concept of a job as a necessity will slowly die out. Vast amounts of human misery will result; the disappearance of survival jobs will give rise to new types of jobs, and new types of problems.
The need to judge and gauge the character of strangers will become even more important, while at the same time becoming harder to accomplish.
The medical profession will undergo the same transformation that the profession of machinist has undergone, only much faster.
All these trends are already underway; you can see it happening, if you pay attention.
America really, really needs some sort of import tariff.
Just saying.
About as likely as a new prohibition amendment or sending 40 million illegals back home.
Last thing we need is more Americans sitting idle while collecting checks.
Am going to read the whole thing
pay attention to this!!!
ping
This needn’t change the participation in work, only the character of it. We put our thinking in boxes and imagine an array of metal men doing what humans do now. It does not have to happen like that. For one thing, even if metal men could do every such thing, who services the metal men? We find robotics a lot more challenging than the Rosie of Jetsons fame. And attempts at artificial intelligence end up ceding a tribute to the divine design of the human brain. (And for that matter the soul, the part of the human being that does not reside in this 3-dimensional mortal coil.)
If we let our ideas honor God and otherwise be unfettered, we will quickly see a plethora of opportunity. It’s only when we surrender to fatalism of thought that we fail.
I think in a jobless society, there will be a push for a guaranteed living wage. This will happen out of political as well as true necessity because nature abhores a vacuum. There is already talk of this in Switzerland. The bad side is that the saying, “idle hands are the Devil’s Workshop” so there will be more opportunity for troublemaking.
For those tempted by cry Luddism, hold your thought. This is nothing like the switch from agricultural revolution to the first machine age. The new displaced cannot migrate into textiles mills and great manufacturing hubs on the 19th Century. Labour-saving technology is now sweeping all sectors, including services. “The challenge is that much more immense now,” he said.
(from the above source-article)
The rest of us will design more sophisticated robots to be manufactured in China and then brought over here to fetch us beer and the newspaper! And take our dogs out for a walk on a cold day
The left’s answer is to reduce the population. Our answer should be to eliminate over-regulation and taxation to let capitalism create jobs naturally.
In either case I suspect service jobs will proliferate turning most people into slaves under leftists,or self-respecting entrepreneurs under conservatives.
You see the results of this throughout Europe......Football hooliganism is rampant.
Why do people join "firms"? It's a source of excitement, the fighting is a source of adrenaline for those who have nothing else going on in their lives.
One day a leader is going to figure out how to channel that for their own ends, look at the ranks of the Nazi Brownshirts in the late 20s/early 30s.
This is the wave of the future. Good or bad it is going to happen.
I see your point, but I really think we need some sort of import tariff.
I really do.
America needs to make things. Right here.
Robot hamburger factory makes 360 Gourmet Burgers every hour...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3100817/posts
Fresh pizza vending machine delivered to the US
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3080333/posts
Look at the keyword “3DPrinting” and all the articles therein here.
If technology were to reach its logical extreme the cost to produce mankind’s basic needs of food, shelter, transportation and medical services would be greatly minimized. Work as we know it would become obsolete and we would become liberated to pursue the top of Maslow’s hierarchy - self-actualization.
Bit of strangeness going on. When I go to that link I get a notice that says the web page has detected a virus on my computer.
"And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.