You can certainly make the argument, and IMO it's a good one. But our government, as cash-desperate as any junkie, gets to decide whether to give your money back.
During the bank bailouts we sailed right past ex post facto and landed firmly in bill of attainder, and no one batted an eye. After all, we were taxing bankers, why let a little thing like the Constitution slow us down. Yeah, we're pretty fucked.
If judges cared about the plain wording of the existing constitution, we wouldn't have these problems to begin with. But you see, sex is fun. And the plain wording of the constitution doesn't support mandating to the states from the bench that abortion must be legal. And, you see, sex is fun. And while the congress is perfectly empowered by the constitution to pass an actual law legalizing abortion everywhere, they lacked the courage to do so. But you see, sex is fun. So we decided "only crazy right-wing reactionaries talk about the plain wording of the constitution - it has emanations and penumbras!", and we lost that protection. About the same time, the birth control pill came to market, removing the urgency of such an extreme judicial measure. Oh, well, water under the bridge now.
Doesn't matter what constitution you write, we lack judges with the will to enforce it in unpopular ways, just as we lack legislators without the courage or insight to change with the times within the bounds of that constitution.
Yes, multi-generation debt is totally illegal in the private sector. For evil of this mind-numbing intensity, you need a government.
Bear in mind, it's the reason governments can afford to borrow money in the first place! Now I'd be happy with a world where governments couldn't secure loans and had to live within their means, don't get me wrong, but that would be a very different world.
Well, assuming you can print the mold in some material that's at all suitable for the material you want. Come to think of it, if you had the patience and materials to do a lost-wax casting, you could do a whole lot more.
You were doing well until you mentioned tyranny. Things went downhill from there. Tyranny isn't an economical system. You can have tyranny under capitalism or any other economical system. In fact, there are loads of poor, capitalist, countries ruled by tyrants.
Fascism is more efficient, labor surplus or not. There is not a single country that didn't do well under it. The same cannot be said of capitalism, even though people like to pretend otherwise.
And before you start, Fascism does not implies putting people in camps.
The post embodies a quite common mistake. There are plenty of ways to make an economy more efficient today, but only technological growth matters in the long run. Exponential growth always wins in the end.
And before you start, "technology" is the ability to produce more goods and services from the same resources (that shiny iThingy is enabled by technology, but isn't technology itself) , so yes that growth is sustainable.
You'd think/.ers at least would grok "always climb the tech tree" as the winning strategy for economics! Anyhow, capitalism for all its flaws has shown itself to be the best at technological growth of systems tried so far. Capitalism: the worst possible system, except for everything else that's ever been tried.
I'm not sure what you're replying too. You can certainly earn a reasonable living as a plumber or repairing A/Cs! There are a great many skilled jobs for which reading the classics and learning calculus are irrelevant. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer or surgeon, nor should we expect people to be, but there's a shortage of skilled blue-collar workers today in most places, and IMO there will be a growing need for skilled service workers. (Plus if you look at the career track for a dentist and a plumber, after college delays and costs the dentist doesn't come out ahead in net lifetime earnings till his 40s, on average).
Would driving for something like Lyft make you feel like a servant? I drove for years in various roles and never felt that way. Doing service work doesn't make you a servant, and every tech revolution has been followed by the middle class being able to afford a bunch that only the rich could before (and I'm expecting that to be service jobs this time).
BTW, "wealth" is orthogonal to income. As long as you're above subsistence, wealth creation is a matter of habit, patience, time, and planning.
There are a huge number of those jobs, and they are increasing all the time.
Wow, the economy must be recovering like crazy if the McDs and Walmarts are on such a hiring spree!
Everyone I know who uses maids and gardners, the "landscaping company" is a half-dozen recent immigrants, one of whom owns the company. Maid services are similar. These are small businesses, with successful owners.
But in any case, you can certainly live on $20/yr - I've done it. Living like a student with roommates and cheap everything, but sometimes that's life.
Half the population will always have sub-median intelligence. That is what median means.
Did you just figure that out? Everyone else seemed to get that without the need to comment - or are you that guy, who can't help explaining the joke that everyone else got?
That said, I believe that we will have a stronger society if we focus on elevating the lower educated to a higher educated state. I do not want to create a permanent underclass of semi- or un-skilled labor supporting the higher class's state of near permanent leisure.
"Education" is it's own bubble now. People don't need abstract education that doesn't help them get a job and $100k in debt. No one needs that. People need training for skilled work.
There will be no permanent underclass of unskilled labor. The trend has been the other way for 300 years now. Soon, there will be no unskilled jobs at all, as everything that can be automated gets automated. We all have unheard-of leisure by historical standards already, thanks to automation bringing prices down. But leisure creates the need for new jobs, thankfully.
If you can't get a job with a CS degree (the Wonka's Golden Ticket of degrees), sorry, it might be you. The one thing we need ever more of is people to write the automation that's replacing all the other jobs. Sure, your first programming job ever is a real bitch to get, as you're still effectively unskilled, but that's basically true with any professional degree if you don't have a good internship or two to build on.
Yep, "building trades" are here to stay. The industries evolve with tech, but ultimately making construction/repair cheaper seems to just stimulate more of it (modulo absurd housing bubbles).
It's pretty difficult- if not impossible- to simply reassign an entire industry of workers. Especially one as large as coal mining.
Oh, agreed. Nor is it the governments business to make such drastic changes on a whim. But over 20 years? There's a real shortage of skilled blue-collar workers in America as it is, and a rising demand for creative service jobs.
Most people have something they'd be interested in doing as skilled work. You can't arbitrarily expect anyone to be good at some specific job, but there's something for almost everyone. And while a few jobs, like electrician, really require significant study and memorization, most skilled blue-collar jobs don't. It's years of learn-as-you-do, instead.
There are very few such jobs. Minimum wage jobs are unskilled, by and large. Look into how much a maid or gardener makes per hour. Most are self-employed or small businesses doing very well (depends on where you live, but paying ~$50/hour isn't uncommon).
Fair point - I think of "suckiness" as something to be counterbalanced by "pay". The point I was trying to make is that coal mining is intense physical labor in unpleasant conditions, and that most people do it because it's the best paying job they can manage. I'd think most coal miners would be OK with a job as e.g. a welder, given the opportunity to train.
There will always be a market for custom, hand made stuff, and the cheaper and more standard automation becomes, the more fashion will focus on this or that to be where you show off your style. There must always be a way to show that you're a unique individual, just like everyone else.
Would you go to a spa and get a pedicure from a coal miner type of guy? Would you hire one as a personal shopper? With their personality
Interesting stereotype there. You might be surprised by the reality.
Your typical male factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers, etc. are not at all suited for interpersonal service jobs. So what are we going to do with them?
Met many taxi drivers? Painters? Plumbers? Electricians? A/C repair guys? The guy you talk to to arrange and schedule the work needs to be somewhat personable. The guy who does the work, not so much.
And a world where all the assholes starve to death? Not the worst possible world.
But that's just it: Hulk Hogan was a skilled worker, a top-notch entertainer.
People need to stop focusing on "tech". Unskilled jobs are going away, as are non-creative semi-skilled jobs. That doesn't mean the only alternative is "tech". There are many skilled jobs in the world, and many semi-skilled jobs requiring human creativity.
A better way to state the question: half the population has sub-median intelligence. In a world of increasing automation, what jobs will there be? It doesn't take much to be a better job than mining coal: the bar is low here. But it won't be manual labor.
I expect a swell in interpersonal service jobs. Unskilled (and non-creative semi-skilled) jobs that used to be only for servants of the rich have grown vastly in numbers as everyone else starts to able to hire the same: gardeners, maids, etc. But the same is stating to happen with creative semi-skilled jobs, and often without the class distinction spas and salons, decorators, drivers, personal shoppers, home theater installers, and so on. We're struggling to replace traditional roles with peer-to-peer roles for a lot of this (think Lyft).
The nice thing is, you don't need to be above average, smarts-wise, to do a competent job at a lot of this stuff. You need to be interested, to care about getting it right, but that's different.
Sure, if you define war as "any day in which the US has troops overseas and the president is Republican".
We've never had a war of territorial acquisition, is the thing (unless you count that War of Northern Aggression;) ). The big exception to "capitalist democracies don't go to war" was WWI. WWI was arguably the stupidest thing the human race has ever done, and proof of how far people can get from acting in their self-interest. While I'd really like to think we're past that now, I can't.
Is that what the left believes today? Well, it's functionally interchangeable with my definition, I think.
But if you wake up and look around the world, you'll see quite a different picture of who is killing whom. Most murder is same-race, because we mostly kill people we know socially. Most genocide is still religion-based, sadly enough, and very little is racial.
Slashdot Mirror
You can certainly make the argument, and IMO it's a good one. But our government, as cash-desperate as any junkie, gets to decide whether to give your money back.
During the bank bailouts we sailed right past ex post facto and landed firmly in bill of attainder, and no one batted an eye. After all, we were taxing bankers, why let a little thing like the Constitution slow us down. Yeah, we're pretty fucked.
If judges cared about the plain wording of the existing constitution, we wouldn't have these problems to begin with. But you see, sex is fun. And the plain wording of the constitution doesn't support mandating to the states from the bench that abortion must be legal. And, you see, sex is fun. And while the congress is perfectly empowered by the constitution to pass an actual law legalizing abortion everywhere, they lacked the courage to do so. But you see, sex is fun. So we decided "only crazy right-wing reactionaries talk about the plain wording of the constitution - it has emanations and penumbras!", and we lost that protection. About the same time, the birth control pill came to market, removing the urgency of such an extreme judicial measure. Oh, well, water under the bridge now.
Doesn't matter what constitution you write, we lack judges with the will to enforce it in unpopular ways, just as we lack legislators without the courage or insight to change with the times within the bounds of that constitution.
Yes, multi-generation debt is totally illegal in the private sector. For evil of this mind-numbing intensity, you need a government.
Bear in mind, it's the reason governments can afford to borrow money in the first place! Now I'd be happy with a world where governments couldn't secure loans and had to live within their means, don't get me wrong, but that would be a very different world.
Normally debts accrue to the estate, not the inheritor.
Well, assuming you can print the mold in some material that's at all suitable for the material you want. Come to think of it, if you had the patience and materials to do a lost-wax casting, you could do a whole lot more.
Internet Explorer for the win (my head asploded):
There is a problem with this websiteâ(TM)s security certificate.
This organization's certificate has been revoked.
Security certificate problems may indicate an attempt to fool you or intercept any data you send to the server.
We recommend that you close this webpage and do not continue to this website.
Click here to close this webpage.
I feel like I've fallen into Bizarro world, where IE is the safe browser and IIS the safe server. Maybe I should grow a goatee?
You were doing well until you mentioned tyranny. Things went downhill from there. Tyranny isn't an economical system. You can have tyranny under capitalism or any other economical system. In fact, there are loads of poor, capitalist, countries ruled by tyrants.
Fascism is more efficient, labor surplus or not. There is not a single country that didn't do well under it. The same cannot be said of capitalism, even though people like to pretend otherwise.
And before you start, Fascism does not implies putting people in camps.
The post embodies a quite common mistake. There are plenty of ways to make an economy more efficient today, but only technological growth matters in the long run. Exponential growth always wins in the end.
And before you start, "technology" is the ability to produce more goods and services from the same resources (that shiny iThingy is enabled by technology, but isn't technology itself) , so yes that growth is sustainable.
You'd think /.ers at least would grok "always climb the tech tree" as the winning strategy for economics! Anyhow, capitalism for all its flaws has shown itself to be the best at technological growth of systems tried so far. Capitalism: the worst possible system, except for everything else that's ever been tried.
Hahaha, pure awesome. Now I'm trying to picture a prawn Charlton Heston.
Well, you enjoy your hopeless depression and I'll enjoy my success. Farewell.
I'm not sure what you're replying too. You can certainly earn a reasonable living as a plumber or repairing A/Cs! There are a great many skilled jobs for which reading the classics and learning calculus are irrelevant. Not everyone is cut out to be an engineer or surgeon, nor should we expect people to be, but there's a shortage of skilled blue-collar workers today in most places, and IMO there will be a growing need for skilled service workers. (Plus if you look at the career track for a dentist and a plumber, after college delays and costs the dentist doesn't come out ahead in net lifetime earnings till his 40s, on average).
Would driving for something like Lyft make you feel like a servant? I drove for years in various roles and never felt that way. Doing service work doesn't make you a servant, and every tech revolution has been followed by the middle class being able to afford a bunch that only the rich could before (and I'm expecting that to be service jobs this time).
BTW, "wealth" is orthogonal to income. As long as you're above subsistence, wealth creation is a matter of habit, patience, time, and planning.
There are a huge number of those jobs, and they are increasing all the time.
Wow, the economy must be recovering like crazy if the McDs and Walmarts are on such a hiring spree!
Everyone I know who uses maids and gardners, the "landscaping company" is a half-dozen recent immigrants, one of whom owns the company. Maid services are similar. These are small businesses, with successful owners.
But in any case, you can certainly live on $20/yr - I've done it. Living like a student with roommates and cheap everything, but sometimes that's life.
Half the population will always have sub-median intelligence. That is what median means.
Did you just figure that out? Everyone else seemed to get that without the need to comment - or are you that guy, who can't help explaining the joke that everyone else got?
That said, I believe that we will have a stronger society if we focus on elevating the lower educated to a higher educated state. I do not want to create a permanent underclass of semi- or un-skilled labor supporting the higher class's state of near permanent leisure.
"Education" is it's own bubble now. People don't need abstract education that doesn't help them get a job and $100k in debt. No one needs that. People need training for skilled work.
There will be no permanent underclass of unskilled labor. The trend has been the other way for 300 years now. Soon, there will be no unskilled jobs at all, as everything that can be automated gets automated. We all have unheard-of leisure by historical standards already, thanks to automation bringing prices down. But leisure creates the need for new jobs, thankfully.
If you can't get a job with a CS degree (the Wonka's Golden Ticket of degrees), sorry, it might be you. The one thing we need ever more of is people to write the automation that's replacing all the other jobs. Sure, your first programming job ever is a real bitch to get, as you're still effectively unskilled, but that's basically true with any professional degree if you don't have a good internship or two to build on.
Yep, "building trades" are here to stay. The industries evolve with tech, but ultimately making construction/repair cheaper seems to just stimulate more of it (modulo absurd housing bubbles).
It's pretty difficult- if not impossible- to simply reassign an entire industry of workers. Especially one as large as coal mining.
Oh, agreed. Nor is it the governments business to make such drastic changes on a whim. But over 20 years? There's a real shortage of skilled blue-collar workers in America as it is, and a rising demand for creative service jobs.
Most people have something they'd be interested in doing as skilled work. You can't arbitrarily expect anyone to be good at some specific job, but there's something for almost everyone. And while a few jobs, like electrician, really require significant study and memorization, most skilled blue-collar jobs don't. It's years of learn-as-you-do, instead.
There are very few such jobs. Minimum wage jobs are unskilled, by and large. Look into how much a maid or gardener makes per hour. Most are self-employed or small businesses doing very well (depends on where you live, but paying ~$50/hour isn't uncommon).
Fair point - I think of "suckiness" as something to be counterbalanced by "pay". The point I was trying to make is that coal mining is intense physical labor in unpleasant conditions, and that most people do it because it's the best paying job they can manage. I'd think most coal miners would be OK with a job as e.g. a welder, given the opportunity to train.
so I avoid sales jobs like the plague, even though I'd be really, really good at them.
Anyone working as a coal miner is so far past the "I'm willing to do jobs that suck" threshold that it has vanished over the horizon.
Wow, yes, of course.
There will always be a market for custom, hand made stuff, and the cheaper and more standard automation becomes, the more fashion will focus on this or that to be where you show off your style. There must always be a way to show that you're a unique individual, just like everyone else.
Sounds like a world without very many men
Sound like you need a more reasonable definition of asshole. Most people are capable of being reasonably polite to their boss and to customers.
I wouldn't expect jobs like painters and drivers to go away in the next 20 years. That's the next revolution, not this one. One crisis at a time.
Would you go to a spa and get a pedicure from a coal miner type of guy? Would you hire one as a personal shopper? With their personality
Interesting stereotype there. You might be surprised by the reality.
Your typical male factory workers, construction workers, truck drivers, etc. are not at all suited for interpersonal service jobs. So what are we going to do with them?
Met many taxi drivers? Painters? Plumbers? Electricians? A/C repair guys? The guy you talk to to arrange and schedule the work needs to be somewhat personable. The guy who does the work, not so much.
And a world where all the assholes starve to death? Not the worst possible world.
But that's just it: Hulk Hogan was a skilled worker, a top-notch entertainer.
People need to stop focusing on "tech". Unskilled jobs are going away, as are non-creative semi-skilled jobs. That doesn't mean the only alternative is "tech". There are many skilled jobs in the world, and many semi-skilled jobs requiring human creativity.
A better way to state the question: half the population has sub-median intelligence. In a world of increasing automation, what jobs will there be? It doesn't take much to be a better job than mining coal: the bar is low here. But it won't be manual labor.
I expect a swell in interpersonal service jobs. Unskilled (and non-creative semi-skilled) jobs that used to be only for servants of the rich have grown vastly in numbers as everyone else starts to able to hire the same: gardeners, maids, etc. But the same is stating to happen with creative semi-skilled jobs, and often without the class distinction spas and salons, decorators, drivers, personal shoppers, home theater installers, and so on. We're struggling to replace traditional roles with peer-to-peer roles for a lot of this (think Lyft).
The nice thing is, you don't need to be above average, smarts-wise, to do a competent job at a lot of this stuff. You need to be interested, to care about getting it right, but that's different.
Right, right. You claim that X is bad. I ask "wait, why is X bad? Please justify" and I'm the one with blind assumptions?
Sure, if you define war as "any day in which the US has troops overseas and the president is Republican".
We've never had a war of territorial acquisition, is the thing (unless you count that War of Northern Aggression ;) ). The big exception to "capitalist democracies don't go to war" was WWI. WWI was arguably the stupidest thing the human race has ever done, and proof of how far people can get from acting in their self-interest. While I'd really like to think we're past that now, I can't.
BS. Racism is prejudice plus power
Is that what the left believes today? Well, it's functionally interchangeable with my definition, I think.
But if you wake up and look around the world, you'll see quite a different picture of who is killing whom. Most murder is same-race, because we mostly kill people we know socially. Most genocide is still religion-based, sadly enough, and very little is racial.