The parent poster is quite correct, and I'm at a loss to understand why this post has been so misread. Read your Huxley, people!
As more and more can be done cheaply by machine or by a Third-World laborer whose work is priced comparably the pool of useful employment for those desiring a living wage actually shrinks to only those jobs that can't be replaced with either cheap uneducated labor or machines, ie: the jobs of the ever more highly educated and the jobs of management. However, even if everyone in the society possessed the innate intelligence and/or the will to study necessary to attain such education for such a job, there would not be enough work to employ them all.
This is because capital flows in our economic system to those who make the most with the least, those who make widely demanded commodities or perform profitable services with the least skilled labor. Therefore, they will invest it in increasing their own profits, and an easy way of doing so has been found to be decreasing the amount of labor necessary to operate the business. Thus the laborer, both skilled and unskilled since the compensation in time, money and benefits of unskilled labor tend downward as technological progress tends upward, is forced into cycles of eternal retraining for the Next Big Innovation that will bring back demand for his hours, even though that Next Big Innovation will inevitably create a saturated labor market (example: the IT boom) that will eventually result in deliberate labor-cutting measures once best practices have been decided upon.
Something fundamental in this system must change, by evolution or revolution, or the demand for labor will eventually shrink so low that only unionized government employees, managers, economic and political policymakers, and the bureaucratic glue-people who perpetuate a system they deliberately make too convoluted for any machine will be left employed.
OK, you can start refuting me in 3... 2... 1... GO!
You're kidding us all, right? Those Anti-Drug commercials are complete bullshit, the best thing you can do for your child is to respect their rights. This, in turn, teaches them by example to respect the rights of others.
Oh, and there is that whole "government will do it" paranoia, but the vast majority of us feel that tracking your kids everywhere is dehumanizing.
Well, good to see somebody's working on true AI, but I think we should wait to pass judgment on its intelligence for when it attempts to take over the world and stick human beings in pods.
Are there going to be little mathy marks next to/over/under the words of the lectures to help the speaker remember what to sing? 'Cause those tend to be damned hard to learn.
Ahhh... I see. You've both grown so old, but you still lack the wisdom to realize that your latest opinion isn't necessarily or objectively your best and that you have no right to insult others based on your resentment of your former self. In fact, you really should learn to not resent your former self at all.
Just because you're older now and think a different way doesn't mean that the opinions of your teenaged self and other people's teenaged selves are invalid, it just means you disagree. Try to respectfully disagree.
Please be more respectful of young people. There are intelligent teens trying to win their age peers more rights than deciding what goes on an iPod, and people like you and the original poster are unfortunately holding them back.
Actually, I more meant that perhaps they'd learn about proper security models and the command line when they where young, but I suppose the comment was phrased in rather typical-Slashdotter Linux-marketshare-is-good language.
You got me on my own foolishness. Still, if I ran things they'd all be in programming classes during elementary school and could write their own damned OS by the time they graduated high school.
Then why am I defending them? Are you going to say that I'm a complete fucking moron, as well, now? If you do I hope you can cite more than anecdotal evidence to support your claim.
Mind you, I'm not claiming that all teenagers are intelligent and sensible, I'm claiming that they are of various intelligences in the same proportions as any other subgroup of society. There are as many smart teens as smart adults, and there are as many idiot adults as there are teens.
Why the hell is this modded "4, Insightful"? Teenagers are not "fucking morons" and the parent has offered no proof of his claim of such other than his own retardation as a teenager. Just because he was stupid in his teen years doesn't make all teens ever so, or even a majority!
There are MySpace users who happen to be young. These people alone do not - quite luckily - constitute a generation just as the large numbers of young Slashdot users aren't a generation.
They already have a name for this generation: Generation Y/Millenials. We're the ones who grew up with computers and everyone knows it, but apparently BusinessWeek needed an article.
Hopefully yes, because that's how the upper classes DO perpetuate themselves in the capitalist system: through inherited wealth and higher-crust education designed to bind the student body (already mostly wealthy) into a class.
Wait, I thought we WANTED them using yesterday's technology and losing efficiency to it? Remember, these are the folks who spy on our emails, who can perform searches without warrants nowadays... we want them at least two steps behind the citizenry.
Rather than repeat arguments that are already printed somewhere else I recommend you visit the National Youth Rights Association, read their website, perhaps debate the forum members, and post back here about what you think.
Oh, and why is my age relevant to this discussion?
You'd only be breaking a subset of Windoze software by removing ActiveX. Surely the entire world isn't running on Windows built of OLE objects and ActiveX controls?
Kids should be allowed to purchase sexual images if they so please and have the money to do so. What the hell is so bad about sex that everyone wants to keep any mention of it it from the hands of "children"?
And what are these "children" you speak of, anyway? The young people I've met have always seemed filled with intelligence, but with layers and layers of cultural and social norms and conditioning layed down by school and parents cutting them off from this intelligence until they become the sick creatures we see in our schoolyards.
Whether or not sex or violence is good for anyone is irrelevant. Current laws forbidding under-18s from buying pornography, seeing movies rated NC-17 (read: 17), or cigarettes are themselves affronts to the rights of these youth.
You have obviously been morally corrupted by your exposure to "your parents' values" and aflicted with an intolerable self-righteousness. I'm afraid we shall have to outlaw said parents and have all children properly raised in State Conditioning Centres.
Who has the right to decide what people should be able to do with their own bodies and minds? Nobody whose own rights are not infringed. In the case of children we make an allowance for parents in order that they might have more persuasive power, but the essential fact is still the same: morality is an unsure thing that should never, ever be legislated.
Slashdot Mirror
It probably correlates negatively. Or has someone on here gotten married?
The parent poster is quite correct, and I'm at a loss to understand why this post has been so misread. Read your Huxley, people!
As more and more can be done cheaply by machine or by a Third-World laborer whose work is priced comparably the pool of useful employment for those desiring a living wage actually shrinks to only those jobs that can't be replaced with either cheap uneducated labor or machines, ie: the jobs of the ever more highly educated and the jobs of management. However, even if everyone in the society possessed the innate intelligence and/or the will to study necessary to attain such education for such a job, there would not be enough work to employ them all.
This is because capital flows in our economic system to those who make the most with the least, those who make widely demanded commodities or perform profitable services with the least skilled labor. Therefore, they will invest it in increasing their own profits, and an easy way of doing so has been found to be decreasing the amount of labor necessary to operate the business. Thus the laborer, both skilled and unskilled since the compensation in time, money and benefits of unskilled labor tend downward as technological progress tends upward, is forced into cycles of eternal retraining for the Next Big Innovation that will bring back demand for his hours, even though that Next Big Innovation will inevitably create a saturated labor market (example: the IT boom) that will eventually result in deliberate labor-cutting measures once best practices have been decided upon.
Something fundamental in this system must change, by evolution or revolution, or the demand for labor will eventually shrink so low that only unionized government employees, managers, economic and political policymakers, and the bureaucratic glue-people who perpetuate a system they deliberately make too convoluted for any machine will be left employed.
OK, you can start refuting me in 3... 2... 1... GO!
Moderately Intelligent Man AWAAAAAAY!
You're kidding us all, right? Those Anti-Drug commercials are complete bullshit, the best thing you can do for your child is to respect their rights. This, in turn, teaches them by example to respect the rights of others.
Oh, and there is that whole "government will do it" paranoia, but the vast majority of us feel that tracking your kids everywhere is dehumanizing.
Well, good to see somebody's working on true AI, but I think we should wait to pass judgment on its intelligence for when it attempts to take over the world and stick human beings in pods.
Yep, I haven't done any CVS commits at all...
Are there going to be little mathy marks next to/over/under the words of the lectures to help the speaker remember what to sing? 'Cause those tend to be damned hard to learn.
Ahhh... I see. You've both grown so old, but you still lack the wisdom to realize that your latest opinion isn't necessarily or objectively your best and that you have no right to insult others based on your resentment of your former self. In fact, you really should learn to not resent your former self at all.
Just because you're older now and think a different way doesn't mean that the opinions of your teenaged self and other people's teenaged selves are invalid, it just means you disagree. Try to respectfully disagree.
Please be more respectful of young people. There are intelligent teens trying to win their age peers more rights than deciding what goes on an iPod, and people like you and the original poster are unfortunately holding them back.
Actually, I more meant that perhaps they'd learn about proper security models and the command line when they where young, but I suppose the comment was phrased in rather typical-Slashdotter Linux-marketshare-is-good language.
Darn me and my hasty posting.
You got me on my own foolishness. Still, if I ran things they'd all be in programming classes during elementary school and could write their own damned OS by the time they graduated high school.
Then why am I defending them? Are you going to say that I'm a complete fucking moron, as well, now? If you do I hope you can cite more than anecdotal evidence to support your claim.
Mind you, I'm not claiming that all teenagers are intelligent and sensible, I'm claiming that they are of various intelligences in the same proportions as any other subgroup of society. There are as many smart teens as smart adults, and there are as many idiot adults as there are teens.
Give people Linux in their youth so that they won't be completely computer-brain-dead and M$ vulnerable when they get older! An excellent idea!
And those companies are the late-comers in this case! They get these folks after the school system's had them for 12 or 13 years!
Why the hell is this modded "4, Insightful"? Teenagers are not "fucking morons" and the parent has offered no proof of his claim of such other than his own retardation as a teenager. Just because he was stupid in his teen years doesn't make all teens ever so, or even a majority!
The parent is a troll.
There are MySpace users who happen to be young. These people alone do not - quite luckily - constitute a generation just as the large numbers of young Slashdot users aren't a generation.
They already have a name for this generation: Generation Y/Millenials. We're the ones who grew up with computers and everyone knows it, but apparently BusinessWeek needed an article.
Hopefully yes, because that's how the upper classes DO perpetuate themselves in the capitalist system: through inherited wealth and higher-crust education designed to bind the student body (already mostly wealthy) into a class.
Wait, I thought we WANTED them using yesterday's technology and losing efficiency to it? Remember, these are the folks who spy on our emails, who can perform searches without warrants nowadays... we want them at least two steps behind the citizenry.
Rather than repeat arguments that are already printed somewhere else I recommend you visit the National Youth Rights Association, read their website, perhaps debate the forum members, and post back here about what you think.
Oh, and why is my age relevant to this discussion?
The link is dead.
You'd only be breaking a subset of Windoze software by removing ActiveX. Surely the entire world isn't running on Windows built of OLE objects and ActiveX controls?
Actually, your child should focus on the really important things like getting the hell out of school to pursue a real education.
Kids should be allowed to purchase sexual images if they so please and have the money to do so. What the hell is so bad about sex that everyone wants to keep any mention of it it from the hands of "children"?
And what are these "children" you speak of, anyway? The young people I've met have always seemed filled with intelligence, but with layers and layers of cultural and social norms and conditioning layed down by school and parents cutting them off from this intelligence until they become the sick creatures we see in our schoolyards.
Whether or not sex or violence is good for anyone is irrelevant. Current laws forbidding under-18s from buying pornography, seeing movies rated NC-17 (read: 17), or cigarettes are themselves affronts to the rights of these youth.
You have obviously been morally corrupted by your exposure to "your parents' values" and aflicted with an intolerable self-righteousness. I'm afraid we shall have to outlaw said parents and have all children properly raised in State Conditioning Centres.
Who has the right to decide what people should be able to do with their own bodies and minds? Nobody whose own rights are not infringed. In the case of children we make an allowance for parents in order that they might have more persuasive power, but the essential fact is still the same: morality is an unsure thing that should never, ever be legislated.
They could perhaps just remove ActiveX entirely, insecure as it has proven to be.
Yep, Somalia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchocapitalism