Topic: Technological unemployment is (almost) here - page 22. (Read 88274 times)

I don't see technological unemployment as necessarily having negative ramifications that outweigh the long term positive ramifications. It depends on how we deal with it. So we don't need humans to do pointless grunt work anymore? We have machines which build and work for machines?

Now we can be far more efficient in our designs. We don't have to produce as much waste, or destroy the earth because we will have more people taking part in the research and design phase. Intelligent machines can assist with research and design to optimize for survival scenarios which for instance have the lowest carbon footprint.

Technology does not have to be like what you see in Cloud Atlas. Technology liberates people as well. If you watched that movie then you'll realize that it reached that point due to human ignorance.

The same technology which would allow us to build intelligent machines would allow us to remove the veil of ignorance. Our design decisions could be longer term, more efficient, ecologically sustainable, and benefit the community designing it by awarding the shares to the designers.

Human beings are the grand designers, and while intelligent machines will eventually surpass our capability to design, those intelligent machines will still require human feedback to optimize in a way which supports our habitat and along with it our long term survival.

I don't fear technology. I'm no neo-luddite. It's the human being that creates destructive designs, not the tools.
You could use 3d printers to reduce poverty, increase self sufficiency, promote ecological sustainability, or you could use it to make guns and other weapons. The human being decides and most human beings aren't very good at thinking about long term consequences.

Who would voluntarily give their shares? When did I say it would work like that?

Nor do I say some government should steal your shares and distribute it for you.

Everyone is part of some community, if you're so greedy that you can't give a percentage of your shares back to the community why should you expect the community to support or protect your business?

It's an advantage for a business to support the community they operate in. I would give some of my shares to my community. That doesn't necessary mean "the poor" or random people. When I say my community that could mean my fraternity, my peer group, the Bitcoin community or any community I choose. Most shares wouldn't be given away but should be easy to earn for the volunteers.

People already are following this distributed ownership business model. They might not give the shares away for free but they let you in on it at pre-IPO when shares are going for pennies.

Look at altcoins for example and you'll see that when altcoins launch they go for pennies. A small community of true believers form around the altcoin. These are the people who actually develop the coin, build value around the coin, etc.

In a DAC if we use that as the example then you'll have people volunteering for shares in the DAC. They aren't supposed to all just be given away. In other cases people mine and get them from that.

I find it strange that in the Bitcoin community where most are poor and own shares in this Bitcoin thing that you think it's a foreign concept that the same familiar process could be used over and over again to solve poverty.

STOP THINKING INSIDE THE BOX!!!

Have a look at my blog article and learn more http://hplusmagazine.com/2014/03/12/autopoietic-computing-and-reality-augmented-autopoietic-social-structures/

Interesting, who will voluntary give away these shares for free to the unemployed?!

http://darkai.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Resilience-Project-Whitepaper-Draft-3c.pdf

My unfinished whitepaper provides an outline for a solution to technological unemployment. The whitepaper could use some editing, can be improved upon in the details, but it shows that you can have basic income under a pure capitalist system. No one has to use the government to take anything from anyone else. The government is merely bypassed in favor of technology which makes everything so cheap that the cost of living goes down.

Capital assets in the form of dividend paying stocks for instance can provide basic income. You do not need to tax the rich to feed the poor because economic growth can pay enough in dividends to provide basic income to entire cities or entire countries. I hope to show that you can use the levers of capitalism even easier than you can use the levers of government and without any confrontation because you decide how to distribute your shares.

It is true that higher levels of needs will be difficult to automate, but 1) very few people have enough talents to take these remaining jobs, 2) "superstar effect" will continuously grow as technology advances.

Meanwhile, Bill Gates recently acknowledged the problem, however proposed standard rightist bullshit (I haven't expected anything else from him, he probably won't change his position even if underpaid/unemployed rioters will throw Molotov cocktail into his house).

I agree with the rest of your post, but the plot device for the actual ending of Elysium was most certainly deus ex machina 

Wealthy people have much more political influence, so you would push legislation to make economy more redistributive (e.g. share remaining jobs by reducing working week to 15 hours for the same wage, implementing unconditional income, put heavier tax burden on capital while freeing labor etc).

If you watched the movie, you must know how Elysium ended!

A small bump, but for everyone who blatantly disagrees with the "We're rapidly losing permanent well paying jobs", I recommend you to watch this vice news series (not all is aired yet, just parts 1-3) and still come away with the same viewpoint.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbqD6ARCGNE

Even if I was a wealthy person and felt bad for these people, how would I help them? donate to them? give them work cleaning my shoes? There is a problem here and it needs to be fixed, the market isn't going to be able to fix it by itself and that's becoming more and more obvious to me, unless you want to live in the world of Elysium where 99% of the worlds population lives in a dump and 1% lives on a space-station with extravagant wealth.

The problem (eventually) will not be that we will not have all of our needs satisfied, it's that we will not have any instinctual reason to learn or do anything productive, which will slow down human development and through eventual evolution (unless we manage who gets to have kids through managed reproduction) we'll eventually split into a dualist race of cyborgs and "the rest", which will most likely devolve into people who just accept what their told and maximise their pleasure.

Although once we have extremely well developed VR games, it may not really big that big of a deal. Personally I actually really don't enjoy the possibility of people living their whole lives in VR, its quite depressing, although this does seem like the most likely future we're going to be walking into.

Not intending to put words into Biomech's mouth but I guess he meant that we'd have to give up individuality i.e. become hive animals.


That's my point entirely: A large minority recognizes that the system is rigged but what they want is more of the same - more state, more concentration of power, central planning. I guess it is no coincidence that George Soros, one of the most ruthless speculators since Nathan Rothschild likes Occupy so much. People need to be careful what they wish for - it may come true.

Quite some people on this forum can just lean back and enjoy the show. There is no need for them to be activists. It is all going in the direction they want. The only thing they have reason to be unhappy about is that it is not them who get to run the show.

Automation and robots are "something other than human", however they are/will be able to do the most of work which humans had performed for millenniums.

Corporations with greedy shareholders are pushing people here. But it won't last forever, sooner or later people will realize what is happening and reject this system.

Hayek's Road to Serfdom and Popper's The Open Society and it's Enemies are widely available since a long time. If what you are saying is true, then why are we still moving from an opportunity society to a neofeudal society? If what you are saying is true, why do people still believe a command economy like Zeitgeist proposes is the solution?

It is very simple: Economic freedom is at the base of all liberty. It is the freedom to create and trade the fruit of your labor. If you do not have that freedom you are a slave. It does not matter if Monsanto is taking that freedom from farmers, using IP and state bureaucracy or if Zeitgeist is taking that freedom away from farmers, using socialist ideology and state bureaucracy. Dito for everybody else.

If what you say is true, why isn't that understood?

It has been a very long time since I read anything on the Venus project. At the time, it looked even more tyrannical than Soviet communism. But I'll have another look.

However, top down planning really only works in programming. Central planning of human economies has a proven track record going on for millennia. It hasn't worked once.

It won't this time either. For socialism to work requires that we become something other than human. I am opposed to that. This is what the ultimate form of socialism looks like.  

Pol Pot certainly did.  Do you think Dow Chemical started out to kill the people of Bhopal?

Rhetoric is agitprop, but a large demographic is immune to that these days.  Using facts, logic, and rigorous statistical methods gets more cred these days.

This time is different, this time we'll get it right, says Pol Pot.

Do you think the Bolsheviks started out to kill millions of people? Frankly, they were in fact so similar to Zeitgeist, it is scary.

I personally support RBE which from the political economy spectrum can be classified as a form of socialist planned economy (however it is completely different from Stalin/Mao version).
If you have studied The Venus Project ideas you should know that the variant I have quoted above is true.

Very interesting usage of that word.  Allow me to suggest a different sentence, a less dishonest one:

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, today uttered his unqualified opinion that technologically-driven inequality will be number one problem for democratic countries in the future.

Totally agree with your 4 arguments. Nevertheless, socialist planned economy (or more advanced variant - Resource Based Economy) rejects all the ways to maintain inequality you have mentioned.

Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, today admitted that technologically-driven inequality will be number one problem for democratic countries in the future.
He offered standards solutions like supporting startups and more education, among them also interesting thing:


My personal opinion: after attacks on shuttle buses, Google and other tech company directors really worried about consequences for them that will be if simply ignoring unemployed (like some fools write here "let them to starve"). 1917-like revolution means for them total loss of all assets and possibly personal repressions, therefore I won't wonder if capitalists will be the most active supporters to implement wealth redistribution schemes.

Not even close to it!

Read my previous messages, I wrote many times that new jobs WILL appear, but the problem is their quantity comparing to the destroyed ones.
Regarding this concrete example - human sitting near Bitcoin ATM can be useful for a short time while customers will learn how to use it.