Topic: Technological unemployment is (almost) here - page 20. (Read 88255 times)

In planned economy there won't be any need to motivate entrepreneurship at all (this have some disadvantages of course, but at least unemployed won't starve). People who don't like this system will be free to leave the country, so what a problem?!

This is the politician who is running the largest ministry (Social) in Germany at 145 Billion Euro. Look at that impressive resume:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Nahles
Frankly, I'd not even hire this person as a cashier in a grocery store.

Remember the Wiso survey of MPs in the German parliament when they were doing the ESM vote? Most MPs didn't have a clue that it was 211 Billion nominal and none of them knew that it is potentially unlimited. They also didn't know that they were about to vote for immunity of the fund managers. They essentially handed over the power over the German budget to the ESM without even knowing it. Dito in other EMU countries.

You may be right, they may not all be idiots. But they are also not the people who are truly running the show. Those people who are really running the show could not care less about a good implementation of some BIG scheme. It will either fit their agenda or it won't. If it does fit it will be implemented in such a way as to fit the agenda best.

Naah, it depends very much on how the BIG is implemented. For a start I would recommend a cost neutral implementation. It would save hundreds of thousands of government clerks paying out welfare. It would prevent people from being stigmatized and humiliated because they lost their job. Together with a flat tax with as few exceptions as possible it would not only be much more efficient but also be more fair than what most countries have today.

The question is how to balance it. Votes on the height of the BIG would have to be coupled to the height of the flat tax percentage (a nonlinear relationship) to prevent deficit spending. Please note that in Switzerland there was a vote on a very high BIG before and people voted against it. The majority is much smarter than most people think. No one in his right mind with a time horizon of more than five years would agree to long term general government indebtedness.

It's not that politicians are idiots. But the system makes them act like idiots in a lot of cases. Here people need to take control and force politicians to do the right thing for the long term.

That's the Socialist spirit: Use violent force to solve all problems. Force entrepreneurs to work and rob them at gun point. Much good did that way of doing economics do to the Argentinian and Venezuelan economy.

You see, it doesn't stay there: Put yourself in the shoes of an entrepreneur and ask yourself what you would do. You would probably move to some other country. So the next reaction of govt is clear: Build a wall around your country to prevent people from escaping BIG paradise - tried and tested Socialist practise.

Say: From what will you pay the Guaranteed Income (TM) when entrepreneurs use their creativity not to produce but to escape.

EDIT:
You mention "corporation owners". Those people will be just fine. Crony capitalists are good at entering a symbiosis with a socialist government. They don't care if their corporation is "owned by the people" because they know who the real owner is: The one who controls it. George Soros is a socialist. Ask yourself why.

Therefore a probably outcome is nationalization of the means of production by state, so corporations' owners won't be able to hide profits.

If basic income implemented, I think most countries will shift from imprisonment to property confiscation as a punishment.

It requires much higher taxes and/or central planning, as this thread' poll suggests. It will result in even more involvement of govt in every day life. It will result in more tax evasion and thus a war against tax evasion. I'd expect the prison population of BIG countries to exceed that of the US today if BIG is financed through taxes. If, for example Switzerland were to introduce BIG and finance that partly through VAT, the current habit of Swiss people to shop and fill the tank in neighboring countries can no longer be tolerated. Bern will need more, much more law enforcement.

How would a well balanced BIG empower the government? It would simplify so much and make the government much leaner.

THIS!

Big government's power has only one goal: Perpetual growth of big government's power.

The assembly in a Swiss Canton is serving the goals of the people there. The US had a similar concept at the beginning: The County. Much of the 2nd amendment was directed at the county (A well regulated militia...) But these days, the county has been reduced to a mere administrative unit and it's power has been transferred to Washington. In the EU we do the same thing: The power of Brussels is directed at the goal of increasing the power of Brussels.

Frankly, the only reason BIG is not adopted by the power centers is that they do not (yet) understand how well it serves their purpose. So proponents should maybe change their strategy: In addition to explaining to the sheeple how they get goodies, they should explain to really powerful people like Cheney, Haass and Schäuble how BIG can be used to centralize power.

And what can the all-powerful state/govt do about it, should this "threat" materialize? Ban H2S? Bomb it with hellfire missiles, their preferred way to spoil Muslim wedding parties? Lock H2S up in Guantanamo and use enhanced interrogation methods, aka Waterboarding? Maybe nuke H2S like Ms Timoshenko apparently want to do with the Ukrainian Russians? Or legislate H2S into H2O like the state of Indiana tried to legislate the value of PI to 3.2?

Frankly, the only climate change that is IMO both realistic and terrible is caused by the state, i.e. turning the world into a radioactive snowball.

Back to topic: Proponents of BIG should really look into the track record of the state to determine if this is the right agent to implement such plans. At the very least we need to change the organization of society away from big government to something like the Swiss model before BIG can be attempted, probably even less centralized. Unless you have a death wish, of course.

Just an FYI or reminder:  Hydrogen Sulfide might be a threat:
http://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/awakening-the-horrors-of-the-ancient-hothouse-hydrogen-sulfide-in-the-worlds-warming-oceans/

Haha, it's perhaps entertaining to link thoughts of war against the aliens to aliens, but as you stated there between the lines, there's likelihood/hope they would actually be smarter than just a warmongering space barbarian... Which the common image actually seems to be most of the time at this moment.

The alien is a psychological archetypal character that can be used as an object to narrate beliefs of the emperor to the common folk trough means of mass production and it's greatest field of societal programming apart from the education field; the entertainment industry. A giant engine of PR aka. propaganda for the almost monarchistic state. Power, again... yet again... grown behind closed doors, away from the public, off from the streets.

Being afraid of the alien and projecting it as a military threat is a powerful way to link the thought that the unknown solutions, technologies, thoughts, creativity... is only in the realm of the war machine. Be afraid, be very afraid.

But if the concept of aliens is taken seriously and not used as a ridiculous puppet, as a genuine reflective tool to think about human possibilities...
Don't you think that ANY highly sophisticated society of alien intelligence would actually be very peaceful and wise instead of fearful and tribal.

If you take a neurologic viewpoint, this would be a wrong evolutive direction to follow the observations...
Intelligence is about understanding. Real intelligence is not harmful. Real science is always about good ethics.

It comes from rational approach to apply rationally confirmed knowledge into a process of understanding.
It would be safe to assume that any self-aware planetary race would have to solve the questions and challenges of the questions about spreading wealth and population management as a whole. It is the biggest challenge of humanity right now and basically everything that we ever discuss in the fields of the sciences, politics, social studies and economics. That's what all the fuss is about, that's why there is something we call "News". We look at the developments of this lunatic social experiment because we are just too damn lazy to catch and cultivate our own food.

Well, that's the first intelligent being process all about... Reaching adulthood, balance of body and mind and self sustenance without tantrums and violence.
That's what the aliens needed to figure out FIRST, before they could develop tech further, otherwise been lost into space due some stupid disputes. That's precisely why the big nations do space programs together.... The scientists are trying to keep up having world peace challenging the best of these nations work together on a bigger quest. To keep the frustrated men off each others throats as this political madhouse tries to settle itself.

Aliens, obviously would have had to been gone through all of that and way beyond.
And using alien to connect unknown elements into ridicule or fearful scenarios is mental image manipulation to hold psychological leverage against progressive thought.

So no, I don't think sending radio waves to space is all that dangerous  
The dangers only exist likely on the silver screen. Real aliens would be magnificent beings in greater likelihood if you take a broad look on nature and the universe.

Damn, I would like to see that vivid imagination of yours used into envisioning smarter societal solutions that positive and rather utopistic ones.
People who don't have envisioning skills follow the generally accepted vision. And it is envisioning ability that we are ripped out from in our schools.

We are taught to linear, systemic, mechanistic thinking. A slave mind is taught directly, effectively without visible violence.

That is TODAY.

We already live in a dystopia horrifyingly near to those things you wrote about...
It's time to turn the mental gaze fully into the new possibilities, in the pro-life department before these things get too non-human.
Organic things are to be harmonized with and learned from. It's smarter than dissecting and dissemination.

With more freedom from the oppressive lingual lexical systemic fuckup of a technical language run amok unchecked, unmonitored, misunderstood, faulty... With more freedom from it... We release our research potential and communications from oppressive systemic taxing and monetary distortion to the scientific fields via predatory social entity corporatization... As the wealth is pumped from the crowds, everything becomes a corporation. Public wealth gets sucked out in the vortex and we are left with unfair state contracting and corrupt favoring those business owners who agree to their political schemes openly.

So, fellows of coins, the re-inventors of the old healthy trade cultures that produced great common wealth zones where money circulated between people...
Let's see together what we can do with this re-lit torch of newly found spirit for fair trade and restoration to the great progress humanity made before "The Empire Stroke Back" and we found ourselves with these tokenic coinages made out of sheer ether! Dios Mio! Herregutt! Oh so many possibilities! Such Vision.

Decentralized does not mean disconnected. Politicians usually are elected for less than five years. Because of this their time horizon is five years or less, they don't think further ahead. This is the main reason for public debt btw.
Reasonable people and especially parents have a much longer time horizon, they care more about the future. With a longer time horizon of say twenty, fifty years fighting/dealing with climate change and meteor threats becomes much more important so a decentralized but coordinated system might come to much more consequent decisions and actions instead of only talking.

OT: The alien threat is a bad example. We would be 100% at the mercy of any intelligence that makes it's way to us. They could destroy us with the blink of an eye before we even realized because their technology would be so far superior. Think of a modern army against Roman empire. The only thing we could hope for was that they/it would also have high moral standards. Maybe it's not so smart to send radio waves into all directions...

Such as? The most immediate existential threat comes from state power, i.e. 1000s of nukes. I can't see why climate change should be a threat at all, even if it happens. Even if it were, I can't see what govt can do about it - except for the already discussed population culling.


The Roman Empire is a good example of how any time the government say "We", the rest of the sentence is a lie. The average Latin farmer had no benefit from all the conquest. They only died in it. All the loot went into the pockets of Marcus Licinius Crassus and his friends.

Had the Roman Farmer understood this, they would have left their neighbors alone and everyone would have been better off (xcept Crassus, of course). For them, the best course of action would have been to simply walk away from the power centers and so it is for us today.

De-centralized power is nice when we aren't under threat.

Climate Change won't be solved by de-centralization of power, and if our alien neighbours decide its time to inhabit earth and get rid of the indigenous population I have a strong feeling that mom and pop who have their own 3D printers so they can make guns and robots in their house won't be able to stand up against existential threats.

For now, de-centralization is nice because it makes each individual worth more. But in the event that we need to work as one and we are all de-centralized, we're going to be obliterated. Take look at the city states of Europe before the Romans conquered them, and then imagine what would have happened if the Roman Legion suddenly invaded a historical European Union.

lol (of course you have a point there)

this (my emphasis)

Libertarians and people more in favor of direct democracy share this goal.

IMHO everybody on the blockchain technological frontier has a moral responsibility to decentralize power.

War? What are you talking about? One night you go to bed, in the middle of the night a flybot injects something, next morning you wake up dead. Along with 300 Million fellow useless Americans.

There are still ways to prevent it. Stop waxing about BIG and other ways to give central government unlimited power. For you Americans: Vote for anything you want BUT Demopublicans. For Germans: Vote for anything BUT the CDUCSUSPDFDPGreen cartel. Brits: Vote UKIP. Dito for others. Vote for whoever is NOT entangled in the current power structure. You Americans had at least 2 close brushes with totalitarianism already: Lincoln and McCarthy. You did come around. You can do it again.

Incidentally the 3-D Printers are one of the potential ways to avoid being reduced to cattle for the majority of the population. Not because you may print guns, but because this is about de-centralizing manufacturing.

Weakening power centers by de-centralization is key. BIG and other means of centralization is leading to desaster. Hard to believe that one has to make the case for de-centralization and against centralization on a Bitcoin forum.

funny you should speak of 3D printers that can print metals and ceramics; in my second year of university I created a startup and seeked funding to build a prototype DMLS 3d printing device to be used for mass production, in the end we weren't able to get funding but the tech is viable and if I had the money I'd be able to do it today. Oh well

I hope to the time when tech unemployment will hit hardly 3D-printers will evolve enough to print complex metal structures (i.e. rifles, pistols, SAM missiles to destroy drones etc) and be affordable for the masses. Elites will think again before starting the war. 

Then you better get ready for it. I agree with tinus42 that this inevitable. The elites have always loathed the plebs, in every system. Think what the much adored Spartans did to the Helots - they regularly culled their numbers to what was useful.

Question is, what will you do with your AK47 in a time of micro drones and localizers?


[EDIT]Somehow, the picture doesn't show: http://static5.businessinsider.com/image/4fe1eedcecad041c0d000000/the-future-of-micro-drones-could-get-downright-scary.jpg [/EDIT]