And today’s equivalent of panem et circenses is McDonald’s and cable?
5 Likes
America is well past the wealth disparity of Rome. http://www.businessinsider.com/even-the-roman-empire-wasnt-as-unequal-as-america-today-2011-12
7 Likes
Scarier part? That article’s from 2011, and cites that the top 1% controlled 40% of the wealth. Now it’s up over 50%.
8 Likes
That’s a good thought-provoking article, and its main point is worth of discussion, but the chart is distracting me. I find it interesting that the chart shows commercial drivers and ambulance drivers growing by +37% and +33%, but the news now says all those drivers are going to be unemployed soon. Two of the other fastest growing jobs are predicted to be cartographers and genetic counselors.
Cartographers? Are we expected to be mapping new territory of a lost continent in the next decade? Of course, new maps of known places - mapping things differently or overlaying different data on the maps - can reveal new information. But GIS and other software makes that way less intensive than it has ever been. That seems another position likely to be automated out the moment it becomes profitable to do so.
I can see genetic counselors as being a thing, since we seem to be well into a full-on sci-fi dystopia now, but how big is the market for that? Is Gattaca secretly a documentary?
2 Likes
Here’s a more useful study from Oxford University suggesting that almost 50% of US jobs could be lost to AI and Automation (AIA) over the next two decades.
Anger in Midwestern states over job-losses in manufacturing / industry due to automation and globalization is one of the main reasons Trump was elected (not the only one, sure, but without it, Clinton doesn’t lose the Midwest). So here’s what worries me: what will happen in future elections if there are much greater numbers of angry people for unscrupulous demagogues to appeal to?
AIA should be immensely beneficial to humanity… but only if we accompany it with fundamental economic policy changes (and probably not just UBI or Mincome). Unless, that is, you believe that private enterprise and markets are going to solve this in the absence of fundamental economic policy changes at the national government level… which I do not: the numbers are too large, the time frame is too short, and not everyone wants to be (or can quickly become) a new-age creative and entrepreneurial knowledge worker.
Anyone have any links to good ideas as to how to deal with this?
4 Likes
3 Likes
True, Blade Runner did
2 Likes
Can we explore this idea a little? Like for example, how would I buy my sewing machine thread and fabric to make the clothes we wear and sometimes sell? The gardening and canning supplies that we use to grow and preserve our food? Which type of money do I use for what part of my life?
I was actually thinking of a different split between actual labor dollars, so we could more easily trade home-made cheese for haircuts, and speculation dollars, used for making risky bets in markets.
As you probably have guessed, we have already entered the other economy.
3 Likes
Isn’t this just the Eloi and Morlocks of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine?
4 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
