Their job wasn’t stolen. The guillotine had operators. Better for the former ax-man – he wouldn’t suffer “executioner shoulder”. Those axes were heavy and hard to handle.
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The problem with robots “taking” jobs is the same thing as immigrants “taking” jobs. You keep hearing stupid people complaining “they took our jobs”. People complain about immigrants “taking” jobs like they feel the immigrants snuck into their houses and robbed them in the night. No, they didn’t. They didn’t take anything. At worst, they were given those jobs by the cheapass bosses.
Most of the jobs that go to immigrants are jobs that Americans don’t want to do. No American wants to work in a meat packing plant or do stoop labor in cabbage fields. And other jobs that Americans do want but immigrants get hired instead - those jobs weren’t taken. They were given by cheap bastards who want to save a few dollars.
If you lost a job, or can’t find a job in your field, because illegal immigrants get the job instead, and you complain “they took our jobs,” you’re an idiot. The truth is your job was given away by your fellow-American white Christian boss who makes a big deal out of patriotism and religion and all that crap, but he decided to get rid of you because you cost more than the immigrant. And your fellow-American white Christian boss MADE THE DECISION to put you out of work so he could save a few dollars that he’s probably going to blow on hookers and slot machines in his next Vegas vacation.
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Oh hell yeah – I’m going to allow myself to be independently wealthy. Good bye sucka’s only allowing yourself to fight for a factory job…
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This. It seems that in both the private and public sectors, middle-management is still a growth industry. And you can’t roboticize those jobs because they are largely superfluous in the first place! Cuts always come to the producers at the bottom of the food chain, by so-called ‘managers’ that first and foremost protect their own asses. They are neither workers nor entrepreneurs, neither proletariat nor bourgeoisie. These folks didn’t really exist in Adam Smith or Marx’s day for that matter, at least not in anything like the numbers they do now. These are all the people you know who make six figure incomes but can’t really explain what they do.
Tell us how you really feel…
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You are a damn fool or a corporatist shill. “Gig economy” is a label applied by idiots and thieves to try to sugarcoat the fact that bouncing from one short-term low-pay no-future job to another dozens of times a year is a financial and health nightmare. The reality of it is that it’s a desperate struggle to make enough to stay alive and anyone who thinks it can take the place of a regular job where you can plan more than one day ahead and save up money for the future is deluded.
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This
and this
taken together do give an old cynic some hope. Maybe the move from a broadly agrarian economy to an industrial one (via ‘the industrial revolution’) was a necessary step to get us over the barriers to true self-determination in a post-scarcity economy. Once most production has been largely automated, as well as a large chunk of necessary services, we can step back and say “well we wish we hadn’t had to go there, but I’m glad it got us here”. ‘Here’ hopefully being far fewer people, and complete elimination of world poverty - a decent and healthy ‘standard of living’ for all, whatever their chosen roles in society, etc., etc.
But absent a world government focused on the health of the planet and its occupants, I am not holding my breath. Robots are not being pursued for those reasons but merely to serve capital. As others have pointed out, once everything is automated where are all the consumers (not just people, but people wth real disposable income to spend) going to come from?
Or perhaps, “Your boss, who has been neuro-implanted by robots and is now being secretly controlled by them, wants to replace you with a robot.”
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I couldn’t find it online, but there was a segment on CBS news about automation at a small rural factory. The business owner was doing it to keep the business afloat - and help his remaining employees to keep their jobs. He needed a minimum number of people for the work, and lost too many workers to substance abuse.
He tried hiring younger people, and most wouldn’t show up or stay long. So, he was using automation to bridge the gap. We hear a lot about the big corporations fueled by higher profits and greed, but that segment made me reconsider what causes small business owners to automate.
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Having worked retail before, I’d like to tell him how I feel about his comment, but I really don’t feel like having my account suspended today.
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There is a fine line (ok, maybe a thick, gray DMZ) between these two concepts. I am all for replacing all jobs, any job, with robots – as long as we also go 100% on renewable energy (essentially, free energy given the supply chain for that energy is also automated and running on renewables). That and recycling could (should?) essentially mean a free-anything, post-scarcity society.
I know, utopia, but let me dream.
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I’ve worked in retail as well as the restaurant industry so I hear ya’. These are the folks who like their steak well done, make special menu requests, and tip frugally or not at all. Looks like it’s a win-win if he avoids front-end service staff period. What with the rise of online shopping and takeout being the fastest growing segment of the restaurant industry, he may be able to (almost) avoid interacting with humans altogether!
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Reminds me of a joke. Two nuns are in the bathtub. One nun says, “Where’s the soap?” The other nun replies, “Yes, it does, doesn’t it.”
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Oh, whoo! Well, that sure is a relief!
Here I was thinkin’ we’d have to form up militia patrols and keep a weather eye out for advancing mechatroids, and gun ‘em down on sight or somethin’. (Personally, I still suspect the Lime & Bird scooters of being spies and Forward Air Controllers for the coming mech invasion.)
But , you say, all I have to do is blackmail my boss? Kewl. (-:
Your boss’s duty is to shareholders not to her employees. That’s the system we have today. If you don’t like it then change it.
start saying “Your boss wants to replace you with a robot”
Rather, your boss is probably threatening you with a non-existent robot in order to pay you less.
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I pulled my son out of school yesterday and we went for a hike in the mountains north of Vancouver. On the drive there, we encountered a traffic cop assigned to handle an intersection while a city crew worked to hoist a new signal into place. By the time we returned a few hours later, any sign of the disruption was gone. I commented to my son, “that was the case of a person temporarily replacing a robot.”
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Yeah, but I bet as soon as the guillotine came in he was suddenly expected to behead twice as many people in the same time as before to make up for it.
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Actually, Scott Adams was right. There are 4 major forces driving human decisions and history: laziness, selfishness, horniness, and stupidity.
