...take a good hard look at what they worship. They follow social media narcissists rubbing in an Insta-lifestyle that the average pleb can only dream of. If that shit was what I consumed all day every day, I'd probably be fucking depressed about my normal mundane life too.
And yeah, Lifestyles of the Rich and Obnoxious has been around for a long time; the difference now is there's a billion people following their every move.
I assume the next US elections are 2020? Soon enough that hopefully the USA will put an adult in charge of things and need for the ISS will be weight up by someone with better qualified to determine the real merits of keeping it in operation.
We've managed to elect a peanut farmer, a movie star, a member of a gang (Choom), and now a social media celebrity.
The next election will likely be won by a corporate shill that will make Ajit Pai look as neutral as beige paint. Corporations have been manipulating government for decades; might as well officially hand it over to them.
"Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will make launches cheap enough for that to be feasible."
Same thing they told us about the %$#@% Space Shuttle. They promised weekly launches and cost of a few hundred dollars a kg to LEO. The best they ever did was 9 launches in 1985. And the average cost to LEO was $60000/kg.
But this time it's different.... How different? Most likely, not very.
NASA budgets are fueled by taxpayer dollars. And taxpayers don't really see their taxes as an investment with returns, nor do they often raise their hand and volunteer to raise taxes by the billions in order to properly fund specific projects.
Compare and contrast that with Tesla, budgets are fueled by investors. And investors want to see revenue and returns, which require Musk to deliver. Is he on schedule? No, he has slipped, no doubt. But he has managed to innovate and deliver like no one else in the EV market, and reduce the cost of his product over the last 10 years to something that the average consumer can afford, not just the 1%.
Yes, I'd say this time is different. Moving space programs into the private sector is likely the solution to beating $60000/kg.
A major city suffers a blackout for more than 24 hours, and we find hospital delivery rooms overflowing 9 months later.
Welcome to Snopes. May I interest you in a JATO-powered car?
Welcome to the island of Zanzibar, circa 2008, where a month-long blackout resulted in a 20% spike in births.
Sorry to burst your Snopes bubble, but the concept of an unemployable workforce and idle time extends well beyond 99% of the statistical evidence provided in the past. Eat, sleep, and fuck will be the activity du jour, with predictable results.
Props for the rant feedback (a good rant is always entertaining and often enlightening), but Steve has also failed to see that The Patent Wars have not merely stifled innovation. It has destroyed it altogether.
I can try and innovate something very specific, and even if I'm somehow lucky to get my product off the ground, some overly vague patent barely related will be politically pushed into a courtroom by an army of litigators with the end goal of ass-raping the "competition".
No shit innovation is dying. The MBAs of a world fueled by litigation get what they deserve.
Of course, the real question is: why didn't they do this when they put the slowdown software in in the first place? Treating your customers like milk cows makes it harder, not easier, to sell next-generation hardware.
Apple has spent years making their products so idiot-proof that a 3-year old can operate them. They cater to the milk cow generation of technically inept, which has made them a shitload of money.
And the only thing that would ever make it harder to sell is if making a fashion statement with overpriced iHardware suddenly went out of style.
They never cared about any of that shit before...they're just now being open about the fact the only thing they care about is fucking the american public and violating our foruth admendment rights.
You are correct. In the civilian market, I call it Corporate Arrogance. It's when an organization knows damn well that they can do whatever the fuck they want, and there's not a damn thing you can say or do about it.
They'll change their signature line to Fuck You Very Much and Have a Nice Day soon too.
I think you've forgotten that most consumers simply don't give a shit.
They'll give a shit when all their software is subscription and they're paying $200 per month which they can no longer afford.
Which is exactly why subscription models are nowhere near that cost. It's called Death by 1,000 Cuts. SaaS at $9.99/month is as justified as a bar turning on the happy hour sign. Works every damn time.
Oh, and consumers will ultimately be paying $200/month for all of their services, but they'll justify that cost because they're paying two dozen providers for several services that used to be one-time costs.
Larger companies will eat the subscription model.
Small businesses and home users will eventually fall away - do without or find non subscription alternatives.
Small providers will eventually get consumed by the Mega-Corp Overlords. Competition doesn't stand a chance in the future, no matter how cheap your product may be.
We understand how people can get addicted to opiates and when the supply runs our or their money dries up, they switch to heroin as a cheaper and more widely available source of the high but with eCigarettes, that doesn't hold up.
Vaping is CHEAPER than smoking. Vaping supplies are widely available.
It's nonsensical to think that people would seek alternatives to the cheaper method that they're already using.
LK
Every smoker I know who tried to vape as an alternative ultimately quit and went back to the original cancer sticks.
If vaping were actually an effective alternative to nicotine addiction, we wouldn't see many people still choosing cigarettes.
"...public health experts concluded in a report released on Tuesday that vaping with e-cigarettes that contain nicotine can be addictive..."
Wait, you mean nicotine-infused products are still addictive? Gee, can't imagine how that wasn't rather fucking obvious after Big Tobacco agreed to a couple hundred billion in medical settlements 20 years ago.
Starbucks. Big Pharma. Gaming. Social Media. Addiction is nothing more than 21st Century Capitalism. If you're not making a patented/trademarked product that's physically, mentally, or psychologically addictive these days, investors will be quick to point out that you're fucking doing it wrong.
All that stands between an official statement from authorized government official and a possible malicious docxing is a weak, guessable twitter password. It might even be his zip code. And any Twitter employee or contractor can spoof any user account!
And these jokers enact laws for "ensuring" cyber security.
If you think this is scary, you should see the POTUS Twitter feed...
Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?
When you say "industry", are you referring to those who still broadcast old-fashioned signals to boxes that the cord-cutting generation doesn't use anymore?
Kind of hard to "disseminate" information to the masses who tend to now recognize only two forms of communication; social media and internet streaming.
It's not about maximizing profits necessarily. Investors prefer to see subscription based revenue rather than one time purchases or contracts with optional renewal.
When it comes to making highly proprietary hardware that barely lasts beyond the shitty factory warranties and support ends prematurely, it is about maximizing profits.
When it comes to preferring never-ending subscription models over one-time costs, it is about guaranteeing profit streams, which is just another way of maximizing profits over time.
Both of these actions serve Greed N. Corruption. Enron was so long ago companies have hired new cooks from Ireland and have recipes you've never even heard of. Any ancient regulation isn't doing a damn thing to help the consumer these days. Prices keep going up, hardware continues to become more and more proprietary, content continues to be shoved behind walled gardens and perpetual subscriptions, mega-corps continue to collude and dominate entire industries regardless of anti-monopoly laws, and competition effecting real change is dead before it even starts.
I found replacements of Photoshop and Illustrator for $50 each, both are much better (Affinity Photo, and Designer). As for any other software that changes to a subscription based pricing, I just move along to something else. I think these companies have forgotten that we the consumers decide what we want or need, and can just buy from somewhere else. Standards are set and broken everyday, and we the consumer need to make them change to our needs.
I think you've forgotten that most consumers simply don't give a shit. They're lazy, and they'll take whatever manufacturers demand.
You can try and "stand up" for your rights. You can try and claim that you can make a difference. But at the end of the day, your "army" attempting to change an industry that was established on inaction and indifference won't change a damn thing because you'll represent 5% of the consumer voice at best.
Companies have not "forgotten". They know damn well I'm right, which is why they're so arrogant about displaying "courage".
It doesn't matter if you wanted a smart TV or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a headphone jack or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted to pay a one-time cost, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a removable battery, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted A la carte, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
Bottom line is consumer opinion no longer matters. And don't give me that Vote with your Wallet crap. That's as dead as the concept of competition. The mega-corps could care less about the 5% of you that would actually stand up and "vote". The other 95% of mindless consumers just stand in line and beg for more product regardless of price. And Greed is infectious, which is exactly why we are seeing more SaaS mandates, not less. Shareholders and investors demand it.
And it's been this way for a long time now, so you might as well get used to it. Your entire life will be subscription-based 30 years from now.
Security issues can be patched later on. If you are beaten to market, in many cases you might as well send everyone home and close up shop. Launching ahead of the competition and establishing a beachhead is the single most important thing with any product and everything else is #2. I understand that many engineers don't understand this, but they are not paid or trained to think this way. That doesn't make it any less true.
The problem with ignoring the priority of security is often times the priority of safety is dismissed as well. When that happens, innocent people die.
And when Greed N. Corruption essentially never gets punished for immoral, unethical, or even illegal activity, don't expect the environment to get any more secure or safe.
You cannot retrain a toilet cleaner to be a robot repairman.
Whatever.. a good buddy of mine got tired of being a ditch digger, and after two years of hard work and studying (starting with the lowly A+ and busting ass up the food chain) he's now a senior storage engineer for a top ten company in the Fortune 500 making over 150k a year in the midwestern US.
You need to understand that from a mental capacity and motivation standpoint, your buddy represents 1% of the toilet-cleaning/ditch-digging/truck-driving force out there.
We're only fucked if simpletons do not evolve to accept the fact that most traditional work will be obsolete, and the idea that you must toil to earn your keep.
Toil doing what? In case you didn't notice, the only simpletons on Star Trek were dressed in red, represented about 1% of the space fleet, and were predictably made obsolete within about 45 seconds of appearing on screen.
The key, of course, will be a certain amount of population control for future generations along with finding creative mental and physical outlets.
A major city suffers a blackout for more than 24 hours, and we find hospital delivery rooms overflowing 9 months later. Good luck implementing population control when the unemployable masses have little to do all day but eat, fuck, and sleep. That creative mental and physical outlet has already been proven. At least until the Fuckitron 3000 shows it can do that better than a human too.
Jobs are going to disappear to robots, so we need to bring in immigrants to do the jobs that American robots won't do.
Yeah, we are pretty much fucked. The experiment in class mobility and the death of the aristocracy stands on the razor's edge. Now cheer, peasant, cheer for your Lords and Masters, that they might toss you a loaf of bread.
Lords and Masters? Uh no. With the amount of people they're looking to turn into peasants, the concept of Eat the Rich will become reality faster than you can say HFT millisecond.
According to the BLS some 154 million Americans are employed. That <1% of those jobs would disappear in 8 years, in fact less than 0.1% per year sounds like the most unrevolutionary revolution ever. We'll all run out of jobs like... year 3000.
If there's one thing we humans are pretty damn good at, it's massively underestimating the future.
Remove every waitress, barista, cashier, and other automation-targeting jobs from the employment market. Now you've just removed the very jobs that the uneductated masses use in order to become educated, removing the lowest rungs on the Ladder of Success.
After automation decimates every job out there that doesn't require a decade of experience, we'll soon find that go-get-an-education mantra we've been preaching to the buggy whip makers of yesteryear isn't going to work either. That's because we'll have "good enough" AI solutions that will be coming for the educated jobs. The entire justification of higher education tends to become pointless when humans are unemployable, so that entire education business gets decimated as well. The economy will be reduced to a shadow of its former self.
This will all happen because of Obscene Greed. Automation and AI creators don't give a shit about the end-game. They care about making billions now. And spare me the UBI speech. We can't even get the 1% to pay taxes now, so UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the billions living in the Global Welfare State, which also won't do jack shit to revive a decimated economy.
Regardless of that dystopian future, "reskilling" isn't even a viable solution today for one simple reason; not all humans are created equal. There's usually a damn good reason someone spends an entire career as a ditch-digger. Mental capacity is not some unproven theory.
I'm mostly in agreement with you, but I will say that working for a large company means that those in accounting and HR and many other groups, are mostly leeching off those actually doing the work...they become the bureaucracy that keeps large companies from being agile.
Accounting, HR, IT, every CxO position, even building maintenance. One could argue all of those non-revenue generating departments are "leeching" off all the others who are "actually doing the work", but it's a pointless argument because they are all necessary evils.
If you want to talk about the true burden to efficiencies, consider what litigation has done against business efficiency over the last 50 years. Litigation and subsequent laws, regulations, policies and procedures are the reason most of those evils are now mandatory.
The concept that there is a "problem" is premised on several notions:
- Only those in the US should have free speech on the Internet.
- US readers are unable to think for themselves and scrutinize. They need a protective overlord.
What would be more acceptable is tagging content that has certain attributes, then letting readers do what they wish with such tagged content. In fact, instead of debating what algorithms or filters FB, Twitter or any other potential big brother should have, how about letting readers customize their own algorithms and be empowered to control what they see in their feeds? Why isn't this concept being proposed?
One can already filter and control what is seen in their own feeds. And when the signal-to-noise ratio gets too high, often the best way to control the feed is to fucking unplug from it. Many people have left Farcebook for this very reason, and have been better off without it.
As far as tagging content goes, that's a dead idea from the start. Clicks and likes are all that matter these days, which is exactly why we continue to have a bullshit peddling problem. And as long as clicks and likes generate massive revenue, they will continue to be a priority. That means truth and facts will come second, which will never solve any problem of fake news.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft can easily hop to China or Europe. Throwing stifling regulation at them will do absolutely nothing other than cause fewer jobs here in the US. Instead, government needs to stand behind business so people have jobs and the economy stays well off.
As of now, this is working well -- the stock market is at record highs, the US is at full employment, where anyone who wants a job can get one, and companies are turning record profits. Hitting them with regulations will mean a recession, if not a depression, as they take their toys and go home.
How exactly is allowing monopolies/oligopolies to crush every other form of competition a good thing, and something that should be supported by government? If you allow entire industries to collapse into half a dozen companies, there will be FAR fewer jobs than there are today. When Amazon bankrupts or buys 10,000 other companies, you think they're going to hire the 10,000 CEOs? Think all of the jobs in the 10,000 accounting or HR departments will be needed? Hell no. Automation will only exacerbate that issue even further.
Today Too Big To Fail not only enjoys tax-exempt status, but also funnels billions in profits through offshore tax havens. They essentially have no regulation. If you're not going to apply some regulation to them, then at least fucking break them up to maybe allow competition to stand a chance, along with thousands of jobs.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I grew up before smartphones and was still unhappy. Come to think of it, I've been mostly unhappy since I was about sixteen.
How does being happy work in the first place?
How did it work before you were sixteen?
Contentment often leads to a newfound place of peace and happiness.
...take a good hard look at what they worship. They follow social media narcissists rubbing in an Insta-lifestyle that the average pleb can only dream of. If that shit was what I consumed all day every day, I'd probably be fucking depressed about my normal mundane life too.
And yeah, Lifestyles of the Rich and Obnoxious has been around for a long time; the difference now is there's a billion people following their every move.
I assume the next US elections are 2020? Soon enough that hopefully the USA will put an adult in charge of things and need for the ISS will be weight up by someone with better qualified to determine the real merits of keeping it in operation.
We've managed to elect a peanut farmer, a movie star, a member of a gang (Choom), and now a social media celebrity.
The next election will likely be won by a corporate shill that will make Ajit Pai look as neutral as beige paint. Corporations have been manipulating government for decades; might as well officially hand it over to them.
"Musk's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy will make launches cheap enough for that to be feasible."
Same thing they told us about the %$#@% Space Shuttle. They promised weekly launches and cost of a few hundred dollars a kg to LEO. The best they ever did was 9 launches in 1985. And the average cost to LEO was $60000/kg.
But this time it's different. ... How different? Most likely, not very.
NASA budgets are fueled by taxpayer dollars. And taxpayers don't really see their taxes as an investment with returns, nor do they often raise their hand and volunteer to raise taxes by the billions in order to properly fund specific projects.
Compare and contrast that with Tesla, budgets are fueled by investors. And investors want to see revenue and returns, which require Musk to deliver. Is he on schedule? No, he has slipped, no doubt. But he has managed to innovate and deliver like no one else in the EV market, and reduce the cost of his product over the last 10 years to something that the average consumer can afford, not just the 1%.
Yes, I'd say this time is different. Moving space programs into the private sector is likely the solution to beating $60000/kg.
A major city suffers a blackout for more than 24 hours, and we find hospital delivery rooms overflowing 9 months later.
Welcome to Snopes. May I interest you in a JATO-powered car?
Welcome to the island of Zanzibar, circa 2008, where a month-long blackout resulted in a 20% spike in births.
Sorry to burst your Snopes bubble, but the concept of an unemployable workforce and idle time extends well beyond 99% of the statistical evidence provided in the past. Eat, sleep, and fuck will be the activity du jour, with predictable results.
Props for the rant feedback (a good rant is always entertaining and often enlightening), but Steve has also failed to see that The Patent Wars have not merely stifled innovation. It has destroyed it altogether.
I can try and innovate something very specific, and even if I'm somehow lucky to get my product off the ground, some overly vague patent barely related will be politically pushed into a courtroom by an army of litigators with the end goal of ass-raping the "competition".
No shit innovation is dying. The MBAs of a world fueled by litigation get what they deserve.
Of course, the real question is: why didn't they do this when they put the slowdown software in in the first place? Treating your customers like milk cows makes it harder, not easier, to sell next-generation hardware.
Apple has spent years making their products so idiot-proof that a 3-year old can operate them. They cater to the milk cow generation of technically inept, which has made them a shitload of money.
And the only thing that would ever make it harder to sell is if making a fashion statement with overpriced iHardware suddenly went out of style.
They never cared about any of that shit before...they're just now being open about the fact the only thing they care about is fucking the american public and violating our foruth admendment rights.
You are correct. In the civilian market, I call it Corporate Arrogance. It's when an organization knows damn well that they can do whatever the fuck they want, and there's not a damn thing you can say or do about it.
They'll change their signature line to Fuck You Very Much and Have a Nice Day soon too.
I think you've forgotten that most consumers simply don't give a shit.
They'll give a shit when all their software is subscription and they're paying $200 per month which they can no longer afford.
Which is exactly why subscription models are nowhere near that cost. It's called Death by 1,000 Cuts. SaaS at $9.99/month is as justified as a bar turning on the happy hour sign. Works every damn time.
Oh, and consumers will ultimately be paying $200/month for all of their services, but they'll justify that cost because they're paying two dozen providers for several services that used to be one-time costs.
Larger companies will eat the subscription model.
Small businesses and home users will eventually fall away - do without or find non subscription alternatives.
Small providers will eventually get consumed by the Mega-Corp Overlords. Competition doesn't stand a chance in the future, no matter how cheap your product may be.
We understand how people can get addicted to opiates and when the supply runs our or their money dries up, they switch to heroin as a cheaper and more widely available source of the high but with eCigarettes, that doesn't hold up.
Vaping is CHEAPER than smoking. Vaping supplies are widely available.
It's nonsensical to think that people would seek alternatives to the cheaper method that they're already using.
LK
Every smoker I know who tried to vape as an alternative ultimately quit and went back to the original cancer sticks.
If vaping were actually an effective alternative to nicotine addiction, we wouldn't see many people still choosing cigarettes.
"...public health experts concluded in a report released on Tuesday that vaping with e-cigarettes that contain nicotine can be addictive..."
Wait, you mean nicotine-infused products are still addictive? Gee, can't imagine how that wasn't rather fucking obvious after Big Tobacco agreed to a couple hundred billion in medical settlements 20 years ago.
Starbucks. Big Pharma. Gaming. Social Media. Addiction is nothing more than 21st Century Capitalism. If you're not making a patented/trademarked product that's physically, mentally, or psychologically addictive these days, investors will be quick to point out that you're fucking doing it wrong.
Local news outlets transmit over the air (TV and radio)....
TV and radio? You mean Netflix and Spotify?
..., plus they have their own online presence as well.
Those who have invested in an online presence do. And if it's not on a YouTube or Facebook live stream, you might as well be offline.
All that stands between an official statement from authorized government official and a possible malicious docxing is a weak, guessable twitter password. It might even be his zip code. And any Twitter employee or contractor can spoof any user account!
And these jokers enact laws for "ensuring" cyber security.
If you think this is scary, you should see the POTUS Twitter feed...
Why would he rely exclusively on Twitter when there's an entire industry whose job it is to disseminate information?
When you say "industry", are you referring to those who still broadcast old-fashioned signals to boxes that the cord-cutting generation doesn't use anymore?
Kind of hard to "disseminate" information to the masses who tend to now recognize only two forms of communication; social media and internet streaming.
It's not about maximizing profits necessarily. Investors prefer to see subscription based revenue rather than one time purchases or contracts with optional renewal.
When it comes to making highly proprietary hardware that barely lasts beyond the shitty factory warranties and support ends prematurely, it is about maximizing profits.
When it comes to preferring never-ending subscription models over one-time costs, it is about guaranteeing profit streams, which is just another way of maximizing profits over time.
Both of these actions serve Greed N. Corruption. Enron was so long ago companies have hired new cooks from Ireland and have recipes you've never even heard of. Any ancient regulation isn't doing a damn thing to help the consumer these days. Prices keep going up, hardware continues to become more and more proprietary, content continues to be shoved behind walled gardens and perpetual subscriptions, mega-corps continue to collude and dominate entire industries regardless of anti-monopoly laws, and competition effecting real change is dead before it even starts.
I found replacements of Photoshop and Illustrator for $50 each, both are much better (Affinity Photo, and Designer). As for any other software that changes to a subscription based pricing, I just move along to something else. I think these companies have forgotten that we the consumers decide what we want or need, and can just buy from somewhere else. Standards are set and broken everyday, and we the consumer need to make them change to our needs.
I think you've forgotten that most consumers simply don't give a shit. They're lazy, and they'll take whatever manufacturers demand.
You can try and "stand up" for your rights. You can try and claim that you can make a difference. But at the end of the day, your "army" attempting to change an industry that was established on inaction and indifference won't change a damn thing because you'll represent 5% of the consumer voice at best.
Companies have not "forgotten". They know damn well I'm right, which is why they're so arrogant about displaying "courage".
It doesn't matter if you wanted a smart TV or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a headphone jack or not, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted to pay a one-time cost, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted a removable battery, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
It doesn't matter if you wanted A la carte, you'll take what maximizes profits and like it.
Bottom line is consumer opinion no longer matters. And don't give me that Vote with your Wallet crap. That's as dead as the concept of competition. The mega-corps could care less about the 5% of you that would actually stand up and "vote". The other 95% of mindless consumers just stand in line and beg for more product regardless of price. And Greed is infectious, which is exactly why we are seeing more SaaS mandates, not less. Shareholders and investors demand it.
And it's been this way for a long time now, so you might as well get used to it. Your entire life will be subscription-based 30 years from now.
Security issues can be patched later on. If you are beaten to market, in many cases you might as well send everyone home and close up shop. Launching ahead of the competition and establishing a beachhead is the single most important thing with any product and everything else is #2. I understand that many engineers don't understand this, but they are not paid or trained to think this way. That doesn't make it any less true.
The problem with ignoring the priority of security is often times the priority of safety is dismissed as well. When that happens, innocent people die.
And when Greed N. Corruption essentially never gets punished for immoral, unethical, or even illegal activity, don't expect the environment to get any more secure or safe.
Whatever.. a good buddy of mine got tired of being a ditch digger, and after two years of hard work and studying (starting with the lowly A+ and busting ass up the food chain) he's now a senior storage engineer for a top ten company in the Fortune 500 making over 150k a year in the midwestern US.
You need to understand that from a mental capacity and motivation standpoint, your buddy represents 1% of the toilet-cleaning/ditch-digging/truck-driving force out there.
We're only fucked if simpletons do not evolve to accept the fact that most traditional work will be obsolete, and the idea that you must toil to earn your keep.
Toil doing what? In case you didn't notice, the only simpletons on Star Trek were dressed in red, represented about 1% of the space fleet, and were predictably made obsolete within about 45 seconds of appearing on screen.
The key, of course, will be a certain amount of population control for future generations along with finding creative mental and physical outlets.
A major city suffers a blackout for more than 24 hours, and we find hospital delivery rooms overflowing 9 months later. Good luck implementing population control when the unemployable masses have little to do all day but eat, fuck, and sleep. That creative mental and physical outlet has already been proven. At least until the Fuckitron 3000 shows it can do that better than a human too.
Jobs are going to disappear to robots, so we need to bring in immigrants to do the jobs that American robots won't do.
Yeah, we are pretty much fucked. The experiment in class mobility and the death of the aristocracy stands on the razor's edge. Now cheer, peasant, cheer for your Lords and Masters, that they might toss you a loaf of bread.
Lords and Masters? Uh no. With the amount of people they're looking to turn into peasants, the concept of Eat the Rich will become reality faster than you can say HFT millisecond.
According to the BLS some 154 million Americans are employed. That <1% of those jobs would disappear in 8 years, in fact less than 0.1% per year sounds like the most unrevolutionary revolution ever. We'll all run out of jobs like... year 3000.
If there's one thing we humans are pretty damn good at, it's massively underestimating the future.
Remove every waitress, barista, cashier, and other automation-targeting jobs from the employment market. Now you've just removed the very jobs that the uneductated masses use in order to become educated, removing the lowest rungs on the Ladder of Success.
After automation decimates every job out there that doesn't require a decade of experience, we'll soon find that go-get-an-education mantra we've been preaching to the buggy whip makers of yesteryear isn't going to work either. That's because we'll have "good enough" AI solutions that will be coming for the educated jobs. The entire justification of higher education tends to become pointless when humans are unemployable, so that entire education business gets decimated as well. The economy will be reduced to a shadow of its former self.
This will all happen because of Obscene Greed. Automation and AI creators don't give a shit about the end-game. They care about making billions now. And spare me the UBI speech. We can't even get the 1% to pay taxes now, so UBI will become nothing more than Welfare 2.0 for the billions living in the Global Welfare State, which also won't do jack shit to revive a decimated economy.
Regardless of that dystopian future, "reskilling" isn't even a viable solution today for one simple reason; not all humans are created equal. There's usually a damn good reason someone spends an entire career as a ditch-digger. Mental capacity is not some unproven theory.
I'm mostly in agreement with you, but I will say that working for a large company means that those in accounting and HR and many other groups, are mostly leeching off those actually doing the work...they become the bureaucracy that keeps large companies from being agile.
Accounting, HR, IT, every CxO position, even building maintenance. One could argue all of those non-revenue generating departments are "leeching" off all the others who are "actually doing the work", but it's a pointless argument because they are all necessary evils.
If you want to talk about the true burden to efficiencies, consider what litigation has done against business efficiency over the last 50 years. Litigation and subsequent laws, regulations, policies and procedures are the reason most of those evils are now mandatory.
The concept that there is a "problem" is premised on several notions: - Only those in the US should have free speech on the Internet. - US readers are unable to think for themselves and scrutinize. They need a protective overlord. What would be more acceptable is tagging content that has certain attributes, then letting readers do what they wish with such tagged content. In fact, instead of debating what algorithms or filters FB, Twitter or any other potential big brother should have, how about letting readers customize their own algorithms and be empowered to control what they see in their feeds? Why isn't this concept being proposed?
One can already filter and control what is seen in their own feeds. And when the signal-to-noise ratio gets too high, often the best way to control the feed is to fucking unplug from it. Many people have left Farcebook for this very reason, and have been better off without it.
As far as tagging content goes, that's a dead idea from the start. Clicks and likes are all that matter these days, which is exactly why we continue to have a bullshit peddling problem. And as long as clicks and likes generate massive revenue, they will continue to be a priority. That means truth and facts will come second, which will never solve any problem of fake news.
The idea is to "push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning" to create an "effortless experience for customers"...
Customers? Oh, you mean all the workers you put in the unemployment line with this "vision" of the future? Those customers?
They say automation is unavoidable. We'll see if the concept of Eat the Rich is too.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft can easily hop to China or Europe. Throwing stifling regulation at them will do absolutely nothing other than cause fewer jobs here in the US. Instead, government needs to stand behind business so people have jobs and the economy stays well off.
As of now, this is working well -- the stock market is at record highs, the US is at full employment, where anyone who wants a job can get one, and companies are turning record profits. Hitting them with regulations will mean a recession, if not a depression, as they take their toys and go home.
How exactly is allowing monopolies/oligopolies to crush every other form of competition a good thing, and something that should be supported by government? If you allow entire industries to collapse into half a dozen companies, there will be FAR fewer jobs than there are today. When Amazon bankrupts or buys 10,000 other companies, you think they're going to hire the 10,000 CEOs? Think all of the jobs in the 10,000 accounting or HR departments will be needed? Hell no. Automation will only exacerbate that issue even further.
Today Too Big To Fail not only enjoys tax-exempt status, but also funnels billions in profits through offshore tax havens. They essentially have no regulation. If you're not going to apply some regulation to them, then at least fucking break them up to maybe allow competition to stand a chance, along with thousands of jobs.