When I think of Unions I think of all the corrupt Unions that litter the USA. Standing unions are a corrupted version of collective bargaining.
Collective bargaining is good. I'm not a big fan of the standing unions we have today. If unions came into existance, fixed the problem and
then disbanding then I wouldn't have a problem with them.

Unfortunately, the main reason this hasn't happened is because it's easier, more efficient, and cheaper* to train one person and have
them work 60 hours a week than it is to train 2 people and have them each work 30 hours a week.

*It's cheaper even IF companies were required to pay overtime (which many don't). Time and a half is cheaper than the added
expense of medical, additional training, and Brooks's law.

I would probably add entertainment as a different sector (although it technically might fall under service)
But unfortunately although entertainment is a large chunk of people's disposable
income, the majority of entertainment is also produced by only about 4% of the population.

If we only need 4% of the population to provide everybody's food, goods, services, and entertainment,
I'm not sure what we're suppose to do with the excess labor. Luckily, I think we're still a long way from
there. The service industry still has alot of room. There are plenty of services that people are willing
to pay for whether it is for a massage or for a housekeeper. General purpose housecleaning robots
are still a long way off.

That was my point. The number of farm workers has also drastically declined but in both cases
we haven't seen a huge spike in unemployment. I see these particular job areas reacting about
the same. There are occupations that are more worrisome but I don't see making an occupation
more efficient as being one of those areas.

These white collar jobs aren't being replaced any more than the spreadsheet and accounting software replaced the accountant.
There is still a human at the top. A computer can't completely replace a lawyer and won't be able to for a very long time.
This is just FUD. There are jobs that are at risk and just like what has happened with farmers, ditch diggers, and accountants
one person can now handle the work of 10 (or 100) people but as long as the pace is reasonable and there is still a need for
a percentage of humans at the top then we'll be fine. Let's start worrying about it when you see a mcdonalds, a public school,
or a hospital without any employees. Granted by then it might be too late but we're not there yet. Not even close.

I am well aware of how power is *currently* priced. There has been a move
towards more dynamic pricing at the residential level with smart meters and
I would think a smart meter should almost be mandatory for solar users that
want to buy and sell electricity. The average works ok for the average person
but it doesn't allow the average person to optimize their usage to help the
grid better cope. Certain things are fixed but it's very possible that if
consumers knew when electricty was cheapest they would do things like
charge their electric cars or heat their pool during offpeak times.
Solar users are a completely different scenerio and when electricity is
both coming and going then having a single fixed rate is going to allow
one or both sides to potentially abuse the system where dynamic pricing
is fairer to both sides.

This is exactly what net metering doesn't allow. It makes no sense to require power companies to
buy power from rooftop installations at retail.

So the speed of lookup affects retention? I don't believe it. Just because it takes 30 seconds to look up a word in a paper dictionary
vs 1 sec to click on a word isn't going to affect how well you remember that definition.

That's not entirely true. Check out the history of Easter Island and also the many simulations and experiments
that have been done. If everyone only gets 50% of what they need then everybody dies. Yes, war, disease,
and cannibalism can help but it still might not prevent a complete collapse. More importantly, like in easter
island, the most likely outcome of overpopulation is that we screw up our ecosystem and make the world
uninhabitable by us. It's possible that a few people will survive but any simblance of civilization probably wouldn't.

What came to mind to me is the movie "Screamers" based on a Philip K Dick short.

Actually, what is needs is a lack of liquidity. It needs to live within it's means. If it's overextended then
maybe bankrupcy is the right thing to do. A crytpcurrency might help if it can't be manipulated and used
to print new money. I wouldn't say bitcoin is super stable at the moment but a stable currency backed by
something that can't be faked would go a long ways to fixing greece and the other economies that like
to print their own money instead of balancing their budgets.

Possibly, but if we're in a "game of life" type situation where the universe pauses, all the positions
are updated, and then the next cycle begins, we would never be able to observe it as it just means
that a "cycle" takes longer. This "cycle" could take 1 minute or 100 years but being inside the
simulation we have no way of observing actual time and therefore have no idea how long it takes
to go from moment to moment.

That's actually what I thought too. I've actually pondered this before. If we are in a simulation then stuff at the microscopic
or macroscopic only has to exist when viewed and can be generalized to a much lower resolution the rest of the time which
would greatly reduce the processing power required. This might also help explain some of the observation effects of quantum
physics where it seems that things act differently when observed.