Comment Re:About time... (Score 3, Insightful) 158
File a bug report.
So how is a surgeon supposed to wire up a body to a brain that hasn't grown into that body?
Seems like what you need is a way to replicate that original process and let the brain re-learn its interface.
But those are not human hands.
Well, not Human 1.0 anyways.
The number of farm workers has also drastically declined but in both cases we haven't seen a huge spike in unemployment.
That is because the displaced farm workers were able to move into the manufacturing sector. More recently displaced manufacturing workers have been moving to the service sector for at least forty years. The question is, now that the service sector is going through the same process where are all the workers going to move to? (There are only three sectors to the economy) While 100% automation is unlikely any time soon, if manufacturing and the service sector become as efficient as Agriculture then we're looking at less than 4% of the population being employed. Those sort of levels would have profound social consequences.
These white collar jobs aren't being replaced any more than the spreadsheet and accounting software replaced the accountant.
The head accountant is still there but the overall size of accounting departments and associated administrative staff have shrunk massively over the last fifty years.
You've heard these stations that are totally automated. No human touch, dry as a bone. The ones you want to listen to are still emceed by humans.
Personally I prefer the automated ones.
I used to agree with you on the basic income, but now I'm not so sure. The mistake a lot of socialists tend to make is assuming that humans will go do some thing useful with their time if they have no need to work to survive. I think this is not a valid general assumption, and if it isn't then socialism eats itself (interestingly in the same way capitalism eats itself due to greed), not due to an inability to supply the needs of the population, but due to social breakdown.
Social breakdown isn't the normal problem of socialism, rather it's the allocation of benefits at a rate faster than wealth is produced. In order for a society to have successful socialism it must first A) Be exceedingly wealthy, B) Have a way to continue generating large amounts of wealth even after incentives for work are reduced, C) Ensure that beneficiaries can't vote themselves wealth greater than what is being produced. So far we haven't managed to create a society that can do all three at the same time but automation may fix A&B enough that a bit of social design to fix C might make the whole thing workable.
Yep, sounds like a perfect recipe for a revolution.
Hence the emphasis on DARPA projects that can produce robotic soldiers and autonomous war machines.
Dignity does NOT come from forced coercive threat of violence and income redistribution based on that violence. We have conclusively proven that in the former USSR (and North Korea and more).
True, but when wealth disparity becomes extreme that doesn't turn out so well either. See feudalism for a potent example of what it's like for most people to exist as little more than chattel.
When there are no jobs, provided we can feed everyone, we essentially have communism. The worker becomes the artist and the commodity is culture.
That could happen, more likely the unemployed will be considered "useless eaters" and every effort will be made to disenfranchise them. Warehousing and/or liquidation will be the preferred outcomes by the elite.
Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.
