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> A single digital market could bring in €340 billion to European GDP, create 3.8 million jobs, Automation was never about creating jobs. In my experience it's
by wobbleblob 12y ago
> A single digital market could bring in €340 billion to European GDP, create 3.8 million jobs,
Automation was never about creating jobs. In my experience it's mainly about two things:
- Doing the same or more work with fewer people
- Doing things a person cannot safely or accurate or affordably (or at all) do in person
Compare the number of people employed by a major software company compared to a major oil company with a similar market cap. We are not in the business of creating jobs, our job is to save customers money by making jobs redundant.
> Geo-blocking of online content – the geographical fencing in of video services like Netflix NFLX -1.24%, for instance – across the EU should be abolished, the strategy paper says. Copyright law should be updated and harmonized.
That sounds good to me, but the content that's blocked to me is almost never from inside the EU, it's content from American IP owners I'm not allowed to watch / listen to. I don't think this is because of copyright laws, but simply because the content owners insist on selling their IP on a per country basis.
The only thing that stops me from accessing European content are the 23 different official languages.
- sirkneeland 12y agoNot to mention the underlying different cultures in the case of entertainment seservicek like Netflix. Even if the language could be translated on the fly (which will certainly happen inevitably) would Germans find an Italian comedy funny, and vice versa?
- wobbleblob 12y agoI dunno, we know they like Italian cartoons, westerns and opera, so why not?
- FD3SA 12y agoPrecisely. I am still waiting for the dime to drop in politics regarding the true nature of technology. It is all about efficiency, and by definition, human workers are inefficient. Once this fact is internalized and understood, we can begin having a frank discussion on what our societies will look like in the future. Spoiler: it won't be anything like the present system. If the current systems are in place going forward, we will have a dystopian future where a tiny percentage of the world population owns everything, and everyone else is a useless meatbag. Farming, manufacturing, defence, sanitation and other critical infrastructure will be highly automated. Consumer products will no longer be lucrative because the majority of consumers will have zero disposable income. Luxury goods will be the new consumer market [1]. The unholy trinity of capitalism, globalisation and automation is proving far too effective. Off-shore labor minimizes costs in the short term, while automation eliminates them in the long term. As capital increasingly substitutes for labor (in the form of technology) as the sole factor of production, it becomes impossible to participate in the market without large capital reserves. Thus, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Piketty has already documented this phenomenon occurring across the board. We live in interesting times. 1. http://store.apple.com/ca/buy-watch/apple-watch-edition?product=MKL52VC/A&step=detail# http://store.apple.com/ca/buy-watch/apple-watch-edition?prod...