is "Race to the Bottom", not "competitive workforce". It's a matter of perspective really. You're one of the lucky winners. If you had the wind knocked out of you by a few more rounds of offshoring though things might turn out differently for you.

I didn't say humanity was going away. I said that a substantial amount of the population was going to be stuck living in abject poverty for 50/60 years until our economy somehow catches up and finds new jobs for them. This is what happened when the Industrial revolution hit. A whole lot of completely unnecessary Human suffering...

From the announcement (bold mine):

Attention freedeskto.org: Commit that to memory, brand it on your foreheads, tattoo it on each other's butt cheeks, whatever it takes!

it pretty much _did_ happen. There was a 60 year period during the industrial revolution when millions were put out of work and tossed to the wayside. There's a reason why Luddites existed. They weren't forward think people. They were Luddites for Pete's sake. They were living in the misery caused by a lack of jobs in their day.

The industrial revolution caused massive unemployment, and it took the economy 60 years to catch up and start creating new jobs. If you lived after that period things got better as new tech created new jobs. If you lived during that period and weren't born wealthy life was Nasty, Brutish and Short. I'd like to skip that cycle this time.

Oh and there's one other thing: we're better at automation this time. So there's a good time the cycle will last a _lot_ longer. e.g. instead of 60 years of poverty we might be looking at 100, 200 or more while we wait for Star Trek style replicators and massive population declines to fix things.

SSDs

I'm pretty sure that's the management.

The sad part is that the huge corporate screw-ups keep winning the contracts because small but capable shops can't afford the costs of the paperwork designed to keep screw-ups out of the process and they can't afford the lawyers needed to actually get paid when the customer changes directions 5 times and makes the project late.

If they would allow pay as you go contracts with small shops they would get a lot more successful projects (or at worst, fail cheaply enough to try again) but again they're so paranoid that the project will fail that they set conditions that assure it will fail big and expensive.

Right, but the conversation that's being had around this is what are we going to do with all these people that we don't need anymore. Sure, we can say that the economy will catch up, but that might take 50, 60 years. In the meantime we'll have 2 or 3 lost generations who live in terrifying abject poverty. It'd be nice if this time around we did something about that...

The federal government has the authority to regulate interstate commerce, which includes telecommunications. The FCC charter tells it to use that power for the public interest.

You should really delve more into history then. There was a real movement for it. The red flags weren't a coincidence. Remember, the red scare hadn't happened yet. 'The Russians' were still good guys. The cold war was over a decade in the future.

Communism wasn't a dirty word at all except among the wealthy.

As for the rest about Marx, that's all irrelevant. It doesn't matter what actually was or how that came out, all that matters is what the people contemplating revolution at that time believed. Had they not been placated by positive changes, they would have pressed on to a revolution for better or worse. They didn't have the benefit of the rear view mirror that we have on the Russian revolution.

Again, read carefully. I didn't say it won't happen. I said it won't happen for a while. Personally, I would like to have an autonomous vehicle. I just want to see provisions made for the general welfare before we go much further down the path.

But it won't. The DOT doesn't give a damn about Google's union trouble and they're the ones who will ultimately have to sign off on automated vehicles.

Tie your knees down and read it again. I said that the concessions forced by unions PREVENTED a communist revolution and that it's a GOOD thing that they did.

If you WANT a communist revolution, by all means take back all that the unions have gained and ban them. Give a few years for the pressure to build up (plus or minus a few cities being burned) and BAM you'll have your revolution.

I prefer that we keep the relief valve in place maintaining a reasonable balance so we can avoid all that nonsense. Even better would be enlightened management recognizing that tightening the screws causes unions and union problems and adopting a more balanced approach, but given the quality of MBAs these days I'm not holding my breath.

I honestly doubt it will affect the timeline even one iota.