Russians Marvel At American Bolsheviks And Give Fair Warning To The Consequences
 

Russians Marvel At American Bolsheviks And Give Fair Warning To The Consequences

Worth a read and a well worded warning.

It kind of speaks to why I've said, for the last couple of years, I feel like we're living in the movie, "Dr. Zhivago", but without the love triangle. You think people would learn from history...

Life isn't a movie though. Open your eyes and get out of your nightmare, but stay in Chicks'. :cool:

Not sure what your meaning by the "nightmare" but I definately get the gist of the article. More and more people think they are just entitled to have everything without really putting forth any effort. Once people see they don't have to work for anything then soon everybody stops actually working and then, where does the money come from?

"The greatest reward this life has to offer is hard work worth doing." --Theodore Roosevelt.

There will always be plenty of people who feel like Teddy did. They, and the machines, will get all the work done that needs doing.

An old right wing tactic used to scare the white working class that lazy colored folk, welfare trash and democrats all want freebies which will be paid for by the white working class.

Just to clarify, I think that people of multiple races would do the same thing.

Agree with the quote totally!

But

Who are the machines?

Oh man, another of these "well written" articles that makes my head hurt trying to understand the point. I won't try to parse it because when I wrote a carefully considered response to the one you posted about the rise of Naziism, I got nothing back. I will ask you though, what you think the point of this is. In two sentences, what is the author trying to say?

Robots for the shop, AI for 'white collar' work.

I also have been trying to understand. I will take a stab at it.

I believe it is an attempt to intimidate so that one would be fearful to discuss openly the rising inequality.

However, there is a coming storm of contradictions: the rise of robots leading to the disappearance of human workers and massive rewards going to the .01% but with no UBI in place. Those who promote UBI will be cast as Bolsheviks. Watch it Andrew Yang!

"Makers and takers", Ayn Rand bullshit.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) will be necessary to sustain demand. How are permanently unemployed people supposed to consume? Who will buy what the robots make? There must be sales for the capitalists to reap profits.

Often in these social unraveling logic is missing and there is a reach for "let them eat cake".

The employed workforce is yet another commons the capitalists are destroying. There is a gotcha in thinking 'I can fire most of my workers, and everyone else's workers will sustain my market.'

Another insight: What did they do with the massive tax giveaways?

They had massive stock 'buy backs' and paid yuge dividends/bonuses.

So what your saying is, a company owner fires all workers and puts robots in their place. While he is not employing people who could then by things he is relying on other employers to have employees who can afford his products, until the next employer goes to all robots.

Thing is, I don't think any companies are thinking "I can fire most of my workers, and everyone else's workers will sustain my market." :cool:

That's the idea, yes. The point is, it's in every employer's interest to reduce his labor cost as much as he can, and that interest is persistent in all economic conditions. But if they all do it enough, they wreck the economy. No one employer is responsible for the aggregate effect, or intends it. But it's an emergent result from the system.

Or an emergent from technology.

You can look at it that way, as technology is making it happen more.

You are correct. In addition, it's all the emerging technologies that have arrived since the start of the Industrial Revolution, along with other things, that has us here today.

Really it's always been going on. Creating things that make our lives easier. Think about the wheel. The simplest thing that made a huge difference, I would assume.

You are correct about the industrial revolution. What I see as the true issue is since technology has made our lives so much easier it has also created a much lazier society. The jobs that just require hard physical labor are actually going up in pay scale cause people dont know how to work hard. The jobs that I see being slowly taken over by "bots" are things like cashiers. Sometimes when I go to walmart I feel I should get a W2 since I'm doing the work for them, self checkout. Kiosks at mcdonalds to order food.

Another issue I see is people wanting to be paid a crapton of money for jobs that don't require really much effort or education.

Sorry for the intrusion but I have to ask, what kind of work do you do?

A/V install for a small company. Why inclined to ask?

Just curious.

There must be something that sparked your curiosity?

Not really. Just idle curiousity.

Me, I'm a retired general construction puke. Everything from roofing to carpentry, plumbing etc.

Ah. I grew up on a farm. Have done all of those things. Pretty cool actually. My dad was the type if he needed it he "built" it with steel. Many roofing jobs, carpentry, plumbing, welding, machining, repairing vehicles. Running farm equipment, moving pipe (hated that), loved running combine though.

My dad was similar. I didn't value that growing up. I value it highly now.

I spent most my childhood in the shop with my dad. Taught me the mentality of "do it right or don't do it at all".

Best memories though are when we ran IMCA Hobby Stock. Dirt track oval racing. Pulled an old car out of the weeds and ran it the first year then built a new car the next year along with one for one of our friends. Built another new car for the third year. I drove the cars and dad knew how to set them up. It was a blast for three years.

I envy that ability you guys had to work together on something. My dad was real good with tools, but was unable or unwilling to teach my anything or work together with me. The only thing was, about once a decade, if he needed a bit of free-form design work, he'd ask for my help with that. If you couldn't draw it with a square, he was helpless.