All that's really happening here is that millions of low-selling software applications, instead of being sold in the far-flung corners of the internet, have now been gathered into one place: the Apple App Store. So the fact that most applications are not actually all that successful is just more visible now than it once was.

No need to type at all - just say "call so & so".

I don't have a need for any hard drives right now? I guess I could have picked "make do with what I've got"... but "make do" makes it sound like I'm kind of limping along on something that really ought to be replaced, which is not the case.

Shredding IS a good way to protect the information. After shredding my bank statements with the cheap-ass shredder I bought at Office Depot, a bad guy would have to spend more time/money reconstructing the statement than he'd be able to extract from my bank account. And really good shredders essentially pulverize the paper - I don't think there's too much fear of being able to un-shred US gov't cross-cut shredder processed documents, for example.

Even when I first got into the Navy (which was like 25 years ago... damn I'm old), we were using cross-cut shredders to destroy classified paperwork. These things practically turned the paper to dust - the individual pieces were like maybe 3/8" long by, I don't know, 1/32" wide? There's no freaking way you could put these back together.

And if that wasn't good enough, one ship I was on had a paper mulcher. You threw in the paper you wanted destroyed, and it ground it up with water into a sodden, pulpy gray mass. There was nothing TO put back together after this process.

Or why it needs 11 aircraft carriers, when there are only 20 aircraft carriers in the world, and only two countries with more than 1 (Spain and Italy).

It's worse than that. If you count ships like Spain and Italy's "aircraft carriers" as carriers, then you should also count all the LHA/LHD class ships in the US inventory, which would bring our "carrier" total up to around 20.

That said, there's really not a lack of useful work to be done. There's tons to be done in the sciences, for example. Medical research is wide open.

Ok, then. When Google finally perfects automated driving, and all the truck drivers are thrown out of work, we'll just get them jobs as medical researchers! Problem solved.

Sarcasm aside, I'm in 100% agreement with your first paragraph. But the only way to get there is to forcibly take some of the profits from these automated industries and just give them to displaced workers. Otherwise, what you'll do with all the wonderful free time you have from being unemployed is... starve.

And the sales guy who sold the machine, and the receptionist at the company where the sales guy works, and the engineer who designed the machine, and the workers who manufactured the machine (or the engineers who designed the automation of the manufacturing of the machine), and the programmer who programmed the machine, and the software engineer who designed the programming, and the tech writer who wrote the tech specs, and the trainers who trained the product, and the all of those peoples' managers

• Sales guy: wages/commission cut to the bone by competition from all the other out-of work people
• Receptionist: reduced to part time to avoid paying benefits
• Engineer: still ok if not outsourced to India
• Workers: almost all laid off because production has been automated
• Programmer and software engineer: you expect us to pay for a programmer AND a software engineer?
• Tech writer: laid off. The engineer can write his own specs
• Trainers: laid off. Customers will figure out how to use this stuff themselves
• Managers: mostly laid off. far fewer people to manage

And of course, this doesn't count the layoffs resulting from the redundancies produced from the product itself - if your new device replaces lawyers, most of the lawyers will end up getting laid off.

This is the fallacy of moving up the employment food chain. We employ lots of people as truck drivers, waitresses, nurses aides, etc. If all those jobs are replaced by automated equivalents, they're screwed. We're never going to need that many engineers, CEOs, supermodels, or other elite occupations.

Middle class people now have a better life than a king a few centuries ago.

Middle class people - I remember those. They were those people who could actually expect to make enough money to live on, without having been born to rich parents.

Whatever happened to them, anyway?

Now adays you can't get "documented" workers to break their backs on farms

You mean, nowadays you can't get documented workers to break their back on farms, under deplorable working conditions, for a tiny paycheck and no benefits. FTFY.

I guarantee you that you could find people to do the work if you were willing to pay a decent wage, didn't expose them to pesticides, provided retirement and medical, etc.

And by lately, I mean ever?

Why didn't combines and massive tractors ruin agriculture jobs in the United States?

Dude, I hate to break this to you, but combines and tractors DID ruin agriculture jobs in the United States. Time was that a majority of the US workforce was employed in agriculture. Now we're down to about 1% of the workforce.

And sure, in the past, all those displaced ag workers found other work, including doing things like building the tractors and combines. But if we get to the point (as suggested by TFA) where suddenly, large swathes of the workforce are being replaced all at once by robots... what then? The robots build themselves (not entirely, obviously, but without a lot of human labor required), so there's no help there.

There will always be more work to be done

I'm no longer so sure. In the not-too-distant future, a huge proportion of the workforce may be "made redundant", as the Brits say, by machines. What the hell are we going to do then?

You either sign up for our current system, which produces lots of shiny consumer goods, but leaves millions of people economically insecure... or you become Amish. No other outcomes are even conceivable.

Hey, here's a thought - maybe we could ask rich people to pay a little more in taxes and use the funds to keep people from starving in the streets, provide job training, provide useful services - which would produce enough demand that we could enjoy technology without having our jobs terminated.I know, it's crazy talk.

Dude, do you seriously think that corporations of the Gilded Age were just about to voluntarily improve working conditions, stop selling adulterated products, etc? Really? What color is the sky on your planet?

By the same argument, if drugs were legalized tomorrow, you would claim that everyone would run out and start doing heroin.

-1, Strawman argument. Of course, I wouldn't claim that. I might, entirely reasonably, claim that some people would, and that those people would be harmed. Whether the benefits of drug prohibition are worth the costs is another argument that is entirely off-topic here. Relating this back to the topic at hand - no, I don't claim that getting rid of, for example, USDA meat inspections, would immediately cause all meat to spoil spontaneously. You're right, that's just stupid (which is why I don't claim it). But we know from freaking experience that without any inspection program, some companies ABSOLUTELY WILL sell tainted meat, and customers have essentially no way to know which products are safe and which are not. As a result, many people will be harmed. Unlike the drug prohibition issue, I don't think there are very many people who would argue that the benefits of the inspection program are not worth the costs.

That's the problem with big government supporters--they don't think. They want someone else to do it for them.

And this is the trouble with libertarians - they substitute ideology for thinking.

Make the loans dischargeable in bankruptcy, and have the government only guarantee a portion of the loan. Then there would be some incentive from the lenders and the government to vet loan recipients and college programs a little more thorougly, rather than just showering money on anyone who shows up.

It's not just that they're passing costs on to the students more than they once did... their costs themselves are so much higher than they once were. There's just very little incentive for university administrations to cut costs. There's very little ability for consumers to figure out what a given college program is worth, so they use price as a signal: if it costs more, it must be better. So the more it costs, the more of it people want.