Recently the establishment mouthpiece known as The Guardian, posted an article that tells you a lot about what the elites want. Specifically, how the elites want to control us with automation. The article discusses Bill Gates’ recent idea to tax robots as a way to mitigate the possibility that automation will cause more income inequality.
What’s particularly interesting about this article, is the nightmarish future that it predicts. If automation eventually eliminates all of our jobs; and with it, the political power and wealth of the common man, how will the elites respond? By separating themselves from the rest of society in private fortified communities, and then exterminating us when we grow resentful.
If that scenario isn’t bleak enough, consider the possibility that mass automation could lead not only to the impoverishment of working people, but to their annihilation. In his book Four Futures, Peter Frase speculates that the economically redundant hordes outside the gates would only be tolerated for so long. After all, they might get restless – and that’s a lot of possible pitchforks. “What happens if the masses are dangerous but are no longer a working class, and hence of no value to the rulers?” Frase writes. “Someone will eventually get the idea that it would be better to get rid of them.” He gives this future an appropriately frightening name: “exterminism”, a world defined by the “genocidal war of the rich against the poor”.
To be fair, I don’t doubt that this is something that the elites want (and by elite, I don’t mean the 1%. More like the .00001 percent), or at least see as unfortunate and inevitable. The real propaganda in this article is the solution that is offered to this problem.
When I asked the prominent leftwing thinker Matt Bruenig for his thoughts, he explained that whatever we do, we shouldn’t try to discourage automation. “The problem with robots is not the manufacturing and application of them – that’s actually good for productivity,” he told me. “The problem is that they are owned by the wealthy, which means that the income that flows to the robots go out to a small slice of wealthy people.”
Job-killing robots are good, in other words, so long as the prosperity they produce is widely distributed. An Oxfam report released earlier this year revealed that the eight richest men in the world own as much wealth as half the human race. Imagine what those numbers will look like if automation accelerates. At some point, a handful of billionaires could control close to one hundred percent of society’s wealth. Then, perhaps, the idea that wealth should be owned by the many, rather than monopolized by the few, won’t seem so radical, and we can undertake a bit of sorely needed redistribution – before robot capitalism kills us all.
Do you see the point of this propaganda?
They want us to think that we have only two choices. Either we can accept nearly unimaginable levels of wealth inequality and class warfare, or we can accept socialism and wealth redistribution at the barrel of a gun. But as we all know, socialism doesn’t actually take from the rich and give to the poor. It takes from the rich and middle class, and gives it to the ultra rich.
In other words, this article is giving you two solutions to a problem, and both of those solutions benefit the establishment elites. Also, they are solutions to a problem that doesn’t exist.
The truth of the matter, is that wealth inequality is not caused by automation. Throughout human history, labor saving devices have only ever benefited the common man by lowering prices and reducing the amount of work we need to do to achieve a good standard of living. Wealth inequality is actually caused when the government creates regulatory conditions that only benefit a handful of elites. It happens when you inflate the currency, and give the ultra-rich first dibs on that new cash, so that they can spend it before it losses value.
If automation is going to lead the extermination of the poor by the rich in the near future, it’ll happen because the government created economic conditions that gave a handful elites more money to begin with. It’ll happen because certain government policies made it so that ordinary people wouldn’t have enough money to buy their own robots, and compete with the rich.
Automation is a scary thing. A lot of us aren’t sure yet how we’re going to adapt to it. But don’t let the establishment convince you that the only way to survive the next wave of automation is with wealth redistribution and tyranny. The real solution is freedom, sound currency, and deregulation. When in doubt, trust the free market. We wouldn’t have a good standard of living to lose in the first place without it.
This is strange, I’m noticing a pattern that local dear like to come at night and hang out under the light of my solar powered motion sensing lights. They mill about grazing on my lawn, and manage to keep the light lit for long periods as in till the batteries are dead. Who knew Deer liked night lights, so much.
Yep deer own the night. Mine set off my motion detectors at nt.
Well consider this in the big scheme of things. The lefties like Obama wanting to increase the min wage to $15 am hour is a plot to make the poor poorer and obsolete as companies doing the math figure it is more cost effective to replace $15 hour employee with automation. This is a drip drip move to put more people out of work with mandatory minimum wage mandates. More people loose jobs which makes them dependents and slaves to the state and elites. Poor broke people cant put up any fight. Want to see more poverty. Increase the min wage higher and higher. More automation is cheaper than higher Min Wage. And you Lefty dopes all thought Obama loved you by increasing you min wage. You all have been scammed, all to out price your jobs to automation. Brilliant scam. Want to see automation really take over? Raise the min wage to $50 an hour. And watch the stopid lefties cheer, like they just got a grwat deal. Next year they are all slaves to the state via obsolenses.
Smarter than a 5th grader. Our Country is in a perpetual swirl down the toilet bowl.
Over 200 yrs ago. Jacques Mallet du Pan (1749—10 May 1800), wrote about the first leftist reign of terror, in his 1793 essay that ”…the Revolution always eats its own children” (“A l’exemple de Saturne, la révolution dévore ses enfants”).
After that, the communist commissars pointed guns at the backs of their fellow soldiers and told them to advance of get shot in the back.
Now, the campus leftists owe collectively over one TRILLION dollars – all to fund their lazy arzed socialist professors and their retirements at age 54. And most of them now will have no homes, no future, no children, no nothing.
The left never gets it, do they? They are just cannon fodder.
Zeus, those libturd dildos will either get on the public dole or turn to crime. I saw 2 articles recently where Wendy’s and McDonald’s are already considering installing those kiosks I’ve been hearing about. Way to go libturds! Never be able to fix stupid!
2017-03-04 – My wife and I stopped at a pee stop (McDonald’s) in Florida for a drink refill. We took note of the 6 kiosks (3 vertical posts with back to back screens sitting there but not quite on line yet. Each had a credit card reader.
This is not considering installing. These are installed and almost ready to run!! Goodbye front end jobs at McDonald’s!! The only job needed will be one to take cash and make change.
There is a hamburger robot that cooks burgers and wraps them too. Illegals will have to go back to mexico to find a job. 🙂
They do most of the lawn care work, commonly lay block, remind me of the stories or my Italian Great Uncles.
huh. I could go to a kiosk and have my order understood. If it “talks” back, I could understand it. I don’t patronize fast food joints though for numerous reasons not pertinent to this discussion.
Plan twice:
Rudolph only Hangs out on your lawn when the Christmas lights are on. That should have told you something about deer.
__
What other solutions to automation besides these two?
One possibility is that an asteroid falls on the “elites .000001%” ‘s compound.
Another possibility is that we all become monks who are tied religiously to the land.
Third alternative is we join the Amish.
Fourth is we becom Mormons with twenty wives on welfare paid by the .000001%.
I think I’ll stop here because although the possibilities are endless, the elites like to give us two, three, or four options to debate; and besides I rather like the idea of twenty wives paid for by the people who have been planning OUR genocide.
__
20 women under the same roof… B…you are either very brave or crazy.. i can’t figure out what my wife and 2 daughters are going to do from one minute to the next. Some days i just want to build a wall of chocolate and flick midols like tic-tac’s at them.
The only thing worse than 20 wives is twenty mother-in-laws. Marry sisters to cut that by half. 🙂
“The problem is that they are owned by the wealthy, which means that the income that flows to the robots go out to a small slice of wealthy people.”
Maybe. Maybe not. 🙂
I am sure that the same sentiment was voiced when autos were invented. Mass production of robots/androids will require CAPITAL that will come from pension funds, hedge funds, retirement plans, and other investors.
Companies will be formed to buy R/A and lease them out. Syndications and partnerships will give small investors a shot at the income produced by the R/A.
Don’t panic snowflakes. It’s called CAPITALISM. 🙂
Or it’s called something like guaranteed universal income.
We can always live on $900. a month, right?
Well, with gold over $3500 an ounce, I predict a new gold rush and a lot of greenhorns and tenderfoots heading to the hills to find some shiny.
Those of US already there will sell them gold pans. 🙂
There is one big factor FLAW the elitests keep forgetting. Its That Nasty 2nd Amendment where the poor are well armed, not with pitch forks but hight powered rifles sending hot lead steel penetrator projestiles down range at 3200 FPS, and from a half mile away and into their ivory towers. So notice which political factions are trying to disarm Americans? It not the Republicans. Wake up you stupid Lefties you are being scammed again and again.
The “poor” spend their time killing each other with those weapons, and the tiny percentage of rulers is so far removed from reach that you are more likely to be their victim than the Rulers are if they ever organize in a revolt of any kind.
FWIW, the 4th circuit has ruled the people have no right to access to “weapons of war” and it is likely to be upheld so you can expect to have them taken away soon and spend the rest of your life in prison or die if you decide you aren’t going to go along with it in any manner than hiding your somewhere it is useless to you anyway.
Anonymous
Rifles of all types are used in approximately 400 murders per year according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports. Semi Auto riles (under your broad category of military style) as a fraction of those 400 per year. There are 320 million people in the US. Your odds are less than one in a million; hardly a public safety issue.
The 4th Circuit Court has 83% of its cases overturned. In light of Heller and McDonald this will follow that trend.
Think an armed civilian population is unnecessary? Unarmed defenseless people have no hope against armed aggressors. Evil governments did wipe out 170,000,000 innocent non-military lives in the 20th Century alone (chart below). This was dramatized in the movie Defiance, the Bielski brothers saved 1000 civilians lives.
http://jpfo.org/pdf02/genocide-chart.pdf
Where do you find that 83% for the 4th?
That was on TV. Regardless the murders using a rifle of any type are from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2011-2015.xls
Oh it was 252 people murdered with a rifle of any type for the last year in the FBI Uniform Crime Reports which was 2015. They’re still working on 2016. 2014 was 258. This is for rifles of all types, bolt, lever, pump and semi auto. There are 51 people on average killed per year by lightening strike.
Sill hold to the tremendous risk these rifles have in a free peoples hands? If so why?
Add this to your chart:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/four-million-muslims-killed-in-western-wars-should-we-call-it-genocide/5541926
Yes. Zeus. Some of the “sheep” do have fangs, claws and quietly growl.
Zeus, spot on. Those same bullets can also be used on the robots. I still say the overall plan for automation is doomed to failure. Not feasible.
Makes them deer easier to kill. I harvest the younger ones make venison steaks and deer burger. There is a chicken processing plant in NE Ark. they cant hire enough workers. starting pay at $15 a hour and they need 600 more workers.
US Military head shed is doing everything possible to take the on station decision making out of the hands of a human. For example drones: A human being might refuse an unlawful order to drop munitions on innocent people. That pilot if in a plane might “miss” the target or turn those munitions against an oppressor giving an unlawful order. A human has a conscience. Knows right from wrong.
But a drone “operator” in a location 10,000 miles away from the actual battlefield is more easily “persuaded”. If a .45 to his head by the intel agency officer does not get the “operator” ( now at remote location not in pilot seat ) to launch on an unlawful target, even if it is his fellow Americans. Then the intel agency can yank him out of the seat and insert a useful idiot that will follow BLINDLY any order given.
Mark my words. Those at the top 2% will one day turn ALL of this technology against the other 98% of humans. I watched the US military systematically REMOVE pilots, from planes and replace planes with drones. THE ORDERS ARE NOW GIVEN BY A COMPUTER SIMULATION and three letter agencies. NOT BY an actual human decision. The Computer controls the targeting. Therefore those at the top control the battle space without any conscience or human oversight. That was happening ten years ago. I can only imagine how bad it is today or will be in the very near future.
These same agencies are now systematically trying to undermine our President Trump.
The top 2% will use machines to MURDER the 98% of the rest of us. YOU will be targeted because you are visiting a web site like this.
These agencies tapped private conversations. Fed false accusations to press to undermine our President.
If these UNELECTED agencies do that to a voted into office President. Then what do you think they will do to YOU?
There is a VAST conspiracy to undermine President Trump. Three letter agencies and almost ALL MEDIA in ALL FORMATS, are out to destroy Trump.
If these agencies and media are successful, then there will be a civil war. I believe that is their purpose. To turn American against Amerikkan. They also want a Nuclear war with Russia to destroy America.
Your right Tom they have been deploying swarm drones in Afghanistan,they also tested (not positive on this) in California,should outlaw drone swarms we need more anti drone tech for civilians.
Tom, welcome, and I agree. ANYONE who targets me does so at their own peril. It won’t MATTER whose uniform they’re wearing, etc. Anyone comes at me with a weapon I’ll put them down like a rabid dog.
Tom, – Likewise the Bottom 98% can use Gun Machines to MURDER the top 2% who have it out for us. One thing is certain, the Top 2% will never crawl out of the caves with the guts to take on the 98% in person and in our faces personally. (G. Soros is a prime example. Fat slob coward sitting in his underwear stuffing donuts into his pie hole from a hidey hole.) They will use proxy armies, or proxy rioters, or technology or some other Force Multiplier to attempt that. There are Flaws in each of those methods.
Proxy Armies refuse to carry out orders,
Proxy Rioters, cut off their money payments,
Technology fails in millions of ways including counter measures and signal jammers.
So they will continue to chip away at the Populace’s Freedoms and invent bogus laws to stifle our resistance. Degrade out moral using the MSM, with propaganda. And more and more people are cutting the Lie TV Cable Cord. I have not have Cable TV or a Cable Bill in 2 years, and don’t miss it one bit. Real life is happening outside your front door. Stop Feeding the beast is your message. Reduce their revenue streams and boycott the Commies Businesses. Many are already going bankrupt. like Lie News Print, their retail outlets, MSM viewership. I think CNN viewership in now less than 1 million people now in a country of 330 Million. Nobody is listening to the BS Lies any more. Take your Cue from Trump.
the country is headed to civil war with take over and installation of communism. robots will be a nonissue.
Trump can drain most of the DC SWAMP with this one move. Read Below: A whole lot of DC Congress politicians are caught up in this scummy network including the Clintons.
Ivanka Trump: Dad Is Destroying DC Pedo Network
03-03-2017 • http://yournewswire.com, by Baxter Dmitry
Brave Ivanka posted a photo to Twitter of herself in the Oval Office with President Trump and NGOs tasked with eradicating the stench of human trafficking and pedophilia from not just Washington D.C. but the whole country.
It has emerged that Ivanka Trump was responsible for the sudden Trump administration attention to pedophilia epidemic, with the president’s daughter urging her father to hold a listening session last week on domestic and international human trafficking and pedophilia.
By doing so, Ivanka Trump, an influential West Wing force despite her decision not to take an official title at first, will one day be viewed by history as the person who was brave enough to tip over the first “domino” that eventually led to the whole house being bought down – and the garbage being cleared away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeYwspBPK_0
Here in Australia, the self service checkouts have pretty much taken over. I check my own groceries out at Coles and Woolies. I go to the countries largest hardware store (Bunnings) I check myself out ….. MacDonalds, you have to use there selfordering screens. Even if I head to my local Club and play the pokies …. automated cash out. The airport is automated (baggage check, passport control) Even my library for those who still read books is self checkout!!!
This country has literally changed insideout in under five years. I pre-order my dinner if I go for a night out to a restaurant (waiters and waitresses are dissapearing fast) there are apps for anything I want including ordering dinner and getting my ‘available’ table moved to the other side of the restaurant ….. customer service is a thing of the past.
Lately I’ve noticed people’s speech has changed because everyone is out of practice with their communication skills because you no longer need human interaction to live here!!!
GULP!!!!
Good to hear from you down under,just goes to show it’s not a U.S or Australian,france,germany etc it’s a war on humanity.
We all have to stick together.
Down under, welcome, and I do find that report very alarming to say the least. The elitists are trying to move us in the same direction but at least we still have means of resistance. One question I have for you is how is all of that automation maintained?
I have no idea?
I refuse to use Self check out at coles or woolies.
I always use the one counter where there is still a human.
Everybody should do that. But the youth especially just jumps on these machines as if they would get a discount there.
The war propaganda has worked well throughout human history and it will work in the future, until the numbers are sufficiently low.
Throughout the ages, the elites have mastered the art of dumbing down the masses… it works!
Was posted on http://www.cuttingedge.org/news_updates/newsupdatemain.html
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski Makes Alarming Admission: Media’s “job” is “controlling exactly what people think”
Brezinski–does that last name ring a bell wiyh anyone.
WW, she could be related to the globalist POS Zbigniew Brzezinski but I’ll have to research that. BTW, I saw the video where she made that slip of the tongue.
Mika Brzezinski is the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski- FACT!!
Zeus
Great find.
Its reasons like this I keep coming here.
You are very welcome Sir. Mika B has had her father ZB, on the Morning Joe Show many times. And introduces him as her dad.
Of course she is. Did you think that TWIT with SHIT FOR BRAINS got the TV job on her MERITS ??? LMFAO !!! 🙂
DK,, Yes, and why she said that (HER – They) “Its the Media’s Job to Control what people think.” Like Father Like daughter. Both scumbags.
I had an old girlfriend that looked like her. Hot. My chic was from the Czech Rep and escaped to the US. She barely got out of there alive.
Zeus, that’s interesting. No surprises there. Like father like daughter. Both commie POS.
In 1980 my small computer business built a hook up between a cash register and a computer. We built one of the first fast food order takers to display in the kitchen what the cash register rang up. The net result for me was I had to hire and train a technician to service the units we installed. The net result for the fast food chain we installed them in was a sales increase of 15% and I estimate 6 to 8 more people gained jobs because they added a new store in the first year based on increased sales.
So every time I hear this robot narrative I laugh. I am sure this automation would be trashed by the press today as a robot job killer. Far from it…
Interestingly unemployment or underemployment has necessitated 43 million on food assistance. The Ford Rouge Works at one time employed 100,000. We’re in uncharted territory regarding the impact of this. This impact has global ramifications of instability that are far beyond fast food service.
Kevin2
I am very familiar with Ford Rouge (I lived most of my life in Michigan – where I write from today 30 miles from the Ford Rouge) having worked for them in the Dearborn area. Since the 1960s a large part of Fords blue collar manufacturing base has shrunk from automation. However if you look at Fords technical hiring their overall employment just shifted. The loss in blue collar was offset by employment in technical hiring.
I read many years ago (I can’t remember what it was) each line robot in car painting required 1.4 people in support. So there was a net increase in employment at Ford. How could this be so? The answer was the paint robot was more productive doing the jobs of 2 workers (it only replaced 1 person). But still there was a net increase in employment on the technical side.
While at Great lakes Steel, where I built and installed the time and attendance system, I saw similar hiring practices. Lose a blue collar worker to automation hire a technician to support the automation.
So no we are not in uncharted territory it has been going on for 60 years…
I imagine none of that applies to the Oil Refining Industry because our throughput increased 300% while our workforce reduced by 70%.
Interesting. I never realized that the Us Auto Industry was doing so well.
Wouldn’t have a link to that information would you because i would love to go through it?
rabbitone
Can you explain how Ford now employees 72,000 people in North America today and employed 100,000 at just the Rouge Works 70 years ago in light of your automation INCREASES the number of employees claim.
h ttp://www.nbcnews.com/id/39786621/ns/business-us_business/#.WLsW5LGZPVp
Oh and please supply that link that shows that automation increases the overall number of employees creating more “good jobs of the future” in sufficient abundance relative to the numbers it displaces.
Take Apple computer, through technology and Robotics they produce more phones and create more jobs today, that were never there before the Cell phones. So yea automation also creates more jobs, because more product lines and products expand, and are produced to sell to consumers, and today more people shop online using their cell phones as a convenience. So that also creates more jobs. Amazon was created due to access to technology and computer robots, for people to order online instead of a Sears paper catalogue only read by one person at a time.
Henry Ford is a good example of Automation with the production of the assembly line and Model T in 1908. Look at how many jobs were created in the Auto Industry, and dealerships, car part manufactures, car repair shops, gas stations, etc since then a hundred years later… Hundreds of millions of jobs were created due to automation, Yep that Automation is sure a Jobs killer eh?
Solar Electricity is Automation, and a New Growth Industry. I’m jumping in on that newest trend and going to sell it. Innovate or evaporate folks. Reinvent yourselves, learn, adapt and move forward.
Kevin2,
Yes I can explain how Ford now employees 72,000 people in North America today and employed 100,000 at just the Rouge Works 70 years ago. It is the same with GM and Chrysler. It goes like this:
The big 3 auto companies in the 1920s to the late 1960s had one objective – be a turn key business. That meant owning all the means of auto production from iron ore to produced steel that was stamped into the finished automobile. Every thing went fine until the early 1970s when UAW took control of labor and wages. This started the spiral of costly labor wages and nasty strikes that cost the big 3 billions.
As wages spiraled out of control at all big 3 facilities management was forced to act. All of the big 3 began to divest itself of production plants. For example in 1997 GM and Hughes Electronics Corporation spin-off of Hughes Defense electronics business and transfer Delco Electronics from Hughes to Delphi. Then in 1999 Delphi Automotive Systems became a fully independent publicly held corporation. In1985 Ford purchases First Nationwide Financial Corporation, a savings and loan. Sold in 1994 after large losses. In September 2005, Visteon and Ford reached an agreement whereby seventeen of the less-profitable Visteon plants and six offices would be transferred to an independent business entity called Automotive Components Holdings LLC
By the time the crash of 2008 all of the big 3 except for Ford had almost totally divested themselves of all of their production assets and were close to being bankrupt from wage demands. And you know the rest of the story….
Yep Kev.. Look at GMAC finance. They make more Profit financing cars than selling them for cash.
Rabbitone
I decided to look for evidence that supports your claim and came across a very interesting article that tends to refute your allegations from a very prestigious university. Take note of the “Even more ominous for workers” which implies that we are in fact in uncharted waters and the evidence doesn’t bode well for employment.
Brynjolfsson, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and his collaborator and coauthor Andrew McAfee have been arguing for the last year and a half that impressive advances in computer technology—from improved industrial robotics to automated translation services—are largely behind the sluggish employment growth of the last 10 to 15 years. Even more ominous for workers, the MIT academics foresee dismal prospects for many types of jobs as these powerful new technologies are increasingly adopted not only in manufacturing, clerical, and retail work but in professions such as law, financial services, education, and medicine.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/515926/how-technology-is-destroying-jobs/
Kevin2,
This article does a much better job of explain how we got to where we are:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-04/americas-miserable-21st-century
Technology hasn’t yet displaced the workforce in sufficient number to be a primary cause of job loss relative to “Free Trade” with slave labor nations. Its exponential advancement certainly is the writing on the wall. Even today the factory that closed and went to China in 2000 employing say 3000 when it fled would return employing far less. The rapid dynamic advancement in manufacturing technology displacing the workforce poses a great problem because the educational system is reactive at best and slowly at that. I think of it as training people to shoe horses after not the model T but the model A Ford makes its appearance.
In effect too much, too fast with no thought of its social economic impact.
The US Auto Industry the “BIG-3” dominated in the 1960’s because they did not have much competition, and thus they did not have to try as hard in creating quality products for US consumers.
Then by the 1970’s and the Gas shortages, comparable imports like Datsun now called Nissan and Toyota were more gas efficient and grabbed a stronghold in the US just by shopper demand for better quality and fuel efficiency built by the Japanese.
Then by the 1980’s the US was so far behind the ball on quality and gas efficiency, and high Union wages that they really took a hit along with Detroit. Chrysler went Bankrupt, Lee Iacoca got a Govn’t bailout and promised better quality. They did come back but it was too late.
Now in the 1990’s and NAFTA Free trade, that further destroyed Detroit and the US auto manufactures, along with the Unions High wages. It was a race to the bottom.
So if you really look at what killed the US auto industry, it was not necessarily Automation or robots, but BAD MANAGEMENT who lived on their Monopolies and laurels from past decades.
Most business that go bankrupt, is mostly due to poor management. Good management recognizes future trends, or creates new innovation that creates demand and trends. Of course Corporate Management refused to accept the Blame due to their own fault, and likes to blame some other factor or outside forces. Smart people know better.
I remember back in the early 1980’s a few idiots asked me, “Why did I drive a Rice Burning Datsun 280~Z instead of an American Car?” My response was, “I bought a foreign car to drive, not have to have to fix all the time.”
You will also see Unions Blame Automation and Robots as Job killers, when it is really their way over priced Union Job wages, that made them less competitive. Its a combination of factors and the blame game.
That’s my take on this issue.
Zeus
Automation killed jobs, it didn’t kill the automobile industry, quite to the contrary.
I was a DB2 Data Base Administrator at GM Clark Street when EDS gobbled us up. My data base responsibility was financial data. I worked and played with many GM plant finance mangers. On a summer golf outing I heard some one remark something like “… Automation killed jobs…” The assistant finance manger of the plant remarked “…yes, that is correct. Our plant head count is down from automation. How ever our total payroll to support that dam automation is up 4% (he was not a fan of automation)…”
Kev, Only low skilled jobs get replaced by automation. A bolt turner and now a robot that turns the bolt. Big deal, So what. Sounds like a personal problem, because they have no meaningful skills. Like burger flippers.
That’s why I am in sales, No friggin robot is going to replace me. You need to make yourself more valuable, with skills and education and a good work history. Switch jobs before you get replaced. Innovate or evaporate. Lazy people fail to invest in themselves by learning new skills.
Zeus
I retired as an operations supervisor of a 60MW Powerplant within a 200k bbl/day oil refinery holding a Gold Seal Engineers License. Its not me but rather the masses at large. No robot will replace you but that is tunnel vision because the economy depends upon consumer demand. If they ain’t working, they ain’t spending. Its trickle down economics in reverse. If you doubled the supply of engineers you would by and large just flood the market (that old supply and demand) thus dropping their compensation. Before too long the medical field will feel the “trickle up” along with more displaced professionals of one discipline flooding the market of the medical profession. Assuming no catastrophic event, given the increases in technology, there will be massive unemployment in less two decades or less.
Its not just whats happening but the speed at which its occurring. Wait until China, the most vulnerable nation has to lay off its workforce.
“along with the Unions High wages”
Compensation for German Auto Workers is greater than their American counterparts. The company sets the quality standards. Germany has a relatively small market for very high quality goods that China has yet to meet thus protecting them by default from their low paid competition.
The “High Paid Union Workers” are always those to blame. Interestingly the US Textile industry, low paid by any industrial standards at $15 / hr as the common wage and largely not Union still lost their employment to Asia where less and $1 / US / Hr is common. The CEO’s in the meantime go from 50 X a line workers pay to 500 X a line workers pay with no cry of substance. The system is being balanced on those backs least responsible and most vulnerable.
I grew up in Detroit too, and see the Unions as a huge part of the downfall of the Big 3. These wages motivated the Big 3 to go outside the U.S. for lower wages. As an I.T. worker in Middle Tennessee where we have Nissan, a GM plant, Fiat/Chrysler plant and they are building a Kia plant. The only plant with a Union is the GM plant and has outsourced to contractors. These plants have brought economic prosperity to these areas. People have been bitching about automation since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Where do you think the word Saboteurs and Sabotage came from? The Luddites carried this tradition on later.
What there real problem is, is the people themselves. I have worked blue collar jobs, where seniority is king. Got treated like crap when I would work hard, because unbeknownst to me I was making the old timers look bad, by outproducing them. They didn’t want to learn anything new. Bitched about it, whenever a new machine or tool was introduced. “This is how things are done” Was the mantra if you tried to suggest a better way to do it. Granted there are a lot of these folks who are too stupid and/or lazy to get better training or education.
Well screw anyone with this attitude. I went into the Army and got educated and now the last laugh is on them. Pulling six figures creating the stuff that will put these idiots out of a job. The rest of you who have the smarts to train up need to do it. If you are content working in plant putting a widget on a device, then bless you. Hopefully you will be able to retire from it. If not, I’m sorry for you. The future is automation, as was the past. Adapt or die.
Harsh words that I know won’t win me any friends, but examine yourself, before blaming others for your woes. BTDT and it gets you nothing. You are responsible for you, regardless of whatever group makes it harder on you. I despise most of the greedy f**ks. Gain a skill that will be useful.
Want a glimpse into the future? Watch the movie Surrogates.
An attorney I know, decked out his office with expensive furniture and rugs fit for a king. His wife was dismayed especially when he installed a top of the line computer. The attorney wrote his own software. Within a short time his business increased to many times more than it was before, allowing him to hire many people to build a dream house on several acres in a nice area for his wife and kids.
The computer created jobs and improved lives for others. I believe he wrote some software for government, too. I bet President Trump is using it. I don’t know. I don’t fear nuts and bolts robots. I fear flesh and blood robots, especially the nuts.
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I remember the days when dept store cashiers did the checking out for a single lane, a dozen lanes open meant a dozen cashiers were needed.
Today, in a Walmart as example, you may have a dozen lanes open with maybe two using cashiers and the other ten being self checkout robotic lanes, with one overseeing cashier available to help all ten robot checkers if people have a problem using them (which is becoming less common as they are used by more people on a regular basis).
There is never anyone working on them, and I imagine one technician handles multiple stores.
Fast food is not going to be employing even half as many people in just a few years as more and more people are replaced by machines that do the routine and menial work they are now doing as employees.
Rethink your position in terms of overall numbers of people employed and the effect robotics in every form has on their numbers.
yes but automation doesn’t increase sales.
15% of the customers were not walking out because it took too long or 15% more didn’t come in to that restaurant because the service was better than the fast food place down the street that was slower.
ford hasn’t increased sales by one car because of automation unless automation has decreased their costs of building cars.
I know what I’m taking about, I have been automating tasks and jobs for decades.
what’s slowly happening is that jobs that are automated make job growth decrease. if your job got automated, you may get moved to another job rather than being fired, but that job is no gone for the next job seeker forever and with a population that is still increasing, that’s a big problem.
It reduces or eliminates the costs, taxes, and liabilities associated with employees. Particularly the legal liabilities, every employee has to be considered as a potential lawsuit that could cost you enormous amounts of money or put you out of business.
Not everything is simply to increase sales, I think most robotics don’t, some things are to increase or maintain profit levels by the cutting costs of the products and sales and reducing potential legal and tax liabilities from employees.
It isn’t just low end workers that are being faced with replacement, everything from highly skilled workers to office personnel to physicians are currently in the scope for full or partial robotic replacement.
Look at what is developing in Japan and project the future from there: ht tp://asia.nikkei.com/Tech-Science/Tech/Japanese-firms-turning-attention-to-medical-robots
Anonymous,
and WHO do we have to thank about all the stupid lawsuits and ones like winning a million bucks because your stupid enough to drink HOT coffee and have it spilled in your lap while driving a car??? it is LAWYERS and THEY have been a MAJOR (con) tributor to this countries issues!! we have TOO many laws and LAWYERS!! lawyers and crooked politicians go hand in hand!! remove them and most of the laws that have been passed over the 25 years and we will be on a better footing for survival!
lena is using excuses and ancient fallacies. Lena says Automation does not increase sales? LMFAO!!!! Go try to build a car 100% by human hands, and see how many cars you will build and sell in a year in the USA. Case Closed.
I’m surprised lina has a job at all, with those kinds of ignorant thoughts.
Regardless if you have sound money if there is insufficient consumer demand wages don’t get dolled out. We are presently facing this using debt, both private and public to bridge that gap while attempting to bring back manufacturing. If people don’t manufacture there is nothing to bring back. There will be another distribution of wealth which I assume will be some type of hybrid of capitalism and socialism or massive political instability. China will be the test case as they are most effected. With that in mind the effects of this may have global geo political consequences that effect the US before its domestic impact takes its toll. I seems logical that theft of government known as war upon your neighbors to take what they need may be the option before it all collapses.
The self driving car is the biggest threat to jobs in the near future. Manual transmissions in new cars are non existent these days. If you ask a salesman they will tell you nobody wants to shift which is total bullshit. Me and the wife can both drive it and it’s cheaper they just don’t want them cus most people can’t drive them and they are hard to resell because there is no way of knowing if they were drove right. just think about all the all the driving jobs that will be lost. Even if it’s expensive investment it’s worth it in the long run. If they can get this tech to work the lives that will be saved and insurance business will report record profits. Once again corporations will get richer and everyday folks will get poorer. This is what they need to usher in the full program of socialism. Whenever some new tech comes out the public runs to it to be the first with it. This will be the case for the mark of the beast microchipping program. It will be cool to be chipped at first then it will be mandatory and everyone’s worst nightmare will be realized. People are stupid sheep and they will for for it.
Asshat, that self-driving car isn’t exactly working out well for them. It will fizzle out. I don’t see that one as a threat.
Sorry. We will get that fixed. Self driving cars are coming. This prediction sounds like the old timer who said cars were a fad. Once we get the technology perfected, it will be mandated in new cars.
Plus, if you are thinking about the Tesla. The ones that people died in are Level 3. My new Tesla will come with Level 5 hardware, but won’t be ready for Level 5 driving until sometime this year, if then. Look up the levels.
Love my stick shift. There are a few manual transmissions made in new cars but mostly in rather expensive sports cars. I keep looking since mine is an 04. Still runs great; I just worry about what-ifs (a bad habit) and what to do with retirement coming up.
One great benefit of a manual transmission is that few people can drive them so no need of an anti-theft device. 😀
I don’t think this automation with robots will work. Just like the robot barista, I refuse to use one. These are machines with a program that only covers so much. These machines cannot adlib to fit the situation as a person can. When I have to call the phone company I refuse to speak to an automated voice. I pay too much money and I want personal attention. And again this automation has trouble understanding you and is programmed to only do so much. I’m not wasting my time trying to be serviced by an automated voice. My time is just important to me as any ones. Theses are machines and they malfunction. Give me a real person any day, even a dumb one, because I can help them understand. A machine is only programmed to do so much, and I’m not allowed to reprogram them, so I must wait then for an actual person to come and alleviate the problem. I refuse to use self check out at Walmart.
Self check is taking a job from someone..and continue to push ‘0’ on automated and a rep will serve you soon.
do you use a smartphone ?
then you are enabling automation.
the amount of people that will refuse it over convenience are going to be so small,it won’t even amount to a speed bump.
No, I don’t use a smart phone. Mine is an old flip phone; my phone is exactly that, a phone. I didn’t even get a computer until one and a half years ago. I don’t play games on my computer, I use it for information. waiting
Lena, do you ever send an email or are you still using Snail Mail and a stamp to send messages? How about electricity for lights or do you use candles exclusively? Cook your food over a camp fire still? LMFAO!!! Yep that automation is such a villain.
Hey Lena, Do you think the Soda Pop Vending machine has any impact on annual Soda sales?
Here are some facts for Lena that says Automation does not increase sales:
Vending Machine Statistics Data
*Revenue generated by the snack and vending machine industry $64,350,000
*Average annual amount spent per capita at vending machines $27 a year per person.
*Total number of vending machines in the U.S. 6,900,000
*Percent of vending machine sales that were soda or cold drink sales 56 %
Yep that Automation sure does not increase sales does it Lena? LMFAO!!!
Link: http://www.statisticbrain.com/vending-machine-industry-statistics/
Content Author: Statistic Brain
Date research was conducted: October 25, 2016
Vending Machine Industry Statistics
Industries
Most people love it. I can take it or leave it, depending on how many items I have or what the lines look like. Dude I have worked on projects that had RFID chips in every package and all you do is drive the cart through a portal and it totals everything up. Hook your CC up to a store account or a NFC enabled phone like an iPhone 6 with Apple pay, boom you are done. Only drawback, you need to stop and bag your stuff.
People can refuse on principal and I’m not saying give in, but there are too many of the masses that just don’t care either way and use all of this. With enough use it will get adopted, no matter what you think. Just saying.
If it reaches that point of the rich wanting to exterminate the poor, the rich lose . The poor will out number the rich so drastically that the genocide that takes place will be directed at the rich. After all when it reaches these proportions the poor have nothing to lose. waiting
Yes, it will fail the same way Stalin’s Holodomor famine failed to affect anyone in the Ukraine.
Had it not been for that attempted genocide’s failure, Stalin would not have been removed from power in Russia and Russia become a free state again.
Waiting, the rich are hopelessly outnumbered as I type this. It’s only a matter of time before the fuse is lit. Plus they overlook the fact that so many of us still have means of resistance.
The 3d printers, routers, and milling devices are robots, which can be used to make more robots. Automation can be in the hands of the individual, cheaply — making the crony capital parasite class obsolete.
The 3d printers, routers, and milling devices are robots, which can be used to make more robots. Automation can be in the hands of the individual, cheaply — making the crony capital parasite class obsolete.
Automobiles, pharmaceuticals, gasoline are all very difficult to impossible to make outside of the traditional system just to name a few.
People custom-make suv’s. Pharms are probably difficult to make, in general, but people do that. Fuel is made, power is generated, and machines are run, outside of the traditional system.
I felt that the point of plastic printers, etc, etc, is making something, independently of the prevailing, world order.
But, if you like, the same logic applies to planting a tomato seed.
“People custom-make suv’s.”
People assemble or make? People make the engine that powers it? They make the metal its built from? I’m sorry but the concept of living with modern machinery that is self made is false.
Yes, milling does produce engine blocks, on demand.
Accidents are reported, but people can make fuel. Yes, really.
Electric motors and generators.
imo, there will be a new, industrial revolution, when robots, printers, or milling devices are use to make more of these things, privately.
Class warfare and genocide. Somebody always wants to poop in the Cheerios.
Sept 23 1953 mk ultra
that was bad news for sure.
the good news is… my DH was born on that date 🙂
I suggest caution…every week I read articles of automated/robots that can be hacked..so where will that leave you then??
just a scapegoat.
all those accounts hacked in govt agencies and companies, do you ever hear of the need for more oversight by actual people ?
no, it is accepted as part of the information age.
there should be a lot of jobs for people to monitor accounts, payments and orders and ensure accountability; when is the first time you heard of anyone propsing that ?
I’m probably it.
Robots probably need oil…….withold the oil!
a war, maybe even nuclear is coming; probably even with the next 10 yeas as the global elite come to the realization that automation will create too many people that are costing their countries money on support from jobs lost to automation. they need to get rid of a lot of their people to stay afloat and wars are good for doing that thru combat amd people accepting wartime restrictions that cause a lot of costly people to die out.
two things that no one, not even rush Limbaugh talk about. one, that the usa is going majority Hispanic and majority democrat eventually and deporting 11 million wont change that. and two, that automation will eliminate jobs for 10s of millions and cause wages to decline for decades.
the 1980s to 2000 were likely the last great economic period for the usa.
BINGO?Always prep
Wars don’t kill enough people and destroy too much. Disease effecting those expendable while the useful are spared with the one type of vaccine that just so coincidently happens to be effective is the sneaky, stealthy, OSTENSIBLE why they operate.
I don’t trust “Free Flu Shot” at every pharmacy. Free? For the masses that are capable of paying? From pharmaceutical companies? For the dangerous flu that I haven’t had a shot for in 15 years and haven’t had the flu in 25? What is the urgency? I haven’t known anyone that had the flu either and they don’t get the “Free Shot”.
Buy one get one “Free”? “Free” with every purchase. This is The United States Of America and I have a healthy skepticism when I see “FREE”.
Automation is part of the New Order. Just like the merge. The merging of male and female. The merging of human and animal. And the merging of man and machine.
An insect colony in the making.
China big on automation and weapons free people millions murdered and still going strong.
This is why the trump puppet has been told by his jewish bankers masters to close the doors to immigrants because cheap slave labour is no longer needed so stop seeing him as a hero when he’s just another puppet following orders.
Man has sown the seeds of his own destruction but for now the elite control this new power but they will become pray too and obey the machines just like we do with traffic lights today.
Mr Smith
“cheap slave labour is no longer needed”
That cheap labor hasn’t filled the factory floor in the US in the last 5 decades. Immigration globalization transcends mere labor cost and its purpose is world wide social / cultural / political / economic homogenization. President Trump is adding sand into the gears of that blender.