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This debate isn't about jobs. The question is this: will the powerful still value human life when robots are better than manual workers? Wealth keeps concentr

This debate isn't about jobs. The question is this: will the powerful still value human life when robots are better than manual workers? Wealth keeps concentrating in the hands of a small minority. Unskilled workers increasingly look like nothing but a drain on resources, unable to produce anything valuable or afford education. Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life and libertarians do not believe in free education or social services. When the bottom 50% of society finally ends up with no money, no marketable skills, and no military prowess, what is going to happen to them?

zizee 15y ago
When it eventually happens, society will have to change. viva la revolution baby!
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  This. You do not want to have too many poor people or somebody will take advantage of this and use them to overthrow whomever is in power and put himself in power.
  - ebiester 15y ago
    Tanks make this a difficult proposition.
    - zizee 15y ago
      Only if you have brainwashed the tank crews (which admittedly does happen in the military).
      - billywitchdr 15y ago
        In this scenario, I'd imagine the tank crews to be automated too.
        zizee 15y ago
        Yes, this would be a big problem if warfare was to become fully automated. I guess we have to hope that when the ability to completely automate warfare that the people in power aren't genocidal sociopaths.
      - zizee 15y ago
        In this situation a tank crew would be attacking their fellow country men, so one would hope hope they would be questioning their orders to fire on civilians. If they didn't question the orders you would have to question whether they were brainwashed into thinking the fellow country men were deserving of attack. A lot of militaries train their soldiers to not question the orders of their superiors. I believe the US military does allow a solider to question orders, but I would expect that it is not encouraged.
        ck2 15y ago
        Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.
        zizee 15y ago
        ck2 wrote: Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request. I think we are in agreement. I was just trying to clarify my comment above because I was confused as to why my previous comment had been down voted. +1 for you :-)
        nknight 15y ago
        US law in this area is largely illusory. It makes reference to "lawful orders", but provides little guidance on what would constitute an "unlawful order". Getting it wrong means prison, and getting it right can still mean prison -- the last case I heard about, the military court basically said "the order is lawful unless you are told otherwise by a superior officer", making the entire question moot.
        TeMPOraL 15y ago
        You don't have to look too hard for a real-life example of this scenario. Just look at what happened in Libya and other countries affected by the Arab Uprising - how military behaved in different countries. They're facing this dilemma right now.
        forensic 15y ago
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - nTsplnk 15y ago
      Yes, if the tanks are enemies. But what if there are two powers, each with tanks? What he is suggesting is, if there are two rich people, both with enormous power, they will ally themselves with the poor to gain an advantage over the other. These propositions of the rich getting robots and killing all the poor are so absurd and exaggerated.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- forensic 15y ago
  This is the classic view, but things have changed. Robots do not just make better workers, they are also better warriors. How many Chinese peasants does it take to kill a single UAV? How many protestors can modern riot police crowd control using sophisticated psychological warfare combined with advanced nonlethal weaponry? Once the violent, unskilled, uneducated, unmoneyed lawbreakers are rounded up by the riot police and thrown in jail... then what? The Chinese are not shy about executions. How about humane lethal injections for everyone?
  - zizee 15y ago
    I guess it could happen gradually (as these things usually do). But the original poster was talking about 50% of the population (500 million people in China alone). I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go (rather than trying to work change into your social structure). It just sounds too James Bond villanesque. Also, if 50% of people are unemployed there will be a lot of people who are employed who sympathise with them, so we are really talking about 80% plus.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - jamieb 15y ago
      I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go ... It just sounds too James Bond villanesque. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history
lionhearted 15y ago
> ...libertarians do not believe in free education or social services. I'm an ex-libertarian and have moved to a more centrist position, but this is disingenuous. Libertarians generally want the right to make their own decisions and are anti-coercion. However, many of them are big believers in philanthropy and true voluntary social contracts - just not the kind enforced by the barrel of a gun. They're not opposed to education or social services - just of funding them by force. It might seem like a small thing, but it's not - if a society could built that achieves high levels of education and prosperity without coercion, most people would think that's a good outcome. Libertarians frequently believe this is possible. They might be wrong, but the attitude is not "let them eat cake" - it's "my life, my choice for what I do with it, take your hands off of me." But many or most believe in learning and prosperity.
- forensic 15y ago
  It's unrealistic because the people with the money are not going to give it away unless you force them. In the industrial revolution the wealthy had a motivation to educate the masses: get better workers and fill the military. What now though? Robots are better soldiers AND workers. Carnegie and Rockefeller were motivated by foreign competition to help people with education and social services. Rockefeller in particular focused his social services on birth control to reduce overpopulation because he saw little value in human life at the bottom of society. Now that masses are simply not needed for anything, and the masses no longer are a military threat due to extreme military tech, the masses have no bargaining chips other than appealing to the humanity of the plutocrats. And I fear that many of the plutocrats agree with Ayn Rand when she says, "I don't want your appeals to my better nature. Appeal to my self-interest." How does someone with no money, no marketable skills, no way to afford education, no ability to exert physical power, continue to survive when the upper class only accepts appeals to their self-interest?
  - eneveu 15y ago
    Rockefeller in particular focused his social services on birth control to reduce overpopulation because he saw little value in human life at the bottom of society. That's pretty interesting. Being European, I don't know much about US industrialists and US population policy. I'd like to learn more about this. Do you have books / articles you'd advise on this subject?
reemrevnivek 15y ago
When they have no marketable skills, they'd better learn some. In the absence of mental or physical handicaps, I don't see any reason why people would be incapable of doing this.
- bdr 15y ago
  It seems like the mental/physical floor required to get a job is getting higher.
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    The physical floor has crashed, actually. Today a man in a wheelchair can contribute meaningful work.
    - bdr 15y ago
      Only above a certain mental floor. Calling it a floor in general is oversimplifying, it's a curve (Stephen Hawking, football player).
  - protagonist_h 15y ago
    i would say "education floor" is getting higher. very few jobs fully utilize human mental capacity.
- forensic 15y ago
  Education is expensive and hard. If the people at the top don't reach down with a helping hand, few from the bottom will be able to stand. Is this the world we want to live in? Social Darwinism?
- nodata 15y ago
  Why marketable skills? Why not useful skills. I find the focus on marketing as much as a problem as everything else.
zizee 15y ago
Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life Which billionaires do not value unskilled human life? How many billionaires are their in the world? Are there really many, many of them that feel that way? Are they really all that selfish that they would happily destroy millions of lives? What does that benefit them?
- forensic 15y ago
  Actions speak louder than words. Billionaires stand by while the miserable and hopeless suffer. Billionaires fund FOX News to indoctrinate the middle class and push them toward self-destruction. Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment? By their actions the upper class is saying that they don't want a middle class. They are saying: if the middle class is so stupid to fall for Rupert Murdoch propaganda and Evangelical Christianity, then they deserve to be enslaved. The alternative would be to fund liberal educations, fund free mental health services, fund enlightening media like PBS rather than saying, "If the middle class won't fund it it doesn't deserve to exist." So many of the elite put all the burden on others. It's true that people should take care of themselves, but they don't. Mental illness is epidemic. Are the wealthy going to stand by and watch as the middle class implodes? Not all plutocrats are malicious, but the majority are indifferent, and their actions speak this.
  - yummyfajitas 15y ago
    Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment? I have no clue what a "culture of empowerment" is, but as to funding education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundati... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donate-half-his-wealth-to-charity/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donat... Another billionaire was recently in the news for donating $40k to a Republican governor. He also donated $7M to PBS, $35M to educating people about evolution and $78M to educating people about science in general didn't make the news. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy These are just a few that I can think of. Peter Thiel also funds education, though probably not the sort of education you wish he would fund.

zizee 15y ago

When it eventually happens, society will have to change. viva la revolution baby!

felipemnoa 15y ago
This. You do not want to have too many poor people or somebody will take advantage of this and use them to overthrow whomever is in power and put himself in power.
- ebiester 15y ago
  Tanks make this a difficult proposition.
  - zizee 15y ago
    Only if you have brainwashed the tank crews (which admittedly does happen in the military).
    - billywitchdr 15y ago
      In this scenario, I'd imagine the tank crews to be automated too.
      - zizee 15y ago
        Yes, this would be a big problem if warfare was to become fully automated. I guess we have to hope that when the ability to completely automate warfare that the people in power aren't genocidal sociopaths.
    - zizee 15y ago
      In this situation a tank crew would be attacking their fellow country men, so one would hope hope they would be questioning their orders to fire on civilians. If they didn't question the orders you would have to question whether they were brainwashed into thinking the fellow country men were deserving of attack. A lot of militaries train their soldiers to not question the orders of their superiors. I believe the US military does allow a solider to question orders, but I would expect that it is not encouraged.
      - ck2 15y ago
        Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.
      - zizee 15y ago
        ck2 wrote: Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request. I think we are in agreement. I was just trying to clarify my comment above because I was confused as to why my previous comment had been down voted. +1 for you :-)
      - nknight 15y ago
        US law in this area is largely illusory. It makes reference to "lawful orders", but provides little guidance on what would constitute an "unlawful order". Getting it wrong means prison, and getting it right can still mean prison -- the last case I heard about, the military court basically said "the order is lawful unless you are told otherwise by a superior officer", making the entire question moot.
      - TeMPOraL 15y ago
        You don't have to look too hard for a real-life example of this scenario. Just look at what happened in Libya and other countries affected by the Arab Uprising - how military behaved in different countries. They're facing this dilemma right now.
      - forensic 15y ago
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - nTsplnk 15y ago
    Yes, if the tanks are enemies. But what if there are two powers, each with tanks? What he is suggesting is, if there are two rich people, both with enormous power, they will ally themselves with the poor to gain an advantage over the other. These propositions of the rich getting robots and killing all the poor are so absurd and exaggerated.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
forensic 15y ago
This is the classic view, but things have changed. Robots do not just make better workers, they are also better warriors. How many Chinese peasants does it take to kill a single UAV? How many protestors can modern riot police crowd control using sophisticated psychological warfare combined with advanced nonlethal weaponry? Once the violent, unskilled, uneducated, unmoneyed lawbreakers are rounded up by the riot police and thrown in jail... then what? The Chinese are not shy about executions. How about humane lethal injections for everyone?
- zizee 15y ago
  I guess it could happen gradually (as these things usually do). But the original poster was talking about 50% of the population (500 million people in China alone). I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go (rather than trying to work change into your social structure). It just sounds too James Bond villanesque. Also, if 50% of people are unemployed there will be a lot of people who are employed who sympathise with them, so we are really talking about 80% plus.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - jamieb 15y ago
    I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go ... It just sounds too James Bond villanesque. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War_II http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

lionhearted 15y ago

> ...libertarians do not believe in free education or social services. I'm an ex-libertarian and have moved to a more centrist position, but this is disingenuous. Libertarians generally want the right to make their own decisions and are anti-coercion. However, many of them are big believers in philanthropy and true voluntary social contracts - just not the kind enforced by the barrel of a gun. They're not opposed to education or social services - just of funding them by force. It might seem like a small thing, but it's not - if a society could built that achieves high levels of education and prosperity without coercion, most people would think that's a good outcome. Libertarians frequently believe this is possible. They might be wrong, but the attitude is not "let them eat cake" - it's "my life, my choice for what I do with it, take your hands off of me." But many or most believe in learning and prosperity.

forensic 15y ago
It's unrealistic because the people with the money are not going to give it away unless you force them. In the industrial revolution the wealthy had a motivation to educate the masses: get better workers and fill the military. What now though? Robots are better soldiers AND workers. Carnegie and Rockefeller were motivated by foreign competition to help people with education and social services. Rockefeller in particular focused his social services on birth control to reduce overpopulation because he saw little value in human life at the bottom of society. Now that masses are simply not needed for anything, and the masses no longer are a military threat due to extreme military tech, the masses have no bargaining chips other than appealing to the humanity of the plutocrats. And I fear that many of the plutocrats agree with Ayn Rand when she says, "I don't want your appeals to my better nature. Appeal to my self-interest." How does someone with no money, no marketable skills, no way to afford education, no ability to exert physical power, continue to survive when the upper class only accepts appeals to their self-interest?
- eneveu 15y ago
  Rockefeller in particular focused his social services on birth control to reduce overpopulation because he saw little value in human life at the bottom of society. That's pretty interesting. Being European, I don't know much about US industrialists and US population policy. I'd like to learn more about this. Do you have books / articles you'd advise on this subject?

reemrevnivek 15y ago

When they have no marketable skills, they'd better learn some. In the absence of mental or physical handicaps, I don't see any reason why people would be incapable of doing this.

bdr 15y ago
It seems like the mental/physical floor required to get a job is getting higher.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  The physical floor has crashed, actually. Today a man in a wheelchair can contribute meaningful work.
  - bdr 15y ago
    Only above a certain mental floor. Calling it a floor in general is oversimplifying, it's a curve (Stephen Hawking, football player).
- protagonist_h 15y ago
  i would say "education floor" is getting higher. very few jobs fully utilize human mental capacity.
forensic 15y ago
Education is expensive and hard. If the people at the top don't reach down with a helping hand, few from the bottom will be able to stand. Is this the world we want to live in? Social Darwinism?
nodata 15y ago
Why marketable skills? Why not useful skills. I find the focus on marketing as much as a problem as everything else.

zizee 15y ago

Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life Which billionaires do not value unskilled human life? How many billionaires are their in the world? Are there really many, many of them that feel that way? Are they really all that selfish that they would happily destroy millions of lives? What does that benefit them?

forensic 15y ago
Actions speak louder than words. Billionaires stand by while the miserable and hopeless suffer. Billionaires fund FOX News to indoctrinate the middle class and push them toward self-destruction. Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment? By their actions the upper class is saying that they don't want a middle class. They are saying: if the middle class is so stupid to fall for Rupert Murdoch propaganda and Evangelical Christianity, then they deserve to be enslaved. The alternative would be to fund liberal educations, fund free mental health services, fund enlightening media like PBS rather than saying, "If the middle class won't fund it it doesn't deserve to exist." So many of the elite put all the burden on others. It's true that people should take care of themselves, but they don't. Mental illness is epidemic. Are the wealthy going to stand by and watch as the middle class implodes? Not all plutocrats are malicious, but the majority are indifferent, and their actions speak this.
- yummyfajitas 15y ago
  Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment? I have no clue what a "culture of empowerment" is, but as to funding education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundati... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donate-half-his-wealth-to-charity/ http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donat... Another billionaire was recently in the news for donating $40k to a Republican governor. He also donated $7M to PBS, $35M to educating people about evolution and $78M to educating people about science in general didn't make the news. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy These are just a few that I can think of. Peter Thiel also funds education, though probably not the sort of education you wish he would fund.