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The stark job loss by industry infographic is quite somber, across those manufacturing industries. Everyone likes to quip "Relevance: gotta retrain to remain"

The stark job loss by industry infographic is quite somber, across those manufacturing industries. Everyone likes to quip "Relevance: gotta retrain to remain" when it comes to automation, but people fail to realize the implicit costs of doing so at an individual level (the time commitment and energy required to face this anxiety all the time). The rate of "innovation" has grown so fast, that we may very well be at a place where your retraining itself may not be relevant by the time you are finished being retrained. Robots are meant to serve one purpose- cost reduction. It was the case that Robots replaced monotonous tasks, but it just seems like that inchoate stage in robotics is over. Software seems to be aimed directly at doing much more than that- It's not a coincidence that Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are both trendy right now and revolve around "thought" in their respective monikers. Once these data scientist achieve their goals... what's next? Won't they be replaced by metarobots too? A traditional supply and demand framework doesn't apply here where retraining to meet the demand is the solution to one's labor woes- it just defers the problem until the next "retraining." I don't have a solution, but we should remain vigilantly aware what the end goal in Robotics is: Providing capitalists with more ways to accumulate capital, at the expense of our labor.

VLM 9y ago
"at an individual level" And the irrelevance at the large scale. General life advice is not to mix micro-economic problems and solutions with macro-economic problems and solutions. Obviously on a micro-individual layer, if the bottom 90% are getting fired, getting yourself into the top 10% cognitive elite is quite useful. Its also completely useless as macro-economic societal level advice, there's no point telling the bottom 90% getting fired that they should all work harder to be one of the 1 in 10 still employed. This is aside from the problem of most of the people IRL giving advice to retrain just coincidentally happen to have a financial interest in signing up as many retrainers as possible, or in calming the masses into not rolling the guillotine out yet because of those fantastic retraining benefits. On a large scale as the job cognitive requirements increase over time, eventually you'll reach a limit where most of the community doesn't have the cognitive power to determine who's a retraining scammer and who's legit at which point the confidence-job scam collapses. Arguably we're pretty close to that with higher education right now, we are at the point now of investing trillions of loans and a tenth of young peoples productive lives into an end result of poverty stricken baristas, waiters, and NEETs, which can only go on so long before the plug is pulled on the system. What do I as a taxpayer get out of spending my tax dollars so my waitress was able to obtain her unusable education degree? It certainly doesn't make her a better waitress.
- treyfitty 9y ago
  > What do I as a taxpayer get out of spending my tax dollars so my waitress was able to obtain her unusable education degree? It certainly doesn't make her a better waitress Eh... Taxes are a tricky subject. I think it's unproductive to make arguments based on what is owed to you in return for your contribution to taxes. Sure, our taxes pay for infrastructure, and we have an expectation for that infrastructure to work properly. But, when you extend it to matters such as "paying for someone else's education" and expecting something in return, it just doesn't sound "right." No one owes you anything, even if an indiscernible amount of that was funding that person's education. Taxes are a social construct allowing our elected officials to allocate resources to what's needed. So, the problem isn't so much that your taxes aren't being utilized to give you something in return (the frivolous education of your barista), but the underlying problem is the excessive funding to education that exacerbates all the waste to happen.

VLM 9y ago

"at an individual level" And the irrelevance at the large scale. General life advice is not to mix micro-economic problems and solutions with macro-economic problems and solutions. Obviously on a micro-individual layer, if the bottom 90% are getting fired, getting yourself into the top 10% cognitive elite is quite useful. Its also completely useless as macro-economic societal level advice, there's no point telling the bottom 90% getting fired that they should all work harder to be one of the 1 in 10 still employed. This is aside from the problem of most of the people IRL giving advice to retrain just coincidentally happen to have a financial interest in signing up as many retrainers as possible, or in calming the masses into not rolling the guillotine out yet because of those fantastic retraining benefits. On a large scale as the job cognitive requirements increase over time, eventually you'll reach a limit where most of the community doesn't have the cognitive power to determine who's a retraining scammer and who's legit at which point the confidence-job scam collapses. Arguably we're pretty close to that with higher education right now, we are at the point now of investing trillions of loans and a tenth of young peoples productive lives into an end result of poverty stricken baristas, waiters, and NEETs, which can only go on so long before the plug is pulled on the system. What do I as a taxpayer get out of spending my tax dollars so my waitress was able to obtain her unusable education degree? It certainly doesn't make her a better waitress.

treyfitty 9y ago
> What do I as a taxpayer get out of spending my tax dollars so my waitress was able to obtain her unusable education degree? It certainly doesn't make her a better waitress Eh... Taxes are a tricky subject. I think it's unproductive to make arguments based on what is owed to you in return for your contribution to taxes. Sure, our taxes pay for infrastructure, and we have an expectation for that infrastructure to work properly. But, when you extend it to matters such as "paying for someone else's education" and expecting something in return, it just doesn't sound "right." No one owes you anything, even if an indiscernible amount of that was funding that person's education. Taxes are a social construct allowing our elected officials to allocate resources to what's needed. So, the problem isn't so much that your taxes aren't being utilized to give you something in return (the frivolous education of your barista), but the underlying problem is the excessive funding to education that exacerbates all the waste to happen.