...Even if you add in the energy use of the portion of the global banking industry that deals specifically with fiat currencies, here is simply no way that they use anywhere near the amount of energy per unit of value transacted as Bitcoin does.
Uh, you had to fracture this down to "amount of energy per unit of value transacted" in order to make it look like traditional currencies is a bargain. Now let's add up all of the extended costs of warehousing physical currency (every bank, bank vault, and ATM we've built and maintain globally), along with the cost to print and mint physical media (the US Mint spends billions on metal and materials costs every year). THEN perhaps we can start actually comparing the real costs between cold hard cash and crypto-cash.
A single decent crypto mining rig running for a year can likely mine at least one bitcoin, currently valued at $8200. Running costs are less than $2K/year, and the currency is made and stored electronically. Now compare that to the costs of minting, printing, distributing, and warehousing $8200 in physical tender.
The US Mint is still making pennies at a loss "per unit". The CFO told them to do what makes sense. Obviously there was some confusion...
Should we talk about how much energy is wasted building and maintaining heavily fortified bank buildings that warehouse large stacks of colorful paper? Or why the US is still minting fucking pennies?
When comparing standard currency to cryptocurrency, traditional proprietors of legal tender have zero room to talk about overhead or waste. At least bitcoin doesn't have to exist as physical tender, and we've done fucking nothing to minimize or eliminate the massive burden of printing and minting cash, regardless of the popularity of electronic transactions. The US Mint spends billions every year just in metals and materials costs.
The thing is if the market didn't demand it, it wouldn't sell. Admittedly there is a level of homogeneity in the market so there may not be much choice in the matter but as an example, if no one wanted the S7 edge (I didn't) then they would have bought the standard S7 and I wouldn't be stuck with an edge screen on my S8. Sure you can assume marketing drove the sales of the edge but you can't argue with the results. People buy shit that is less practical based on "cool factor".
Your last statement confirms my point. When "cool factor" is what's driving demand, functionality is essentially moot.
No one wanted the headphone jack removed from the iPhone. They did it anyway. Rabid fans sustain demand, because "cool factor", not because a feature was added or removed. In today's world, a polished turd will still sell with the right logo on the case. Because consumers are rather blind to functionality and care more about brand, choice is also rather moot. The endless amount of lawsuits confirm the entire market is comprised of nothing but copycat designs anyway, and they copy the dumbest shit. How about a big notch at the top of your screen? Oh you didn't have one on the last model? Well it's the latest feature manufacturers felt you needed, so here you go.
It was the anti-ad. Many gas or diesel vehicles going down the highway can pull this plane.
The fact that there are exactly zero scenarios in which any car would ever need to tow a plane turns this into a gimmick and nothing more.
Publicizing the fact the an electric vehicle can do this just shows how far behind electric vehicles are when it comes to range, power, and duration.
Behind? As far as power goes, we've sent humans to space, and yet 100 years of internal combustion engine development hasn't been able to create instant torque response that an EV can deliver every time. Performance numbers certainly aren't lacking for the maker of "ludicrous" mode either.
Range is dictated by battery tech, and you're getting a hell of a lot more out of rechargeable batteries today than you were 20 years ago. My first cell phone had an hour of talk time. Another decade of battery development will likely create EV solutions with a 1,500-mile range, which at that point the metric is pointless, because human passengers would never want to sit in a car that long.
Duration? I'm assuming you're referring to longevity. Hell of a lot less moving parts when it comes to EVs, and the durability of humans will also likely be improved when there's a billion less tailpipes polluting the planet every day.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. We won't have any dino-juice left to fuel this argument 100 years from now.
>I don't want thin, either. Give me a larger, replaceable battery, not some phone that's hard to not drop.
You do realize it's the market that wants thin, and not Apple? The reason the likes of you and I aren't getting what we want is because we're a minority, and not because Apple is so anti-us. If people actually cared about batteries more than about thin I expect Apple would have delivered.
Uh, did the "market" also demand 3D surround sound, screen resolutions pushing the boundaries of the human eye, no headphone jack, non-removable batteries, or any of the other pointless bullshit features that help "justify" an obscene price tag?
You still seem to be under the delusion that manufacturers actually give a shit about what consumers want. They don't. They care about what makes them the most money. Apple leads this arrogant mentality with their Department of Courage. Other vendors are merely following suit because their shareholders demand it.
And yet you think free money for everyone for life is plausible? Now who's delusional?
Uh, when and where in my statement did I ever confirm that bullshit? No, I don't believe free money for life is plausible, but humans becoming unemployable is inevitable. And no matter how plausible UBI is or isn't, it won't stop a few hundred million idiots voting for their favorite liar promising to deliver it. The only delusion here is assuming that would never happen.
New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States. And since we're here discussing a US city, here's the actual link that is relevant.
Perhaps it becomes a prime motivator to work once basic income rolls around.
Quite the opposite. Citizens that voted themselves onto permanent welfare will also vote themselves this treatment for free. And free television, and a free couch.
Delusional thinking at it's finest.
No matter how much citizens vote, a Ferrari will never be free. And you can sure as fuck bet that immortality won't be either.
Then what does that say about the millions of people who have to rely on the subway to get to their jobs?
There's not much more to say about the millions of idiots who insist on living in a city so overcrowded that alternative forms of modern transportation are all but impossible.
Anyone who believes replying to tweets, no matter how mean, even cracks the list of top 1,000 worst jobs has probably never had a job period. This is what all public relations people do. I also notice there's no mention of their taxpayer funded salaries and benefits.
Exactly. I was wondering why the fuck the subway system even needs a Twitter account to begin with. It has operated for many decades without it, and outages and maintenance work can be posted to a website. And no, that doesn't mean a website with a fucking comments section. It means an HTTP server that disseminates information, and does not require taxpayers to fund a fucking social media team.
I've never really worried about government control. The govt knows who I am, they have my biometrics (passport), my NI number (tax), my car registration, my fingerprints were first taken when I was five... If they were to do something untoward with this information they'd have acted by now. What the government has are a load of rules around this data that are enforced and there would be a lot of warning signs before any of this changes.
How well did you really think a "load" of rules surrounding data privacy and protecting sensitive information ultimately prevent theft? Perhaps you should ask one of the millions of citizens who were victims of the OPM data breach.
You really need to understand the fact that we should not be asking any organization HOW are going to protect data; we should now be asking WHY they're collecting it in the first place, because it is absolutely fucking inevitable that the data will be leaked or stolen. Your government may have not found a reason to act against you (yet). That's hardly guaranteed when other entities are in possession of your information.
Private industry on the other hand has no qualms about screwing me over for a quick quid. About abusing my personal data for their gain. This is why we need strict laws regarding what they can do with my private data, how they are supposed to protect my private data and under what conditions they are permitted to collect it in the first place.
When considering potential damage and comparing industries, remember that governments openly employ assassins. Also remember every governments history. None of them are pristine, and most are riddled with some seriously evil shit that has been done against their own citizens.
...but what we really need is something that will mark these people when they're in public, something that tells you, this person has more money than sense.
You mean the unemployed Millennial who constantly blogs about being broke on a $3000 MacBook while sucking down a $17 latte isn't obvious enough?
Vinyl can still sell because it's relatively inexpensive and plenty of record stores sell used records for pretty cheap. However, no hipster has $11,000 to spend, so I don't see this having much of a market outside of the rich audiophile crowd that thinks it will pair nicely with their gold-plated monster cables.
Uh, let's be realistic for a minute here. The only reason vinyl is selling now is because hipsters found a cool new wall decoration. I'm willing to bet only 5% of vinyl sold today ever actually touches a record needle.
I don't see reel-to-reel taking off because the media isn't considered artsy hipster kitsch, and those who can afford to blow $11K on a deck will "use" it as room decor.
There is really no need for hysterics. First, stop all immigration. Now. This is so that the remaining work can go to our own citizens.
Yeah, let's not panic...as you suggest a "solution" that has proven impossible for even Trump to pull off and not look like the largest asshole in the universe. But hey, don't panic.
Secondly, retrain employees for the jobs that are available, as needed.
Oh, this one again. There's a valid reason a billion humans hold highly repetitive simple jobs, and often for their entire life. Because they're not mentally capable of getting an education and being re-trained. We humans have advanced in many ways, but mental capacity isn't one of them And the entire point of automation is to take the "available" jobs.
If that doesnt fully solve the problem, we can go to a shorter work week to distribute remaining work evenly among more people in smaller chunks.
The overwhelming majority lives paycheck to paycheck, and your suggestion is to cut paychecks by 50%. Good luck with the angry mob, because you're sure as shit not going to convince employers to double their payroll costs.
There is no need for communist/socialist basic incomes and other crackpot ideas.
Understand that UBI in the future will be nothing more than that old time-tested "crackpot" concept we call Welfare today. If Welfare was such a stupidly insane idea, then we would have probably figured out how to get rid of it long ago. Humans will become unemployable. You have that problem today, and that problem will grow considerably tomorrow. Figure out how you're going to sustain families and lives, because taxing the automation overlords to pay for it sure as shit won't work; we can't get the rich to pay taxes now.
The end of slavery was going to take all the jobs. Then it was going to be industrialization that was going to take all the jobs. Then it was going to be immigrants. Than automation. Then globalization. Now it's immigrants again that are taking all the jobs.
Yet, after all that, we still have jobs in this nation.
Something tells me that even with the future of AI people will still find things to do.
People can find "things" to do now. Hell, I can think of a dozen things I'd rather be doing. We likely ALL can. The reason we don't is because a lot of "things" we want to do don't pay worth a shit, which tends to limit you to a life of poverty. Not unlike Welfare 2.0 (a.k.a. UBI) will.
The other mistake you're making is looking at history. This particular round of evolution makes comparing it to history wrong because all throughout history we've simply told humans to "go get an education". Since automation and AI is also going after educated jobs, it's rather obvious that humans won't be able to take the time-honored advice in the future as the simple answer. Not every human holds the mental capacity to be re-trained. Ultimately, automation and AI will make a human unemployable. And this is BEFORE you take into account we've got a billion more humans on this planet to employ; far more than we did 100 years ago.
And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that?
You compare the face with the face in your database of all people that bought a legit ticket. If that doesn't produce a match, you ask for the ticket and ID, and do a manual check.
3rd party resellers account for over 25% of ticket sales today. When upwards of 1 in 3 gate-check faces will never match the ticket-purchase face, it questions the entire point of a system claiming to "speed up" processes.
selling this database to every bidder who comes along
If that's what you're afraid of, then make it illegal. In the EU that would already be the case with existing laws.
Ticket scalping has been a problem since these events were created.
And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that? What, you're going to capture pictures of the gullible victims? Listen to their drunken "guy wearing a hat, I think" descriptions of gone-by-now scalpers? Oh, and nothing like deploying yet another treat-everyone-like-a-criminal system in order to catch the bad guys. Yeah, that punch in the gut for every law-abiding citizen is justified once again.
This is just a new attempt at a solution using technology that didn't exist 2 years ago.
Facial recognition has been around a lot longer than 2 years. If it was truly all about fixing Ticketmaster problems, then Ticketmaster would NOT be drooling at the notion of selling this database to every bidder who comes along. Fact is, this will become a revenue generator for Ticketmaster, and it probably won't do a damn thing to solve any ticket-related excuse they're using to justify it.
Here's my prediction; Five years from now Ticketmaster will declare a War on Scalpers while the system that promised to fix that quietly becomes a part of DHS infrastructure...
The system is meant to replace manual identity checks, not ticket checks.
Uh, let's not blindly dismiss that first part; we should be asking why the hell manual identity checks are required in the first place, in order to even justify implementing a system like this.
I'm sure it's not about speeding up the process at all. I think anyone can see through Ticketmasters BS. I bet you'll only be able to resell tickets through Ticketmasters own official market place for resllers with Ticketmaster taking a cut of course. Don't get me wrong scalping and fake tickets are a real issue but there's nothing about this move from Ticketmaster that's of real benefit to the customer just them protecting their own interests aka profits.
That's a cute theory you've got, but this has fuck-all to do with ticket sales, speed at venues, or even scalping.
You don't make a million-dollar investment and build a facial recognition database of men, women, and children to not sell it to every bidder who comes asking for it. You really need to start thinking of the value of such a database. Ticketmaster sure as shit has.
It's mostly to stop ticket touts selling on tickets at inflated prices.
Well, now that we've unwrapped this bullshit burrito, let's get down to the corn-riddled meat of it. This isn't about curbing inflated ticket prices. This isn't about protecting vendors who thrive on gouging customers with onsite food services. This isn't even about security.
This is about building a fresh database of facial recognition data, to include men, women, and children. This is about testing the accuracy of said system. This is about testing the tolerance level of the masses to accept such surveillance as the new "norm" in our world.
In other words, this is about Control.
If the name on the ticket doesn't match your id, you don't get in.
Two years ago no one was talking about this. Now, matching a physical person to every ticket sale is suddenly a critical requirement? Also remember who ultimately pays for a mult-million dollar system like this, as if ticket "service fees" weren't high enough. Oh, and let's not forget about the massive amount of additional law enforcement resources that will be showing up at venues like this. They will be there to abuse the new do-my-job-for-me system to literally scan the masses for wanted criminals, and perform arrests onsite. Your service fees and tax dollars at work. I haven't even started down the potential rabbit hole of abuse, and that's before this database inevitably gets sold and/or stolen.
When people bitch about an Orwellian future, they should remember that silence coming from the masses defines acceptance.
Demonetization is likely the only way you're going to get any traction to curb the fake news problem. You sure as hell aren't going to fix stupid. In fact, it would seem the masses are actually becoming more gullible these days, evidenced by how often fake news goes viral.
When we stop financially rewarding bullshit peddlers, the justification to peddle bullshit tends to go away.
These days? Good luck finding enough people to actually form a line on any topic. Sure, quite a few people might complain in an "outcry" of sorts, but companies already know that less than 1% of their customers would ever actually get off their ass and DO anything other than rant. This is why they'll continue to do whatever the hell they want to customers; statistics have already proven you won't do a damn thing about it.
It sucks, but personally it's still worth it to my household, another $20/year is way below my threshold for going on the warpath.
Death by 1,000 cuts is the preferred tactic because it always seems to work. And now we return to As the Frog Boils...
A lot of people are saying that the government is going to pay us for not working anyway,
They do already. It's called welfare. Yeah, I'm sure we'll give it a fancy name in the future like "UBI" to appease the Starbucks hipsters and make it feel like something other than welfare, but in reality it won't be any different. The trillionaire owners and rulers of the future who will be asked to fund UBI will dodge that responsibility like they do taxes today, so certainly don't expect UBI to pay any better than welfare today.
Even Nobel Prize Economists, like Krugman, is saying the same
I would certainly hope a Nobel Prize winning economist would know a thing or two about welfare. As automation and AI create a global welfare state and put billions of unemployable humans in it, the real question will be mental health and stability.
Do I need to worry that AI is going to take away my job?
Yeah, but feel good knowing it will only take automation or perhaps "good enough" AI to take your job away, and that will be the same for the other 80% of the human population.
Do I have to worry?
Probably, but look at the bright side. You won't have a pesky job consuming 40 hours a week, so humans will be free to pursue their life's dreams. Or at least as free as welfare recipients are.
This time it's half? Last week it was something else.
Nobody really knows.
Actually, history has shown us the one thing we humans do know when it comes to predicting the future; we can underestimate the shit out of damn near anything.
As it stands, only about a quarter of the age eligible population is able to join the armed forces. If Cyber Command had become its own service then they could have opened recruiting to anyone who was willing to do the work, study hard, and become a member. As it stands, the ranks will be closed to those who are not a member of the physical elite.
As it stands today, the United States Military could not function without the generous assistance of a few hundred thousand contractors supporting it. And a lot of those contractors were former military members who simply grew well beyond their former physical limitations.
Not only dies this close the door to service by those who are not in near perfect physical condition; but it also limits the pool of potential candidates based on a factor that has nothing to do with their acumen at cyber-security.
Couldn't agree with you more here, but let's be honest for a minute. How many potential candidates within the "uber-hacker" ranks would pass a background investigation for a security clearance, as well as a drug test? Physical conditioning is likely the least qualifying concern.
Slashdot Mirror
...Even if you add in the energy use of the portion of the global banking industry that deals specifically with fiat currencies, here is simply no way that they use anywhere near the amount of energy per unit of value transacted as Bitcoin does.
Uh, you had to fracture this down to "amount of energy per unit of value transacted" in order to make it look like traditional currencies is a bargain. Now let's add up all of the extended costs of warehousing physical currency (every bank, bank vault, and ATM we've built and maintain globally), along with the cost to print and mint physical media (the US Mint spends billions on metal and materials costs every year). THEN perhaps we can start actually comparing the real costs between cold hard cash and crypto-cash.
A single decent crypto mining rig running for a year can likely mine at least one bitcoin, currently valued at $8200. Running costs are less than $2K/year, and the currency is made and stored electronically. Now compare that to the costs of minting, printing, distributing, and warehousing $8200 in physical tender.
The US Mint is still making pennies at a loss "per unit". The CFO told them to do what makes sense. Obviously there was some confusion...
Should we talk about how much energy is wasted building and maintaining heavily fortified bank buildings that warehouse large stacks of colorful paper? Or why the US is still minting fucking pennies?
When comparing standard currency to cryptocurrency, traditional proprietors of legal tender have zero room to talk about overhead or waste. At least bitcoin doesn't have to exist as physical tender, and we've done fucking nothing to minimize or eliminate the massive burden of printing and minting cash, regardless of the popularity of electronic transactions. The US Mint spends billions every year just in metals and materials costs.
The thing is if the market didn't demand it, it wouldn't sell. Admittedly there is a level of homogeneity in the market so there may not be much choice in the matter but as an example, if no one wanted the S7 edge (I didn't) then they would have bought the standard S7 and I wouldn't be stuck with an edge screen on my S8. Sure you can assume marketing drove the sales of the edge but you can't argue with the results. People buy shit that is less practical based on "cool factor".
Your last statement confirms my point. When "cool factor" is what's driving demand, functionality is essentially moot.
No one wanted the headphone jack removed from the iPhone. They did it anyway. Rabid fans sustain demand, because "cool factor", not because a feature was added or removed. In today's world, a polished turd will still sell with the right logo on the case. Because consumers are rather blind to functionality and care more about brand, choice is also rather moot. The endless amount of lawsuits confirm the entire market is comprised of nothing but copycat designs anyway, and they copy the dumbest shit. How about a big notch at the top of your screen? Oh you didn't have one on the last model? Well it's the latest feature manufacturers felt you needed, so here you go.
It was the anti-ad. Many gas or diesel vehicles going down the highway can pull this plane.
The fact that there are exactly zero scenarios in which any car would ever need to tow a plane turns this into a gimmick and nothing more.
Publicizing the fact the an electric vehicle can do this just shows how far behind electric vehicles are when it comes to range, power, and duration.
Behind? As far as power goes, we've sent humans to space, and yet 100 years of internal combustion engine development hasn't been able to create instant torque response that an EV can deliver every time. Performance numbers certainly aren't lacking for the maker of "ludicrous" mode either.
Range is dictated by battery tech, and you're getting a hell of a lot more out of rechargeable batteries today than you were 20 years ago. My first cell phone had an hour of talk time. Another decade of battery development will likely create EV solutions with a 1,500-mile range, which at that point the metric is pointless, because human passengers would never want to sit in a car that long.
Duration? I'm assuming you're referring to longevity. Hell of a lot less moving parts when it comes to EVs, and the durability of humans will also likely be improved when there's a billion less tailpipes polluting the planet every day.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. We won't have any dino-juice left to fuel this argument 100 years from now.
>I don't want thin, either. Give me a larger, replaceable battery, not some phone that's hard to not drop.
You do realize it's the market that wants thin, and not Apple? The reason the likes of you and I aren't getting what we want is because we're a minority, and not because Apple is so anti-us. If people actually cared about batteries more than about thin I expect Apple would have delivered.
Uh, did the "market" also demand 3D surround sound, screen resolutions pushing the boundaries of the human eye, no headphone jack, non-removable batteries, or any of the other pointless bullshit features that help "justify" an obscene price tag?
You still seem to be under the delusion that manufacturers actually give a shit about what consumers want. They don't. They care about what makes them the most money. Apple leads this arrogant mentality with their Department of Courage. Other vendors are merely following suit because their shareholders demand it.
Delusional thinking at it's finest.
And yet you think free money for everyone for life is plausible? Now who's delusional?
Uh, when and where in my statement did I ever confirm that bullshit? No, I don't believe free money for life is plausible, but humans becoming unemployable is inevitable. And no matter how plausible UBI is or isn't, it won't stop a few hundred million idiots voting for their favorite liar promising to deliver it. The only delusion here is assuming that would never happen.
Ha. New York "overcrowded."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_population_density
New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States. And since we're here discussing a US city, here's the actual link that is relevant.
United_States_cities_by_population_density
Manhattan graduated from "overcrowded" to "supreme clusterfuck" about 20 years ago.
Perhaps it becomes a prime motivator to work once basic income rolls around.
Quite the opposite. Citizens that voted themselves onto permanent welfare will also vote themselves this treatment for free. And free television, and a free couch.
Delusional thinking at it's finest.
No matter how much citizens vote, a Ferrari will never be free. And you can sure as fuck bet that immortality won't be either.
Then what does that say about the millions of people who have to rely on the subway to get to their jobs?
There's not much more to say about the millions of idiots who insist on living in a city so overcrowded that alternative forms of modern transportation are all but impossible.
Anyone who believes replying to tweets, no matter how mean, even cracks the list of top 1,000 worst jobs has probably never had a job period. This is what all public relations people do. I also notice there's no mention of their taxpayer funded salaries and benefits.
Exactly. I was wondering why the fuck the subway system even needs a Twitter account to begin with. It has operated for many decades without it, and outages and maintenance work can be posted to a website. And no, that doesn't mean a website with a fucking comments section. It means an HTTP server that disseminates information, and does not require taxpayers to fund a fucking social media team.
I've never really worried about government control. The govt knows who I am, they have my biometrics (passport), my NI number (tax), my car registration, my fingerprints were first taken when I was five... If they were to do something untoward with this information they'd have acted by now. What the government has are a load of rules around this data that are enforced and there would be a lot of warning signs before any of this changes.
How well did you really think a "load" of rules surrounding data privacy and protecting sensitive information ultimately prevent theft? Perhaps you should ask one of the millions of citizens who were victims of the OPM data breach.
You really need to understand the fact that we should not be asking any organization HOW are going to protect data; we should now be asking WHY they're collecting it in the first place, because it is absolutely fucking inevitable that the data will be leaked or stolen. Your government may have not found a reason to act against you (yet). That's hardly guaranteed when other entities are in possession of your information.
Private industry on the other hand has no qualms about screwing me over for a quick quid. About abusing my personal data for their gain. This is why we need strict laws regarding what they can do with my private data, how they are supposed to protect my private data and under what conditions they are permitted to collect it in the first place.
When considering potential damage and comparing industries, remember that governments openly employ assassins. Also remember every governments history. None of them are pristine, and most are riddled with some seriously evil shit that has been done against their own citizens.
...but what we really need is something that will mark these people when they're in public, something that tells you, this person has more money than sense.
You mean the unemployed Millennial who constantly blogs about being broke on a $3000 MacBook while sucking down a $17 latte isn't obvious enough?
Vinyl can still sell because it's relatively inexpensive and plenty of record stores sell used records for pretty cheap. However, no hipster has $11,000 to spend, so I don't see this having much of a market outside of the rich audiophile crowd that thinks it will pair nicely with their gold-plated monster cables.
Uh, let's be realistic for a minute here. The only reason vinyl is selling now is because hipsters found a cool new wall decoration. I'm willing to bet only 5% of vinyl sold today ever actually touches a record needle.
I don't see reel-to-reel taking off because the media isn't considered artsy hipster kitsch, and those who can afford to blow $11K on a deck will "use" it as room decor.
There is really no need for hysterics. First, stop all immigration. Now. This is so that the remaining work can go to our own citizens.
Yeah, let's not panic...as you suggest a "solution" that has proven impossible for even Trump to pull off and not look like the largest asshole in the universe. But hey, don't panic.
Secondly, retrain employees for the jobs that are available, as needed.
Oh, this one again. There's a valid reason a billion humans hold highly repetitive simple jobs, and often for their entire life. Because they're not mentally capable of getting an education and being re-trained. We humans have advanced in many ways, but mental capacity isn't one of them And the entire point of automation is to take the "available" jobs.
If that doesnt fully solve the problem, we can go to a shorter work week to distribute remaining work evenly among more people in smaller chunks.
The overwhelming majority lives paycheck to paycheck, and your suggestion is to cut paychecks by 50%. Good luck with the angry mob, because you're sure as shit not going to convince employers to double their payroll costs.
There is no need for communist/socialist basic incomes and other crackpot ideas.
Understand that UBI in the future will be nothing more than that old time-tested "crackpot" concept we call Welfare today. If Welfare was such a stupidly insane idea, then we would have probably figured out how to get rid of it long ago. Humans will become unemployable. You have that problem today, and that problem will grow considerably tomorrow. Figure out how you're going to sustain families and lives, because taxing the automation overlords to pay for it sure as shit won't work; we can't get the rich to pay taxes now.
The end of slavery was going to take all the jobs. Then it was going to be industrialization that was going to take all the jobs. Then it was going to be immigrants. Than automation. Then globalization. Now it's immigrants again that are taking all the jobs.
Yet, after all that, we still have jobs in this nation.
Something tells me that even with the future of AI people will still find things to do.
People can find "things" to do now. Hell, I can think of a dozen things I'd rather be doing. We likely ALL can. The reason we don't is because a lot of "things" we want to do don't pay worth a shit, which tends to limit you to a life of poverty. Not unlike Welfare 2.0 (a.k.a. UBI) will.
The other mistake you're making is looking at history. This particular round of evolution makes comparing it to history wrong because all throughout history we've simply told humans to "go get an education". Since automation and AI is also going after educated jobs, it's rather obvious that humans won't be able to take the time-honored advice in the future as the simple answer. Not every human holds the mental capacity to be re-trained. Ultimately, automation and AI will make a human unemployable. And this is BEFORE you take into account we've got a billion more humans on this planet to employ; far more than we did 100 years ago.
And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that?
You compare the face with the face in your database of all people that bought a legit ticket. If that doesn't produce a match, you ask for the ticket and ID, and do a manual check.
3rd party resellers account for over 25% of ticket sales today. When upwards of 1 in 3 gate-check faces will never match the ticket-purchase face, it questions the entire point of a system claiming to "speed up" processes.
selling this database to every bidder who comes along
If that's what you're afraid of, then make it illegal. In the EU that would already be the case with existing laws.
Laws won't prevent the theft of such a database.
Two years ago no one was talking about this.
Ticket scalping has been a problem since these events were created.
And how the hell is a venue-deployed facial recognition system going to help curb that? What, you're going to capture pictures of the gullible victims? Listen to their drunken "guy wearing a hat, I think" descriptions of gone-by-now scalpers? Oh, and nothing like deploying yet another treat-everyone-like-a-criminal system in order to catch the bad guys. Yeah, that punch in the gut for every law-abiding citizen is justified once again.
This is just a new attempt at a solution using technology that didn't exist 2 years ago.
Facial recognition has been around a lot longer than 2 years. If it was truly all about fixing Ticketmaster problems, then Ticketmaster would NOT be drooling at the notion of selling this database to every bidder who comes along. Fact is, this will become a revenue generator for Ticketmaster, and it probably won't do a damn thing to solve any ticket-related excuse they're using to justify it.
Here's my prediction; Five years from now Ticketmaster will declare a War on Scalpers while the system that promised to fix that quietly becomes a part of DHS infrastructure...
The system is meant to replace manual identity checks, not ticket checks.
Uh, let's not blindly dismiss that first part; we should be asking why the hell manual identity checks are required in the first place, in order to even justify implementing a system like this.
I'm sure it's not about speeding up the process at all. I think anyone can see through Ticketmasters BS. I bet you'll only be able to resell tickets through Ticketmasters own official market place for resllers with Ticketmaster taking a cut of course. Don't get me wrong scalping and fake tickets are a real issue but there's nothing about this move from Ticketmaster that's of real benefit to the customer just them protecting their own interests aka profits.
That's a cute theory you've got, but this has fuck-all to do with ticket sales, speed at venues, or even scalping.
You don't make a million-dollar investment and build a facial recognition database of men, women, and children to not sell it to every bidder who comes asking for it. You really need to start thinking of the value of such a database. Ticketmaster sure as shit has.
It's mostly to stop ticket touts selling on tickets at inflated prices.
Well, now that we've unwrapped this bullshit burrito, let's get down to the corn-riddled meat of it. This isn't about curbing inflated ticket prices. This isn't about protecting vendors who thrive on gouging customers with onsite food services. This isn't even about security.
This is about building a fresh database of facial recognition data, to include men, women, and children. This is about testing the accuracy of said system. This is about testing the tolerance level of the masses to accept such surveillance as the new "norm" in our world.
In other words, this is about Control.
If the name on the ticket doesn't match your id, you don't get in.
Two years ago no one was talking about this. Now, matching a physical person to every ticket sale is suddenly a critical requirement? Also remember who ultimately pays for a mult-million dollar system like this, as if ticket "service fees" weren't high enough. Oh, and let's not forget about the massive amount of additional law enforcement resources that will be showing up at venues like this. They will be there to abuse the new do-my-job-for-me system to literally scan the masses for wanted criminals, and perform arrests onsite. Your service fees and tax dollars at work. I haven't even started down the potential rabbit hole of abuse, and that's before this database inevitably gets sold and/or stolen.
When people bitch about an Orwellian future, they should remember that silence coming from the masses defines acceptance.
Demonetization is likely the only way you're going to get any traction to curb the fake news problem. You sure as hell aren't going to fix stupid. In fact, it would seem the masses are actually becoming more gullible these days, evidenced by how often fake news goes viral.
When we stop financially rewarding bullshit peddlers, the justification to peddle bullshit tends to go away.
These days? Better get in line...
These days? Good luck finding enough people to actually form a line on any topic. Sure, quite a few people might complain in an "outcry" of sorts, but companies already know that less than 1% of their customers would ever actually get off their ass and DO anything other than rant. This is why they'll continue to do whatever the hell they want to customers; statistics have already proven you won't do a damn thing about it.
It sucks, but personally it's still worth it to my household, another $20/year is way below my threshold for going on the warpath.
Death by 1,000 cuts is the preferred tactic because it always seems to work. And now we return to As the Frog Boils...
A lot of people are saying that the government is going to pay us for not working anyway,
They do already. It's called welfare. Yeah, I'm sure we'll give it a fancy name in the future like "UBI" to appease the Starbucks hipsters and make it feel like something other than welfare, but in reality it won't be any different. The trillionaire owners and rulers of the future who will be asked to fund UBI will dodge that responsibility like they do taxes today, so certainly don't expect UBI to pay any better than welfare today.
Even Nobel Prize Economists, like Krugman, is saying the same
I would certainly hope a Nobel Prize winning economist would know a thing or two about welfare. As automation and AI create a global welfare state and put billions of unemployable humans in it, the real question will be mental health and stability.
Do I need to worry that AI is going to take away my job?
Yeah, but feel good knowing it will only take automation or perhaps "good enough" AI to take your job away, and that will be the same for the other 80% of the human population.
Do I have to worry?
Probably, but look at the bright side. You won't have a pesky job consuming 40 hours a week, so humans will be free to pursue their life's dreams. Or at least as free as welfare recipients are.
This time it's half? Last week it was something else.
Nobody really knows.
Actually, history has shown us the one thing we humans do know when it comes to predicting the future; we can underestimate the shit out of damn near anything.
As it stands, only about a quarter of the age eligible population is able to join the armed forces. If Cyber Command had become its own service then they could have opened recruiting to anyone who was willing to do the work, study hard, and become a member. As it stands, the ranks will be closed to those who are not a member of the physical elite.
As it stands today, the United States Military could not function without the generous assistance of a few hundred thousand contractors supporting it. And a lot of those contractors were former military members who simply grew well beyond their former physical limitations.
Not only dies this close the door to service by those who are not in near perfect physical condition; but it also limits the pool of potential candidates based on a factor that has nothing to do with their acumen at cyber-security.
Couldn't agree with you more here, but let's be honest for a minute. How many potential candidates within the "uber-hacker" ranks would pass a background investigation for a security clearance, as well as a drug test? Physical conditioning is likely the least qualifying concern.