Right now, 85 people take in the same income as 3.5 billion other human workers.

Extend that trend forward 20 years to world with extensive automation and perhaps 400 people taking in the same income as 7.5 billion other human beings while another 1 billion making "decent" incomes still (the rest of the 3 billionis people being children, disabled, and senior citizens).

For the most part- once the wealth reaches the top- it stops. It doesn't come back down. It's not even spent. It's put into long term bonds. Bonds have to be paid for with taxes. So bonds are really just another way for the wealthiest to extract more income from the rest of society.

How do you run a society without taxing the people who hold all the money?
How do you execute an economy when most of the wealth is all piled up on the opposite side from the consuming part.

In the face of ubiquitous automation, the very concept of money breaks down. Because "money" is just a token representing hours of your life. If no one needs your labor- the hours of your life have no value monetarily.

Which means no food- no entertainment- no medical care-- i.e. nothing to lose.

How do you run a world where 60% of the adult humans have nothing to lose?

North Korea has shown us one way of doing this. The other way is violent bloody revolutions which redistribute the wealth so the game can start over again.

Sure. But what would distinguish a flash drive from all of the other electronics?

A friend of mine works in a lot of internet marketing and used to do things like search optimization and whatnot. Trust me, no matter what user-based system you set up, people will work day and night to subvert it to push their products. Any sort of review or rating system would be corrupted very quickly.

So the system is inherently flawed.

I can't believe there's no way to design a more robust system of review that isn't prone to corruption. Maybe the FDA is that system, but it's an expensive and inefficient way to go. Of course though, any app that interfaces with a pacemaker or diabetic medication or something ought to be vetted by them. A "health and fitness app" less so.

"So far, neural networks have succeeded in imitating distinct musical styles, but truly original compositions have remained elusive. Miranda is tackling that problem with an orchestra of virtual musicians â" called agents â" that interact to compose original music. "

"The ChaoSynth "soundscapes," often accompanied by Miranda on the piano, have won awards for being "musical" despite the unearthly sound of their individual parts. While pleasing when blended in composition, the everyday sounds fit no known category when isolated. "

Sounds like it still needs work.

You know I see you continuing to bloviate, but I don't see any links to your job ads and I don't see any hard descriptions of the skill sets you are looking for or for the job you are trying to fill.

Seriously man, time to put up or shut up.

The thing you need to realize is that they are not rewarded based on your replacement succeeding as well as you.

They are rewarded for saving money. Executive bean counters can literally redefine the goal posts as well and declare success when the project failed by the original criteria.

And finally, they can move on to another job after a fairly short time to take their money saving ideas to the new company.

Nope, it's a conspiracy.

Go to youtube.

Search for
"avoid hiring americans"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Immigration attorneys from Cohen & Grigsby explains how they assist employers in running classified ads with the goal of NOT finding any qualified applicants, and the steps they go through to disqualify even the most qualified Americans in order to secure green cards for H-1b workers. "

And...
Lou Dobbs: Law Firm teaches how to avoid hiring Americans
A law firm is teaching corporations how to get around hiring American workers for jobs so they can import foreign workers under the H1-B visa program. Lawrence M. Lebowitz, the marketing director of the Pittsburgh law firm of Cohen & Grigsby, told executives at its Immigration Law Update Seminar how to advertise...

--

Quote: "Our goal is CLEARLY not to FIND a qualified us workers."

No things like pastors, editors, dentists, certain lawyers, ad executives, project management, inventors, certain freelance artists, etc.

Of course some creativity won't be worth keeping so it will be designed out when the process is automated.

Example: I was on a project in 2009. Rewrite the purchase order system. It turned out to be hugely complicated because every form on the P.O. form was overloaded and when we finished there were actually 31 ways to create P.O.s. Which meant a big project, budget, etc. And there was a lot of political power in each department that prevented any of us lower than them from changing or simplifying it.

So the executives bought a new PO program that had one way of doing things and said, "This is the only way to do it now". And that was that. All the "creativity" was out- and there was one way to do P.O.'s. It didn't have complete coverage- a few things had to be done manually or as attachments (to explain to approvers what was the PO was for in better detail than supported). But mostly, all the complexity of the system was cut away so it could be replaced with a $5000ish/year product that came off the shelf.

A robot doesn't replace 1000 workers.

A group of robots supported by a few human workers replace 1000 workers. They cost 1/3 the price, don't make mistakes, don't get sick, etc.

Other machinists don't agree with you on the replacement aspect.
http://www.goiam.org/publicati...

http://motherboard.vice.com/bl...
"That's according to a 2013 Oxford study, which was highlighted in this week's Economist cover story. That study attempted to tally up the number of jobs that were susceptible to automization, and, surprise, a huge number were. Creative and skilled jobs done by humans were the most secureâ"think pastors, editors, and dentistsâ"but just about any rote task at all is now up for automation. Machinists, typists, even retail jobs, are predicted to disappear. "

And that's not even addressing the 3d printing aspects.

When you replace several machinists, you have a few good ones out of the 12 you let go- and you take the one who is willing to work 24/7 for $10 to $15 bucks an hour.

I think they are off on "editing"-- it's partially being automated, partially being crowdsourced, and what's left- they just have stopped doing. I've seen "howlers" in professionally published (not self published) paper and hard back books increasingly over the last 10 years.

Agree with you entirely on the white-collar jobs which are not 90%+ creative. Jobs with less creativity will be combined and the creative parts done by consultants or designed out.

For example, drug use of course but increasingly also

smoking
drinking alcohol

Less common but more common by the year.
engaging in risky sports.
going on a vacation where you can't be reached by cell phone.
Saying something unpopular that "reflects badly on the company" even tho you did it on your own time.
being unreachable outside of working hours for more than a short period.
taking certain prescription drugs.
not taking certain prescription drugs (blood tests better show their presence).

etc.

I'm sure you can think of more now.

Interesting.

So do you think that you could replace a good advertising executive with an automated process?

Or a creative lawyer who thinks of new ways to argue existing laws?

Isn't dealing with ever changing exceptions being creative?

----

One thing about the ever changing exceptions is that companies are eliminating those by eliminating options and reducing the domain space (or eliminating it entirely).

For example with customer service menu trees and automated websites (and even automated chatbots).

You have a point but it's really more about terminology.

There are many different kinds of intelligence. I think being "creative" is one of them. And there are many different kinds of "creativity". A person who is really creative at painting won't be creative as a lawyer (finding new ways to apply existing law) or an advertising executive (thinking of something "fresh" to penetrate the noise" or as a writer.

But a lot of smart people don't create as much as they do analyze. Their jobs are at risk.

And a lot of people can create an idea now and then, but given a shortage of jobs, standards would be very high.

And ordinary manual labor (even telemarketing) is going the way of the dodo now.

I've seen estimates of 2/3 of fast food jobs being gone within 15 years. And the jobs that remain will basically be loading supplies into robots. (i.e. automated drink machine, automated cooking machines, automated kiosk or voice recognition ordering machines-- even automated delivery and unloading to storage of bulk supplies.)

Is this something that would respond to crowd-sourcing? I'm asking because I really don't know.

I've noticed that the reviews for apps have become much less reliable. Apple and Google have even started making it harder to break out the low-rated reviews on apps in their stores now, and there's so much manipulation of the reviews that it's impossible to fully trust them. And Apple and Google are far from blameless in this.

I wouldn't mind seeing some independent site that had sort of "wiki-reviews" of apps and medical apps might be a place to start. Let's see what some people with medical book-learnin' have to say about these things. We all know the wide range of quality of these things. This is one of those areas where anecdotal information would be pretty useful. I don't need to read peer-reviewed journal articles to know whether an app that measures and charts heart rate is useful, I just need to know if it does what it says it's doing. I've used an excellent sleep app for about a year now and I'm convinced that my experience matches what it's telling me, but I would have liked to know a little more in advance.

Having reviews on online stores was a good idea, but it's getting hopelessly corrupted. There's got to be some solution to this besides having the FDA have to chase it all down and delay the release of apps until they pass regulatory muster.

To employ people for $5,000 and sell products to people who make $80,000.

They do not see the fundamental problem.

It will resolve itself. Wages in china and india are up to $5,000 now and still doubling every 2-4 years (lower wages doubling faster).

Of course, that leaves the problem of robotics- which right now- today- can do work for less than poverty level wages in most of the world- and are only getting better an cheaper.

Robot repair jobs are two orders of magnitude less (1 worker and robots replaces 1000 workers). Automated procedures is replacing most of the thinking jobs.

The only jobs left will be "creative" jobs. Where the creative part of your jobs is less than half of your job- look for outsourcing. And about, oh, at least half of the global population isn't well suited for creative jobs since they are (by definition) below average intelligence.

Either a free stuff utopia or some kind of really terrible future is just down the road.
Hopefully after I'm dead of course.