The math doesn't really work for extreme levels of unemployment, but it could delay the 'automation apocolypse' for a time and at least keep people out of poverty.
How many clerks on ledgers did those computers replace? How many telegraph operators and mail sorters? The reason computers took off it just economical: The cost savings - predominantly increased efficiency which allows for fewer workers - are so great, they outweigh the cost of buying computers and paying someone to maintain them.
That only works when the number of jobs that are needed exceeds the number of people wanting jobs. A little lower is acceptable. But a lot lower and it all breaks down - it doesn't matter if you've got five university degrees if there just isn't a job to be had, and when one does open up thousands of people apply.
The reason is that they use very aggressive search engine manipulation techniques, and so often when searching on something technical they'll be result #1. And #2, #3, #4.... sometimes you have to go onto page two to escape them.
My point was that it has to be balanced. One person today can be more productive than ever before, thanks to modern industrial technology, automation and communications - and if one person can do more, it means less are needed to do the same amount, which means severe unemployment. The only way that has been avoided so far is to hugely increase consumption to match: People today, espicially in western countries, live a lifestyle of waste that would make their ancestors ashamed. We throw away clothes with a small tear rather than sew them up, we toss much of the food we buy in the bin. There is a whole industry, marketing, dedicated to making people buy things they don't really want or want things they don't really need.
You can run an economy unbalanced - producing more than is consumed, or vice veras - using international trade, but it creates long-term problems both politically and economically.
I do wonder if there is a limit to consumption - a point at which most people will simply decide that no, they don't need to spend any more money to be happy, no matter how much the marketing companies try to convince them.
Probably right, aside from the arrests. It sounds like most of the points were taken by script kiddies, who arn't worth the effort of arrest. Maybe if MS can find who wrote the code-generating program.
My main income at the time was from hi-sec mining, mostly alone, as my corp-mates tended to be on a different schedule. Timezone issues. Take hulk, get pyroxeres, repeat.
As a former player, it does upset us a bit because it makes the game unfair.
I flew a Megathron. That's a big battleship, and it took me months to save up for it and all it's fittings. It was a good ship, well fit, and very expensive... to someone who doesn't spend real money. But if I were willing to, I could buy one for the cost of one PLEX and still have change. If I cut out the faction fittings, I could buy two, maybe three.
The implication of this is that a player willing to spend real money becomes near-invincible. They can afford to lose ships, and long-term conflict in EVE is all about economic war and attrition - cut off the enemy corp's industry, wear down their funds and resources. But you can't do that when they are spending real money. It's just unfair. It means the game is no longer a contest of skill, but about who has the best funding in real life, which just completly ruins everything.
MMORPGs are to escape reality. If you give those with real money an advantage, that's reality intruding.
Ideological differences. Slashdotters like such princibles as open source, patent-free technologies, and the right to do as you wish with hardware you buy even without the manufacturer's approval. They hate DRM and any anti-tamper measures. This means they will be in conflict with Apple, in the same way they are in conflict with Microsoft. Both companies behave in ways (Like requiring code-signing to run any software on an iPod/phone/pad) which are in very strong opposition to the openness and right to tinker that most geeks love.
At least until you run out of land because everyone has built a small mansion and a solar field. But no matter: your handy replicator can always produce weapons instead to defend yourself from the people who want your precious sunlight.
I'm sure there is a dystopian science-fiction novel in this concept somewhere. Replication renders all resources plentiful but energy, causing the collapse of governments - and in their place rise feudal societies in a constant struggle for land.
Because it isn't free. You can copy a plant, but it takes a long time to grow. You can also make those processed foods at home, but there is a cost of time. When you buy cooked food, you're paying for the convenience - the price is worth more to you than the time it would take to prepare it yourself.
Sometimes, yes. But it's never a specific rejection letter - it's always a simple mass-mailing to everyone who applied and failed. Even if you went to an interview, they won't say why you're being rejected, just that you are.
Spoken with the confidence of one who has not had to spend a year or more living on benefits and recieving one rejection letter after another. For those of us in the real world, a job is a very nice thing to have - and I don't want to lose mine.
But a lot of people really do care. They believe it is their duty to protect the morality of the nation by making sure anyone who doesn't live up to their own standards is punished.
"It becomes relatively easy to break into other people's accounts using publicly available information."
That's how Sarah Palin's emails were 'hacked.' This teaches us two lessons: Firstly that it's not that hard to break into email, and secondly that a crime which would be ignored if the victim were a lowly commoner will result in an investigation, prosecution and jail time if the victim has friends in high places.
But today, there is a risk in posting anything that might offend anyone. What if your employer finds it? What if your potential future employer finds it while googling on candidates for the job? It isn't advisible to say anything at all under your real name any more, not when everything is archived and googleable. There is nothing you can say on any issue remotely political without the risk of upsetting someone, and that someone may be your now-or-future co-worker or boss.
It's even appropriate. If loaves and fishes could be copied freely, the economic damage would be terrible. How many people are employed in food production? It must be in the tens of millions, even if you exclude subsistance farmers. They would all be out of work. Everyone from the farmers to the factory workers to the truck drivers. Then the knockon effects as advertising and retail suffer would worsen it even further.
I assumed that said unaroused man would also be very scared, which would render it more difficult. Plus he'd need to be restrained - the woman would need both arms just to hold him, and I imagine it'd be rather hard to both stimulate a man and keep him from escaping without the aid of some rope.
It can be done. Suction, drugs... there are ways to force an erection. But it's not something that can be easily done as a casual crime - a woman couldn't just drag a man into an alley and rape him. It would take planning.
"or take a pill to let us have no strings attached sex like guys"
And several readers set out to become research biologists.
It's actually not that implausible. Formation of the emotional bond depends in large part on oxytocin. It probably wouldn't be too hard to inhibit that. The difficult part would be doing so without terrible side-effects, as it's a multi-function hormone.
"I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing."
It made sense at the time. This was back before the invention of (reliable) contraception. If you had sex back then, you *would* produce a child, and probably in quite a short time too. But you can't just go around breeding at random - it takes a family to provide the support and resources to care for a child until they are independant. It also really screws up the social order if there are children of unknown fathers around. These religious rules had their origin at a time when countries were ruled by heritary monarchs, preserving the family line was critical, and inheriting the family plot of land the only thing to keep many people from starvation. Then there is a very possessive attitude towards females, for no man wants to be unknowingly paying for the raising of another man's child. All this leads to a taboo against casual sex, and that in turn leads to taboos against things that would tempt people towards that sex.
The problem is that the rules, practical as they were, were not justified by practicality. Instead they were presented and regarded as some form of divine decree, or a moral code written into the nature of the universe. So they remain in effect even many years after the reason passed.
Slashdot Mirror
I have no idea what a negative income tax is, but it sounds a bit like a basic income.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee
The math doesn't really work for extreme levels of unemployment, but it could delay the 'automation apocolypse' for a time and at least keep people out of poverty.
How many clerks on ledgers did those computers replace? How many telegraph operators and mail sorters? The reason computers took off it just economical: The cost savings - predominantly increased efficiency which allows for fewer workers - are so great, they outweigh the cost of buying computers and paying someone to maintain them.
That only works when the number of jobs that are needed exceeds the number of people wanting jobs. A little lower is acceptable. But a lot lower and it all breaks down - it doesn't matter if you've got five university degrees if there just isn't a job to be had, and when one does open up thousands of people apply.
The reason is that they use very aggressive search engine manipulation techniques, and so often when searching on something technical they'll be result #1. And #2, #3, #4.... sometimes you have to go onto page two to escape them.
My point was that it has to be balanced. One person today can be more productive than ever before, thanks to modern industrial technology, automation and communications - and if one person can do more, it means less are needed to do the same amount, which means severe unemployment. The only way that has been avoided so far is to hugely increase consumption to match: People today, espicially in western countries, live a lifestyle of waste that would make their ancestors ashamed. We throw away clothes with a small tear rather than sew them up, we toss much of the food we buy in the bin. There is a whole industry, marketing, dedicated to making people buy things they don't really want or want things they don't really need.
You can run an economy unbalanced - producing more than is consumed, or vice veras - using international trade, but it creates long-term problems both politically and economically.
I do wonder if there is a limit to consumption - a point at which most people will simply decide that no, they don't need to spend any more money to be happy, no matter how much the marketing companies try to convince them.
And you can't have producers without consumers to justify their production.
This has applications in robot pets. Artificial mouse brain sounds a lot easier than a human AI.
Probably right, aside from the arrests. It sounds like most of the points were taken by script kiddies, who arn't worth the effort of arrest. Maybe if MS can find who wrote the code-generating program.
My main income at the time was from hi-sec mining, mostly alone, as my corp-mates tended to be on a different schedule. Timezone issues. Take hulk, get pyroxeres, repeat.
Or about US$20 in real money, if they just sell PLEX to pay for the loss.
Just to give you all some idea.
US$30 = 350,000.000 ISK.
One battleship, unfit = 65,000,000 ISK
One battleship, moderate kick-ass fit = 150,000,000 ISK.
So it's roughly $15 to buy a battleship. Not the best around, but decent enough to be a potent weapon in a fleet.
As a former player, it does upset us a bit because it makes the game unfair.
I flew a Megathron. That's a big battleship, and it took me months to save up for it and all it's fittings. It was a good ship, well fit, and very expensive... to someone who doesn't spend real money. But if I were willing to, I could buy one for the cost of one PLEX and still have change. If I cut out the faction fittings, I could buy two, maybe three.
The implication of this is that a player willing to spend real money becomes near-invincible. They can afford to lose ships, and long-term conflict in EVE is all about economic war and attrition - cut off the enemy corp's industry, wear down their funds and resources. But you can't do that when they are spending real money. It's just unfair. It means the game is no longer a contest of skill, but about who has the best funding in real life, which just completly ruins everything.
MMORPGs are to escape reality. If you give those with real money an advantage, that's reality intruding.
Ideological differences. Slashdotters like such princibles as open source, patent-free technologies, and the right to do as you wish with hardware you buy even without the manufacturer's approval. They hate DRM and any anti-tamper measures. This means they will be in conflict with Apple, in the same way they are in conflict with Microsoft. Both companies behave in ways (Like requiring code-signing to run any software on an iPod/phone/pad) which are in very strong opposition to the openness and right to tinker that most geeks love.
At least until you run out of land because everyone has built a small mansion and a solar field. But no matter: your handy replicator can always produce weapons instead to defend yourself from the people who want your precious sunlight.
I'm sure there is a dystopian science-fiction novel in this concept somewhere. Replication renders all resources plentiful but energy, causing the collapse of governments - and in their place rise feudal societies in a constant struggle for land.
Because it isn't free. You can copy a plant, but it takes a long time to grow. You can also make those processed foods at home, but there is a cost of time. When you buy cooked food, you're paying for the convenience - the price is worth more to you than the time it would take to prepare it yourself.
Sometimes, yes. But it's never a specific rejection letter - it's always a simple mass-mailing to everyone who applied and failed. Even if you went to an interview, they won't say why you're being rejected, just that you are.
Spoken with the confidence of one who has not had to spend a year or more living on benefits and recieving one rejection letter after another. For those of us in the real world, a job is a very nice thing to have - and I don't want to lose mine.
But a lot of people really do care. They believe it is their duty to protect the morality of the nation by making sure anyone who doesn't live up to their own standards is punished.
"It becomes relatively easy to break into other people's accounts using publicly available information."
That's how Sarah Palin's emails were 'hacked.' This teaches us two lessons: Firstly that it's not that hard to break into email, and secondly that a crime which would be ignored if the victim were a lowly commoner will result in an investigation, prosecution and jail time if the victim has friends in high places.
But today, there is a risk in posting anything that might offend anyone. What if your employer finds it? What if your potential future employer finds it while googling on candidates for the job? It isn't advisible to say anything at all under your real name any more, not when everything is archived and googleable. There is nothing you can say on any issue remotely political without the risk of upsetting someone, and that someone may be your now-or-future co-worker or boss.
It's even appropriate. If loaves and fishes could be copied freely, the economic damage would be terrible. How many people are employed in food production? It must be in the tens of millions, even if you exclude subsistance farmers. They would all be out of work. Everyone from the farmers to the factory workers to the truck drivers. Then the knockon effects as advertising and retail suffer would worsen it even further.
I assumed that said unaroused man would also be very scared, which would render it more difficult. Plus he'd need to be restrained - the woman would need both arms just to hold him, and I imagine it'd be rather hard to both stimulate a man and keep him from escaping without the aid of some rope.
It'd be easier just to get him drunk.
It can be done. Suction, drugs... there are ways to force an erection. But it's not something that can be easily done as a casual crime - a woman couldn't just drag a man into an alley and rape him. It would take planning.
"or take a pill to let us have no strings attached sex like guys"
And several readers set out to become research biologists.
It's actually not that implausible. Formation of the emotional bond depends in large part on oxytocin. It probably wouldn't be too hard to inhibit that. The difficult part would be doing so without terrible side-effects, as it's a multi-function hormone.
"I wonder why religions even have made sex to look like a bad thing."
It made sense at the time. This was back before the invention of (reliable) contraception. If you had sex back then, you *would* produce a child, and probably in quite a short time too. But you can't just go around breeding at random - it takes a family to provide the support and resources to care for a child until they are independant. It also really screws up the social order if there are children of unknown fathers around. These religious rules had their origin at a time when countries were ruled by heritary monarchs, preserving the family line was critical, and inheriting the family plot of land the only thing to keep many people from starvation. Then there is a very possessive attitude towards females, for no man wants to be unknowingly paying for the raising of another man's child. All this leads to a taboo against casual sex, and that in turn leads to taboos against things that would tempt people towards that sex.
The problem is that the rules, practical as they were, were not justified by practicality. Instead they were presented and regarded as some form of divine decree, or a moral code written into the nature of the universe. So they remain in effect even many years after the reason passed.