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Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

Did serfs live in houses with 30+ others? Migrant workers do. Did serfs' diets consist of beans, rice, and water? Migrant workers' do. Regarding the hours-per-week claims, they seem totally disconnected from the realities I've seen. I've never seen a migrant worker that worked nice short days or took weekends off, but without reliable statistics, we'll just have to agree to disagree here.

You might want to get your facts straight. This was from 2002-2003 so the number may not be a perfect illustration of today but it's fairly obvious that migrant workers don't have it as bad as serfs by a large margine
Hours and pay
"In 2001-2002, the average was 42 hours, compared to 38 in 1993-1994. In 2001-2002, approximately one quarter each worked less than 35 hours, between 35 and 40, 41 and 49, and 50 hours or more."
Housing
Only 5% were in a dormitory, barracks, or multi-family structure.
80% live off farm.

That they are doing the farming for a larger population does not follow from the fact that there are fewer people farming than there were 600 years ago. Non sequitur.

So are you disagreeing that there are fewer farmers or that the population has not grown in 600 years. The were 40 million farmers in Europe in the middle ages with a population of 50 million. Today there are 13 million farmers and a population of 740 million.

I specifically stated that if these jobs had an equal requirement for labor as the jobs they replaced, the logical conclusion would be that there was no net gain in productivity. Since there was in fact dramatic gains in productivity, the claim that these new jobs simply replaced the old jobs is demonstrated false. This is what's called a proof by contradiction.

People no longer have to farm for a living they do one of a million other things because of technology. If technology was not there they would have to farm. I'd like to see your proof that those other jobs did not replace farming jobs, you are missing a few rungs in your logic chain.

Specifically, do you have any evidence that they would have to work less hard to fix broken technology if they do more than "just enough to get by"?

They would have to work harder to fix broken technology. They would need to continue their current effort PLUS fix the technology. I don't know where you are getting this. If you use technology to do the bare minimum you will run into an issue when it breaks. You won't have any money to get replacement parts and fix it yourself or pay someone to fix it. You will need to do more then just meet your current needs.

To avoid death at the hands of an angry mob. I can't believe you've never heard of the French revolution. Amazing.

This I do agree with, that the French Revolution was just a 20 year riot. Your point pretty well illustrates that migrant workers have it better, they are not rioting and killing innocent people so they must be receiving better treatment then farmers 200 years ago. Over half of the migrant workers in the US are committing a crime just to work there.

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

I never said otherwise. I was saying that a serf in the middle ages had it more or less equally good as modern migrant workers.

Do migrant workers live in drafty one room houses with leaky roofs no windows and dirt floors? Serfs did. Do migrant workers diet consist of onion, potatoes and bread? Serfs did. Migrant workers work 40-50 hours a weeks while serfs worked 60-80 hours a week.

The kind that lack a legal right to work, work for illegally low wages

Any wages a person with no legal right to work makes are illegal wages. They choose to enter the country illegally and work illegally why should anyone be shocked if they are paid illegally.

Now you need a bunch of machines for most of it and a bunch of Mexicans for a small remainder. If it took as many people to design/build/maintain the machines as it did to do the work manually, there would not have been any gains in productivity, which is contradicted by reality. So we can agree that we need fewer people to do the same work, and yet somehow we still need everyone working full time? I call bullshit.

There are many assumptions you make that lead to this wrong conclusion, or maybe it's just your way of convincing yourself it's ok to be lazy.
-There are fewer people farming then there was 600 years ago, this means fewer people are doing the farming for a larger population
-You seem to think society has not gotten any more complex, there is not just a carpenter, blacksmith, and farmer any more. All the people that would be farming are doing something else, thousands of job fields that have to serve the whole population.
-Now if people use technology to do just enough to get by they are setting themselves up for failure, when their technology breaks they will have to work harder to fix it or pay to have it fixed and thus will now have to work harder to maintain their same lifestyle.

Gains in efficiency are disproportionately pocketed by the wealthy

Gains in efficiency are pocked by the by the people paying for the technology, if migrant workers are not paying for the technology then they won't see as much of the benefit. Why should the person risking their capital forfeit the benefits?

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

Are you familiar at all with serfdom? A serf in the middle ages did not have it better then modern migrant workers.

Could you be specific about what migrant workers you are talking about. I doubt there is any place in this world where migrant workers are taking advantage technology to improve their efficiency and do not have modern amenities like cell phones.

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 1) 353

So you're saying one can have a place to live, clothes to wear, and food to eat by performing a tiny fraction of the manual labor expected of the average worker 600 years ago?

I am absolutely not saying that, your work ethic is not the only thing that you need to work on.

If you want to work hard enough to match the output of 600 years ago you will end up living like it's 600 years ago.

Since your reading comprehension is a little low I'll spell it out for you. I'm saying that a migrant worker that gets the same amount of produce as a person 600 years ago would end up living in conditions like it was 600 years ago. Migrant workers have cell phones, cars, indoor plumbing, heating,... none of which were around 600 years ago so I'm lost on your point. Does having advance technology to someone 600 years ago only count if it's less then a year old. Thanks to technology there are higher yields meaning the produce density is higher so they can collect it faster with the same input as people 600 years ago. The trucks that they put their produce in allow them to spend more time collecting produce and less pulling horse carts out of the mud or trudging through a field to drop off your filled crate.

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 2) 353

If you want to work hard enough to match the output of 600 years ago you will end up living like it's 600 years ago. Technology has made it so working as hard produces significantly greater output. You can choose to keep up or get left behind but society should not reward you for your lack of work ethic.

Comment Re: I never thought I'd say this... (Score 3, Informative) 353

The problem is the people that "don't feel like busting ass" are not incentivized to contribute to society. They get free food, shelter, clothes, cell phones, medical services,... and are not required to contribute at all. When you reward lazy behavior more people are lazy, you then get to a point where the people footing the bill refuse to work hard because their hard work just goes to the lazy people.

Comment Re:By all means (Score 1) 264

Cops should have always on wearable cameras and tech that wirelessly streams to servers. Who watches the watchers? We should all be watching.

I doubt that would even be possible, streaming wirelessly inside buildings may be difficult, a building on the edge of town forget about it, then there is also the privacy issue when police enter people's homes. The videos should be encrypted and only prosecutors can decrypt them, so police can't alter their story to fit with the evidence.

Comment Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score 1) 246

According to Wikipedia ISIS has around 100,000 people fighting for it. The world's Muslim population is around 1.6 billion. Therefore ISIS contains 0.006% of the world's Muslims fighting for it.

Interestingly that's around the same percentage of the US population (0.006%) who were convicted of murder in 1994 (source), so is Islam really any more broken than, for example, 1994 America?

That's how many soldiers ISIS has, where did they get money for weapons, outside support. Where are they getting rations, outside support. Where are they getting vehicles, outside support. It was 20 years ago but I don't remember a Guns for Murders program, I do remember a Jail for Murders program that still continues today. Again it was a long time ago but I don't remember there being support for murders, even congress has better approval numbers then murders. When you look at Muslim support for terror groups and their activities it is much higher then 1994 US support for murders, 32% of Palestinians support Itamar attack which was a brutal murder of 5 family members including a 3 month old. 89% of Palestinians support attacks on Israel. 20% of British Muslims sympathized with the 7/7/7 bombers, 16% of French Muslims support ISIS, 51% of Pakistanis grieved for the death of Osama Bin Laden, only 16% though the killing of Bin Laden was justified, the majority of Muslims in the middle east have positive or mixed feelings of Bin Laden. This is not a small percentage that approves of this behavior it's 25-50% of all Muslims.
sources
http://www.ynetnews.com
http://www.telegraph.co.uk
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org
http://www.pewglobal.org
http://www.pewforum.org

Comment Re:The coral will need guard rails around it (Score 1) 76

Sonar will not help, you would need to detect within the stopping range, lets say 10'. It is too difficult to determine weather the obstruction is directly in front of you, below you, or a multi-path bounce at those ranges. Radar systems have this problem too there is a doughnut hole around their systems. Lidar systems would work better and will have less impact on the ecosystem.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 1) 76

By definition a 'sports car' is a two seater.

There is no such definition for a sports car. The Porsche 911 turbo s has 4 seats and would be home on a track day, which is the requirement to be sports car. The 911 turbo has a 0-60 of 3.2 sec, it's fully stock Nurburgring time was 7:38. The 911 GT2, which is a road legal race car, 0-60 was 3.4 sec and a fully stock Nurburgring time 7:34. The 911 turbo hands down is an excellent track day car having two seats in the back does not change it from being a sports car.

Comment Re:Seriously? (Score 2) 76

Let me help you with what he said, "No one with red blood in their veins buys a sports car and hands the keys to a chauffeur". Now because you are not a car person I suspect you wouldn't know what a sports car is. Most sports cars are two seaters, the few that are four seaters an infant would not have enough leg room, the back row is strictly for lower insurance rates, so you would be sitting in the front seat of your chauffeur driven sports car, not a typical chauffeur chauffee relationship. Secondly sports cars are not very comfortable they have low profile tires, firm suspensions, and rigid seats, they are designed to drive fast around corners not smoothly on the highway. What you want for your chauffeuring is a sedan, suv, or van.

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