I haven't been to a grocery store since late 1999, thanks to Peapod, Webvan, Safeway, Albertsons, Kingsoopers and others who have had internet based grocery shopping and into-your-kitchen delivery for most of a decade now.
I admire the bravery of someone who buys meat and veg without seeing it first. And which butchers/greengrocers/fishmongers delivery by the way? We don't all eat supermarket crap.
submitting it and then making sure I'm home when the groceries are delivered during a two-hour window on the day of my choosing.
So instead of spending half an hour at the shop, you spend two hours sat at home waiting for the delivery, then who knows how long checking for 'substitutions', meaning you have to go to the shop anyway?
Oh, and what's the betting when they select your items they give you all the stalest things on the shelf? And somehow I don't think a website is as easy to browse as a supermarket.
Some supermarkets do that in England. The ones I rarely shop at. It pretty much means you can't go shopping if you haven't got any change, and it assumes you're a criminal. Most notably, the most successful supermarket in Britain by far doesn't make you put coins in.
It's only a pound anyway, far less than the worth of a trolley. Probably easy to smash the coin back out anyway, before throwing it in the canal.
And making your employees sing songs and do stupid exercises before their 12 hour night shift is going to make them care? If my employer did that to me I'd make sure their machines didn't work.
Most modern machinery can be run by monkeys anyway.
I see the reason health care is so high is because of the lawyers.
No, it's high because of the inherent costs of running a private business. A state-run health service doesn't need a huge marketing budget, hordes of expensive executives, actuaries, salesmen, brand consultants, dividends, etc. etc. etc.
Why do you think Toyota is taking over as the world's biggest carmaker? Do you think maybe singing the company song each morning and doing some basic exercises to pump up employees makes a tiny bit of difference compared to the listless, overweight UAW workers slouching into GM plants?
I think it's more to do with their incredibly efficient production and superior cars. The shop-floor workers don't make much of a difference in a place that's pretty much entirely automated, and shutting the machines down to sing a song doesn't make more cars.
Ever wondered why the crime rate is so low in Canada? It's not because guns are outlawed. No, it's simply because welfare helps ensure that someone that hit the bottom of the barrel will not have to turn to crime in order to survive.
Britain has a bloated, generous welfare system whereby if you play it right you don't need to work a day in your life, but we still have terrible crime rates, with constant stabbings, shootings and anti-social behaviour.
People don't commit crime generally because they need the money, it's because they're bored, greedy, lazy, or just psycopathic. Giving them welfare just makes them worse as they have more time on their hands.
I think if welfare was cut to force people into jobs, there'd be much less crime. After all you can't go out and mug an old woman if you're working a 12 hour night shift can you?
Why would you want to stop prisoners killing themselves? It would save tax-payers millions, and would be a much more effective form of justice than today's "OK you ran over a granny whilst drunk and stoned off your head on your way back from a bank robbery, you're sentenced to six months with sky TV, pool table and gym, out in two months due to good behaviour, plus free benefits if you can't be bothered working" form of justice that is doled out today, in Britain at least.
I don't know why I'm arguing with this shit, but here we go...
So in the old days, people lived simple lives, exercised every day and ate freshly killed food? Not quite all bad...
No, they lived incredibly complicated lives, having to travel dozens of miles each day just to survive. If they were lucky, they got a bit of raw meat to eat every few weeks.
All of this technology is suppose to make our lives easier. It used to be all one had to do was go out and hunt for some food a couple ours a day (if even that). Nowadays, we work 8+ hours a day just to make ends meet.
Cavemen would have to walk across continents to find food, had a life expectancy of 20 and slept in a cave half-freezing to death. A hundred years ago, people worked 100 hours a week or more in terrible conditions, with a small, crumbling house to live in and just enough food to survive, and had to run ten miles each way to work. Today, people sit for 8 hours a day in comfortable offices (which they drove to), and have a house with double-glazing, a roof that doesn't leak, central heating, electricity, indoor plumbing, a life expectancy in the 70s or 80s, retirement, endless forms of entertainment, several weeks off work a year (a century ago you were lucky to get Christmas Day off), all the food we can eat flown in from around the world, and endless other benefits.
So yes, I'd say modern technology has made life better.
That's the point though, after fifteen years of technological innovations, surely they should be able to come up with something better? Otherwise they may as well just re-release the megadrive.
...Privileged background, meaning that their parents acknowledge the value of education and support their kids while in school?
Of course, it's easy to teach kids whose parents drive them. You can only judge a school if they have to take in a completely random selection of kids.
That's not a very impressive statistic when you consider most (all?) of the pupils there will probably be from priveledged backgrounds so would get into college anyway. It doesn't say a lot about the quality of teaching.
Our society looks down on education, to the point where we pass over well-educated, well-spoken presidential candidates for the apparent moron, the "regular joe guy I'd like to have a beer with."
Doesn't George Bush have a degree? Or are you saying we should judge political leaders based on whether they've had elocution lessons or something equally superficial?
I want to live in a world in which I have a job. In all the advancements you've mentioned, the improvements in technology have allowed the same number of people to do more work. However, with fruit picking, there is no more work to do, no more fruit needs to be picked, so it will just mean unemployment.
Remember, technology is just a tool, and tools should only be used when they are beneficial. If technology will not bring a benefit to society, then it should not be used. What will be the benefit to society of fruit-picking machines? There will be no more fruit picked as the market is saturated, it will just mean more unemployment, and perhaps a lower cost of fruit to the rich.
technology's been throwing people out of shitty, back-breaking jobs for centuries and jinkies, look how bad off we are.
Yeah, you're well off, they all starved to death. If my livelihood is destroyed by technology, I will merely turn to crime to make a living. I will not allow technology to ruin my life just so someone in a hundred years has it easier.
IQ may not be the *only* thing that corresponds to intelligence, but it definitely is an objective measure of some factors that we consider to be the hallmarks of an intelligent person.
Then how come every IQ test I take gives vastly different results?
Having no domestic food source means you're entirely reliant on imports for food. All it takes is a war or an embargo and your population starves within weeks.
And every country needs unskilled labour, most people do not have the inborn intelligence or the right education and upbringing for skilled work. The world only needs so many lawyers, doctors, scientists etc. If everyone took up a skilled job, most of them would be unemployed as it would be a top-heavy society.
How difficult would it be? You just need a robot with lots of arms, each arm with an orange picking device on the end. It would need some sensors and AI, but nothing too complicated.
This wont be pretty. Perhaps we should ask England is advice concerning textile machines?
Those machines came about during a massive increase in production. Whilst the number of people needed to spin cotton went down, the amount of cotton being spun massively increased, so you had the same number of people making exponentially more cotton. However in this case there will be no massive expansion of the fruit industry, it's pretty much at its peak, so there will be millions left unemployed with no prospects. If you want a picture of what that looks like, have a walk through the Brazilian favelas.
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They should name their shop after one off TV known for selling food that's fallen on the floor?
Oh, and what's the betting when they select your items they give you all the stalest things on the shelf? And somehow I don't think a website is as easy to browse as a supermarket.
It's only a pound anyway, far less than the worth of a trolley. Probably easy to smash the coin back out anyway, before throwing it in the canal.
And making your employees sing songs and do stupid exercises before their 12 hour night shift is going to make them care? If my employer did that to me I'd make sure their machines didn't work.
Most modern machinery can be run by monkeys anyway.
People don't commit crime generally because they need the money, it's because they're bored, greedy, lazy, or just psycopathic. Giving them welfare just makes them worse as they have more time on their hands.
I think if welfare was cut to force people into jobs, there'd be much less crime. After all you can't go out and mug an old woman if you're working a 12 hour night shift can you?
Why would you want to stop prisoners killing themselves? It would save tax-payers millions, and would be a much more effective form of justice than today's "OK you ran over a granny whilst drunk and stoned off your head on your way back from a bank robbery, you're sentenced to six months with sky TV, pool table and gym, out in two months due to good behaviour, plus free benefits if you can't be bothered working" form of justice that is doled out today, in Britain at least.
If they had such an easy life, why were they dead at 20? And I think you're overestimating the amount of food available.
No, they lived incredibly complicated lives, having to travel dozens of miles each day just to survive. If they were lucky, they got a bit of raw meat to eat every few weeks.
The modern way of doing things is far better.
So yes, I'd say modern technology has made life better.
That's the point though, after fifteen years of technological innovations, surely they should be able to come up with something better? Otherwise they may as well just re-release the megadrive.
They came out 15 years ago, how can they release a game like that today and call it 'new'?
That's not a very impressive statistic when you consider most (all?) of the pupils there will probably be from priveledged backgrounds so would get into college anyway. It doesn't say a lot about the quality of teaching.
What's the point in Sonic Rush though? It doesn't have anything that Sonic 1 on the Gamegear didn't have. Except it has more boring levels.
I want to live in a world in which I have a job. In all the advancements you've mentioned, the improvements in technology have allowed the same number of people to do more work. However, with fruit picking, there is no more work to do, no more fruit needs to be picked, so it will just mean unemployment.
Remember, technology is just a tool, and tools should only be used when they are beneficial. If technology will not bring a benefit to society, then it should not be used. What will be the benefit to society of fruit-picking machines? There will be no more fruit picked as the market is saturated, it will just mean more unemployment, and perhaps a lower cost of fruit to the rich.
Or maybe millionaires are too busy making money to waste time learning shit?
Having no domestic food source means you're entirely reliant on imports for food. All it takes is a war or an embargo and your population starves within weeks.
And every country needs unskilled labour, most people do not have the inborn intelligence or the right education and upbringing for skilled work. The world only needs so many lawyers, doctors, scientists etc. If everyone took up a skilled job, most of them would be unemployed as it would be a top-heavy society.
How difficult would it be? You just need a robot with lots of arms, each arm with an orange picking device on the end. It would need some sensors and AI, but nothing too complicated.