Still waiting for us to have a conversation about labor as a utility and means to an end as opposed to a moral imperative that separates the “deserving” from the “undeserving.”
But I guess we can wait until the guillotines come out to have that conversation as a society.
Do you think they’ll be autoguillotines?
One of the most mean-spirited things I ever saw on Facebook (which gives it a pretty high threshold) was a picture of an automated fast-food restaurant with the caption, “Don’t expect $15 when you’re this expendable.”
What made it mean-spirited was this was a person arguing against the minimum wage, although I think there was a serious underlying point. Too many people already depend on fast food jobs.
Response should read, “Don’t expect a 50 cent Big Mac when you’re this gullible.”
If the beef is ground-to-order, rare burgers shouldn’t be a problem.
Imagine a vertically integrated version 3.0 of this. There could be a little feed lot out front that you walk through with an overhead crane (a bigger version of the kind you play to win a stupid prize). Occasionally an animal is plucked from the herd, dropped into a machine that slaughters the animal, grinds the primals, and spits out the greatest burger ever in 10 minutes.
We already have robot burger joints, it’s called McDonalds.
But are these people more accurately “put out of work”, or are they being liberated from toil? Being offered “employment” only says that I am useful to some others, who I may or not have equitable relationships with. Autonomy means that I can exploit myself and instead do whatever work I notice needs doing. I know which I prefer!
Oh cool! Is that the one in Phoenix? Have you eaten there? Can you see the machines?
This so-called “robot” doesn’t even bring the food to your table for you? We had that tech in the 1980’s!
I visited that place as a kid. The robot had to break up a fight between me and my siblings, if I remember right. @Brainspore?
I just remember grandma scolding us for misbehaving in front of our new robot overlords.
Until they mess with hockey, the the revolt will begin!
Liberated to work where? Currently you have the elderly working jobs normally expected to be ‘my first employment’ so they can suppliment fixed income or to otherwise pay for the nessecities of life. What’s the job market going to be when those jobs are obliviated and nobody has figured out what to do with the thousands if not millions that both don’t have a job and can’t afford higher education?
As CGP Grey pointed out, we need to start figuring out how to transition into these scenerios otherwise the unemployment rise will gut our economy.
Have you cooked in a fast food restaurant in the last 30 years or so? You place the frozen burgers on the grill and press a button. When you hear a beep you flip them over. When you hear another beep, you remove them from the grill and give them to your coworker who pulls the trigger on a ketchup/mustard gun and wraps the thing up. The first thing that occurred to me when I first stood at that grill 30 years ago was that I was filling a temporary gap in a largely automated process.
Enjoy your $15.00 an hour while it lasts kids.
I’ll wait for the robot celebrity chef.
In their own lives? Their own communities?
Income has a kind of “transactional” sound to it. I think that it flows in all directions more easily, like water. If what you do has some social value, then something will come back to you.
An imagined quagmire of selfishness and wishful thinking, like all markets tend to be.
I think that it’s rather cynical; and oppressive to suppose that people need something to “be done with them”. How about affirming their agency and autonomy, rather than fighting for their “right” to be exploited by others?
Sir Galaxy, make me a large pepperoni and a big gulp of Mr. Pibb.
Look. I personally want us to not have to work unless it’s on things that interest or because our skills naturally lend themselves towards that field. However right now the economy is not geared for that, and the government (at least in america, and only so far as I know) don’t seem to have some kind of plan to help with the inevetable ‘when a non-trivial prtion of the population is out of work because nobody wants to hire them because robots.’ Not everyone can ‘just transition to new jobs.’ Right now the support network for the jobless is sneered down on, like if you don’t have a job you have no inherent worth so why should we support your lazy bum?
That perception needs fixing and those safty net programs need strengthening as a short term solution so people don’t starve while a longer term transition towards a ‘work optional’ situation.
Maybe we could pay some of the unemployed to go around breaking things and then pay the rest to go around fixing that stuff?
Well the ‘humans need not apply’ video asks that question because no matter what one may wihsh or think you cna’t have a ‘painting and poetry’ society, purely because these are popularity based things. ONly a very few will be able to make their bread from work where your ability to income is dependant on how popular you are, and even those that act as support structure for the actual in front of the camera work is a vanishingly small market compared to flip burgers, restock shelves, and other jobs automation will end up obsoleting.
Another example the GCPGrey video brings up is how horse populations have been dwindling since their peak just before world war one through no fault of the horses and more the fact we don’t need the horse like we used to.
Horses are fairly easy animals to care for. WIth people you can’t just turn them out into a pasture with a water source and go ‘best of luck. Bye.’
Our economy generates around $50k of goods and services per person. If we can make the robots create 75% of that, then only a fairly small percentage of our population would actually need to work.
The transition from this economy to that one will be ugly, but we can get there.
