953 replies to this topic

[Mind]

Wendy's To Replace Workers With Self-Service Kiosks Due To Minimum Wage Increases

 

Wendy’s (WEN) said that self-service ordering kiosks will be made available across its 6,000-plus restaurants in the second half of the year as minimum wage hikes and a tight labor market push up wages.

 

I think this is a fairly predictable economic response to increases in the minimum wage. It's an incentive to automate more aggressively. 

 

Same thing at KFC: http://www.zerohedge...entirely-robots

 

Just raise the minimum wage up to $100 per hour, and I am sure everything will be fixed, lol
 

[Major Legend]

Why not at least entertain the possibility that achievement behavior might soon become maladaptive?

 

Interesting line of thought. You mentioned genetic engineering in relation to this - I would say achievement behavior would be hard to define if not non-existent in genetics. Afterall

genes only tell you enzyme/protein expressions.

 

I imagine the 16-18 years or so of growing up plays a large part into how people think - hence differences in cultures regarding work ethic.

 

If you want to "engineer" people to be not achievement driven, parts of Europe have already successfully done that, at least in comparison to countries like American, South Korea, Hong Kong etc.

 

Also if technology was so advanced that nobody needs to work, then logically the family wouldn't be envious of the child that's an "over-achiever", it could perhaps be annoying or unwelcome behavior.

 

Also what is work anyways? What is value? At least 50% of the economy is based entirely of speculative or artificially generated "value" . So that puts the question of - what is work? If somebody has a job at a financial institution made up of products based of speculation of other things real or not - is that really work? Or is that work just generated by ourselves to justify the division of resources/luxuries dictated from a century old division of labour system.

 

Somebody said that the west have been pushing the race forward by using quantitative easing - how much of that value is just stock market money and share buybacks? Is there any real "value" generated there (with QE)?

 

So let's return to the idea of work. If somebody goes and saves hundreds of lives being a paramedic for free, is that considered work or just somebody doing something they are passionate about.

 

^ in our current society the banker would be considered a "worker" and the volunteering paramedic would be considered "unemployed" - this is of course a broad generalisation but as more and more of our economy turns informational, turns digital - the definition of work can only be whittled down to "getting paid regularly".

 

So I think we need clearer, better definitions.

 

For examples Chores(Work nobody wants to do), Actives (People who proactively provide a service to the community), Inactives (People who do not do anything or can't do anything), Statistical (People who do things like work but provide hard to perceive value, gets paid frequently), Passives (People who do very little but live off passive income of assets) and finally Jobber (people who do something they like, and also get paid, the difference between Jobbers and Actives is that Jobbers have responsibilities and deadlines)

 

With these definitions, then it becomes easier to talk about an automated society. In today's society most Chores are not automated, we have a lot of Inactives who don't really know what to do because we are trapped in the old way of thinking about work. Finally at least 50% of the economy is saturated with Passives and Statisticals who don't actually advance the economy or our technology in any manner. Viewed in this manner if we created incentives of being Active, then society will benefit from increased value, even though nobody is actually getting paid more, no jobs are created.

 

On the other hand, if we can stop making being a Passive (land owner) or Statistical (financial instruments) such an admired job, then we can persuade less of society to be those things and create more value.

 

------------------------

 

Another thought to have is people seem to be so willing to throw away the current system - have they thought about that the system might have been working for hundreds of years not because of resource problems, but because fundamentally humans are lazy and greedy, and the capitalist system is the only thing we have so far that has worked to create technological advances.

 

^Perhaps what has always driven people to work is "self interests" it is "achievement" and "recognition" being admired by others. So the fact that other systems have failed to get us closer to singularity, perhaps we should not be blaming the systems, but we just need to face the fact that humans as a race just perhaps doesn't work to its highest ideals without a carrot and a stick.

 

Bar reaching the singularity of course. I think singularity talk is pointless, because at that point all bets are off, any sort of discovery from that point forward will be made by some kind of advanced intelligence beyond our understanding or stuff we simply don't have or understand at the moment anyways. Imagine if singularity allowed travel between different universes or times - by that point who the hell cares about unemployment.

 

Edited by Major Legend, 15 May 2016 - 10:18 PM.

[mag1]

Yes, legislate the minimum wage at $100 per hour, then legislate companies to hire workers at this wage.

Who's laughing now?

 

This seemed to be part of the problem in Greece.

It wasn't so much that people did not want to work.

The problem seemed more that everyone was quite happy to be paid for their no show jobs.

Employment became another entitlement program.

 

This form of labor market distortion gives me a bad feeling.

With the approaching Singularity, it might be helpful for there to be somewhat more labor market flexibility in terms of lowering minimum wages.

 

The technological changes that are looming seem likely to cause a large wave of job displacement and reduce the

marginal product of labor. It is unnerving to think that this new living wage movement could greatly intensify such dislocation. When such 

changes begin, progressives might no longer be pushing for a living wage but instead for any wage. Without a work centered world one

can have legitimate apprehensions about how our society will avoid a near total collapse.

 

I have also noted recently with some astonishment how certain power groups in our community have responded to increasing stress on funding levels:

They have simply refused to compromise! It is quite surprising. We are now facing profound challenges with respect to providing Alzheimer's services and reimagining

how education might be delivered.

 

I would not have thought that government workers would have been so inflexible. What will happen as we get closer and closer

to extreme social change and groups with power will not make reasonable concessions? They might even have to accept wage cuts.

 

There could be this enormous division in society between people without any resources who might have medical needs etc. and a group

with strong job entitlement who will not negotiate nor acknowledge that even their jobs might have become redundant if they were part

of a free market. Of course, as we have seen with the self-serve kiosks, high wages become a driver for innovation to replace people with robots. 

Edited by mag1, 15 May 2016 - 10:07 PM.

[mag1]

I did not want to be too specific in my definition of the genetics of achievement behavior in our family.

However, as a guess I would point to variants in our family member's exome that hint at 

obsessive-compulsive personality trait, intelligence variants (such as Klotho), also variants in 

serotonin processing. Evolution has found a way to find proteins that change a range of 

human behaviors including achievement,

 

I think we have already reached a time that genetically engineering against striving behavior is quite doable.

If society simply recognizes such behavior as maladaptive and gives it some sort of label under DSM definitions,

then we could move toward this nirvana world of non-achievers. People would not even have to be troubled by there

ever having been people who had been driven to succeed. It would be the ultimate triumph of social democratic ideals.

 

As it is now, no matter how much social engineering is done, without genetically engineering the underlying biological 

processes a range of non-collectivist behaviors remain. It is surprising that such a mass genetic engineering program

has never been attempted. In many of these societies such a program would likely enjoy wide spread support. Instead what has

typically happened is that these communities wind up being drained of their most talented people and the entire community 

then enters a stage of decline. By avoiding such a drain by genetically removing talent from the start, the entire society becomes

more stable 

 

 

Clearly such behavior in the past had significant adaptive potential.

The squirrels that squirreled away their acorns for the winter survived, those that did not did not.

 

It would seem to me to be such a powerful challenge.

Within our family achievement type behavior has been very destructive.

If you look at typical schools or work places, then I suspect this behavior also could induce substantial social friction.

It is quite amazing how strongly the narrative of the disliked nerds resonates across cultures and generations. 

 

Genetic engineering gives us this exceptional opportunity to confront this question.

Is society really ready to step up and accept the consequences of genetically engineering against success?

It is easy to victimize people when such people have no clear rebuttal.

Genetic engineering provides a strong and eternal rebuttal. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 15 May 2016 - 10:42 PM.

[Major Legend]

Yes, legislate the minimum wage at $100 per hour, then legislate companies to hire workers at this wage.

Who's laughing now?

 

This seemed to be part of the problem in Greece.

It wasn't so much that people did not want to work.

The problem seemed more that everyone was quite happy to be paid for their no show jobs.

Employment became another entitlement program.

 

This form of labor market distortion gives me a bad feeling.

With the approaching Singularity, it might be helpful for there to be somewhat more labor market flexibility in terms of lowering minimum wages.

 

The technological changes that are looming seem likely to cause a large wave of job displacement and reduce the

marginal product of labor. It is unnerving to think that this new living wage movement could greatly intensify such dislocation. When such 

changes begin, progressives might no longer be pushing for a living wage but instead for any wage. Without a work centered world one

can have legitimate apprehensions about how our society will avoid a near total collapse.

 

I have also noted recently with some astonishment how certain power groups in our community have responded to increasing stress on funding levels:

They have simply refused to compromise! It is quite surprising. We are now facing profound challenges with respect to providing Alzheimer's services and reimagining

how education might be delivered.

 

I would not have thought that government workers would have been so inflexible. What will happen as we get closer and closer

to extreme social change and groups with power will not make reasonable concessions? They might even have to accept wage cuts.

 

There could be this enormous division in society between people without any resources who might have medical needs etc. and a group

with strong job entitlement who will not negotiate nor acknowledge that even their jobs might have become redundant if they were part

of a free market. Of course, as we have seen with the self-serve kiosks, high wages become a driver for innovation to replace people with robots. 

 

Yes if you read my edited post about labeling the type of work instead - basically machines will be replacing a lot of chores and a lot of statistical type jobs. So you would create a lot of inactives, these inactives if made say 20% of the population it would already result in a severe collapse/compromise of the current system. So society needs to change the definitions of work. Unemployed people need to feel like they can still be part of the community by going from Inactive to Active.

Fundamentally from the lenses of a advanced future, we kind of have a caste system. If a landowner makes money from rent, we don't call those people unemployed do we? 

 

I agree that most people are stuck in the past, and it's going to be very hard to make them change their understanding of an increasingly automated society - it's a dangerous thing - we can only hope that

we get a soft landing, the longer people on top of the system keep being asses, the more likely the whole thing will blow up into a WW3, or a split into two species.

[mag1]

Interestingly enough even in a technologically saturated world, "achievement" likely will still play a role.

 

This probably can be seen most starkly on the Canadian native reserves.

Even when everything is provided to people, some will do better than others.

Ironically all that happens when people are placed under such circumstances is that they start to perceive the minor

differences between people even more than before. As much as some might wish, class perceptions can not be 

legislated away.

 

It might not be unreasonable to expect that such environments are creating the most extreme level of evolution of any habitat on the planet.

With close to complete social collapse, it is certainly possible that the only people who will survive will have a range of interesting genetic qualities.

 

Even with intense efforts by socialist societies remolding the human spirit has never been overly successful.

Typically all that happens after a revolution is a new leadership emerges that ultimately is based on the same old ideology.

Genetic engineering could bring about a truly harmonious collectivist society. 

 

One could well imagine that something similar will also occur in most other Singularity societies.

Sociological observers of America have already noted that there is emerging a serious drug problem.

It would not be difficult to imagine that selection against drug behavior genotypes will become increasingly

prominent in the years to come.   

 

The Singularity world will select for a range of genetic characteristics.

Will achievement be selected for or against?

 

 

Edited by mag1, 15 May 2016 - 11:23 PM.

[niner]

Another thought to have is people seem to be so willing to throw away the current system - have they thought about that the system might have been working for hundreds of years not because of resource problems, but because fundamentally humans are lazy and greedy, and the capitalist system is the only thing we have so far that has worked to create technological advances.

 

^Perhaps what has always driven people to work is "self interests" it is "achievement" and "recognition" being admired by others. So the fact that other systems have failed to get us closer to singularity, perhaps we should not be blaming the systems, but we just need to face the fact that humans as a race just perhaps doesn't work to its highest ideals without a carrot and a stick.

 

I like your idea of labeling varieties of occupations to more accurately reflect value creation. 

 

I don't think that people are particularly anxious to throw away the present system, as it has clearly worked more or less ok for a long time, but it's predicated on the human brain being a valuable asset.  When it becomes cheaper to hire machines than to hire human brains, that's what employers will do, in a free market.    Unless we are ok with ragtag armies of starving unemployed people roaming the countryside looking for food and more ammunition, then it looks like free market capitalism is headed for trouble.  It's reasonable to talk about what we might do to head off such problems.

 

I'm not sure what you mean about other systems having failed to get us closer to singularity.   Since we aren't there, and don't know when we will be, it's awfully hard to relate our closeness or the lack thereof to any economic system that we have or haven't tried.
Do you mean that capitalism has led to more technological development than communism?  That would be true, if so.

[Elus]

Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 Per Hour

 

 

“I was at the National Restaurant Show yesterday and if you look at the robotic devices that are coming into the restaurant industry -- it’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries -- it’s nonsense and it’s very destructive and it’s inflationary and it’s going to cause a job loss across this country like you’re not going to believe,” said former McDonald’s (MCD) USA CEO Ed Rensi during an interview on the FOX Business Network’s Mornings with Maria.

 

 

Adidas switches production back to Germany/US from Asia, for first time in 2 decades, to 100% robot staffed factories.

 

 

The announcement came as Adidas unveiled its prototype “Speedfactory”, a state-of-the-art, 4,600 square-meter facility on Tuesday, meant to automate shoe production, which is largely done manually in Asian factories at the moment.

 

Edited by Elus, 25 May 2016 - 08:28 AM.

[marcobjj]

Lol, so MacDonalds is planning on becoming the Red Box of burgers. They will be bankrupt soon after that happens (which they eventually will regardless, so pick your death McDonalds). They are full of shit and they know it.

The 7/hour minimum wage is already being subsidised by middle and upper classes. in case most people didint know it. Ill just paste this post from another board:

"15/hr is roughly 30k.
Current federal minimum wage worked make only about 15k at full-time work but qualify for Medicaid and food stamps at that point. Those benefits for the entire family if they are a parent.

One thought is a question of at what point and how much is government already subsidizing these people at this low of a wage.

In that system, the government is publicizing risk and coat while privatizing the profits.

If everyone make less than 30k is getting benefits that move the total benefits up to 30k, then this move simply privatizes the cost of business instead of public subsidies.

I don't know hthe average benefit cost of a minimum wage worked.

I don't know this the right dollar amount (15 might not be it), but raising minimum wage while cutting benefits off for those people is MUCH better way to handle this. Lower cost to administer. Puts the power back in the workers hands instead of the food stamp office. Stops hiding the true cost of the product.

And if the real cost of human capital is so high that places choose to mechanize those jobs, so be it. I'm not for my tax dollars subsidizing the low paid worker."

Edited by marcobjj, 25 May 2016 - 08:41 PM.

[marcobjj]

The announcement came as Adidas unveiled its prototype “Speedfactory”, a state-of-the-art, 4,600 square-meter facility on Tuesday, meant to automate shoe production, which is largely done manually in Asian factories at the moment.

Im guessing that the "integration" of those 1million low skilled muslims they took in last years wont work too well eh. Who couldve thought....

[mag1]

Remarkable that with all the technological changes that have happened over the decades and even the changes that have occurred

during the last few years, we are still approaching near full employment levels. The Fed has been carefully watching the heating up of

the economy and is expected at some time in the not too distant future to implement macroeconomic policies that will slow the economy.

They will actually need to find a way to increase unemployment! Which is strangely counter-intuitive given the focus of this thread.

 

http://www.tradingec...employment-rate

 

Our discussion has overlooked the enormous economic benefits that are created by liberating human potential. Consider all of the precious

human accomplishment and achievement that went unaccomplished and unachieved under non-market economies. All those billions of lives

squandered on socialistic utopias that became dystopias.

 

We really need to make an environment for the 1% of the global intellectual elite to achieve their full potential. It is remarkable how much wealth

the technological elite in China has created over the last few decades. And of course, they are just getting started. The days of the Proletariat

Democratic State hopefully will not return. Those who can row the boat should be given every opportunity to do so.

 

Furthermore, there is substantial unrealized human potential beyond the 1%. Typically the low hanging fruit will be harvested, and yet there

is still yet more potential available. Human potential needs to be recognized as the most valuable of all resources. It would be all too easy

to slip back into the dismal past, if we were to withhold too much of the gains that have been achieved from those on the margins of our community.  

A global launch of market based capitalism has been achieved, the wealth that will be created in the years ahead is going to be monumental.

 

We cannot afford to live in a world again where Dr. Einstein weeds the garden, Dr. Warburg drives a tractor and Dr. Bohr plants tomatoes.

It was not so long ago that this would have been true in China and many other developing economies. Liberating human potential in order

to create the next generation of technology is of far larger importance and is more reflective of true real wealth than the ownership of any

other resource.

 

   

 

 

Edited by mag1, 05 June 2016 - 08:34 PM.

[marcobjj]

Western economy is on Fed induced life support. Look at the data. they gave it a .25% raise in interest last year (from zero) which was supposed to demonstrate how much they trusted the strength economy, with another hike promised for June. Now after the abismal jobs report that came out last week theyre talking about scrapping the interest hike that was planned. So an interest rate of < 1% is enough to put US economy into near recession, which goes to show US never really recovered from the 2008 crisis. It was fictional recovery based on 3 rounds of quantitative easing (money printing), and doubling US debt to nearly 20 trillion dollars. European economy is going down the tubes much in the same manner.


http://www.cnbc.com/...eport-miss.html

"The probability for a June rate hike plummeted Friday after a major miss in the May jobs report.
The Labor Department report said U.S. economy added just 38,000 jobs, far below economist estimates of 162,000."

Edited by marcobjj, 05 June 2016 - 09:47 PM.

[mag1]

Yeah, that was pretty funny. Thursday night I decided to set-up a forex demo account.

After the 30 minute training course, and the graduation party I went to some demo forex trading.

 

Great fun!

I was buying $US for 108.995 Yen and then selling at 109.015.

$10 profit in 20 seconds!

Not bad.

 

It seemed though that some traders really wanted out of dollars.

In one of the trades I was short dollars and there was a whipsaw trade.

Couldn't understand why someone would be so interested in exiting dollars.

Sure dollar has been trending down for quite a while, though it seemed odd.

 

 

Then Friday morning I noticed that the dollar had tanked against all major currencies!

USD JPY has been slammed since the start of this year!

Edited by mag1, 05 June 2016 - 10:22 PM.

[Elus]

As Tech Evaporates Jobs, “The Tipping Point Will Be Driverless Trucks” Driverless vehicles “will make what happened in the steel or auto industries look tiny,” says the former chief of one of America’s largest unions.

 

 

 

"It’s 3.5 million truck drivers. Then there are 6.8 million people in auto repair, insurance, rest stops, gas stations and emergency rooms that all live off those 3.5 million people"

 

Edited by Elus, 12 June 2016 - 03:48 PM.

[mag1]

This has been my ongoing position on this thread:

Distribution is the central node of our economy.

 

Marx went on at length decrying the injustices of the means of production.

In a modern economy the means of production winds up in the nation with the lowest conceivable wage rates.

Can such a nation truly call winning under such circumstances a victory?

Yet, even with China's low wage rates there is growing concern that China's competitive advantage is eroding.

 

I have been considerably more anxious about the means of distribution.

Until now I would have agreed in broad outline with the notion that allowing a free market to determine

what would happen to the coal industry or steel industry is the correct economic policy.

 

I am now very apprehensive about applying this same logic to the transport industry.

Transport is at the center of our economy: Everything else radiates outward from this pivotal spoke.

The importance of transport/distribution extends far beyond the conception envisioned in the above quote.

 

On this thread I have consistently advocated the idea that once a robotic transport technology is developed,

the entire retail economy could collapse. In some communities retail is their entire economy. If transport became essentially

free then nearly none of the businesses that could be found in a typical urban environment would have a future.

The approaching urban economic moonscape idea does not seem that far fetched.

 

 

In such a future I could tap on my smart phone or tablet an order for lunch and a robobot perhaps 10 miles away could deliver it to me.

If McDonalds is now able to justify rolling out robotic workers with the current model of distribution, what might happen if they could 

centralize their production to perhaps only a few locations in an entire city?

 

Also in such a future why would I bother walking the few minutes it would take me to get to a supermarket? I could place an order perhaps

in a supermarket in California and have it delivered right to my door probably for less than it would cost if I had to get off the sofa for a walk.

I am quite sure that they could find a way to make sure that the ice cream wouldn't have become a milkshake when it arrived on my doorstep.

 

For any major city anywhere in North America there might be one huge receiving center and from there a simply enormous system of robotic

distribution could ship everything out. The so called last mile problem would be solved easily and it might perhaps only cost pennies to transport

items from the distribution center to the customer.

 

As it is now I have sometimes paid exorbitant prices for shipping. Ordering groceries online now from 2,000 miles away clearly would make no sense today, with 

roboport I am not so sure. It is clear to me that there is simply a massive massive wave of demand approaching for the robotic transport vision, though

there might be virtually no need for any human labor input to sustain such an industry. Given a choice I would order everything that I needed online.

 

Such an economy would not be kind to convenience stores. I have on occasion reached deep into my pocket and paid an extra dollar or two for the convenience

of buying milk when supermarkets were not open. There would be no need to pay a penny over the floor price with transport robots. In the current economy 

there is no great advantage seeking out the lowest possible price for items, as one would hardly be any bit ahead after compensating oneself for one's time and effort.

With online ordering with transbot delivery searching for the lowest price possible starts to make much more sense. This dual pricing that 

exists within  cities at almost every geographic scale or more broadly between nations would disappear. We might all become substantially wealthier

if we were able to access domestic Chinese retail prices and then have items robotically shipped.

 

The implications for the employment economy are profound and are deeply disturbing.

 

A fair number of people might be completely tuned out of reality and might not fully realize how devastating robotic transport likely will be for workers and for

our communities more broadly. However, probably one of the big shock absorbers here is that there are regulatory hurdles that would need to be

surmounted. The FDA has conclusively proven that is possible to make sure that the future never arrives. 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 12 June 2016 - 06:21 PM.

[Major Legend]

 

 

A fair number of people might be completely tuned out of reality and might not fully realize how devastating robotic transport likely will be for workers and for

our communities more broadly. However, probably one of the big shock absorbers here is that there are regulatory hurdles that would need to be

surmounted. The FDA has conclusively proven that is possible to make sure that the future never arrives. 

 

I am not sure about the FDA comparison, companies have nothing to gain from the removal of FDA regulation, companies lobby to keep the FDA regulated and not for it to deregulated the opposite will happen with the likes of Amazon, WallMart etc.

 

The issue with the silicon valley types and elites is they think re-education is the answer, the free market model (which rich people overwhelmingly supports) assumes that people can switch to different higher value jobs when they are displaced.

 

This however turned out to be the wrong assumption, a lot of the coastal towns with working class industries never recovered from the 80s, it turns out its pretty hard to turn the working class into computer engineers overnight (big surprise).

 

This assumption is going to be the downfall of the elite types when there is nobody left with money to buy their mass produced products.

 

The problem with free market wealth is when enhanced by technology it seems to disproportionately benefit the wealthy and not other way around.

 

So we can make the same assumption about removing drivers, it would totally collapse the economy, these drivers are not going to suddenly become creative class people overnight, or even over a few years, just like the people from the mining towns haven't become lawyers and engineers. 

 

There is a whole rich man's assumption that the poor just "don't work hard enough", whilst the free market encourages success by merit it also hasn't really worked for the people who don't have higher cognitive skills, there is not enough resources, education and so on to basically switch these people over.

 

And even if they did, if you are 37 and you had to start all over e.g. 3 years of computer science, 2 years of maths, even if that was all paid for etc you would still only be an entry level person at 40 something, not to mention that it simply gets harder to learn as you get older, at least oldlings can't learn at the rate university freshmen could.

 

As such these people just retreat to early retirement and try to live off the state in whatever manner they can, which ironically just makes everything worst for the economy not better, which in turn affects the revenue of large corporations and the very people who came up with the idea of automation and globalisation.

[mag1]

That is a great point about the long-term implications of structural adjustments in the economy.

It certainly places the closure of factories and entire industries in a very different light when you realize that many of

the laid off workers will never be rehired at a comparable wage level. Businesses can make a very calculated 

short run cost decision while bearing almost none of the downstream costs to the communities affected.

 

I have tried to rethink this issue by taking the exact opposite point of view that I described above.

What if clinging to the economy as it is now is the entirely wrong reflex?

Is it actually correct to assume that it would be best to fossilize our economy and society in the state that they now exist?  

When we look back in time, it is clearly true that at no time in history would societies have actually been better off if they had 

rejected the future. Why should we expect that something that has been true through all of time will not also be true this time around?

 

Economists often embrace a creative destructive model when considering vibrant market economies.

Focusing one's gaze on the welfare of workers and not on that of consumers typically does not help anyone.

 

Consumers need to be at the center of any real economy.

When consumers are not at the center of the universe, all you have is a pretend economy.

Workers, while possibly working quite hard, only become actors in an economic drama which in productive terms is largely hollow.

Potemkin village economies typically become increasingly unstable.

How could such a fanciful invention be anything else?

 

There are still such economies in the world today.

Some economies exist almost exclusively on the basis of subsistence agriculture.

In any modern productive sense such an economy is also a pretend economy.

 

I am trying to rewire my brain to think in this fairly radical mode of thought.

In this new state of consciousness, I imagine myself trashing our modern increasingly hollow economy, so that a new economy can emerge.   

 

Economic anarchy!

Why should the kids have all the fun?

I mean life is largely a game of chicken anyway, isn't it?

 

If you know even a little bit of monetary policy, fiscal policy, the use of financial leverage, then you could do a fairly good job of sweeping aside all of

the cobwebish thinking that is keeping us from having an economy that is actually based on what consumers want.

When the kids see that their parents could be as bug eyed nuts as they sometimes pretend to be, I am sure that the kids would finally getting around

to cleaning their rooms and doing their homework. 

 

The obvious low hanging fruit in such a rampage would be the distribution/transport/spatial organization economy that I have talked about many times before. 

If we were to stress the central spoke of modern economies, economic anarchy would not be far behind.

 

Real estate would become almost worthless: perhaps you could buy land for a box of breakfast cereal.

If location location location were no longer true, then the financial system would soon collapse.

Real estate is mostly valued on the basis of location which is only relevant when there is a specific spatial organization

in the urban landscape. Such spatial organization would quickly disappear once transbots emerged. 

 

The whole rationale for this economic anarchy is to move the economy back to being a real economy where consumers

are offered products and a lifestyle that they want.

If we are still left with a pretend economy in some respects fine!

Jobs could be created that fulfilled the needs of those who needed to pretend.

Why have a pretend economy in which consumers do not even get what they want?

 

Transbots would be a massive windfall for giving consumers a service that would make their lives better.

I would love to have an transbot economy!

There would be simply overwhelmingly massive demand for such a service.

An economy based on actual consumer demand has (from past experience) always ultimately benefited workers.

 

What we probably should focus more on as we approach the Singularity is that the fear response could stop us from

going through the creative-destructive process. It is critically important to rejuvenate our economy in order to have a true

(and not a pretend) economy.

 

Otherwise we are all going to sit around eating sucky burgers in suckyville, when there are so many opportunities for wealth creation at hand.

   

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 16 June 2016 - 04:17 AM.

[mag1]

Brexit? This feels a little like the disruption that we might expect in the early innings of the Singularity.

 

I think the thread should send out its best wishes at this difficult time to the International Society for Free Lunches.

I am sure that I speak for the entire thread when I say that we are pulling for you Free Lunchers!

[niner]

Brexit? This feels a little like the disruption that we might expect in the early innings of the Singularity.

 

I think the thread should send out its best wishes at this difficult time to the International Society for Free Lunches.

I am sure that I speak for the entire thread when I say that we are pulling for you Free Lunchers!

 

Huh?  What does this even mean?  Forum needs a "WTF" button.  (Also a TL;DR button for previous post.)

[mag1]

Anyone care to divine the meaning of the ink smudge?

 

(What is TL;DR?)

Edited by mag1, 24 June 2016 - 09:43 PM.

[niner]

Too Long; Didn't Read.

[mag1]

What I was thinking about with the Free Lunch comment which appears to have been somewhat obscure was that all of those

countries that were likely going to ask for handouts from now till forever will no longer have this option available to them.

 

Nations such as the UK that are based upon grown up assumptions about how an economy should be run were going to be used

as chumps for eternity by those without such economic assumptions. Exploiting others is only successful if there are easy targets

who are perceived to be powerless.

 

Getting out of the EU returns sovereign authority back to the UK. There is already talk that some of the less fiscally stable nations

will now also have to leave the EU. With fewer marks there will need to be a more rational thought process about what the EU is all about.

[marcobjj]

EU should've been about the Schengen agreement and nothing else. Brussels and the ECB are an attempt to usurp European national sovereignties.  Here we are on the verge major breakthrough in life extension, artificial intelligence and we have these turdocrats trying to flood western civilization with X century barbarians for political gain. smh. Congrats to the UK on leaving. I hope the other 27 countries follow suit so that Merkel has to deal with her million refugees and Greek debt alone. No solidarity.

Edited by marcobjj, 26 June 2016 - 05:08 AM.

[mag1]

Why didn't they all just stay friends and not bother tying the knot?

 

Thankfully there has been no great push in North America to extend NAFTA to be anything more than an FTA.

Think how sucky it would be if we pushed for a full monetary, and Schengen agreement to encompass all of the Americas!

Panama could be our very own Brussels! We could have our own amero currency and some modernistic looking symbol.

 

Be glad, be very glad that we have not went that route.

The surest way to hate your neighbors is to live with them for a while (please consult the highly regarded Flintstones animation

series for further clarification). (Life would be so much better if only people had learned their life lessons on the Flintstones. I'll buy that!).

 

Almost every component of euroland seems to be folly.

How could a monetary union of such a disparate economic conglomeration have ever made sense?

 

Even the Schengen Agreement has underlying flaws.

The original agreement with a small number of homogenous nations has been mandated upon all new entrants to the EU.

Was that really a good idea?

Simply mandating uniformity in a region that has spent thousands of years

quarreling over often subtle nuances would not on first appearances be a recipe for success.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 27 June 2016 - 11:29 PM.

[mag1]

Yeah, I am chalking up a whole bunch of off-topic and time wasting ratings, though it seems worth it!

I did a forum google search for Brexit, this was the only thread that even mentioned it!

 

I think we might have crossed the bridge here from really could care less apolitical to not seeing the crazed

villagers with pitchforks heading in our direction oblivious.

 

Brexit is important. It is giving us a clue to how nations will respond to the approaching

globalization/technological challenges.

 

I was quite surprised yesterday when the EU came out with their 4 fundamental freedoms bottom line.

Did anyone know about this beaut? The EU apparently will not consider an application by the UK to join

into a free trade agreement unless they allow unlimited numbers of homeless people into their country.

 

This opens to full public display the troll-like behavior that can happen with these free trade agreements.

Sure, there are all sorts of synergies and wealth available to those who sign up, but first you have to make it

past an ugly ogre who will make all sorts of unreasonable demands.

 

Does the UK have recourse to the WTO over this sort of behavior?

This rent seeking behavior is exactly what many of the eurocrats would

probably be in the streets protesting if it were to be done by a private corporation.

Perhaps they believe it is fine because they belong to a public corporation.

 

It appears that most of the other EU members are also not particularly amused that they have been blackmailed in the

same way. They have all been played for chumps! With all the divisions in Europe it appears that it has been possible

to offer the carrot of free trade at the cost of the stick of burdensome non-trade requirements.

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 30 June 2016 - 11:02 PM.

[marcobjj]

the 4 fundamental freedoms discourse is so disingenuous it's not even funny. Brussels are engaging in demographic warfare, It's pretty obvious for anyone to see now.. After Syrian refugees they will be forced to absorb waves of "climate change" refugees from sub-saharan Africa. The perhaps Iranian refugees depending on how the negotiations on their uranium enrichment program go.  Then whatever middle east country is at war at the moment. And they will just keep bringing in low skill, low IQ immigrants who have no choice but to be vassals of Pro-EU Globalist parties, but who count as "citizens" and are registered to vote nonetheless. Rinse repeat until ethnic europeans become minority in their own countries and no type of Brexit-like sovereign vote is ever possible again. Then they will have their superstate.

 

the UK should not buckle to EU bullying not matter what happens. Become poorer, but stay sovereign. Brussels is most likely not going to exist in 2-3 years and then all the 28 countries can engage in bilateral free trade deals again.

Edited by marcobjj, 01 July 2016 - 05:09 AM.

[PWAIN]

The Germans have a lot more to lose if a free trade deal is not forthcoming. It shall appear... I guarantee it. German will NOT lose nearly 300 billion Euro in exports. They will figure something out.

[mag1]

I have read up on the current global demographic situation.

Needless to say we are heading inexorably toward a complete catastrophe.

The below url shows that by the turn of this century, it is expected that every region and almost every nation

(including nearly every nation in sub-Saharan Africa) will have a total fertility rate below replacement.

 

https://en.wikipedia..._fertility_rate

 

Our thread has not talked enough about this approaching game changer for humanity.

The consequence for employment markets in every nation will be severe.

 

 

Currently a common reflex would be to remove the welcome mat for new migrants.

It is obvious that in the not too distant future those nations that can actually attract newcomers will

likely feel quite fortunate.

 

However, the competition will be overwhelmingly intense.

Migrants will be in a very good negotiating position, as all advanced nations will need them.

 

Furthermore, with the current genome technology, these migrants would be able to easily determine

if any illness susceptibility lurked in their genes. If they were all clear, then they would have even 

a stronger negotiating position. If they had been blessed with genetic good fortune, then they

would realize that they probably would never require expensive government medical services.

 

Why would they want to migrate to a nation with socialized government programs?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 02 July 2016 - 03:17 AM.

[mag1]

Enough has also not been said about the truly profound population scale genetic changes that are likely

now underway. Often with genetic engineering things happen quietly to avoid the endless political

argumentation about the ethics involved. However, it is notable that several childhood illnesses have

already quietly disappeared through genetic science techniques.

 

These same techniques can now be applied to adult diseases. With all of the currently available tools to

determine ancestry and specifically inheritance of genetic illnesses, it is no longer difficult to identify and genetically

select against disease variants and of course, the technology is still on an exponential ramp up.

 

The recent Washington International CRISPR Conference concluded that an international moratorium on gene

editing should occur. Such a moratorium will be unable to prohibit the simple genetic selection technology which 

would eliminate disease from our community.

 

A world without genetic illness would be a world without the need for government. The employment consequences

for the genetic selection techniques suggested here would be extreme. There would be no reason and no political

mandate for a paternalistic state to care for a substantial proportion of those in many of our communities that are

currently unable to care for themselves.

 

We are almost certainly heading into a future in which every member of the community will be more than capable of

handling their own affairs. The addition of CRISPR enhancement would dramatically intensify such independence.

 

The entire conception of society as being divided into service providers and service receivers will very soon be

obsolete. This change would cause a massive disruption in the labor market.

 

 

Edited by mag1, 02 July 2016 - 10:07 PM.

[marcobjj]

 

Currently a common reflex would be to remove the welcome mat for new migrants.

It is obvious that in the not too distant future those nations that can actually attract newcomers will

likely feel quite fortunate.

 

However, the competition will be overwhelmingly intense.

Migrants will be in a very good negotiating position, as all advanced nations will need them.

 

 

The labor replacement is an argument that I just don't buy. Almost all migrant families are on welfare anyway. So why can't Euro countries subsidize their own people instead? The other thing is, they all come for the low skill jobs (exception made for high caste Indians and Chinese immigrants). Which means that very soon, with the advancements in AI and automation, most of those migrants will be below the cutoff limit for economic viability. To sum up, the reason they are being invited over by the millions isn't because of labor shortage but to beef up the pro-EU constituency in EUrope.