 | Advances in technology will soon cause 70-80?nemployment in the USA. How will all those millions of people eat, then? That will lead to a conflict between Social Market-ists (gov't imposed wealth redistribution) and Free Market-ists (no gov't imposed wealth redistribution).
First, the Luddite Fallacy. It WAS valid UNTIL machines could do most human mental functions better than humans. Some experts are already saying this, but generally it seems like the American Society and its leaders are proceeding in utter ignorance.
You probably know about all the technologies that now exist or will soon be up & running, & which will massively reduce the need for human labor in the economy, thus MAKING MOST HUMANS UNNECESSARY to the economy.
Some facts:
(1) A couple weeks ago all the toll booth workers on the Golden Gate Bridge were all dismissed because the gov't bought a machine to handle everything.
(2) Computer voice recognition already exists, in programs such as Siri and Google Voice and others. But very soon these programs will be so much better. Virtually all the human-staffed customer service call centers will disappear very soon. Human office receptions will be mostly eliminated.
(3) McDonald's already has a prototype version of their fast food restaurant with NO human workers on site.
(4) Wal-Mart & other retailers already have plans for stores with NO human cashiers.
(5) Google's driverless cars and trucks will soon eliminate most drivers of commercial trucks & taxi cabs.
(6) IBM's computer "Watson" defeated the best human players on "Jeopardy" about a year ago. Watson had to hear and understand host Alex Trebeck's spoken speech just like the human contestants. IBM created Watson to replace Medical Doctors. The plan is that nurses and nurses practitioners will take data from patients (temperate, blood pressure, reports of pains, etc.), enter that into Watson, and Watson will order tests and make prescriptions and treatment plans. Unlike human doctors, Watson will KNOW EVERYTHING about medical science. Doctor errors currently kill about 100,000 patients per year in hospitals alone. Patients will DEMAND to be diagnosed by Watson (or other equivalent) & have a prescription by Watson, since studies will show that patients fare so MUCH better when Watson is their “doctor,” and the cost will be MUCH less.
(7) Computers are now replacing the lawyers that formerly had to spend massive hours read through massive amounts of documents turned over to the opposing side in "discovery" in civil lawsuits. Documents now are turned over in digital form, and computers search in seconds them looking for key words and phrases.
(8) Soon publishers will stop printing books on paper. Everyone will have an e-Reader device. That will be the END of every physical library and bookstore.
(9) Soon computers will be able to general characters in movies that are indistinguishable from real humans. Not only actors will lose their jobs, but costume people, makeup people, scene construction people, camera operators, key grips, electricians, lighting experts, etc.
(10) New machines are replacing the humans who pick vegetables in fields.
(11) New machines are replacing human security guards.
(12) Human airplane pilots, both in the military and in commercial service, will soon be extinct. The FAA has already approved testing of drone planes for commercial transportation of non-human cargo.
(13) Most trades on Wall Street are already being made by computers.
(14) The U.S. Postal Service is doomed. Paying thousands of people to drive around in little trucks to deliver little printed pieces of paper to each household each day is going to seem more and more like idiocy.
(15) Most of the reviews and analysis currently being done by human accountants, actuaries, tax experts, and other financial analysts and consultants will be done must better, more more quickly, and much more accurately, by computers.
(16) Web sites already are using computer programs to write the text for stories that report on sports games. The program integrates the statistics from the game into a story text that seems to have been written by a human being.
(17)Most education at the college and high school level will soon be done online, eliminating a massive number of workers.
Thus, GIGANTIC UNEMPLOYMENT, in the range of 70-80?is coming soon to the USA. This will result in Rio De Janeiro type slums all over the USA. That will result in calls for gov't wealth redistribution, which will result in Armed Revolution, Counter-Revolution, concentration camps, & Latin American-style death squads. The rich and ultra-rich are never going to let any government get control of their wealth. Huge bloody CONFLICT is coming.
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Politicians keep repeating the old canard that the solution is to train and retrain Americans for the "jobs of the future." But they are either morons or are lying, since anyone who thinks about it can easily see that even if every American worker had an engineering degree or a computer science degree, the economy just doesn't need that many engineers and computer scientists.
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Why don't more people see this? Why aren't more people talking about this? We are facing soon a catastrophe in the USA (and in other places) on par of the plagues in Europe that killed half of the population in certain areas, and on par with the depopulation in Europe brought about by WWI and WWII.
Sure, you can just repeat the Luddite Fallacy, and proclaim that the economy will always create enough jobs for most people to survive.
But there is no law of economics that says that any law of economics will always operate the same. Laws of economics are not like the laws of physics. Economies and life forms can and do evolve in fundamental ways that make former economic models and ways of life obsolete. I'm sure the last tribe of Neanderthals were certain that nothing was ever going to change, right before the Homo Sapiens swooped down on them, chased them into a dead end canyon were other Homo Sapiens were lying in wait with big clubs.
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In the past the Luddite Fallacy was valid since machines always needed the mental acuity that only human operators could provide, and machines frequently needed maintenance by skilled human hands and minds. But now machines have mental functions that equal or surpass what humans can provide in most work functions. And computers aren't so much repaired anymore as just thrown away and replaced. How many cell phone repair shops have you ever seen? Even most laptop computers are replaced rather than repaired. More and more laptop computers never even need to be repaired for years and years.
In short, when the economy has no use for most Americans, all h*ll is going to brake loose, & that's coming soon.
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2 answers - Asked By: Perro Americano Invicto - 5/16/2013 |
 | We met up with my sister and her friends a week back. She has graduated from her uni with a degree in IT a year back and she is now living in a shared apartment with a number of her former university IT school mates. About 10 of them.
She is now fresh in the job market working as an IT consultant for a consulting company.
However, when we enquired her house mates further, we found most of them are also working as IT consultants in other companies. Some even got jobs of lower status such as call center operators or computer operators.
None of them, including my sister, got jobs pertaining to a university IT graduate, jobs like an IT manager, a network designer, a database administrator or a university lecturer. In fact, one of them was even dismissed from her job as a database manager only 6 months into her job. She is now in a completely different field - retail assistant.
Is this a sign the university degree they had got is not really that good?
Can I have a reply please, sincerely.
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