37 replies to this topic

[ExpandMyMind]

LMAO. Sorry couldn't resist.

[aztek]

me-wonders, on 20 December 2012 - 06:24 PM, said:

Excuse me, but are you suggesting we should ignore what is happening because it has been happening since the beginning of the industrial age

no, i was not suggesting anything at that time, i just mentioned that men have lost jobs to machines since steam power was invented.but if you insist, i suggest you get used to it, cuz it will be happening more and more, and adopt.

[Render]

Well that's not entirely correct.

The machines taking the jobs of ppl stems from the industrial revolution and taylorism. Organisation have evolved from that stage.
Automatisation doesn't automatically lead to getting fired. Quite the contrary. With new systems, new functions arise. Most companies are also very aware of morale and know that talks of a new system scares ppl. That's why many companies ask for a design in which everyone will still be needed. Sometimes a bit of reschooling needs to happen yes. And that's the way we are headed. Less constrained tasks and more multifunctionalism. More reschooling to keep up and also don't "get stuck" in what you do.
Of course there are companies that deliberately ask for a new system so they can use it as an excuse to fire ppl, but you'll find that these are the minority. It's also very location related. (For example, in China you have a different attitude towards workers than the western world.)

See Toffler and his third wave.

[me-wonders]

Professor T, on 18 December 2012 - 07:30 AM, said:

The way I figure it, Capitalism, Corporatism, and Consumerism are all starting to collapse into one big heap.. Don't get me wrong, these big three C's have certainly done wonders and advanced our civilisation to where it is.. But these three C's have seen their time and the time to drop them is fast approaching.. They used to work for us.. But we have become their slaves.. These three big C's no longer serve the people, they serve a small elite who only care about profit and power.  

All these Corporations use Advances in Techology (protected by Copyright) remove jobs, lower wages, you name it, these big C's are out to make a profit and they don't give a damn about society so long as they can make a quick buck.. & the Governments really don't care either.. They may say they do, but its the Big C's that pull the strings.. Unemployment is not going to go away.. It's going to get worse...

When I was working for a big corporation, I was involved in the installation of a lot of robotics and machinery that basically put an end to over 300 jobs across the country.. Here's a very rough estimate of the Maths..

one off cost of Equiptment 13.2 million.
300 jobs lost @ 45,000.00 PA = Annual wage saving of 13.5 million. (actually i think it was more like 500 jobs & 2 factories, but can't find the darn numbers)

Did the cost of our products go down to reflect these savings?? nope it went up, damn near doubled thanks to some clever marketing.

There seriously needs to be a social and economic restrucuring when this kind of thing is going on.. It's foolish to carry on denying the fact that These corporations are raking it in and creating false scarcity in goods and servises just so that they can charge more to customers who cant afford it because Mr Robot took their Jobs and they are Unemployed.. It's foolish to deny that this is happening. The system has been broken by greed and money..

I am wondering if we can use the evolved capitalist model to build the social economic structure we need, given today's technology.

Marx said capitalism evolves, and what Weber has to say about economic social change is most exciting!  Here is the problem.  We are not well read, so we are not prepared for the necessary discussion.  I will blame education for technology for this, because this education has prepared everyone to serve the military industrial complex, instead of preparing everyone for life.

Actually, the cooperation has to answer to the stock holders.  I think the idea of moving  Social  Security into the stock market is a good one, but it was not well thought out.  Along this line, we have the idea that some businesses are too big to fail, so the government bails them out when they get into trouble.  Hello, this protects the stock holders right?  

Maybe what we should throw into this discussion is Deming's democratic model for industry?   Our industry is based on England's autocratic model.  We enter WWI crying "Democracy and autocracy can not co exist", in complete denial that our industry is autocratic.  Autocratic industry is bad for many reasons, including the harm done to families.

I wish everyone were prepared for this discussion, because no one is going to figure things out, if is not you and I.  Absolutely everyone, from CEO's to politicians is working to serve him/her self.  They have everything to loose, if they do not please others who are also self interested.   We have nothing to loose so we are best suited to resolve our social/economic problems.  But are we ready for this conversation?

[me-wonders]

Render, on 21 December 2012 - 04:30 PM, said:

Well that's not entirely correct.

The machines taking the jobs of ppl stems from the industrial revolution and taylorism. Organisation have evolved from that stage.
Automatisation doesn't automatically lead to getting fired. Quite the contrary. With new systems, new functions arise. Most companies are also very aware of morale and know that talks of a new system scares ppl. That's why many companies ask for a design in which everyone will still be needed. Sometimes a bit of reschooling needs to happen yes. And that's the way we are headed. Less constrained tasks and more multifunctionalism. More reschooling to keep up and also don't "get stuck" in what you do.
Of course there are companies that deliberately ask for a new system so they can use it as an excuse to fire ppl, but you'll find that these are the minority. It's also very location related. (For example, in China you have a different attitude towards workers than the western world.)

See Toffler and his third wave.

Okay, you got my attention.  There are sooo many books to read, but may be we can agree to reading Toffler's last book, and sharing it in the forum?   There is value in knowing history and how things evolved, but we do not realize how different things are today, and will be in the future, our knowledge of the past can't be very helpful.   What I would like to do is pick one book and create a forum for that book.  Then after everyone has a copy of it, take the book one chapter at a time, and discuss each chapter in the forum.   Here is some information about Toffler and his third wave

http://en.wikipedia...._Wave_(Toffler)



I have some of Toffler's books and also Buckminister Fuller.  I think F.E. Trainer's book "Abandon Affluence!" is also important.  We must think globally.  There is no way we can industrialize the whole world and maintain a decent standard of living for everyone, by repeating the old industrial model around the world.

Edited by me-wonders, 22 December 2012 - 04:44 PM.

[me-wonders]

aztek, on 21 December 2012 - 03:10 PM, said:

no, i was not suggesting anything at that time, i just mentioned that men have lost jobs to machines since steam power was invented.but if you insist, i suggest you get used to it, cuz it will be happening more and more, and adopt.

Adopt to what and how?   I kind of liked the idea of communes.   The way we talk of the 60ty's is kind of lame.  That was a time when some realized we are a path of self destruction and major change need to be made.  Communes were about returning to a simpler life and sharing things like a kitchen in common.  One kitchen can serve several families, instead of each family owing a refrigerator, stove, and all the rest of the appliances.  Of course if several families share the same resources, the market for the appliances shrinks and this is not good for economy as it is structured today.  

The trick to making a commune work, is how do you get people to get along?  How do you get everyone to do their fair share of the work, and to put down their petty differences?  This is completely different from, everyone having his/her own home, because people can not get along for more than an hour or two, before the tension explodes into fighting.   Heck, I think most families can not handle getting together for Christmas.  I used to live with a lot of family and friends, when everyone was dependent, and now brothers and sisters aren't even talking to each other.  Trying to make Christmas work under these conditions, is like pulling a hundred pounds up the side of a steep rock mountain, and avoiding the mountain lions and rock slides.  . We have taken individualism down a dark tunnel, and this doesn't work for communal living.

[Render]

me-wonders, on 22 December 2012 - 04:43 PM, said:

Okay, you got my attention.  There are sooo many books to read, but may be we can agree to reading Toffler's last book, and sharing it in the forum?   There is value in knowing history and how things evolved, but we do not realize how different things are today, and will be in the future, our knowledge of the past can't be very helpful.   What I would like to do is pick one book and create a forum for that book.  Then after everyone has a copy of it, take the book one chapter at a time, and discuss each chapter in the forum.   Here is some information about Toffler and his third wave

http://en.wikipedia...._Wave_(Toffler)



I have some of Toffler's books and also Buckminister Fuller.  I think F.E. Trainer's book "Abandon Affluence!" is also important.  We must think globally.  There is no way we can industrialize the whole world and maintain a decent standard of living for everyone, by repeating the old industrial model around the world.

I dont know about you but i dont have time to read Tofflers book and dont have any reason to do so.
The summarization of Toffler related to this topic is good enough.

There are a lot of ppl who are practicing a profession where they have to take effects of technology into account so i wouldn't worry about it too much. There is no technological apocalypse going on, quite the contrary.

[me-wonders]

Render, on 26 December 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

I dont know about you but i dont have time to read Tofflers book and dont have any reason to do so.
The summarization of Toffler related to this topic is good enough.

There are a lot of ppl who are practicing a profession where they have to take effects of technology into account so i wouldn't worry about it too much. There is no technological apocalypse going on, quite the contrary.

Might you explain more about how technology is changing the work environment?  Imagine you have to explain this to a 14 year old, who has decided s/he has all the education s/he needs and has decided to not go to school.

[White Unicorn]

There's not going to be any big changes because of the government and economic systems in place unless they all break apart which will bring a lot more insanity in the systems and in people's lives.  Talk of community life and one house family life not working to get along,  imagine the whole country with no sense on how to get along with each other, even the communities that I know could work would probably be invaded by the criminals trying to survive from other areas. Modern people do need a working government to lead us toward the right direction.

The mentality that marketing and profit has brain washed us to put value on things instead of each other.  I see how kids are left with TV baby sitter and what they see are not the values we were brainwashed with in the 50s and 60s like how family and caring was the most important thing and everybody can make a difference to the world.  I think maybe we have a lot of strife now because us of peace and love not war generations still have a belief in humanity but the kids after never had a taste of what we had they seem to be raised in poverty with parents working too many jobs or utterly spoiled and living rich. How do the poor kids stand a chance to go to college and get out of it now?

I was raised poor working class but still had more than kids today. I had a stay at home mom and grandparents.  We came into lots of money from hard work and mostly  luck. I was then spoiled rotten and thought my grandparents who were rich then became poor in the depression and became well to do again were wrong.  They were right! They always lived poor but with what they needed and wanted and helped others. Money doesn't matter and it only enslaves you to houses, cars and bills and new expensive stuff to throw away and distances you from family.  Many of the rich who gave to build hospitals and support charities are now the working poor through bad investments, job loss, illnesses that can take well over a million dollars after the insurance limits that existed.  I see it all around just like what happened to my grandparents. I'm  lucky because I had lived poor before and know that people are more important than things.

As a dreamer of a better world, I always thought  technology like the Jetsons would be better because we'd still have families but in a way we don't.  How bad is it when your neice and boy friend text to each other across a Christmas dinner because it's more private and neither one will talk to anybody!   There are book's on how to talk at family dinners since no one really talks at all except about weather or something they want to buy!

When I was little I thought that if technology came  people would job share and make almost the same money as everyone else.  All the George Jetson's would be paid good money to push a button for less hours because of the robots. America has so many natural resources there was enough to share a good life with all and robots would do the meanial work. People would be free to learn, be creative and live a better life with each other. But  it ended up the income went down and people with lower level jobs got extra crappy jobs to make ends meet and the only parent children had at home had to go to work too. The other workers made more money and because they were upper corporate or worked 24/7. The investing rich became richer and the working class and poor became poorer. Everyone needs jobs and education to better society as a whole, not constant toil just to survive. Back in the day when people became rich in America they were the working class they lived the dream but still had values. Today it is third generation rich who do not even comprehend working class or being poor, they don't have the same values. I think that has a lot to do with the struggles we now face. Value placed on physical or mental labors are not equal even in their own sector.  Just today I met a man who waters flowers as a job he works FT and makes $17 an hour and has no college.  Other laborers work for $7.70  doing hard labor in the same town and have college!  Corporate says sell sell because you make more on commission but can't survive on their base pays so you work 24/ 7 to find sales.  It's the beast of capitalism  but other forms of goverment have worse.  No easy way out of this at this point.

Our forefathers had freedom and equality in mind but did not foresee the beast of society that would be created by robots taking our jobs and creativity and ultimately our dream of the American life of liberty  for the pursuit of happiness. This part was forgotten by the corporate greed since it's educated third or fourth generation have always been sitting pretty as the rulers in the corporate world and regulating themselves!

We all know what is right and  must somehow work together and get back on the right track without  civil unrest and try to make the system we have better.  It won't be easy even if possible.

[Render]

White Unicorn, you can't expect a society to go from one point in time and just snap it's fingers and become A Jetson Future.
Evolving takes time...duh.

[Render]

me-wonders, on 26 December 2012 - 04:53 PM, said:

Might you explain more about how technology is changing the work environment?  Imagine you have to explain this to a 14 year old, who has decided s/he has all the education s/he needs and has decided to not go to school.

Leveling down the hierarchy since everyone gets more access to more information about the company, thanks to decentralized IT systems.
IT is made for supporting, instead of replacing humans, in their daily chores.
Ppl are mainly acceptive of technology that supports the boring and repetitive tasks, so workers can in turn take on more diverse tasks and work "on a higher level" where more insight is required than assembly line kind of work. Some, mainly the older and less educated population, brings up the most resistance and fear for have to re-educate and such.
Expert systems still get quite a bit of resistence, which is still very valid in these times since computers do not possess intuition yet. For example managementsystems already exist to support manager desicions. Some can also make the decision for the manager, but this isn't used because a big part of a decision is experience. Which is not explicitly programmable. And even if every possible scenario could be put into code it would take too long for the computer to run over all the possibilities and give an answer. A person's history makes up for a big part of present decisions in his/her life and workspace. Therefore managers choose not to use this ability. In many cases the most efficient answer isn't the most wise/moral decision.

The field of ergonomics (physical, mental as well as organisational) is becoming increasingly popular in designing new automatisation systems. Preventing RSI and a like is higher on the agenda.
So technology and the workspace is shaped around that, or they're trying to shape it around that at least. It takes time of course.
For example a reptitive task is difficult in a cognitive sense because eventually mistakes will be made, human mistakes. If a computer can take on a part of this taks to diversify the humans' tasks this could and would raise moral and efficiency.

If you implement a new automatisation system in a work environment, that environment itself will react to it. So dependend on what was asked of the system it can create new jobs, new creative insights, etc. Since we are clearly evolving to a higher cognitive workspace this would lead to (parts of) Tofflers third wave quite seamlessly.

[White Unicorn]

Render, on 28 December 2012 - 10:23 AM, said:

White Unicorn, you can't expect a society to go from one point in time and just snap it's fingers and become A Jetson Future.
Evolving takes time...duh.

We did move ultrafast fast from the industrial revolution to computer tech and robotics in all fields.  We had labor unions the first time around which meant workers who were displaced were trained to fill the gaps created.  They  had appreticeships and trained you for the new job functions for the new tech right out of high school!  You didn't need a master's degree you had on the job training as well as special classes.  Now they just seem to displace workers and hire people with degrees and then TRAIN  them instead of the displaced workers.  Labor unions went too far in one direction and the free market went too far in the other direction during the last tech revolution. Major factor I see is when the older workers with highly specific jobs get displaced they are too old to the company to be retrained because they want younger workers who won't be retiring soon after being retrained.  They have to compete in a labor market with younger and stronger people so a lot of them are left out of the job market and spend down all their resources.   Society needs to find middle ground to keep people productive not just early underfunded  retirements!  Economy slides when all these people lose disposable income and it seems no one pays attention to the reprocussions until after it downswings for several decades. If tech evolves fast our society as a whole must evolve just as fast so not be left behind because of it !

Edited by White Unicorn, 29 December 2012 - 12:44 AM.

[me-wonders]

Thank you to both of you for your very meaningful post!   I have been in another forum where the posters are insulting and really have nothing of value to say, and this makes me appreciate you 100 more!

Render, I like I what you say, but I think White Unicorns pessimism is closer to our reality.  The following link is a long read but the author did an excellent job of studying our reality and covers the complex details.  I bookmarked it so I can return to it and deepen my understanding.

Quote

http://www.theatlant...ica/308844/1/  

Throughout much of the 20th century, simultaneous technological improvements in both agriculture and industry happened to create conditions that were favorable for people with less skill. The development of mass production allowed low-skilled farmers to move to the city, get a job in a factory, and produce remarkably high output. Typically, these workers made more money than they ever had on the farm, and eventually, some of their children were able to get enough education to find less-dreary work. In that period of dramatic change, it was the highly skilled craftsperson who was more likely to suffer a permanent loss of wealth. Economists speak of the middle part of the 20th century as the “Great Compression,” the time when the income of the unskilled came closest to the income of the skilled.
The double shock we’re experiencing now—globalization and computer-aided industrial productivity—happens to have the opposite impact: income inequality is growing, as the rewards for being skilled grow and the opportunities for unskilled Americans diminish.

There is just no way manufacturing is going to require a large work force like it did our past.  It is not as simple as getting more education.  That education will be essential to getting a job, but the number of jobs will not employ the masses that past manufacturing did.  The link features a young intelligent woman, who got pregnant.  She is very lucky to have one of the few non skilled jobs, and there is no way she can work to support her child, and raise her child, and return to school, until her child is raised, and then her advanced years will become a barrier to employment.    Her low income fate is sealed, but she is still much better off than all the people who are not needed, because robotics have replaced humans.

It is not my point to be pessimistic but carry through with the hopes of promises of which White Unicorn speaks, of the increases of productivity, with decrease human effort, leading to the good life.   This is a great puzzle that we absolutely must figure out.   If the greater mass is living in poverty, and can not buy the nice homes and cars and all the products and services that go with them, the whole economic structure will fall.  Like we could have the poverty of India if we do not figure this out.  This would be a shame.  Will our success destroy us, or will we figure this out?

The really terrible fact of life is, not everyone is college material, and there are only so many non skilled jobs for the masses.  What are we to do?

Edited by me-wonders, 29 December 2012 - 03:27 AM.

[Professor T]

me-wonders, on 22 December 2012 - 04:26 PM, said:

I am wondering if we can use the evolved capitalist model to build the social economic structure we need, given today's technology.

Marx said capitalism evolves, and what Weber has to say about economic social change is most exciting!  Here is the problem.  We are not well read, so we are not prepared for the necessary discussion.  I will blame education for technology for this, because this education has prepared everyone to serve the military industrial complex, instead of preparing everyone for life.

Actually, the cooperation has to answer to the stock holders.  I think the idea of moving  Social  Security into the stock market is a good one, but it was not well thought out.  Along this line, we have the idea that some businesses are too big to fail, so the government bails them out when they get into trouble.  Hello, this protects the stock holders right?  

Maybe what we should throw into this discussion is Deming's democratic model for industry?   Our industry is based on England's autocratic model.  We enter WWI crying "Democracy and autocracy can not co exist", in complete denial that our industry is autocratic.  Autocratic industry is bad for many reasons, including the harm done to families.

I wish everyone were prepared for this discussion, because no one is going to figure things out, if is not you and I.  Absolutely everyone, from CEO's to politicians is working to serve him/her self.  They have everything to loose, if they do not please others who are also self interested.   We have nothing to loose so we are best suited to resolve our social/economic problems.  But are we ready for this conversation?

Capitalism promotes individualist economics imo..
What I mean by that is it promotes individual wealth, and promotes individual economic ideas over and above the needs of society.. In a word, it promotes and creates greed by maintaining an imbalance of resourses.

[me-wonders]

Professor T, on 29 December 2012 - 09:39 AM, said:

Capitalism promotes individualist economics imo..
What I mean by that is it promotes individual wealth, and promotes individual economic ideas over and above the needs of society.. In a word, it promotes and creates greed by maintaining an imbalance of resourses.

Marx argued, capitalism evolves and becomes self destructive.   I think we have hit the self destructive point.   This is not just capitalism, but we no longer need a mass of non skilled laborers, and there will never again be a need for a large mass of workers.   So now what?

Edited by me-wonders, 29 December 2012 - 05:04 PM.