[Newfie]

KN,
I for one don't believe in TPTB as some grand monolithic bloc. Maybe in the context of they at the ones in positions of power for some segment at the moment. But that they control our destiny? No!

I don't think you read C8 correctly. I didn't hear him say those jobs are coming back but that the faux financial system may collapse taking our industrial base with it. In the aftermath, when things return to normal, we won't have this problem.

[KaiserJeep]

Newfie, I have always assumed that "C8" was short for "Kate" and that he was a she. Whatever.

I don't think we are going to regress our technology in any meaningful way. We will not ever lose information and knowledge stored in digital media, it will always be available on the network. Most likely, even the Vermin class will have network access - and 90% of it will be consumed by attempting to gain more food, and most of the rest (as it is today) on porn, and a few cycles on online news that is 99% BS.

Some may make the argument then that it is not worth the effort to learn to read. Today that same argument says that it is not worth paying for schooling at the college level. It really is the same argument. Just as today the time spent in college is not time employed in your career, in the world to be, time spent learning to read is not spent in hunting for food.

[Ibon]

I finally watched the documentary. I had a problem viewing the content because Amazon somehow recognized that I was routing my VPN through a US location. Some of you may not know this but when you are outside the US there is media content that is blocked due to whatever licensing films and networks have with distribution. I had to set up a custom gateway with the help of tech support with the VPN provider I am using in order to circumvent Amazon's filters and watch the documentary.

Watching the film is just another confirmation that there is no one entity really driving the ship of modern human civilization. Adam Smith's premise of the invisible hand guiding markets and maintaining equilibrium is what I was thinking about when watching this film. How this trust we have that somehow progress is seen like Smith's economic premise of this "invisible hand" guiding markets and keeping us in equilibrium.

All of the themes we discuss here, financial debt, peak oil, climate change, automation, over population, etc. etc. really all come down to this grave misconception that we do not need to regulate or steer the ship of progress, that somehow on its own progress keeps us in some form of equilibrium. If there are future historians looking back on our age this will be what astounds them most. How where we so collectively naive to trust in the "invisible hand of progress"

What to do with all those idle hands who lose their job? Kill two birds with one stone I fear.

The elite saw the middle class as a benefit as long as they enabled the wealth pump to operate keeping them absurdly rich. As the film accurately depicts, the middle class is slowly every day becoming a burdensome liability.

Watch in the years ahead as the hypocrisy is elevated to incredible cognitive dissonance as the elite experience a moral drift in the way they will lobby for policies that increase the death rate of our species through wars, denying of health care, rationalizing away poverty, creating scapegoats, divide and conquer, blame the muslims, mexicans, terrorists, etc, etc, etc.

We created our own unique human ecology and eco system, and the overshoot predator is emerging from within the elite of our human population. Not fully cognizant of what they are doing, not exactly willful, but just as effective anyway.

[KaiserJeep]

I'm not understanding how one might have a "grave misconception that we do not need to regulate or steer the ship of progress". Because R&D in digital electronics, A.I., and like topics is occurring in multiple places in multiple countries. Like I said before, automation is an unbroken evolutionary line back to the time that disgruntled Dutch weavers were casting wooden sabots into wind and water powered looms. That was in the 15th Century, and the Industrial Revolution is older than the USA. The Industrial Revolution both created and destroyed the Middle Class, which had an existence of not quite 600 years, probably peaked in Post-WW2 America, and now it is being eliminated from society.

I'm sure that all of us Middle Class types are about equally upset over that idea. However let me repeat what I said earlier in this thread, that there is nobody in charge, and no master plan for the way things work and the way they are changing - chaos theory rules. I think that there is some comfort in the idea that a secret cabal of conspirators is following a centuries-old master plan for all of mankind - but it is simply not true, there is nobody in charge, nobody to blame for this sad state of affairs, and no stopping or changing it.

Not to mention, this has happened already all over the world, and it's too late to stop, reverse, or mitigate the changes. The video Obsolete is only telling you something you already knew, and in a sense, forcing you into another of the five stages of acceptance.

Your reaction does you credit, Ibon. It reinforces my opinion that you were a thoughtful and compassionate man. Now you need to integrate this newfound concept into your long range planning. The Middle Class is at least half gone already, the transition will be complete in another 30 years. You and the next generation kind of have two main alternatives to consider when it comes to Mt. Totumas. It either becomes a getaway destination for the very very rich, or it becomes a backwater agricultural locale, supporting a small populace of peasants.

In the deliberately offensive terminology I introduced in this thread earlier, you either become the Toadies of the Elites - whichever one ends up controlling the Cloud Forest - or you become members of the Vermin Class, hiding from view. You are fortunate in that you have two options and enough runway to make either happen. The residents of our inner cities have effectively already reached Vermin status, and are already treating each other like the rat and mice colonies we saw in the video.

I grew up in Southern Illinois about 40 miles from the Gateway Arch that you saw in the video when the failed Pruitt-Igoe housing project was destroyed with explosives. I lived in a small town virtually within sight of this experiment, and the cloud of radioactive isotopes that the US Army sprayed onto Pruitt-Igoe also enveloped my town. Yet I didn't know about the failed experiment, being only 3 years old when Pruitt-Igoe was built, and 28 years old when it was destroyed. I have wondered my whole life why that part of St. Louis looked like it had been bombed. In a way they were - and our own government did it. All of you should think about how the US Federal Government treated the residents of St. Louis, and continues to treat the now surplus residents of all inner cities, before prescribing a government solution to anything - because to them, they consider themselves members of the Elites, and you are not the class of people they serve (which pays them through the system of Lobbyists), you are Vermin.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '-')snip-
Hopefully the Singularity will rise up from our of cell phones and automobile backup cameras to make this all right. Hail Siri, Goddess in My Pocket! Shall you always Live Deep and Prosper!

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')Now you need to integrate this newfound concept into your long range planning. The Middle Class is at least half gone already, the transition will be complete in another 30 years. You and the next generation kind of have two main alternatives to consider when it comes to Mt. Totumas. It either becomes a getaway destination for the very very rich, or it becomes a backwater agricultural locale, supporting a small populace of peasants.

[KaiserJeep]

I actually am feeling the ambivalence you describe. It's no secret that I am looking for a retirement home on the Western shore of Lake Michigan. I would be about two hours drive from where the Grandkids are in Madison, and the wife would have the private sandy beach she desires, which symbolizes wealth and success to her.

Intellectually, I know that what I should be doing is building a tight and efficient, off-the-grid small residence that meets the PassivHaus standard, and is heated and cooled entirely by solar energy, a wind turbine, or both. It should be no larger than two elderly people can easily care for, and it should be habitable in the Zone 6 climate without burning hydrocarbons of any type, including wood. I am estimating that start to finish, this would take 2-3 years, and that it would cost a half million dollars.

Or I could buy an existing residence, with 10+ acres of land and up to 1000' of beach, and move in almost immediately - and start worrying about filling the woodshed and the 500-gallon propane tank sitting next to this custom 3100 square foot residence, only 12 years old. That alternative has immediate occupancy and an asking price that is fifty grand less than my estimated cost for a PassivHaus residence. The difference being, that we get to spoil the Grandkids for the 2-3 years we are not building the perfect old people's home.

I feel lucky to have options. I feel apprehensive about my grandchildren's future.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')Intellectually, I know that what I should be doing is building a tight and efficient, off-the-grid small residence that meets the PassivHaus standard, and is heated and cooled entirely by solar energy, a wind turbine, or both. It should be no larger than two elderly people can easily care for, and it should be habitable in the Zone 6 climate without burning hydrocarbons of any type, including wood. I am estimating that start to finish, this would take 2-3 years, and that it would cost a half million dollars.

[KaiserJeep]

careinke, I appreciate the input and I watched your video. The PassivHaus structure I was contemplating is not in itself a half million dollars, that figure breaks down as follows:

Real Estate purchase 10.1 acres Lake Michigan shoreline: $220,000.
Fresh water and geothermal drilled wells: $10,000.
Conventional 4-bedroom passive septic and leech field: $15,000.
1000' x 10' Paved driveway and misc. sidewalks: $10,000.
Excavation and insulated concrete slab: $20,000.
1800 sq ft PassivHaus main structure, Timber Frame w/SIPs: $110,000.
Finish carpentry, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roof, exterior cladding, etc.: $100,000.
Solar PV panels and Tesla Powerwall: $15,000

The figures are only approximate until the landscape and structure design are done, not to mention the real estate purchase, but the $110,000 main structure and the $100,000 spent to finish the structure might be partially offset by the Open Source Ecology stuff, and I question whether many of the concepts in the video can get approvals by the state and county agencies involved, and whether the resulting structure is appropriate for Northern Wisconsin, Zone 6. For one thing, flat roofs are not appropriate in a zone with large snow loads.

Again, appreciate your input.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'c')areinke, I appreciate the input and I watched your video. The PassivHaus structure I was contemplating is not in itself a half million dollars, that figure breaks down as follows:

Real Estate purchase 10.1 acres Lake Michigan shoreline: $220,000.
Fresh water and geothermal drilled wells: $10,000.
Conventional 4-bedroom passive septic and leech field: $15,000.
1000' x 10' Paved driveway and misc. sidewalks: $10,000.
Excavation and insulated concrete slab: $20,000.
1800 sq ft PassivHaus main structure, Timber Frame w/SIPs: $110,000.
Finish carpentry, plumbing, electrical, HVAC, roof, exterior cladding, etc.: $100,000.
Solar PV panels and Tesla Powerwall: $15,000

The figures are only approximate until the landscape and structure design are done, not to mention the real estate purchase, but the $110,000 main structure and the $100,000 spent to finish the structure might be partially offset by the Open Source Ecology stuff, and I question whether many of the concepts in the video can get approvals by the state and county agencies involved, and whether the resulting structure is appropriate for Northern Wisconsin, Zone 6. For one thing, flat roofs are not appropriate in a zone with large snow loads.

Again, appreciate your input.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
Intellectually, I know that what I should be doing is building a tight and efficient, off-the-grid small residence that meets the PassivHaus standard, and is heated and cooled entirely by solar energy, a wind turbine, or both. It should be no larger than two elderly people can easily care for, and it should be habitable in the Zone 6 climate without burning hydrocarbons of any type, including wood. I am estimating that start to finish, this would take 2-3 years, and that it would cost a half million dollars.

[Pops]

I've been reading along here and will just chime in with the same old story I've repeated many times before FWIW

I started in printing around '74ish. The shop used "photo offset" printing rather than the movable typeset of Guttenberg or hot set type so it was fairly modern. In a large shop or newspaper there were many specialties, designer, typesetter, lay out, cameraman (large galley cameras made negatives of the layout) strippers/platemakers, pressmen, bindery...

There was a big (3 or 4 washing machines wide) computer in the typesetting room where you typed in copy and the machine (Compugraphic) miraculously composed it into justified columns (like a newspaper) and spit it out ready to paste up. It only did body copy, headlines you did by hand a letter at a time also using a different photographic process.

Looked sorta like this (although I don't remember the WSIWG display)


The whole photo-offset technology was really a boon to the industry. Starting after the turn of the century, it made for a great increase in quality and volume (think Time/Life/Look) over the older letterpress, engraved image process and grew like mad. I sorta liked the shop work but wanted to do design, but the way there was through the manual process of layout and I was too sloppy for that, so I went another way for the next dozen years. By then I could do layout in a single desktop, albeit a pretty expensive one, around '93ish. I was an early adopter, it was gravy.

Suffice to say, now all those middle skilled routine manual jobs on the front end are gone, replaced by me and my laptop. All the typeset, layout and prepress work once done by hand is done by the designer directly. At the shop the file goes into a machine that poops out a plate and onto the press it goes. Short run digital printing eliminates the plate and press, and of course the web & digital output eliminates all of it except me and my Mac. Obviously there are people who build cell towers and lay cables and operate servers who were not there before.

The design end of the job will continue as long as there are people who want to communicate something. But the doing part of the job, the manual translating of a design to a product, will continue to contract just as it has since I worked in that shop. Look at what you're looking at right now, someone(s) designed this page, some other one(s) coded the design into an app, but then however million "copies" served up since are done on the fly but a couple of flops of silicon switches in servers scattered here and there.

As always in the march of progress there are winners and losers. The muscle jobs are mostly long gone, humans replaced by horses by steam, FF, electricity. The really big shift that's happened over the last several recessions is that the routine jobs are going, line work, even the ones that take some thinking. Those are the middle skilled middle class jobs that are going and not coming back no matter how many tax breaks the corporations get.

[Newfie]

Thanks for that Pops. Somewhat similar in my experience, but I've worked some of those non repetitive manual jobs, e.g. Lineman.

I'd like to add this. Those folks now out of work, it's not their fault. We have changed the work culture under their feet. As noted above somewhere they still have the strong basic desire to be productive and serve society. I think that's as basic as sex drive. Seriously. We have turned them into idle hands, dangerous.

In 1933 Bertran Russel thought we would all sit in the park and paint or sing or write. That doesn't fulfill the basic desire.

Paradoxically, it is those folks who have adapted to the ghetto life with no job and who are OK with it who are the most WELL adapted. They pose the least threat to society. They also don't contribute but we have excess production so it's not a problem, for now.

There is a real imbalance in our society, in our culture due to this clash between the Puritin Work Ethic, it's drive for Efficiency, and how the effected effiency has made folks obsolete, without an effective replacement for the work ethic.

Perhaps a minimum wage for all folks, redistributing the wealth from the effiencies is a partial answer. I don't think so because the inner desire to do good for the group is still there. Maybe a return to the Shakers? Naw!

But it's all temporary.

Finally, back to your experience. With all those effiencies in producing print one would think that some of those savings would be diverted to providing better content. More reporters, more time for in depth research. But that's not the case. Even reporters are squeezed to put out more content, tweet, blog, etc so the content has also degraded.

Just an old guy bitching and trying to figure things out, unsuccessfully.

[Newfie]

To continue a bit with solutions .

France has a reduced work week. India the caste system and many holidays.

Mandated retirement at 50 or 55.
Mandated 8 weeks vacation.
30 hour work week.
Delayed entry into the workforce, perhaps 4 or 6 years mandatory federal service.

Everything has a negative. These are just samples of the kinds of things that work in the right direction.

[KaiserJeep]

It's not that nobody will remain employed, it's that as time passes, fewer and fewer jobs need to be performed by people. The number of people employed will approach zero over time, but never reach zero.

Nor would I want to do a job that a robot could do as well or better than a person. That would be worse than no job, because you would be both obsolete and the object of someone's pity.

The situation that exists today is starting to feed itself. The lack of people earning disposable income is reducing the number of consumers for every product and every service, save a few professions such as health care, information technology, and government, professions where demand increases as population increases, regardless of income. Unfortunately, the demand is also increasing in our overcrowded prison systems.

The lack of incomes also means the lack of taxable revenues for government. The impact of simply printing money and spending it, lately termed QE (Quantitative Easing) is also affecting the central banks including our own Fed, and in any case only benefits the Elites, not the disaffected and unemployed Middle Class.

All of these forces are happening on a massive worldwide scale, and all are for practical purposes, irreversible by government policy. Add to this situation powerful egos like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the faceless leaders of China, all seeking prosperity for individual countries from the ruined remains of a global economy that was ultimately completely dependant upon the rapidly disappearing fossil fuels.

I don't have any answers, and so far, nobody else's have impressed me. I won't say the clock is ticking, instead it would be better put to say the fuse is burning.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
I don't have any answers, and so far, nobody else's have impressed me. I won't say the clock is ticking, instead it would be better put to say the fuse is burning.

[Pops]

In the back of my little mind I seem to remember you were in or around publishing, Pete, right?
I'm pretty sure the Americans are morons plank is pretty high on the PO.com platform


--
Not sure what the world is gonna do.

For the last few years as alts and LTO grew way beyond my predictions, the economy recovered slowly, and cooled in China rather than crashed outright, I'd become less panicky. After all, the things talked about here - obsolescent humans - are old hat to us.

The election surprised me. It is a big dot. Brexit and other EU countries tilting in a similar direction are another. Patriotism is cool, enlightened self interest is normal, nationalism in the extreme (if that's what we're seeing) not so much. In past situations of big time tech change it took some rough shaking to get things resettled.

--
I was gonna quote something about the Fourth Turning and how it relates to the topic, in the sense of a generational challenge, and this popped up... move it elsewhere if you want
http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon-fourth-turning/