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> Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipient

> Be as cynical as you like. But people's lives are their own. Are they though? Who exactly would fund the self-actualization adventures of the lucky recipients, if not other people? I'm guessing here, but I assume the funding wouldn't be voluntary. In that case, those people's lives are not their own, those people's lives (and the results of them spending parts of their lives at work) are shared. > Now that it's approaching, all anybody can think about is "Keep the lower class working! God forbid they have a life!" I live among the lower class. A good part of them do not work and still have a life.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most of the factories. How is this gonna play out? In the best scenario, we go on to a bright future of little work necessary for everyone. Or, we blame those folks for being 'out of work', let them suffer and die. The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. This is the notion we have to get thru everybody's head.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  >The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Programming, especially web development is a great analogy here. You have tools that do almost all the things you would want a website to do. Why do we need web developers at all then? Because it turns out that connecting everything and fine tuning it for your specific needs is quite difficult.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Yet. Modern farms come pretty close, and there are lots of ideas to close the gap.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes points to you for noticing there's a supply chain. But that's automating too. The remaining 'developers' in industry are Engineers. They number a tiny fraction of the human labor that factories used to employ. The idea the we can 'retrain' line workers is nonsense. They can't all become Engineers, even if we needed 30M more Engineers which we don't. Grasp at straws, sure some business processes might remain unautomated for some time. But it's not going to matter to most Americans. It'll be small change.
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      >The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes, if we still built the old stuff, but we don't. We're building better factories for more sophisticated technology. Factories are tools and they've improved just the same as every other tool. Their complexity has increased immensely. Sure, nowadays it still takes less effort to build the factory, but all the things that the factory makes needs a lot more work. Scientists, engineers, software developers, lawyers, PR people etc. I think almost all businesses are going to remain unautomated. Sure, significant parts of the processes will be automated, but not everything. Complexity will keep increasing and we'll likely still need humans to coordinate, because we're not very good at automating the unknown.
      - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
        That up-front cost is again, a percent of what the factory floor used to employ. And they're mostly used once at the beginning. To support a model of "build new factories forever" requires endless expansion. The world is no longer expanding at a rate that would support that, not nearly. And I don't see that as a desirable world .
- naavis 7y ago
  I would say a huge proportion is also caused by moving manufacturing jobs to cheaper countries. It is not just automation.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Yes, but they're returning now. When a business grows to the point they can swallow the cost of automation, they 'bring it back to America' and automate.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible." More likely, the low hanging fruit of automation has already been plucked bare and the rest will require a century or more to figure out. I certainly don't expect an automated plumber or meat processing worker anytime soon.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    They get smarter every year. As I've posted before, my niece and nephew are automation engineers, moving from plant to plant like migrant workers, automating the hell out of everything and anything. It's not a case of 'can we'. Its only limited by the cost, which is a fixed upfront value. If the market is big enough, then that cost can be amortized. As America grows, more and more processes are entering the magic size where automation pays. When somebody says they "Brought the factories and jobs back to America!" they're lying. They brought the factory back, but only because automation-at-home is cheaper than hand-labor-overseas.
  - wonderwonder 7y ago
    Fully autonomous vehicles could very easily remove the need for 4 million trucking and taxi jobs as well as affect another 3 million uber / lyft drivers. That technology is not a hundred years away.
- grimjack00 7y ago
  > There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, How much of that is due to automation vs. factory jobs being done outside the US?
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    No idea. But the trend (avalanche) is to bring them back and automate. That's what we prepare for.
    - epicureanideal 7y ago
      I'm interested to learn more about this trend. I imagine it would accelerate in the current situation. Are there any data sources about this?
- luckylion 7y ago
  > Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. You're mistaking automation for outsourcing. The factory workers are still around, only they're in China now. Yes, we've automated some things but we're building other stuff now. Much like, yes, we have power tools today, but we're also not only building simple, uninsulated houses. Dream your utopia, but don't forget that real people still do 14 hour shifts to supply you with the goods you desire, not some highly automated robot in some hidden factory under the streets of your city. It's just that most of these people are n ocean away now, so you don't need to see them and get your happy life disturbed by seeing their living conditions compared to yours. The goods pour out of the factories, the power is generated by the the wall outlet, the internet lives in the cable and water flows directly from the tap. The magical world of tomorrow. I know, I know, "some day it will all be automated, just you wait". Yeah, let's wait until that's actually in sight and not just hidden away behind a tiny robot moving the product the last 500 feet to your door. It isn't in sight today and it won't be tomorrow.
  - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
    Categorically wrong. Its being automated now, at a tremendous rate, and has been going on for decades. Even China is automating. China is the US's #1 market for industrial automation machinery. They're behind us, but gaining fast. They're at about the 25% level now, and increasing. Try googling around before making spurious, wrong comments please.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most of the factories. How is this gonna play out? In the best scenario, we go on to a bright future of little work necessary for everyone. Or, we blame those folks for being 'out of work', let them suffer and die. The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. This is the notion we have to get thru everybody's head.

Mirioron 7y ago
>The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Programming, especially web development is a great analogy here. You have tools that do almost all the things you would want a website to do. Why do we need web developers at all then? Because it turns out that connecting everything and fine tuning it for your specific needs is quite difficult.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  You don't have a factory that grows food for example. Yet. Modern farms come pretty close, and there are lots of ideas to close the gap.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes points to you for noticing there's a supply chain. But that's automating too. The remaining 'developers' in industry are Engineers. They number a tiny fraction of the human labor that factories used to employ. The idea the we can 'retrain' line workers is nonsense. They can't all become Engineers, even if we needed 30M more Engineers which we don't. Grasp at straws, sure some business processes might remain unautomated for some time. But it's not going to matter to most Americans. It'll be small change.
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    >The human cost of building those factories, and maintaining them, is 1% of what the hand labor used to be. Yes, if we still built the old stuff, but we don't. We're building better factories for more sophisticated technology. Factories are tools and they've improved just the same as every other tool. Their complexity has increased immensely. Sure, nowadays it still takes less effort to build the factory, but all the things that the factory makes needs a lot more work. Scientists, engineers, software developers, lawyers, PR people etc. I think almost all businesses are going to remain unautomated. Sure, significant parts of the processes will be automated, but not everything. Complexity will keep increasing and we'll likely still need humans to coordinate, because we're not very good at automating the unknown.
    - JoeAltmaier 7y ago
      That up-front cost is again, a percent of what the factory floor used to employ. And they're mostly used once at the beginning. To support a model of "build new factories forever" requires endless expansion. The world is no longer expanding at a rate that would support that, not nearly. And I don't see that as a desirable world .
naavis 7y ago
I would say a huge proportion is also caused by moving manufacturing jobs to cheaper countries. It is not just automation.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Yes, but they're returning now. When a business grows to the point they can swallow the cost of automation, they 'bring it back to America' and automate.
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible." More likely, the low hanging fruit of automation has already been plucked bare and the rest will require a century or more to figure out. I certainly don't expect an automated plumber or meat processing worker anytime soon.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  They get smarter every year. As I've posted before, my niece and nephew are automation engineers, moving from plant to plant like migrant workers, automating the hell out of everything and anything. It's not a case of 'can we'. Its only limited by the cost, which is a fixed upfront value. If the market is big enough, then that cost can be amortized. As America grows, more and more processes are entering the magic size where automation pays. When somebody says they "Brought the factories and jobs back to America!" they're lying. They brought the factory back, but only because automation-at-home is cheaper than hand-labor-overseas.
- wonderwonder 7y ago
  Fully autonomous vehicles could very easily remove the need for 4 million trucking and taxi jobs as well as affect another 3 million uber / lyft drivers. That technology is not a hundred years away.
grimjack00 7y ago
> There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, How much of that is due to automation vs. factory jobs being done outside the US?
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  No idea. But the trend (avalanche) is to bring them back and automate. That's what we prepare for.
  - epicureanideal 7y ago
    I'm interested to learn more about this trend. I imagine it would accelerate in the current situation. Are there any data sources about this?
luckylion 7y ago
> Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. You're mistaking automation for outsourcing. The factory workers are still around, only they're in China now. Yes, we've automated some things but we're building other stuff now. Much like, yes, we have power tools today, but we're also not only building simple, uninsulated houses. Dream your utopia, but don't forget that real people still do 14 hour shifts to supply you with the goods you desire, not some highly automated robot in some hidden factory under the streets of your city. It's just that most of these people are n ocean away now, so you don't need to see them and get your happy life disturbed by seeing their living conditions compared to yours. The goods pour out of the factories, the power is generated by the the wall outlet, the internet lives in the cable and water flows directly from the tap. The magical world of tomorrow. I know, I know, "some day it will all be automated, just you wait". Yeah, let's wait until that's actually in sight and not just hidden away behind a tiny robot moving the product the last 500 feet to your door. It isn't in sight today and it won't be tomorrow.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  Categorically wrong. Its being automated now, at a tremendous rate, and has been going on for decades. Even China is automating. China is the US's #1 market for industrial automation machinery. They're behind us, but gaining fast. They're at about the 25% level now, and increasing. Try googling around before making spurious, wrong comments please.