>>- back in the day old people had the grace to die of diabetes or a heart attack, now they live until 90, but don't work the last 30 years of their lives, effectively eating the seed corn of the new generation.

If you're able and society needs you to work, then you should work, even in the last "30 years of your life" and even if you've done far more than provide for your own retirement.

Good human beings don't live solely for themselves--they also work to help others out.

However, I'm NOT in favor of the masses continuing to work all the way to death solely so that the 1% can pile more gold up onto their hoards.

--PM

You're kidding, right? If every single Chinaman had a rifle, and only a rifle, they couldn't hurt America, not all billion of them.

They couldn't even get here, not being able to walk from there to here.
In the same way, those armed with just small arms can't take on the US Military if the US Military is willing to engage in wholesale slaughter.

The people who don't control the technological military live and are free only because the technological military withholds its power, not because any amount of small arms enables them to fight back effectively.

--PM

Or if only the top .1% of people are sufficiently "creative" to be required in the role of "creative" work such that anyone would pay them?

For example, in entertainment, there used to be millions employed. Now, the top of the top entertain the whole planet, and there's no paying market AT ALL for anyone else.

And if only "creative" work exists, what do you do with all the people who aren't fit for that work? Disintegration booths? They won't be able to be paid to dig ditches anymore.

Also, what happens when there're jobs enough in the "creative" fields for 10% of the population, but 100% of the population wants those jobs? Those jobs won't pay much anymore. The people who own the robots will enslave everyone else.

--PM

When you talk about "paid well".

If there are very few jobs and a LOT of out-of-work people, market forces dictate that the price of labor will drop very low. Lots of supply, little demand.

So, in the situation you describe, it'll be like today, except worse. There's been massive degradation in the reward/hour worked ever since 1973 for everyone except CEOs and other 1%-ers. Imagine when there are 1000 qualified people for every job, and they're all starving. You could pay minimum wage and get someone with a PhD.
Just like the PhD's who're driving limousines in Silicon Valley.

When most jobs are automated, there will have to be MASSIVE government intervention in markets or most people will just starve to death for lack of any way to make money.

--PM

Lie? I remember hearing about something called "stop loss", where soldiers had to return to Iraq/Afghanistan even after their enlistment was up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop-loss_policy

--PM

Your point also applies to books that go out of print. If you can't get a copy, you're SOL.

Maybe laws should be passed putting all scientific papers in public escrow: if rapacious profiteering occurs or other market failure to provide copyrighted scientific works at a reasonable price, the Library of Congress makes it available online free.

I think $0.25 per page up to a maximum of $5 for an article is pretty reasonable, how about you?

--PM

You CAN make a big bomb with TNT, nuke sized even.

However, I do NOT think that you can fool US detection. I'm not familiar with the techniques used exactly, but don't you think the seismic signature of a nuke and a big conventional bomb would be very different? How about neutrino fluxes? Can't fake that with TNT. How about "the flash" (other than neutrinos), like long-wave EMP radiation that might make it through the ground, and maybe a trace of high energy stuff? How about residual radionucleotides that escape?

I don't think Government lying could even be done successfully--it's not just the US who has capability of analyzing seismic data to determine if it's nuke or not. I bet Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Japan, and Israel could ALL do that too. If the US gov't tried to lie about it, they'd be caught out immediately.

NK has nukes. Period. Due to all the arguments above, I believe it is a fools bet to think otherwise. The news reports do say they're pretty lousy nukes, but they're nukes.

--PM

How long did it take the US to decapitate Al Qaeda? I mean, seriously, d'you think finding and destroying enemy heads of state is easy?

Saddam Hussein was NOT easy to find. He had his whole country to hide in--and he did. The US didn't get him until US had control of his country.

The US also missed Qaddafi--he stayed free until he lost control of his country too! NOTICE A PATTERN HERE?

US got lucky with Bin Laden--and Bin Laden didn't control Pakistan nor have control of a country's resources to help him hide.

And if US tries the same thing on NK's leaders, US not only face a high probability of failure, US faces almost certain nuclear retaliation, perhaps not against US, but against US interests at the least.

The reason US/TheWest don't routinely 'decapitate' is not only because TheWest just CAN'T do it (history demonstrates this), it's because it's stupid to try it unless your enemy is incapable of retaliation.

--PM

So, um, you want your government meat inspector to be an unpaid volunteer? What if no one wants to do that job as a volunteer?

Like Salmonella, e. coli, listeria much?

And do you want a "volunteer" from the banking industry regulating--the banking industry?

I for one want the Government to pay those in Government positions, because guess what, if the Government isn't paying them, well, SOMEONE ELSE will.

--PM

I'm not sure, but might some of the geoengineering approaches to removing carbon from the atmosphere considerably accelerate your estimate? Like for example, iron-fertilizing the oceans to create massive plankton blooms that, hopefully, remove carbon faster?

Not that I'm sure that the proposed geogengineering approaches are GOOD IDEAS, I'm just wondering if reducing CO2 could be done quicker.

--PM

Hello,

    Some people are claiming that all spaceflight knowledge in this country has been lost and it would cost far more (in constant dollars?) to re-do what was done in the 60's to get us to the moon. I'm not so sure.

    I'm working in an engineering field (not rocket science) which was dominated by experimentation/prototyping when it was "hot" (WWII and shortly thereafter). Giant teams of people (100s or more) would be doing what our very small team is today (3-ish).

    Granted, we have their shoulders to stand on, but instead of doing a WHOLE LOT of prototypes, we run supercomputer simulations and "try out" thousands of designs. And when we build them, they work--the first time.

    I would say we re-do (sort of, actually we're pushing today's technological boundaries) the equivalent of what our fathers and grandfathers had done, faster, cheaper, better, and with stupider, less-skilled people (I'm including myself) --because we have better tools to extend our minds and bodies with today.

    So I am not so sure that re-engineering the Apollo program would cost anything like the original development program. I think it would depend on what kind of modeling tools and other tech developments are available now that didn't exist then.

    What's more, we're currently executing what I would call an "archaeology" project, reviving a 40-year-old design. The existing documentation is lacking, but it's still helping us a lot--we'll probably get this thing built for 1/10th the cost "back when" thanks to what our ancestors have left us and thanks to the tools we have today. And we might even build it better than they could ever have done, thanks to being able to use supercomputers to search for an optimal design.... But that remains to be seen.

--PeterM

We're already in a mass extinction event. We're wiping out species at a pace that, in a geological-time sense, is indistinguishable from a big asteroid strike or massive volcanic eruption.

And yes, humans are moronic. The kind of investment in humanity's immortality probably won't be made until someone has conquered the entire planet and subjugated the people to such an extent that he doesn't need a huge military budget--and then the effort will be made only if that is the world leader's whim, instead of, say, constructing monuments to himself.

--PM