Topic: rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;) - page 135. (Read 907229 times)

How much would it take and based on what would one ascend to 4000€a month?

Unfortunately for reasons outside my control like having a family and being half autist I can't do half of these. Also, I have diagnosed "oppositional defiant disorder" so it's difficult for me to take orders without questioning every single bit of said order. Also, 400€ monthly seems too low unless standard of living in estonia is really low?

Statistics could get extracted in terms of "how many cameras are used and for how much time are they used, and how many of them get broken" and then manufacture under these %'s. These cameras are built by automated robots, which manufacture given the data input that I mentioned earlier. The wasted stuff aka unrepairable will be decomposed and the prime materials used again. In 1000 years the human imput to keep this cycle going will be peanuts.

Who sends you the camera? Who stores it? Who fixes it when it's broken? If two people want it at the same time, who decides who gets it? What happens to the person who "borrows" it and never sends it back?

And i am really not sure if that is the right purpose of the ad campaign, to function as an income replacement. But i really don't want to go into a more detailed discussion about that.

To each his own.

private property as we knowing must basically dissapear. Things will be lended. Say you need whatever device to do whatever task, like record a movie or whatever, you ask for any free cameras and you get one sent, when you are done you send it back and some other person uses it.

Also, funfact: I can make as much as I would with rpietla's work by working on Stunna's ad campaing.

wow, a few member really try hard to increase their post counter...  

Looking for people who can obey orders, smile, clean rooms, serve tables, cook, know wines, stand long hours in scorching sun, nitpick about petty amounts, do gardening, smile, drive cars, furnish rooms, clean toilets, empty trashbins, greet guests, empty ashtrays, water lawns, sell wines, do the laundry, smile, answer repetitious questions, clean floors, obey orders and smile.

Oh yes, and the starting pay is bad but the range goes up to 4000€/month.

As we are an equal opportunity employer, being an industrial engineer is not a disqualifier.

Maybe if people stopped consuming 105% of their salaries "because I deserve this treat". Their deficit is the businesses' earnings, which goes to stockholders, people who saved so they could invest.

I have heard of many bad things the government does, but never found an explanation for people digging themselves into debt and acccelerating the treadmill of hedonic adaptation on which they are barely keeping up. I have to think that's their own doing.

With our market economy as it stands, the world you describe would be a world of plenty for the technologists only.  The masses, whose labour would no longer be needed, would have no money with which to buy these plentiful goods.


Needs would still go unfilled, because people without jobs would not have the money to pay for them.


The question that has intriqued me for some time is how we transition from a market economy to the paradise you describe.  Because although the paradise you describe is one possible future, another is that only the 0.01% who are needed to maintain the machines live in a paradise, and the remaining 99.99% are destitute.

roy

What does consensus have to do with anything? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

This is basic economic logic: you institute price caps you get lack of sellers (shortages), you institute price floors (in this case minimum wage) you get lack of buyers (in this case employers).

Note that welfare isn't relevant - there's a reason I said "insofar as it is involuntary"; welfare results in some people voluntarily going on the dole, remaining unemployed.

--

As to technological unemployment, it is indeed a good thing. Nay, a fantastic thing. A world without a demand for anyone to work except those who are highly technically skilled would clearly be a world of plenty. Just think about it: no one needs anything non-technical done; that means no non-technical need is going unfulfilled: no one is hungry, because if there were any shortage of food there would be demand for farmers. No one is unclothed, because if there were any shortage of clothes there would be demand for weavers, etc.

And if you'll say that any shortage of clothing will just be met by more machines, YES, that's the whole point and it's great! It means, again, there is no shortage of clothing. Clothing is not in demand. But still more miraculously, no people (or very few people) are required to devote their labor to achieve this state of affairs. It's the whole reason you buy a dishwasher, for example, freeing you up to do something you think is more fun or valuable than washing dishes by hand. You're not working anymore because you don't need to do the work. You're either doing some other work that needed doing, or - if there is no other work at all that needs doing - you're living in a paradise, since all your needs that could be met by any kind of human labor are already met. You don't even need a shoulder massage, because if you did you could hire someone to do that and that would be a non-technical job created, contradicting the initial assumption.

This would be paradise, a situation where you don't need to work at all and you can still experience a higher standard of living than you do now. On the way there, we'll have intermediate situations where you can work only part time with no reduction in life quality, then only 5 hours a week, then a few minutes a week will do it. Finally most people won't work at all unless they want to enjoy an even higher standard of living or if they just want to occupy themselves with something for the fun or psychic reward of it. There is absolutely nothing to be afraid of about this scenario. And keep in mind at no time is the unemployment involuntary in such a future. It's people working less because they care little to better their already quite nice situation by toiling for hours a day; instead they will work only a few hours a week, or eventually not at all - all the while enjoying an increasing standard of living.

What people need to see is that most millionaires make their money by NOT SPENDING.  Risto demonstrates this mentality throughout his post.  Saving all your money gives you money to invest when opportunities come around.

Technical persons weren't technical persons until the day they started to learn technical stuff.

^ Agreed that Bitcoin is the way out. But again, this is another in a long train of technologies that have made everyone's lives better. It's just that now we're getting into the really huge ones. Bitcoin, prediction markets, decentralized everything...then in a short while the pace of new tech becomes impossible to comprehend, let alone predict.

The problem is that in my dystopia, you might be willing and able to pay for such services, but if so you'd be part of the new aristocracy, the lucky few.  The vast majority of people would not be able to spend money on such frivolous expenses, and therefore there would be few oppurtunities to earn money that way.

Lack of economic demand doesn't equate to lack of human need.  Demand is a function of price - in economic terms you can only contribute to demand for a good to the extent that you have the means to purchase it.

For the last 200 years it is a correct assessment, but if you are old enough, comparing 2014 with 1999 in almost every aspect (except, bitcoin  ): living conditions, income and work load in US for a majority of the population are much worse in 2014, no question about it. Creeping unrecognized inflation; long term unemployment; higher premium, but worse medical plans-we have it all. Because of high unemployment, people have difficulty changing jobs and/or moving, etc., etc.
I am trying the Piketty book-it seems that he got something right there regarding the cause of this situation, but I am not sure what solutions (if any) are possible.

It saves my day that someone might get a job thought that thread. Congratulations to Serje and kudos to Risto.