Yup, and it's likely worth the cost for the time being because they are polluting less and represent an incredibly small portion of miles driven on our roadways
We aren't talking about whether it's "worth it". Musk's contention is that electric vehicle adoption is hindered by unfair subsidies to fossil fuel producers. The fact is the exact opposite: it's his vehicles that are massively subsidized.
Raising taxes on gas can't currently result in more profits for Tesla because they are already producing and selling their cars as fast as possible.[...] The only avenue for extra profits here is that he could possibly raise the prices on his cars but that is opposite his mission of making mass market vehicles.
Last year, Tesla was losing $4000 on every car, although that oscillates wildly quarter to quarter. That can't go on like that, they need to raise prices in order to increase profits to something that is reliably positive. Tesla is also selling to a niche market, which is why he can't ramp up production much or risk having prices fall even further and losing even more money.
And you're right that raising prices is "opposite his mission", and that matters a great deal. Since Musk's company is built on massive political favors and subsidies, if politicians and the public perceive Tesla for what it is, an overpriced toy for high income earners, he risks losing those favors. He can't ask for even more subsidies, so instead he is trying to raise the costs of his competitors. It's the only way left to him to make his cars mainstream.
In any case, my main point is: Musk's arguments are bogus. It's electric vehicles that are massively subsidized, while fossil fuel is taxed at around what even climate change activists generally say externalities from carbon emissions are. Musk is right that massively increasing the tax on fossil fuels would make his cars more attractive, but he is wrong in his assertions that such taxes are economically justified or beneficial. In fact, taxing fossil fuels enough to make his vehicles competitive would be a massively regressive tax that hurts low income people the most.
Musk is pushing for the antiquating of the ICE powdered vehicle.
Fossil fuel powered cars are going to disappear on their own, once the technology is ready. But saddling the economy with billions of taxes and even more billions of crony capitalist earnings for Musk isn't going to help anyone, and it isn't going to speed up the breakthroughs in material science and other areas needed to make that happen.
Fact is: Amazon didn't consider it profitable to go into these areas. That means that other businesses there (perhaps locally and minority owned) meet the demand that exists there more efficiently. If forcing Amazon to deliver to those areas has any effect, it's going to be that Amazon is now going to compete with those local businesses. And if they have to expand their business to those areas anyway, they are going to make sure that they are minimizing their losses, which means that they will try to drive as many competitors out of business as they can and get as many customers as they can. How can that possibly be good for those neighborhoods?
Which cell companies don't have arbitration clauses?
You misunderstood. I'm not saying that you can switch to a cell company that doesn't have arbitration clauses, I'm saying that disputes involving cell companies are best solved by simply switching companies. I don't want to have to pay more for cell service because you are hell bent on suing my cell company for millions in damages over some triviality.
These mechanisms have been known for a long time. Likewise, it's been known for a long time that "willpower" and "dieting" don't work for weight loss; hunger is just too compelling. You need to change what you eat and how you live. I suppose it's good that even the NYT is waking up to the idea that "the science is settled... again".
Its in progress, and will be delivered in July. It says that right in the summary you illiterate moron.
Actually, what we can conclude from the summary is that not only is there no paper, the work isn't going to be peer reviewed either (because if this was a peer reviewed conference track, there would have to be a completed paper). Another sign of a crackpot.
Increasingly arbitration is written into all sorts of contracts. Oral surgeon for wisdom teeth demanded it.
Your oral surgeon isn't a "major corporation", and wisdom teeth extraction is risky; you could drag him through the courts for years, ruining his practice, simply because of some accident.
Cell phone plans demand it.
So what? If you don't like your cell phone company, you switch, end of story.
I don't think it should be allowed in such lopsided situations as a major corporation and a lowly individual.
There are layers and layers of fail stacked on top of each other: barriers to entry, regulation, inefficient court systems, medical liability law, legal licensing, etc.
In any case, courts don't work very well, and arbitration is actually a pretty good dispute resolution mechanism; obviously, it's important to ensure it is fair.
Judge Smith also cites an increase in cases -- even civil cases -- that are completely sealed, but also an increase in "private arbitration" and other ways of resolving disputes which are shielded from the public eye.
Sealing legal proceedings before a public court is an outrage in a democracy; the application of government force must remain open in a democracy.
For people to resolve their disputes by private arbitration, however, is fine; that's a private choice and no government force is involved; therefore, there is no justification or need to have such resolutions be public.
Did I miss the paper, or is the blog post everything there is? I remember the good old days when crackpot scientists at least went through the trouble of producing a scientific looking paper in LaTeX with lots of formulas and graphs.
This means that Amazon is effectively going to subsidize delivery business into areas where they are making a loss. But now that they are forced to deliver there, they are effectively going to compete with local businesses at those subsidized prices, and they are likely going to skim off their most profitable customers. It's the local equivalent of what politicians always complain about in international trade: dumping.
The net effect is going to be that these areas are going to be more dependent on a corporate behemoth, small businesses are going to disappear, and poorer people are going to have even less choice. Progressive lawmakers like Ed Markey are really doing everything they can to drive up prices, kill minority businesses, and generally impoverish minority communities.
Michael Smith: "Cell phones can't cause cancer because microwaves are non-ionizing. That's why it's silly to worry about it." [Implication: these studies are a waste of time.]
Me: "Science says otherwise: there are plausible mechanisms by which non-ionizing radiation could cause cancer. That is why we are conducting these studies."
That is, people have been conducting these studies because they weren't the kind of simplistic and pseudo-scientific thinkers like you and Michael Smith. It's a relief that the result of these studies is that there is no large increase in cancer risk from cell phone usage at the population level. However, such epidemiological studies tell us little about whether microwaves can cause cancer. There are plenty of definite carcinogens that don't show up in epidemiological studies. Microwaves might still be a significant health risk in particular populations (e.g., children) or at specific frequencies.
and use it to detect early stages of neurodegenerative disease, cancer, independent thinking, critical thinking, and a propensity to vote against the ruling party
Microwave cooking primarily happens via heating and water molecules, but there isn't significant heating from cell phones. Effects on protein folding appear to be direct and not mediated via heating.
A study published on the 1st April that has no indication of the strength of microwaves used
There are dozens of other papers. Go look on Google Scholar.
Why thats some compelling evidence , NOT
It doesn't have to be "compelling evidence". The point is that people who say that there is no possibility that non-ionizing radiation causes cancer are wrong.
Basically, no. The relevant question for cancer is whether radiation can break atomic bonds (Molecular damage to DNA is the mechanism for causing cancer). Microwaves don't carry enough energy to do this. The quantity is irrelevant
Cancer can be caused by many mechanisms other than breaking atomic bonds.
There is evidence that microwaves affect protein folding and conformation, and that suggests a possible mechanism for carcinogenicity.
There are many things wrong with the US system. What I am saying, and what should be bloody obvious, is that adopting a UK-style single payer system isn't going to work in the US. How do we know that? Because the US already has a single payer system and it is even less efficient than the US private system.
The cause for the excessive US healthcare spending is largely excessive spending on end of life care; if you reduced that to European levels, US health care costs would be at European levels. But it is Medicare that engages in this excessive spending, so switching to a single payer system isn't going to fix this.
You're aware of course that Tesla can't produce enough cars to keep up with demand, right?
In different words, you're saying that the effect of raising the gas tax further wouldn't be to sell more electric vehicles (since they can't be produced fast enough anyway), it would simply be to increase profits for Elon Musk. Thanks for clearing that up.
In fact, Tesla's waiting list is more like Ferrari's: they make a specialty product for a niche market, and they just want even more subsidies (an increase in the gas tax is effectively an additional subsidy for Tesla).
So far as subsidies go the only big one I'm aware of is the low interest loan they had and already paid off. The subsidy for buying an electric vehicle from the fed is paid to customers, not Tesla.
That makes no difference in the end; Tesla still profits from it the same way.
While Tesla and all other electric car drivers don't currently pay any direct road taxes, they will eventually once they become a large enough share of the road traffic.
And until they do, they are still subsidized by fossil fuels.
That said everyone that participates in modern society is paying road taxes through their purchases of goods shipped via semi-truck, which produce the lions share of wear and tear on our roadways
They don't pay the lion share, however. Furthermore, they are weighted, measured, and taxed according to the wear and tear created by themselves; you can't say that that also pays for the usage by electric vehicles. Finally, that argument only applies to major highways anyway; for other roads, it's construction and weathering that are the primary costs, and electric vehicles aren't paying their share.
Really, you're grasping at straws. Elon Musk wants more subsidies to increase his profits; it's typical, simple crony capitalism, and you're promoting it.
Sharing should reduce the total number of vehicles in existence (anytime you have a pool - the total needed goes down).
It would, but so what? Having more vehicles in existence doesn't hurt anything by itself. The capital investment in the vehicle and the space to park it are usually made by the people who want the convenience of having a vehicle 24/7.
Mass Transit couple with autonomous cars that fill in that last mile still allow people to go anywhere.
That kind of combination means that people are still tied to schedules and that they have to change transportation modes. It also only works if all you want to transport yourself and a small backpack, and during regular hours. For large loads, traveling with animals, and/or traveling at odd times it becomes next to impossible.
So we can still all go where we want - sometimes Less is More.
Maybe mass transit serves your needs, it doesn't serve mine or those of a lot of other people. It's also quite slow and expensive in practice, even though it is heavily subsidized. And I speak from first hand experience here.
The author argued that the real way to the future is via Mass Transit. Fewer individual cars should be built. More sharing. That is the big step forward.
No, that's actually a big step backward. Believe it or not, being able to get from anywhere to anywhere any time you want in your own space is actually a good thing, just like bigger houses, more books, more movies, and all the other things civilization brings.
Some have even painted the picture of self-driving vehicles that act as taxis - on demand and shared. Possibly better than the bus in rural areas with more personal schedule choice.
Why is that any different than personal automobiles? The number of vehicles on the road is the same, and the amount of waste generated is also roughly the same, assuming vehicles turn to waste through use.
Speaking at the World Energy Innovation Forum at the Tesla Factory in California, Musk claimed that traditional vehicles and energy sources will continue to hold a competitive edge against greener alternatives due to the vast amounts of subsidies they receive. The solution to this energy dilemma, Musk says, is to introduce a price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions or the carbon content of fossil fuels.
I was going to write a lengthy response about how Musk's argument is bullshit in multiple ways. But there is a much simpler way to see that Musk's arguments are bogus. Due to the way electricity and gas are priced in the US, a Tesla already saves thousands of dollars a year in gas prices. Tesla itself actually aggressively advertises with that fact. So, from the point of view of a Tesla driver, gas is already taxed at 300-400%. If that isn't sufficient for people to switch, how high does Musk want taxes to go?
The real reason people put up with the price of gasoline relative to electric is simple: neither Musk nor any of the other car manufacturers make the kind of vehicles people want. I'd rather pay a few thousand dollars more for gasoline every year than drive around in a Tesla. You want to sell more Teslas? Make better cars, Mr. Musk. And while you're at it, do the decent thing and stop using such obscene amounts of government subsidies for your own products. FFS, Tesla drivers don't even pay for the roads they drive on; those are paid for by gas taxes.
I guess my counter argument is why does it have to be a comparison?
"Opportunist" is a bigoted, anti-American European who used this issue to try and get in a dig at the US. And the kind of ignorance he is peddling, unfortunately, has taken root in the US, with Americans themselves having a distorted view of their own country and making bad political decisions by trying to emulate Europe. Just look at the kind of rhetoric that has been coming from people like Sanders and Obama. So, people like you mindlessly parroting what bigots like "Opportunist" say is not just ignorant, it's offensive, and you ought to know that.
I don't care what country we are talking about, religion has no place in law making. I understand that the men and women crafting our laws are most likely going to practice one religion or another, and their religion is going to guide their morality. I'm fine with that, up until they are using their religion as justification for law.
Look, I'm a gay atheist immigrant. And I think that blanket statement doesn't make sense. Of course, religious people are going to use their religion as a justification for law; that is completely inevitable. If (1) "God" tells you that abortion is a mortal sin and if (2) you view the purpose of the federal government to improve society and help individuals, then you necessarily need to vote for a federal ban on abortion. The problem there isn't with the first premise, it is with the second. That is, historically, it has been at least as bad when people justified laws with science as it has been when they did so with religion. Racism, forced sterilizations, homophobia, etc. have all been justified by politicians by pointing to science, just like they have been justified by politicians by pointing to religion.
America used to make the right choice, which was to sharply limit governmental power, in particular at the federal level, and let states, municipalities, and individuals make their own decisions. That way, Birmingham, Alabama, can be a Christian hellhole, Berkeley, California, can be a progressive hellhole, and the rest of the country can make its own choices and doesn't have to live according to a balancing act between the obsessions of either of those groups of people. Now, America is increasingly making the wrong choice, the European choice, where an elite in national government tries to determine how everybody across the country ought to live. And when people point to Europe in such discussions, they miss the point that there actually is a wide variety of policies among dozens of nations, yet they try to argue for policy in a country of 330 million by pointing to examples ranging from Finland to Germany. In fact, by picking and choosing laws from among European nations, you can justify anything from progressivism and fascism to socialism and communism. (The one political belief that has gone extinct in Europe is classical liberalism because that died there in the 19th century; the only place it is holding on for dear life is in the US.)
Yes, the trouble is that it isn't true. The influence of churches and religion on US politics is much less than in many European countries. So, the OP remains flamebait, and you're simply ignorant.
Having more demand than supply does not mean demand is infinite.... The demand for those services is quite limited.
Look, the debate about "technological unemployment" has gone on for centuries. The fact is that it has never happened before and that there is no hard evidence that it will happen in the future. Like the academic economists and politicians that hold this view, you have provided no evidence that it will happen either. And in light of centuries of doomsaying without this ever happening, you better have some damned good proof that this time, it's different.
This is typical Libertarian rhetoric.
No, it's not "libertarian rhetoric", it is pointing errors in you reasoning: you argue that people leave the labor force because of automation, but you are misattributing the causes. Giving people the freedom to pursue education, learn more job skills, spend more time with kids and family, work shorter hours, and/or to take time off for entrepreneurship have been explicitly stated goals of progressive policies, like public higher education, ACA, family leave, minimum wage, and welfare. You can't promote these policies on the one hand and then blame automation for the fact that people work less when these policies are doing what they are intended to do.
Slashdot Mirror
We aren't talking about whether it's "worth it". Musk's contention is that electric vehicle adoption is hindered by unfair subsidies to fossil fuel producers. The fact is the exact opposite: it's his vehicles that are massively subsidized.
Last year, Tesla was losing $4000 on every car, although that oscillates wildly quarter to quarter. That can't go on like that, they need to raise prices in order to increase profits to something that is reliably positive. Tesla is also selling to a niche market, which is why he can't ramp up production much or risk having prices fall even further and losing even more money.
And you're right that raising prices is "opposite his mission", and that matters a great deal. Since Musk's company is built on massive political favors and subsidies, if politicians and the public perceive Tesla for what it is, an overpriced toy for high income earners, he risks losing those favors. He can't ask for even more subsidies, so instead he is trying to raise the costs of his competitors. It's the only way left to him to make his cars mainstream.
In any case, my main point is: Musk's arguments are bogus. It's electric vehicles that are massively subsidized, while fossil fuel is taxed at around what even climate change activists generally say externalities from carbon emissions are. Musk is right that massively increasing the tax on fossil fuels would make his cars more attractive, but he is wrong in his assertions that such taxes are economically justified or beneficial. In fact, taxing fossil fuels enough to make his vehicles competitive would be a massively regressive tax that hurts low income people the most.
Fossil fuel powered cars are going to disappear on their own, once the technology is ready. But saddling the economy with billions of taxes and even more billions of crony capitalist earnings for Musk isn't going to help anyone, and it isn't going to speed up the breakthroughs in material science and other areas needed to make that happen.
Fact is: Amazon didn't consider it profitable to go into these areas. That means that other businesses there (perhaps locally and minority owned) meet the demand that exists there more efficiently. If forcing Amazon to deliver to those areas has any effect, it's going to be that Amazon is now going to compete with those local businesses. And if they have to expand their business to those areas anyway, they are going to make sure that they are minimizing their losses, which means that they will try to drive as many competitors out of business as they can and get as many customers as they can. How can that possibly be good for those neighborhoods?
You misunderstood. I'm not saying that you can switch to a cell company that doesn't have arbitration clauses, I'm saying that disputes involving cell companies are best solved by simply switching companies. I don't want to have to pay more for cell service because you are hell bent on suing my cell company for millions in damages over some triviality.
These mechanisms have been known for a long time. Likewise, it's been known for a long time that "willpower" and "dieting" don't work for weight loss; hunger is just too compelling. You need to change what you eat and how you live. I suppose it's good that even the NYT is waking up to the idea that "the science is settled... again".
Actually, what we can conclude from the summary is that not only is there no paper, the work isn't going to be peer reviewed either (because if this was a peer reviewed conference track, there would have to be a completed paper). Another sign of a crackpot.
Your oral surgeon isn't a "major corporation", and wisdom teeth extraction is risky; you could drag him through the courts for years, ruining his practice, simply because of some accident.
So what? If you don't like your cell phone company, you switch, end of story.
There are layers and layers of fail stacked on top of each other: barriers to entry, regulation, inefficient court systems, medical liability law, legal licensing, etc.
In any case, courts don't work very well, and arbitration is actually a pretty good dispute resolution mechanism; obviously, it's important to ensure it is fair.
Sealing legal proceedings before a public court is an outrage in a democracy; the application of government force must remain open in a democracy.
For people to resolve their disputes by private arbitration, however, is fine; that's a private choice and no government force is involved; therefore, there is no justification or need to have such resolutions be public.
Did I miss the paper, or is the blog post everything there is? I remember the good old days when crackpot scientists at least went through the trouble of producing a scientific looking paper in LaTeX with lots of formulas and graphs.
This means that Amazon is effectively going to subsidize delivery business into areas where they are making a loss. But now that they are forced to deliver there, they are effectively going to compete with local businesses at those subsidized prices, and they are likely going to skim off their most profitable customers. It's the local equivalent of what politicians always complain about in international trade: dumping.
The net effect is going to be that these areas are going to be more dependent on a corporate behemoth, small businesses are going to disappear, and poorer people are going to have even less choice. Progressive lawmakers like Ed Markey are really doing everything they can to drive up prices, kill minority businesses, and generally impoverish minority communities.
Yeah, those weird Americans and their euphemisms for death.
You really have trouble reading, don't you?
Michael Smith: "Cell phones can't cause cancer because microwaves are non-ionizing. That's why it's silly to worry about it." [Implication: these studies are a waste of time.]
Me: "Science says otherwise: there are plausible mechanisms by which non-ionizing radiation could cause cancer. That is why we are conducting these studies."
That is, people have been conducting these studies because they weren't the kind of simplistic and pseudo-scientific thinkers like you and Michael Smith. It's a relief that the result of these studies is that there is no large increase in cancer risk from cell phone usage at the population level. However, such epidemiological studies tell us little about whether microwaves can cause cancer. There are plenty of definite carcinogens that don't show up in epidemiological studies. Microwaves might still be a significant health risk in particular populations (e.g., children) or at specific frequencies.
I didn't make that assertion. Are you illiterate?
What evidence do you offer for the assertion that non-ionizing radiation cannot, ever, cause cancer?
You would know "the point of science" if it were shoved up your behind.
FTFY
Microwave cooking primarily happens via heating and water molecules, but there isn't significant heating from cell phones. Effects on protein folding appear to be direct and not mediated via heating.
There are dozens of other papers. Go look on Google Scholar.
It doesn't have to be "compelling evidence". The point is that people who say that there is no possibility that non-ionizing radiation causes cancer are wrong.
Cancer can be caused by many mechanisms other than breaking atomic bonds.
There is evidence that microwaves affect protein folding and conformation, and that suggests a possible mechanism for carcinogenicity.
There are many things wrong with the US system. What I am saying, and what should be bloody obvious, is that adopting a UK-style single payer system isn't going to work in the US. How do we know that? Because the US already has a single payer system and it is even less efficient than the US private system.
The cause for the excessive US healthcare spending is largely excessive spending on end of life care; if you reduced that to European levels, US health care costs would be at European levels. But it is Medicare that engages in this excessive spending, so switching to a single payer system isn't going to fix this.
In different words, you're saying that the effect of raising the gas tax further wouldn't be to sell more electric vehicles (since they can't be produced fast enough anyway), it would simply be to increase profits for Elon Musk. Thanks for clearing that up.
In fact, Tesla's waiting list is more like Ferrari's: they make a specialty product for a niche market, and they just want even more subsidies (an increase in the gas tax is effectively an additional subsidy for Tesla).
That makes no difference in the end; Tesla still profits from it the same way.
And until they do, they are still subsidized by fossil fuels.
They don't pay the lion share, however. Furthermore, they are weighted, measured, and taxed according to the wear and tear created by themselves; you can't say that that also pays for the usage by electric vehicles. Finally, that argument only applies to major highways anyway; for other roads, it's construction and weathering that are the primary costs, and electric vehicles aren't paying their share.
Really, you're grasping at straws. Elon Musk wants more subsidies to increase his profits; it's typical, simple crony capitalism, and you're promoting it.
It would, but so what? Having more vehicles in existence doesn't hurt anything by itself. The capital investment in the vehicle and the space to park it are usually made by the people who want the convenience of having a vehicle 24/7.
That kind of combination means that people are still tied to schedules and that they have to change transportation modes. It also only works if all you want to transport yourself and a small backpack, and during regular hours. For large loads, traveling with animals, and/or traveling at odd times it becomes next to impossible.
Maybe mass transit serves your needs, it doesn't serve mine or those of a lot of other people. It's also quite slow and expensive in practice, even though it is heavily subsidized. And I speak from first hand experience here.
No, that's actually a big step backward. Believe it or not, being able to get from anywhere to anywhere any time you want in your own space is actually a good thing, just like bigger houses, more books, more movies, and all the other things civilization brings.
Why is that any different than personal automobiles? The number of vehicles on the road is the same, and the amount of waste generated is also roughly the same, assuming vehicles turn to waste through use.
I was going to write a lengthy response about how Musk's argument is bullshit in multiple ways. But there is a much simpler way to see that Musk's arguments are bogus. Due to the way electricity and gas are priced in the US, a Tesla already saves thousands of dollars a year in gas prices. Tesla itself actually aggressively advertises with that fact. So, from the point of view of a Tesla driver, gas is already taxed at 300-400%. If that isn't sufficient for people to switch, how high does Musk want taxes to go?
The real reason people put up with the price of gasoline relative to electric is simple: neither Musk nor any of the other car manufacturers make the kind of vehicles people want. I'd rather pay a few thousand dollars more for gasoline every year than drive around in a Tesla. You want to sell more Teslas? Make better cars, Mr. Musk. And while you're at it, do the decent thing and stop using such obscene amounts of government subsidies for your own products. FFS, Tesla drivers don't even pay for the roads they drive on; those are paid for by gas taxes.
"Opportunist" is a bigoted, anti-American European who used this issue to try and get in a dig at the US. And the kind of ignorance he is peddling, unfortunately, has taken root in the US, with Americans themselves having a distorted view of their own country and making bad political decisions by trying to emulate Europe. Just look at the kind of rhetoric that has been coming from people like Sanders and Obama. So, people like you mindlessly parroting what bigots like "Opportunist" say is not just ignorant, it's offensive, and you ought to know that.
Look, I'm a gay atheist immigrant. And I think that blanket statement doesn't make sense. Of course, religious people are going to use their religion as a justification for law; that is completely inevitable. If (1) "God" tells you that abortion is a mortal sin and if (2) you view the purpose of the federal government to improve society and help individuals, then you necessarily need to vote for a federal ban on abortion. The problem there isn't with the first premise, it is with the second. That is, historically, it has been at least as bad when people justified laws with science as it has been when they did so with religion. Racism, forced sterilizations, homophobia, etc. have all been justified by politicians by pointing to science, just like they have been justified by politicians by pointing to religion.
America used to make the right choice, which was to sharply limit governmental power, in particular at the federal level, and let states, municipalities, and individuals make their own decisions. That way, Birmingham, Alabama, can be a Christian hellhole, Berkeley, California, can be a progressive hellhole, and the rest of the country can make its own choices and doesn't have to live according to a balancing act between the obsessions of either of those groups of people. Now, America is increasingly making the wrong choice, the European choice, where an elite in national government tries to determine how everybody across the country ought to live. And when people point to Europe in such discussions, they miss the point that there actually is a wide variety of policies among dozens of nations, yet they try to argue for policy in a country of 330 million by pointing to examples ranging from Finland to Germany. In fact, by picking and choosing laws from among European nations, you can justify anything from progressivism and fascism to socialism and communism. (The one political belief that has gone extinct in Europe is classical liberalism because that died there in the 19th century; the only place it is holding on for dear life is in the US.)
There are also fewer cows than humans in the world. Should we start using humans for commercial milk and meat production then?
Yes, the trouble is that it isn't true. The influence of churches and religion on US politics is much less than in many European countries. So, the OP remains flamebait, and you're simply ignorant.
Wrongly claiming that automation has caused the number of jobs to decrease when it has never done that is not a "technicality".
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=labor+for...
Look, the debate about "technological unemployment" has gone on for centuries. The fact is that it has never happened before and that there is no hard evidence that it will happen in the future. Like the academic economists and politicians that hold this view, you have provided no evidence that it will happen either. And in light of centuries of doomsaying without this ever happening, you better have some damned good proof that this time, it's different.
No, it's not "libertarian rhetoric", it is pointing errors in you reasoning: you argue that people leave the labor force because of automation, but you are misattributing the causes. Giving people the freedom to pursue education, learn more job skills, spend more time with kids and family, work shorter hours, and/or to take time off for entrepreneurship have been explicitly stated goals of progressive policies, like public higher education, ACA, family leave, minimum wage, and welfare. You can't promote these policies on the one hand and then blame automation for the fact that people work less when these policies are doing what they are intended to do.