[SeaGypsy]

I work as a truck driver, loader. My skills required aside from driving the truck- locating specific despatch doors, pallets, agents- gathering non uniform stock on, securing loads, ipad detailing each section, print & digital recording of movement & sales. The company makes $15 million Aus, with 25 employees, 15 of who drive trucks. Each truck is average worth $150k, drivers earn $60k. When you make over half a million profit a year from each human you employ, replacement of them with robots seems pointless. I see lots of truck jobs could easily be automated, but already these are the crap paid jobs for lazy desperados, in an industry desperately short of skilled drivers. As a skilled driver who likes physical work & frontline business, there is near zero threat to job prospects due to robotrucks.

[Newfie]

Sea,
You say they "make 15 million." Is that net or gross?

I. Either case I'm glad to hear you feel secure.

[Pops]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'E')ither automation is good or it is bad. Ones opinion should not depend upon who makes the suggestion.

[Newfie]

Pops,

I hear you. I'm not so sure of the roles as you but I agree the times are changing. Automation doesn't help.

One way to look at it is that the role of government is to keep us (we the people) from killing one another. So far they have done a reasonable job. Generally the bigger and more established the government, the more edfective they are. (As a side note realize that even 20th Century Germany, after loosing 2 big wars, had a lower death rate than that found in most hunter gatherer groups.)

I think that works as long as things are improving. My sense is that when things go bad then subgroups start to attack one another. The government identifies one segment and decides to cut it out, make it a scape goat. I suspect that is somewhere in our future, but no clue when. I know that sounds alarmist and I've been downplaying the Panic around the Trump win. At 66 I think I have a bit longer world view than many, I recall Cuba, the race riots, war demonstrations, and the joy of having a low draft number with no further deferments. I've been far more scared in the past than I am now at this immediate time.

That said, I have less hope for the future. I see a lot of issues creating social pressure on our culture. This obsolescence we are discussing here is one of the biggest issues. You can call it obsolescence, or efficiency, or unemployment, or welfare it's all dealing with the same issue. Most of us no longer have any way of effectively contributing to society. It's nice to have spare time, but it's necessary to feel needed. Being redundant is depressing, people will find a way to try to give meaning, if only through sacrificing their lives to some cause. Suicide bombers. This empty sense is the fodder that civil war feeds on.

So for me taxation and rights are secondary issues.

Not that we will see societal breakdown in August, but that when it comes it may be very destructive.

Sorry for not being more cohesive.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')Someone here said we live in a time of entitlement, that is true, but more, we live in a time of presumption. We presume that "our way of life is non-negotiable" but everything is negotiable.

[SeaGypsy]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'S')ea,
You say they "make 15 million." Is that net or gross?

I. Either case I'm glad to hear you feel secure.

[Newfie]

"Hard labor". Yeah. Got that, done a lot of that in my life.

So here in the USA we have
A) people complain they can't find a job with a college degree and
B) companies complain they can't find skilled workers.

Seems to me there is a disconnect (or three) somewhere.

[Ibon]

I was thinking of my father who recently passed away and his life. He grew up in his childhood and young adulthood as a Mennonite with 4 siblings on a farm in Lancaster County in eastern Pennsylvania. He was born in 1926. A classic agrarian farm life of that era; cash crop of tobacco, dairy cows, raised chicken and eggs, they grew their corn and wheat for their livestock and their own consumption, a big kitchen garden, geese, a pond with fish. This was before chemical fertilizers and petro chemicals. They did have a tractor toward the end but their farm life was extremely labor intensive.

Neither my father nor any of his siblings had the slightest interest to inherit the farm. The farm was sold in 1953. Nobody had the slightest interest to continue the toil and drudgery of farm life when the post WWII technologies and progress was just too luring.

When I think of my fathers personal integrity, his character, his strong will and elements of self sacrifice, all of this he attained during his agrarian youth.

His best attributes as a human being came from a lifestyle that when given the opportunity he had no interest in continuing.

This led me to a thought. As long as we have the luxury of choice we are fxxcked. It is only when forced to submit to conditions that force us to our physical and mental limits that we can develop honorable and long lasting integrity as individuals.

Opulence is toxic both individually and collectively. At least when it lasts uninterrupted for several generations.

This is one of the reasons we can't really design our way to integrity, it rises as an unintended consequence of living the challenging life of toil and hard work.

Or?

[Newfie]

Ibon,

I don't know that you are right or wrong but....

The dairy farmer up the road, 400 acres, 14 hour days minimum, poor wages, his grand dad and daughter are buried on the back hill. 64 years old and bent from labor. Kids want nothing of it.

We don't talk much but I know he questions what he's doing it for. Milk is down, he's got to borrow to keep operating, gas leases didn't pan out.

But how can he leave? With the Cemetary looking down on him?

Grown men, tough men, do cry.

[KaiserJeep]

The destruction of the Middle Class proceeds regardless of our feelings and desires and outright fantasies that our government can save us.

Those jobs that can be automated are gone or going already.

The next category of jobs being eliminated are those such as truck drivers which seem to require human judgement. Such jobs will be performed by humanoid form robots capable of any physical task a human can do, and some such as loading 500Kg crates that they cannot. The hardware exists already in prototype form, and software for routine tasks such as driving is maturing rapidly. When such a robot cannot deal with a unique new situation, a remote human operator assumes control. In this fashion, 10 robots and one human replace 10 humans. As the software matures, 100 robots and one human replace 100 humans. Software generation of course is also being automated.

The last category of Middle Class human to be replaced or eliminated is that requiring creativity, for example stage actors, art painters, sculptors, and interior decorators. These jobs will exist as long as you are very very good, the best of the best, so that the 1% Elites pay for your product. The 99% of those humans who are not the best of the best rejoin the Vermin class, as they have no Middle Class customers. We don't need craftsmen, we only need the most original and creative artists.

The Industrial revolution then slowly winds down after 500+ years. Huxley's Brave New World it is not - he was far too optimistic.

[Newfie]

I'm not sure about "obsolete" but there are times, many times, when I feel as though I have outlived my time. I'm not comfortable with the world here and now. My world, if it ever existed at all, was back in the first half of the 20th century. Maybe it's my Dad's influence, how he used to take me places and say "I just wanted you to see this before it's gone." He gave me a sense of a better time that existed befor I was born in 1950. A time when he felt at home.

I think that's partially why I a functional hermit, I like my solitude, as long as it includes my Wife. She concurs and is perhaps more reclusive than I so we are good.

The world I knew growing up is gone, the town is gone, the people gone, the livelihoods gone, the woods gone. I hate going back there because it's so sad. All the beauty and peace that was is replaced by frenzied consumerisim, madness.

Going to the hunting cabin things are much the same as 49 years ago, there is constancy. Same with going to Newfoundland. I can sit on the same (rebuilt) dock I did as a 6 year old. The family names are the same, the bay the same, the headlands. It consoles me, keeps the world from spinning quite so fast. I get my feet under me.

Strangely being on the water has a similar effect. The consistency of the moods. My ringtone is Otis Redding singing "Sitting on the Dock in the Bay."

I like to read, but I don't try to keep up with all the new technology anymore. Be in communications as an engineer there were so many changes so fast. I used to struggle to stay current. Then at one point I realized that a whole generation of protocols had come and been obsoleted befor I had a chance to come to grips. I didn't suffer for it. So I started letting it go. O concentrated more on big scope issues. Things I could touch and effect, the process of building vs the minutia of technology. There is consistency in the process across technology and disciplines. It served me well.

No I'm old and happy to revel in my comfort zone recalling past events.

[SeaGypsy]

Beautifully written Newf. I'm 17 years younger but can fully relate- Australia has changed a hell of a lot since I was a grommet, exploring the outback with my old man, who grew up hunting & fishing in western Pennsylvania. Like you i was instilled with a sense of timelessness & awe before i learned to think. We find our peace in exactly the same environments.

Currently I'm just slogging along in the city, very unlike me- a necessary transition period certain family members like to think is permanent. Unlike you i married into a completely different culture, my wife loves the city, shopping, eating out, proximity to 'everything'. Only reasons i can handle it at all is proximity to yacht clubs, money (required), lots of cheap materials, expertise, cheap flights- only thing we have in common is the need for money. Our children are thriving, super bright, 5+7 now. I take them out of town most weekends, but they are yet to experience real gypsy life as i lived for over 20 years. Next idea/ compromise is a rolling business, event kitchen.

Redundancy/ obsolescence don't make a lot of sense to me personally, one of the things i look forward to in collapse is there are no jobs. I can see the pending disaster, but like the Aboriginal elders taught me, 'when all this crazy business is done, we will still be here'.

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('SeaGypsy', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'S')ea,
You say they "make 15 million." Is that net or gross?

I. Either case I'm glad to hear you feel secure.

[SeaGypsy]

Well it's a cracker business. If the workers owned it we would be very comfortable. The city I'm in is extremely generous, we deal in hundreds of shipping containers a month.

[JV153]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ') Such jobs will be performed by humanoid form robots capable of any physical task a human can do, and some such as loading 500Kg crates that they cannot.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JV153', '-')snip-
Now this is something.. how do you propose, out of curiosity, that a human would load a 500 kg load
into a truck ?

[Newfie]

Here is a story about automation on oil rigs.

http://gcaptain.com/robots-taking-oil-r ... xpendable/

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JV153', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ') Such jobs will be performed by humanoid form robots capable of any physical task a human can do, and some such as loading 500Kg crates that they cannot.

[JV153]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vtsnowedin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JV153', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ') Such jobs will be performed by humanoid form robots capable of any physical task a human can do, and some such as loading 500Kg crates that they cannot.

[JV153]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')
The fifth wave of the Industrial Revolution has already begun. That is when human thinking will be augmented by cybernetic extensions to our brains. The networked global information system we access via devices is the first step, direct machine/man interfacing is being worked and has enjoyed limited success already.

You will be assimilated.