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Originally Posted by BeyondBewildered  What happens to the people who depend on those positions for income when we give their job to a robot? ... moving to automation is not good for everyone. Look what has happened to small town America, who used to depend on their factory jobs. Entire communities have been decimated in the name of "progress". Not everyone wants to get a better job and make more money. Some people want a simple, familiar job; their idea of wealth is immaterial. |
Of course you'd still depend on them, but you wouldn't be depending on "working class people". Is the working class such a precious ideal that we can't eliminate it? Is labor such an aspiration that it's worth fighting for?
What did small town America do before the advent of the factory? I'm sure they really appreciated being human cogs in the great machine, but did small town America exist before that? How far back do you go? Farming destroyed the hunter-gatherer society; do you see any hunter-gatherers today? The university broke the close relationship between academic and society at large, creating the ivory tower. Democracy destroyed the ideal of sovereignty; monarchs are effectively gone from the world now; sucks to be them. The automobile has founded the suburb, letting people become isolated and ignorant of their neighbors. Airplanes have butchered the sense distance: the entire world is but a few days away. The internet has murdered time, convincing us that everything is at our fingertips.
We should get rid of these, too? They changed our world. How terrible. Let us forever remain the same. Take a look at this book:
Dan Pink | A Whole New Mind... and more
Here's an interview with the guy:
HOWdesign.com - Doing Business
The point being is that automation pushes people to become more human in what they do. It forces you, thus, to re-integrate your life. No more separation between "work", "play", and "life": they are and should be the same thing. And in the course of your life, you thus must do everything in the context of other people.
It's not about making more money. It's about bringing a little humanity back to the people who do inhuman jobs, who don't do those jobs as well, and who could become invested in their job for a reason other than paying the bills. Sure, you say, not everyone wants that. And it's certain that at least small pockets of people will continue to slave mindlessly for a paycheck. That's okay; we still have the NRA and people toting guns out into the wilderness to shoot animals for fun.
Oh, and also see the term
Luddite fallacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chet That strikes me as a very sad and empty world, I don't think I would want to live there. |
You already do. Give me a counterexample: name one thing that absolutely requires human interaction that isn't, in fact, human interaction.