... Sigh. Read the synopsis of Tomorrow land and you'll see that whomever greenlit it was tripping balls when they okayed that project.
Terrible. That was Batman Forever levels of stupid.
Tron 3 could be good. The tron movies are simple action fun.
Preach at me in the dumbest way possible though... and I'm changing the channel.
I don't know... I think a lot of the people that write these scripts should just write art house movies that no one watches. Just fill your movie with more kids with cancer-aids and crying puppies.
We don't need any more Day After Tomorrow bullshit. Just make me an action movie with some big Michael Bay explosions and shut up.
Then you go and say "I'm rubber you're glue"... that argument is always funny.
As to it never happening here... I guess the industrial revolution never happened in the US.
We used to have upwards of 60 percent of the US labor force in agriculture. What happened?
You're extremely ignorant and in the context of that ignorance, very arrogant. If you knew something your attitude would be tolerable. But since you don't... it is merely obnoxious.
As to people buying stuff and that not making sense... I ask you to clarify your position and you respond with evasion.
Are you now arguing that labor costs are a small part of business expenses? You do realize that if that were the case the outsourcing never would have happened in the first place. Again, make sense. Try to make a complete coherent argument.
As to your response to why trade deficits are bad... apparently you don't know at all and are bluffing?
I mean... you are perhaps one of the more pathetic shitheads to comment on anything I've said in months.
Right, so if I moved to Russia, refused to speak Russian, and then agitated for part for that part of the country to join the United States... and then the Russians said "you need to become russian or leave"... they'd be neo nazis in your eyes?
No.
Look, I'm prepared to accept that Crimea should just be handed to the Russians. But what remains to Ukraine must be theirs. No more bullshit from Russia.
If Russia doesn't like that deal, then fuck them. They can't have Crimea. They can't have Moscow. They can't have Siberia. Why do they get to decide and no one else does? Who lets them decide that bits of other countries belong to them?
No.
This is not how you form a stable country or government or culture. You don't do that by bleaching your asshole and then bending over so you can get fucked in the ass. That's ridiculous.
It is entirely reasonable to ask that the Russians that remain in Ukraine on the western side of the new border become Ukrannian or leave.
That's not ethnic cleansing. No one is gasing them. How dare you. You just compared me to hitler because I suggested that people that want to be citizens of a country should join that country culturally and politically?
Fuck off.
We're done. That is the most fucking stupid thing I've heard all day. How fucking dare you.
As to fewer people... sure. The point is not to give you a job.
I am always amazed that people make this specious association. They think the whole point of all this industry and agriculture etc is so some guy can collect a pay check.
I mean... Really?
Okay, yes you have fewer people but you also lower costs when you do that which allows for more production. Consider the wealth we have today versus 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago... etc. We have more stuff per person then we did before. More people can afford luxuries than before.
So yeah... a given factory is going to need fewer people. But that is going to lower the cost of producing that good which means that you either afford more if it because production will be higher or you'll have extra luxuries on top of that.
The trend over time is very positive.
We're going through a rough patch and the people running around saying the sky is falling are acting like fools.
Yes, some people are going to get fucked. That happens when we go through these phases. Some people are structurally unemployable. In past cycles these people would often starve to death or be driven into crime.
So this cycle most of those people are going on welfare for life. Sucks but it beats starving to death.
The technological revolution will not stop.
Adapt or die.
Don't get mad at me... I have no more control over this than anyone else. It will happen. Swim or sink.
We've got a lot of crypto communists running around trying to spin this bullshit into an argument for communism. Same old shit. This will pass and the economy will be stronger for it.
It isn't a question of personal intelligence but rather skill set.
A complete halfwit that knows web design is going to be more useful to me if I am designing a website than a genius that happens to have spent his entire life living in the jungle and actually speaks no language what so ever.
Training matters. And it is a fact that when the industrial revolution got going... a lot of farm labor was replaced with machines on the farms. And those workers came to the cities to find work in the factories... and quite a few of them were not useful.
There was some literal starvation the last time we went through this... child labor was common because that was how you kept the kids from starving to death.
We're going through another revolution. An information revolution. And it is going to turn everything upside down.
Being a day trader is not a great idea... my big problem with this notion is that it only works if a few people are doing it. If everyone is doing it the market gets over saturated.
Stocks are sold to raise money for companies to expand or grow etc. it is sort of an old timey kickstarter.
If everyone kicks their money in then that inflates the stock prices because there is more money chasing fewer investments. That leads to bubbles etc.
Yeah but if you had a machine that did the same thing and you could just OWN it... you could get that every day.
There are a few things people do:
1. They sense where there are tight muscles and focus on them.
2. They have a variety of methods for dealing with things and they use their judgement and senses to shift between them.
3. A human will generally push a LOT harder on your body than will some machine. The machines need to be safe. And because they're blind and stupid they can't push as hard on you safely. A machine that was modeling your back and had several tools it could use to put pressure on you in different ways might be able to push a lot harder while not injuring you.
As to strawmen, I think you're drawing a distinction without meaning.
Say why your distinction matters?
As to 20 percent of the labor force being out of work... it has happened many times before. We're still here.
As to less people buying stuff... that doesn't make any sense. some businesses will fail. Not all of them though. This is normal in any economy. And in times of great change it becomes extremely common.
Why outsource when you're automating? The reason to outsource is to reduce labor costs. If I replace you with a robot then I don't need to replace you with a chinese person. Make sense, please.
No really. Take a few deep breaths to get some more oxygen to your brain... and TRY to make sense.
As to trade deficits, see previous point.
As to trade deficits causing a loss in economic growth... How? To the contrary, a loss in economic growth could cause a trade deficit but a trade deficit is not going to cause a loss of economic growth. You've got your order operations backwards.
Again, make sense.
As to civil unrest... I don't think you understand how that would play out. Look at Baltimore as an example of that genius idea. You're just cutting your own throat with that. I'll suggest you don't do it. But I won't stop you from doing it either.
As to capital flights... yep, that's why you don't fuck over the rich because they'll just leave. I know that isn't a popular observation amongst the communists but it is what happens.
Your example involved massive human labor in china to build a large building using prehab blocks assembled by PEOPLE in a factory.
So your example is actually an argument in favor of my position.
it is therefore now my example.
*yonk!*
Thank you so very much.
As to the problem of any industry losing a need for labor etc... we used to have 80 percent of labor in agriculture because we needed 80 percent of our population working on farms to feed the rest.
That number in some cases might have been as low as 60 percent... but the fact is that today it is around 5 percent. And if we go back even farther in history it was a solid 100 percent.
now you say "oh but factory workers are losing jobs to robots" *clutch pearls and whine*... No shit.
And they're going to lose a lot more jobs before this is done. I wouldn't be surprised if that fell to 5 percent of the total labor force just like agriculture.
And yes... you're going to see that run through the cubical farms etc. Does that mean you won't get a job? Perhaps. But that is YOUR generation. When farm jobs started drying up we had a lot of people that couldn't find work. They were farm workers and they didn't really have skills to work in factories.
So, you could get some bad generations where there are people without the skills to work in new businesses.
That doesn't mean their kids won't get jobs unless the schools are run in the most incompetent way possible damning the next generation to be too useless to be employed.
Here is the bottom line. Automation is happening. You are not stopping it.
So adapt. Proactively address the situation understanding that automation is happening.
Or die.
I didn't make the rules. Don't get mad at me. I'm just telling you what is happening. I am the messenger here. You can either accept it or shoot the messenger and make it clear that in the future people should just tell you what you want to hear.
... hmmm... I think we need to expand on this a bit.
I did not say that people without skills would be doing well. I said that people with certain skills should be able to deal with automation just fine.
As to owning the means of production, automation actually facilitates that.
You do realize that there are a lot of machines already that can make really sophisticated stuff right?
Take a rather cheap CNC machine... I can make all sorts of things with that. Basically anything but steel. And I can make the mold for metal casting using that or 3d printers.
You were never going to see that communist dream under the old industrial model because the machines were too big and the organization to maintain the system required so much cooperation that people would really need to be paid to do it. And that requires a hierarchical industrial structure which means you're not owning shit.
The new system could see smaller less expensive production machines being affordable enough that they can be owned by a lot of people.
Now... will you be able to make a living selling crap out of your printer or CNC machine? Probably not. But then neither with the big factories turning out that same sort of stuff. Or at the very least, the market will be a lot smaller and a lot more competitive.
The future of the economy is going to be very volatile. People keep using these 100 year old economic ideas as if they're going to be relevant forever. They ignore that they weren't relevant 100 years before they were relevant and quite a few ideas that were sound at the time are already obsolete.
Communism especially is something that has to go through a full redesign because it assumed a now obsolete industrial model that is not applicable to the present or future.
That is not an argument in favor of capitalism... which I do actually support... but rather a criticism of applying a largely static ideology and economic theory to what is an increasingly divergent reality.
... Depends. There is a lot of non-faith based bullshit out there. And suggesting that all bogus science comes exclusively from the jesus freaks is a confession of ignorance.
What is more, getting a master's degree in something does not mean you actually have a "skill."
Part of the reason you're seeing so many out of work college grads these days is that they majored in bullshit.
That you claim to be an expert when it is quite clear you're full of shit and refusing to budge... it damages your intellectual credibility.
I get proven wrong on occasion. And when that happens, I admit it, thank them for correcting me, and move on.
You have promoted untruths, you have presumed to claim knowledge and authority you don't have, you have condescended to me in the face of contradicting facts, and you have shown a tendency to be selectively stupid whenever it suits your argument.
Your position is annihilated. Not so much as a greasy spot on the concrete to show it was even there. Gone.
You're talking about a profession that in many cases has either no training or dubious training. Anyone here have a family member that has an addiction problem? I have a cousin that is a heroine addict and a brother that is an alchoholic. My brother is also bipolar and god knows what my cousin is at this point... because the drugs do damage the brain.
But the point is that I've some experience with these people and they're often very nice, sometimes they're quite smart... but this is not what I'd call a "science" or even "medicine". A lot of it is witch doctorism. And that can make people feel better. But that is because the believe it works.
Here is a better list:
1. Artists: Computers are terrible at art. 2. Any kind of design or engineering work. Computers will be used as tools but they're not going to do the actual design work. They might automate the implimentation of previously designed concepts. We see that with CPU design where in something designed once is replicated by computer. But the actual design was done by humans. 3. Maintenance and repair work. Repairs are almost never carried out by a machine. You can find a factory that is 100 percent automated and it actually still has human repair techs keeping the robots working. 4. Programmers are not getting automated. The reasons are many but mostly the issue is that we've yet to come up with a machine that can self program or can accept instructions to write a program and then translate that into code with any competence. 5. Construction work on buildings is unlikely to get automated. You're seeing people do prefab and even talking about 3d printed houses etc but even if you include that there is going to be a lot of human labor happening around that.
I could go on... the fears of everyone losing their jobs to robots are ill founded. They're actually going to save us from having to do jobs we hate. Name a job a computer does that you'd actually want to do? There aren't any.
It would have been fine if they had built up some defenses. Part of the swiss model is arming your people.
Anyway, if I were them, I would have given up Crimea on the agreement that Russia foreswears any other rights to so much as another inch o Ukrainian land. And then go nationalist Ukraine. Ask the Russians in Ukraine to either become Ukrainian or leave.
Your WW1 comment ignores that the tensions were between the British Empire and the German Empire.
Had those tensions not existed, the war would not have happened. Those tensions were created largely by economic leverage the British imposed on the Germans.
Again, I'm not defending the actions of the Germans. I'm just pointing out that had the British Empire not been putting pressure on the Germans, the tension would not have existed.
As to WW2, Its hard to know what Hitler thought he was doing. He had a list of "inferior" people and he found them where ever he wanted to find them.
Our close support air power can do everything but the APC part.
You want to destroy a fortification? Drop a guided bomb on it.
You want to destroy a tank column? Drop a bomb on it.
You might argue that it is cheaper to fire a tank shell at something then it is to drop a guided bomb on it.
But there are a lot of things to consider.
1. The tank shells miss a lot. Which means you have to fire more than one. They also aren't that big and for some targets you have to fire many times even if you're hitting it to kill it. Where as we have laser guided bombs that are estimated to be able to take out 40 tanks with a single bomb. They're guided cluster bombs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
2. You have to bring your tanks in range of their tanks or other weapons with some frequency. That raises the risk of actually losing one of your tanks to enemy counter fire.
3. Air power can strike targets FAR behind enemy lines. Back where the enemy isn't even dug in properly. You can destroy enemy formations as they mobilize. you get them on high ways or depots. It is a lot easier to kill a lot of enemy armor in a depot then it is dug into some hillside along the front.
Look, tanks have their uses but they're not as effective or meaningful as they were in WW2. They have been largely eclipsed by air power.
Its possible but I've been in a lot of meetings where such things were discussed and the Russian option was not considered credible. Even the indian idea was dubious.
It comes down to trust. If you're moving hundreds of millions of dollars around... do you really want to let the Somalians into your database? Seems foolish to me.
You say out of one side of your mouth that you want all this environmental stuff... this space program... the batteries... US manufacturing... etc.
And then when someone actually does it, you bitch about the government subsidies.
This forgets that the Chinese heavily subsidize their own industry and that most of what Musk is doing is semi experimental and environmental jazz.
So... leave him alone. Do you honestly think the US federal government is going to spend that money on something else that is better?
Get real.
They lost 46 billion on the US postal service from 2007. What exactly did that accomplish? This is the 21st century. We don't need a DAILY postal service that is subsidized by the US tax payer.
First, you could reduce deliveries to one a week. Tell me why you need more deliveries to your house than once a week? If you need to get your mail faster, than get your fat ass over to the postal office and pick up your mail. The vast majority of what people get in the mail is bills that are on billpay anyway and fucking junk mail. There is very little else in it.
Second, for those that want daily service or even more frequent service than that... have them pay a fee for that. Fed Ex and UPS will check your place of business every day if you pay them for it.
Third, encourage the postal service to start using a digitization service. That is, when mail is scanned in at location X, have it flag certain recipients as preferring a digital service. Mail thus flagged, is digitized on reception by the postal service and uploaded to a cloud database where it can be accessed without further shipping or delivery. Here someone will say "but what if there is something in a letter that you don't want the post man to look at... then don't sign up for this service. Or have something people can write on an envelope that exempts it.
The point is that we do a lot of things that waste money. If you ACTUALLY care about saving money... then there is a great deal we can look at. The Last thing I'd fuck with is ruining Musk's empire. That is good for America. Not bad.
As to Russians tanks versus poor eastern European nations with no back up.
Sure... you can use sledge hammers to kill babies.
But then the old Russian tanks would have been just as good for that. Saddam's tanks that we killed by the hundred in Gulf War 1 would be fine for that.
There are a few things the US could do that would stop this bullshit cold.
1. We could establish a Korean style DMZ between Russia and eastern Europe. Anti tank mines etc. Then we could give the locals a mixture of SAM batteries and man portable anti armor rockets.
That would make it very hard for the Russians to come in quickly and would encourage them to use more infantry rather than armor and aircraft. And that would further slow them down and further increase their attrition in human lives.
The expense to the US to do such a thing would be minimal.
It would make the Russians furious but they have no right to dictate whether someone on their own sovereign land builds defenses against Russian intimidation.
As to why I considered you Russian, you said something that made it sound like you were.
As to why the Russians want to gobble Ukraine, it doesn't matter because NATO is no threat to Russia. NATO is a defensive alliance. Russia need only fear NATO expansion if they intend to conquer those lands in the future.
Saying they're only invading to stop NATO expansion ignores that they'd only fear NATO expansion if they wanted to conquer those lands anyway.
As to USSR agreements... those were not in perpetuity. The US did not sweep in immediately and push NATO into all those countries. We could have.
Most of them wanted it. We held back to give the Russians time to form new relationships with those countries and try to encourage them to join their sphere of influence.
The russians used that time to intimidate, threaten, and extort their neighbors. So no one wants to be part of their sphere because it just means getting threatened and extorted. That is on the Russians. That is their fault. And yeah... there is a price to be paid.
if the Russians want more countries to like them and want to do business with them then they can stop being such raging fucking retards.
Oh they're missiles?... lolz. Okay. That's different. I was thinking that was the range of their main gun.
If they want to play the missile game... the US would just throw cruise missiles at them which means you're looking at a range of about 250+ miles.
As to tanks being obsolete, depends on what you're doing.
And I should point out, that those engagements in the middle east showed more a need for APCs rather than tanks. The issue was not the need for a heavy long range gun but rather for an armored car that wouldn't get shredded by smalls arms and IEDs.
I'll also point out that APCs have a more uniform armor profile. Mainline battle tanks have very heavy armor on their fronts but less heavy elsewhere. APCs to the contrary have a more uniform armor distribution with armor being spread around the back the bottom and the top.
IEDs come from BELOW which generally makes heavy tanks vulnerable to them because the armor on the bottoms of such tanks isn't anywhere near as thick as on the front.
So, if you want to talk about the need for APCs when moving infantry through urban battlespace... sure.
However, in any engagement with the Russians we'll not be doing that. We're not fighting the Russians house to house. And I really don't think we're even going to put our infantry on the ground.
We can whack their armor from the air and while we can't kill their infantry efficiently from the air, the Russians are not going to advance without their armor. They love that crap.
The Russians like their tanks like the US likes its planes. We don't advance without air power.
it is merely unfortunate for the Russians that air power beats tanks. Tanks are large enough that ground attack bombers can see them and target them. They're also valuable enough to be worth the jet fuel and precision guided munitions.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not talking about some guy repairing your vacuum clearner from the 1950s. I'm talking about the guy that repairs the robots at the factory.
Do you honestly think they're going to throw out a 2 million dollar robot and buy another one every time it has a problem?
Comments like yours make my brain hurt. Read what I said again. You're commenting on something I wasn't talking about.
... Sigh. Read the synopsis of Tomorrow land and you'll see that whomever greenlit it was tripping balls when they okayed that project.
Terrible. That was Batman Forever levels of stupid.
Tron 3 could be good. The tron movies are simple action fun.
Preach at me in the dumbest way possible though... and I'm changing the channel.
I don't know... I think a lot of the people that write these scripts should just write art house movies that no one watches. Just fill your movie with more kids with cancer-aids and crying puppies.
We don't need any more Day After Tomorrow bullshit. Just make me an action movie with some big Michael Bay explosions and shut up.
You open with a vague non-falsifiable insult.
Then you go and say "I'm rubber you're glue"... that argument is always funny.
As to it never happening here... I guess the industrial revolution never happened in the US.
We used to have upwards of 60 percent of the US labor force in agriculture. What happened?
You're extremely ignorant and in the context of that ignorance, very arrogant. If you knew something your attitude would be tolerable. But since you don't... it is merely obnoxious.
As to people buying stuff and that not making sense... I ask you to clarify your position and you respond with evasion.
Are you now arguing that labor costs are a small part of business expenses? You do realize that if that were the case the outsourcing never would have happened in the first place. Again, make sense. Try to make a complete coherent argument.
As to your response to why trade deficits are bad... apparently you don't know at all and are bluffing?
I mean... you are perhaps one of the more pathetic shitheads to comment on anything I've said in months.
amazing.
Right, so if I moved to Russia, refused to speak Russian, and then agitated for part for that part of the country to join the United States... and then the Russians said "you need to become russian or leave"... they'd be neo nazis in your eyes?
No.
Look, I'm prepared to accept that Crimea should just be handed to the Russians. But what remains to Ukraine must be theirs. No more bullshit from Russia.
If Russia doesn't like that deal, then fuck them. They can't have Crimea. They can't have Moscow. They can't have Siberia. Why do they get to decide and no one else does? Who lets them decide that bits of other countries belong to them?
No.
This is not how you form a stable country or government or culture. You don't do that by bleaching your asshole and then bending over so you can get fucked in the ass. That's ridiculous.
It is entirely reasonable to ask that the Russians that remain in Ukraine on the western side of the new border become Ukrannian or leave.
That's not ethnic cleansing. No one is gasing them. How dare you. You just compared me to hitler because I suggested that people that want to be citizens of a country should join that country culturally and politically?
Fuck off.
We're done. That is the most fucking stupid thing I've heard all day. How fucking dare you.
As to fewer people... sure. The point is not to give you a job.
I am always amazed that people make this specious association. They think the whole point of all this industry and agriculture etc is so some guy can collect a pay check.
I mean... Really?
Okay, yes you have fewer people but you also lower costs when you do that which allows for more production. Consider the wealth we have today versus 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, 200 years ago... etc. We have more stuff per person then we did before. More people can afford luxuries than before.
So yeah... a given factory is going to need fewer people. But that is going to lower the cost of producing that good which means that you either afford more if it because production will be higher or you'll have extra luxuries on top of that.
The trend over time is very positive.
We're going through a rough patch and the people running around saying the sky is falling are acting like fools.
Yes, some people are going to get fucked. That happens when we go through these phases. Some people are structurally unemployable. In past cycles these people would often starve to death or be driven into crime.
So this cycle most of those people are going on welfare for life. Sucks but it beats starving to death.
The technological revolution will not stop.
Adapt or die.
Don't get mad at me... I have no more control over this than anyone else. It will happen. Swim or sink.
We've got a lot of crypto communists running around trying to spin this bullshit into an argument for communism. Same old shit. This will pass and the economy will be stronger for it.
Can you give me an example of this so I can show you the human being that is actually responsible?
Just give me a specific example and I will show you what you missed. :)
It isn't a question of personal intelligence but rather skill set.
A complete halfwit that knows web design is going to be more useful to me if I am designing a website than a genius that happens to have spent his entire life living in the jungle and actually speaks no language what so ever.
Training matters. And it is a fact that when the industrial revolution got going... a lot of farm labor was replaced with machines on the farms. And those workers came to the cities to find work in the factories... and quite a few of them were not useful.
There was some literal starvation the last time we went through this... child labor was common because that was how you kept the kids from starving to death.
We're going through another revolution. An information revolution. And it is going to turn everything upside down.
I am not addicted to anything. If I conveyed that above that was an error.
Being a day trader is not a great idea... my big problem with this notion is that it only works if a few people are doing it. If everyone is doing it the market gets over saturated.
Stocks are sold to raise money for companies to expand or grow etc. it is sort of an old timey kickstarter.
If everyone kicks their money in then that inflates the stock prices because there is more money chasing fewer investments. That leads to bubbles etc.
Yeah but if you had a machine that did the same thing and you could just OWN it... you could get that every day.
There are a few things people do:
1. They sense where there are tight muscles and focus on them.
2. They have a variety of methods for dealing with things and they use their judgement and senses to shift between them.
3. A human will generally push a LOT harder on your body than will some machine. The machines need to be safe. And because they're blind and stupid they can't push as hard on you safely. A machine that was modeling your back and had several tools it could use to put pressure on you in different ways might be able to push a lot harder while not injuring you.
As to strawmen, I think you're drawing a distinction without meaning.
Say why your distinction matters?
As to 20 percent of the labor force being out of work... it has happened many times before. We're still here.
As to less people buying stuff... that doesn't make any sense. some businesses will fail. Not all of them though. This is normal in any economy. And in times of great change it becomes extremely common.
Why outsource when you're automating? The reason to outsource is to reduce labor costs. If I replace you with a robot then I don't need to replace you with a chinese person. Make sense, please.
No really. Take a few deep breaths to get some more oxygen to your brain... and TRY to make sense.
As to trade deficits, see previous point.
As to trade deficits causing a loss in economic growth... How? To the contrary, a loss in economic growth could cause a trade deficit but a trade deficit is not going to cause a loss of economic growth. You've got your order operations backwards.
Again, make sense.
As to civil unrest... I don't think you understand how that would play out. Look at Baltimore as an example of that genius idea. You're just cutting your own throat with that. I'll suggest you don't do it. But I won't stop you from doing it either.
As to capital flights... yep, that's why you don't fuck over the rich because they'll just leave. I know that isn't a popular observation amongst the communists but it is what happens.
Anyway, half of your list reads like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You're making a lot of fallacious leaps or outright contradictory statements. It doesn't work. Logically. Rationally.... many problems.
Your example involved massive human labor in china to build a large building using prehab blocks assembled by PEOPLE in a factory.
So your example is actually an argument in favor of my position.
it is therefore now my example.
*yonk!*
Thank you so very much.
As to the problem of any industry losing a need for labor etc... we used to have 80 percent of labor in agriculture because we needed 80 percent of our population working on farms to feed the rest.
That number in some cases might have been as low as 60 percent... but the fact is that today it is around 5 percent. And if we go back even farther in history it was a solid 100 percent.
now you say "oh but factory workers are losing jobs to robots" *clutch pearls and whine*... No shit.
And they're going to lose a lot more jobs before this is done. I wouldn't be surprised if that fell to 5 percent of the total labor force just like agriculture.
And yes... you're going to see that run through the cubical farms etc. Does that mean you won't get a job? Perhaps. But that is YOUR generation. When farm jobs started drying up we had a lot of people that couldn't find work. They were farm workers and they didn't really have skills to work in factories.
So, you could get some bad generations where there are people without the skills to work in new businesses.
That doesn't mean their kids won't get jobs unless the schools are run in the most incompetent way possible damning the next generation to be too useless to be employed.
Here is the bottom line. Automation is happening. You are not stopping it.
So adapt. Proactively address the situation understanding that automation is happening.
Or die.
I didn't make the rules. Don't get mad at me. I'm just telling you what is happening. I am the messenger here. You can either accept it or shoot the messenger and make it clear that in the future people should just tell you what you want to hear.
This is happening. Adapt.
... hmmm... I think we need to expand on this a bit.
I did not say that people without skills would be doing well. I said that people with certain skills should be able to deal with automation just fine.
As to owning the means of production, automation actually facilitates that.
You do realize that there are a lot of machines already that can make really sophisticated stuff right?
Take a rather cheap CNC machine... I can make all sorts of things with that. Basically anything but steel. And I can make the mold for metal casting using that or 3d printers.
You were never going to see that communist dream under the old industrial model because the machines were too big and the organization to maintain the system required so much cooperation that people would really need to be paid to do it. And that requires a hierarchical industrial structure which means you're not owning shit.
The new system could see smaller less expensive production machines being affordable enough that they can be owned by a lot of people.
Now... will you be able to make a living selling crap out of your printer or CNC machine? Probably not. But then neither with the big factories turning out that same sort of stuff. Or at the very least, the market will be a lot smaller and a lot more competitive.
The future of the economy is going to be very volatile. People keep using these 100 year old economic ideas as if they're going to be relevant forever. They ignore that they weren't relevant 100 years before they were relevant and quite a few ideas that were sound at the time are already obsolete.
Communism especially is something that has to go through a full redesign because it assumed a now obsolete industrial model that is not applicable to the present or future.
That is not an argument in favor of capitalism... which I do actually support... but rather a criticism of applying a largely static ideology and economic theory to what is an increasingly divergent reality.
... Depends. There is a lot of non-faith based bullshit out there. And suggesting that all bogus science comes exclusively from the jesus freaks is a confession of ignorance.
What is more, getting a master's degree in something does not mean you actually have a "skill."
Part of the reason you're seeing so many out of work college grads these days is that they majored in bullshit.
http://www.nytimes.com/interac...
Just more examples of you being wrong.
That you claim to be an expert when it is quite clear you're full of shit and refusing to budge... it damages your intellectual credibility.
I get proven wrong on occasion. And when that happens, I admit it, thank them for correcting me, and move on.
You have promoted untruths, you have presumed to claim knowledge and authority you don't have, you have condescended to me in the face of contradicting facts, and you have shown a tendency to be selectively stupid whenever it suits your argument.
Your position is annihilated. Not so much as a greasy spot on the concrete to show it was even there. Gone.
That's a little sad.
You're talking about a profession that in many cases has either no training or dubious training. Anyone here have a family member that has an addiction problem? I have a cousin that is a heroine addict and a brother that is an alchoholic. My brother is also bipolar and god knows what my cousin is at this point... because the drugs do damage the brain.
But the point is that I've some experience with these people and they're often very nice, sometimes they're quite smart... but this is not what I'd call a "science" or even "medicine". A lot of it is witch doctorism. And that can make people feel better. But that is because the believe it works.
Here is a better list:
1. Artists: Computers are terrible at art.
2. Any kind of design or engineering work. Computers will be used as tools but they're not going to do the actual design work. They might automate the implimentation of previously designed concepts. We see that with CPU design where in something designed once is replicated by computer. But the actual design was done by humans.
3. Maintenance and repair work. Repairs are almost never carried out by a machine. You can find a factory that is 100 percent automated and it actually still has human repair techs keeping the robots working.
4. Programmers are not getting automated. The reasons are many but mostly the issue is that we've yet to come up with a machine that can self program or can accept instructions to write a program and then translate that into code with any competence.
5. Construction work on buildings is unlikely to get automated. You're seeing people do prefab and even talking about 3d printed houses etc but even if you include that there is going to be a lot of human labor happening around that.
I could go on... the fears of everyone losing their jobs to robots are ill founded. They're actually going to save us from having to do jobs we hate. Name a job a computer does that you'd actually want to do? There aren't any.
It would have been fine if they had built up some defenses. Part of the swiss model is arming your people.
Anyway, if I were them, I would have given up Crimea on the agreement that Russia foreswears any other rights to so much as another inch o Ukrainian land. And then go nationalist Ukraine. Ask the Russians in Ukraine to either become Ukrainian or leave.
Your WW1 comment ignores that the tensions were between the British Empire and the German Empire.
Had those tensions not existed, the war would not have happened. Those tensions were created largely by economic leverage the British imposed on the Germans.
Again, I'm not defending the actions of the Germans. I'm just pointing out that had the British Empire not been putting pressure on the Germans, the tension would not have existed.
As to WW2, Its hard to know what Hitler thought he was doing. He had a list of "inferior" people and he found them where ever he wanted to find them.
... alright, but you don't need tanks to do that.
Our close support air power can do everything but the APC part.
You want to destroy a fortification? Drop a guided bomb on it.
You want to destroy a tank column? Drop a bomb on it.
You might argue that it is cheaper to fire a tank shell at something then it is to drop a guided bomb on it.
But there are a lot of things to consider.
1. The tank shells miss a lot. Which means you have to fire more than one. They also aren't that big and for some targets you have to fire many times even if you're hitting it to kill it. Where as we have laser guided bombs that are estimated to be able to take out 40 tanks with a single bomb. They're guided cluster bombs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
2. You have to bring your tanks in range of their tanks or other weapons with some frequency. That raises the risk of actually losing one of your tanks to enemy counter fire.
3. Air power can strike targets FAR behind enemy lines. Back where the enemy isn't even dug in properly. You can destroy enemy formations as they mobilize. you get them on high ways or depots. It is a lot easier to kill a lot of enemy armor in a depot then it is dug into some hillside along the front.
Look, tanks have their uses but they're not as effective or meaningful as they were in WW2. They have been largely eclipsed by air power.
hey bingo
You're being obtuse and that signals bad faith on your part in this discussion.
We're done if you're going to be deceitful.
Its possible but I've been in a lot of meetings where such things were discussed and the Russian option was not considered credible. Even the indian idea was dubious.
It comes down to trust. If you're moving hundreds of millions of dollars around... do you really want to let the Somalians into your database? Seems foolish to me.
You say out of one side of your mouth that you want all this environmental stuff... this space program... the batteries... US manufacturing... etc.
And then when someone actually does it, you bitch about the government subsidies.
This forgets that the Chinese heavily subsidize their own industry and that most of what Musk is doing is semi experimental and environmental jazz.
So... leave him alone. Do you honestly think the US federal government is going to spend that money on something else that is better?
Get real.
They lost 46 billion on the US postal service from 2007. What exactly did that accomplish? This is the 21st century. We don't need a DAILY postal service that is subsidized by the US tax payer.
First, you could reduce deliveries to one a week. Tell me why you need more deliveries to your house than once a week? If you need to get your mail faster, than get your fat ass over to the postal office and pick up your mail. The vast majority of what people get in the mail is bills that are on billpay anyway and fucking junk mail. There is very little else in it.
Second, for those that want daily service or even more frequent service than that... have them pay a fee for that. Fed Ex and UPS will check your place of business every day if you pay them for it.
Third, encourage the postal service to start using a digitization service. That is, when mail is scanned in at location X, have it flag certain recipients as preferring a digital service. Mail thus flagged, is digitized on reception by the postal service and uploaded to a cloud database where it can be accessed without further shipping or delivery. Here someone will say "but what if there is something in a letter that you don't want the post man to look at... then don't sign up for this service. Or have something people can write on an envelope that exempts it.
The point is that we do a lot of things that waste money. If you ACTUALLY care about saving money... then there is a great deal we can look at. The Last thing I'd fuck with is ruining Musk's empire. That is good for America. Not bad.
As to Russians tanks versus poor eastern European nations with no back up.
Sure... you can use sledge hammers to kill babies.
But then the old Russian tanks would have been just as good for that. Saddam's tanks that we killed by the hundred in Gulf War 1 would be fine for that.
There are a few things the US could do that would stop this bullshit cold.
1. We could establish a Korean style DMZ between Russia and eastern Europe. Anti tank mines etc. Then we could give the locals a mixture of SAM batteries and man portable anti armor rockets.
That would make it very hard for the Russians to come in quickly and would encourage them to use more infantry rather than armor and aircraft. And that would further slow them down and further increase their attrition in human lives.
The expense to the US to do such a thing would be minimal.
It would make the Russians furious but they have no right to dictate whether someone on their own sovereign land builds defenses against Russian intimidation.
As to why I considered you Russian, you said something that made it sound like you were.
As to why the Russians want to gobble Ukraine, it doesn't matter because NATO is no threat to Russia. NATO is a defensive alliance. Russia need only fear NATO expansion if they intend to conquer those lands in the future.
Saying they're only invading to stop NATO expansion ignores that they'd only fear NATO expansion if they wanted to conquer those lands anyway.
As to USSR agreements... those were not in perpetuity. The US did not sweep in immediately and push NATO into all those countries. We could have.
Most of them wanted it. We held back to give the Russians time to form new relationships with those countries and try to encourage them to join their sphere of influence.
The russians used that time to intimidate, threaten, and extort their neighbors. So no one wants to be part of their sphere because it just means getting threatened and extorted. That is on the Russians. That is their fault. And yeah... there is a price to be paid.
if the Russians want more countries to like them and want to do business with them then they can stop being such raging fucking retards.
Oh they're missiles?... lolz. Okay. That's different. I was thinking that was the range of their main gun.
If they want to play the missile game... the US would just throw cruise missiles at them which means you're looking at a range of about 250+ miles.
As to tanks being obsolete, depends on what you're doing.
And I should point out, that those engagements in the middle east showed more a need for APCs rather than tanks. The issue was not the need for a heavy long range gun but rather for an armored car that wouldn't get shredded by smalls arms and IEDs.
I'll also point out that APCs have a more uniform armor profile. Mainline battle tanks have very heavy armor on their fronts but less heavy elsewhere. APCs to the contrary have a more uniform armor distribution with armor being spread around the back the bottom and the top.
IEDs come from BELOW which generally makes heavy tanks vulnerable to them because the armor on the bottoms of such tanks isn't anywhere near as thick as on the front.
So, if you want to talk about the need for APCs when moving infantry through urban battlespace... sure.
However, in any engagement with the Russians we'll not be doing that. We're not fighting the Russians house to house. And I really don't think we're even going to put our infantry on the ground.
We can whack their armor from the air and while we can't kill their infantry efficiently from the air, the Russians are not going to advance without their armor. They love that crap.
The Russians like their tanks like the US likes its planes. We don't advance without air power.
it is merely unfortunate for the Russians that air power beats tanks. Tanks are large enough that ground attack bombers can see them and target them. They're also valuable enough to be worth the jet fuel and precision guided munitions.