3 ms·
circle of life
by sboak 14y ago
circle of life
- angdis 14y agoNot so much a circle. More like an arrow. Pointing downward. This isn't going to end pretty in the long term.
- Ralith 14y agoYeah, at this rate nobody will be working long hours at unsafe assembly lines! Wait a moment.
- yock 14y agoWhy? When did it become a universal truth that human labor must be employed in producing the widgets we consume? Throughout history human labor has been replaced by automation. Some pain is always involved, but society eventually repurposes that human labor to more efficient uses of their skills.
- angdis 14y agoBy the same token, I don't think it is a universal truth that human labor will _always_ be able repurpose itself and/or do so in a way that doesn't involve tremendous human suffering.
- yock 14y agoIt always involves some amount of suffering. Entire generations of people have found themselves in a life dedicated to an obsolete skill. Does that mean we should limit the use of, say, printing machines so that people may be gainfully employed manually copying books? What you're suggesting seems to be to limit innovation for the sake of comfort. A society that buys such a line of thought is far more doomed than the one who may or may not innovate themselves obsolete.
- angdis 14y agoHey, I am not suggesting there's a solution-- let alone even suggesting that we preserve jobs by "limiting innovation" (if that could even be done). All I am trying say is that there had better be something hard thinking about what will happen to people whose jobs become obsolete in large numbers. If recent history is any indication, it seems that we're NOT headed towards increasing the size of the welfare state. Instead we're seeing larger and large rifts between the haves and the have-nots. That's a serious problem and not one that has an easy solution.