You can't stop the evolution of automation, but you can put a complete end to the working class.

[Zalatix]

Myth: increased automation will make life better for everyone, and reduce the need for work.

Reality: more people will be put out of work. No jobs means no income for 99% of the unemployed. No income means no food. Automation won't come for free - you won't get robots given to you for free to take care of you. That, and you need to own or rent land in order to have a standard of living. (Homeless people can't farm or build shelters on someone else's property.) Without a job, 99% of people cannot rent or buy property. Without a pot to piss in, nobody's going to let someone squat on their land and let robots create a living for these landless folk. Logically speaking the bridge is out and there is no way to complete the path from the real world to the fantasy world of automation and high productivity leading to a better life for all.

Over the next decade unemployment is projected to rise to from 200 million to 600 million. There are CURRENTLY 1.1 BILLION people either unemployed or working yet living in poverty. They are not, and will not ever share in the benefits of increased automation. Automation is not creating any jobs for them. Yet worker productivity is skyrocketing.

The going argument is that automation and improved productivity will create more jobs and raise everyone's standard of living. No sane person can say that history has ever shown this to be true, except for SOME of the people who still have jobs. The exploding number of global unemployed and poor people, are living testaments to the fact that this argument isn't panning out in reality.

It's not working. To hide behind the "Luddite" word as a means to avoid talking about the fact that the great automation and productivity dream isn't working, is outright intellectual dishonesty. It is a deliberate act of deception. And screaming "You want us all to go back to horses and carts" is a deliberate attempt to bury the plight of the over 200 million global unemployed and declare it irrelevant.

The Religion of Total Automation and Infinite Productivity is based on utopian theories - aka fantasies and myths. Technology is not God; it can be questioned, and limits are a legitimate concept.

Stepping on millions of workers in the name of progress is NOT A LIBERAL POSITION.

[dogknob]

1. Begs the question: Your thoughts on Space Program?

Not being a smartass. Genuinely curious.

[Zalatix]

4. The space program is the only hope we have.

It's going to take a LOT of jobs to do the research and complex construction / manufacturing (which is above the abilities of modern machines) that'll be involved in a resurgent space program.

[Sherman A1]

2. Very valid points,

we of course need some automation and advancing technologies, however there must be balance and the implementation must be a well thought out process, which I believe it never has been.

[Zalatix]

5. ^^^^^ That.

We need balance. Thank you for posting that.

[Fumesucker]

3. It can't be done under capitalism as currently constituted..

But predatory capitalism is not ordained by God as the only economic system that mankind can use.

At this point technology is the only thing that might save us from a massive population collapse with all the horror and misery that implies, going backwards is not an option at this point unless we want to condemn billions of people to the tender mercies of the four horsemen.

It's my view that we are headed for a technological and cultural singularity beyond which it is impossible to even remotely guess what life will be like in the future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

Physicist and SF author Vernor Vinge wrote this paper in 1993, the entire paper is quite interesting, I'd recommend you read it for a little different perspective.

http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html

The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur):

There may be developed computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. (To date, there has been much controversy as to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.)

Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.

Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

Biological science may provide means to improve natural human intellect.

The first three possibilities depend in large part on improvements in computer hardware. Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades [17]. Based largely on this trend, I believe that the creation of greater than human intelligence will occur during the next thirty years. (Charles Platt [20] has pointed out that AI enthusiasts have been making claims like this for the last thirty years. Just so I'm not guilty of a relative-time ambiguity, let me more specific: I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030.)

What are the consequences of this event? When greater-than-human intelligence drives progress, that progress will be much more rapid. In fact, there seems no reason why progress itself would not involve the creation of still more intelligent entities -- on a still-shorter time scale. The best analogy that I see is with the evolutionary past: Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work -- the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection. We humans have the ability to internalize the world and conduct "what if's" in our heads; we can solve many problems thousands of times faster than natural selection. Now, by creating the means to execute those simulations at much higher speeds, we are entering a regime as radically different from our human past as we humans are from the lower animals.

[sibelian]

6. If altrusim can't play a part, then any progress made wil benefit subsets rather than the whole.

In fact, that's the whole story being played out in the US right now. Altruism vs indifference.

[newthinking]

7. Very simple solution: Fair wages combined with shorter workweeks

In other words, let some of the benefits of modern efficiencies "trickle down" to the commoners.

Instead most remain entirely ignorant and steeped in propaganda. All we hear from our leadership is myth expansion in this area.

[HiPointDem]

10. not simple, because those in power/those with money don't want to do that. it's not a question

of whether it's economically possible, but whether it's politically possible.

[HiPointDem]

8. kr

[Odin2005]

9. Technological unempoyment is a fault of Capitalism, not technology.

[bhikkhu]

11. Well, at least you are blaming it on automation

rather than "free trade" and foreigners.

Mostly I agree with what you have to say - and the problem has been ongoing since the moldboard plow allowed fewer farm workers to feed more of the rest of us. There has been a steady erosion of jobs producing things that are essential to our lives, and a less steady increase in jobs that provide things we don't really need.

Much of the change over the last hundred years has been fueled by crude oil, which is an excellent energy source. Even in the medium-term, this isn't likely to continue to work well. We are already short on the energy and resources that would fuel economic growth, and at some point in the near future (considering climate change a factor as well) maintaining the system that we have becomes problematic. The general shift may be to need more labor in agriculture and manufacture - which industrial automation helped eliminate in the first place - though those were never the kinds of jobs that people aspired to.

[Zalatix]

12. Automation and productivity are the chief cause of global unemployment.

Offshoring is the chief cause of America's unemployment problem.

Automation and productivity will eclipse offshoring in America in due time.