American people becoming obsolete?

[Clerik]

If this is real, its because the rich are too rich, and the middle class is not driving the economy. As a result, the middle class is also shrinking.

The culprits could be big corporations (flat rates) and market traders (low tax or tax free capital gains) who are actually paying less tax than their share, violating the social contract in the article.

People think oh leave the rich alone, they are responsible for economic growth. That sounds flawed thinking to me, because the middle class should be the drivers. And when you treat them right, they do drive growth.

[Alamo]

Originally Posted by Clerik

If this is real, its because the rich are too rich, and the middle class is not driving the economy. As a result, the middle class is also shrinking.

The culprits could be big corporations (flat rates) and market traders (low tax or tax free capital gains) who are actually paying less tax than their share, violating the social contract in the article.

People think oh leave the rich alone, they are responsible for economic growth. That sounds flawed thinking to me, because the middle class should be the drivers. And when you treat them right, they do drive growth.

The middle class lacks the concentrated wealth to invest heavily in new companies or new inventions. That's they way it has always been, and while the middle class does play a significant role with the purchasing of stock and such, it is the upper class that is the real drivers behind new industry and companies. That's just the way of life. You may or may not think that its good, but that's just the way it is.

[Samuel]

Unfortunately the US is now a consumer nation. It takes far more to keep the nation operational than it outputs. We need to change that, or we'll soon go bankrupt. Or everything will break down.

It is worth noting this just means "we can't have as much cheap stuff". Which isn't really bad. As long as you have enough money to provide for necesities and a few luxery items, you don't need much more to live. But people are stupid so...

Also, once we have robots and true AI everyone is obselete- the rich can be replaced by expert systems to deal with the economy or paper weights in the case of those living off earnings

[Clerik]

Originally Posted by Alamo

The middle class lacks the concentrated wealth to invest heavily in new companies or new inventions. That's they way it has always been, and while the middle class does play a significant role with the purchasing of stock and such, it is the upper class that is the real drivers behind new industry and companies. That's just the way of life. You may or may not think that its good, but that's just the way it is.

I think its a matter of perspective. Defintely the big companies are needed, because that large scale is needed for success. But even then, it is the middle class people doing innovative work at these companies, who are driving the economy. And it is the middle class pension funds that own much of the companies. If the state perceives the middle class to be the drivers, their priorities will be very different, and you'll make decisions that will help the middle class thrive and people will stay relevant. The downside is that there won't as many ultra rich, which is why this is resisted by rich Americans. And clearly they have a lot of influence.

[Marius_Falco]

Outsourcing production of military materiel is my biggest gripe. A lot of the electronics for our aircraft and smart weapons are made in asian countires -- Japan and Taiwan, for instance. I heard that our demand for their manufacturing service was so great during Desert Storm tat we had to slow our bombing campaign, and revert to dumb weapons because we had outpaced our own ability to produce them. In 2004, a report came out that we had begun buying bullets from Canada and Mexico because our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had overreached our ability to produce BULLETS!

Yeah. Small arms ammo. FUCKING BULLETS!!!

In WWII, we mobilized our industrial complex and went from a thrid-rate military power to a superpower. And that was with many of our able-bodied men fighting overseas, and our women just entering the workplace.

WTH does it take for our leaders to wake up?

[Emperor Tippy]

People in general are becoming obsolete, at least as far as production is concerned.

Give it 20 years and you won't have factory workers, everything you can do a robot can do more accurately, faster, cheaper, and with less complaining. And robots are just about at the point where the initial cost is low enough for fully automated factories to become a reality.

[CommanderRazor]

And just what happens when all these lovely robots need maintenance? Build robots to maintain them, too? A self-perpetuating system of robots fixing other robots?

Sorry, but people are going to be needed for making shit for a while to come. The technology might continue to get cheaper, but that doesn't mean the ability to implement the infrastructure needed to make it work will scale at the same rate. Not by a long shot as logistics tends to be a bigger bitch than tech development.

[Fallen Angel]

Yes. Build a robot that can repair a identiccal unit. (Subassemblies from a robotic assembly line perhaps with 'plug and play' technology.)

Then make it so those can also repair the bots that work on the factory (or some literation of 'repair the bots that repair the bots that... work on the factory floor'.)

Simple.

[Emperor Tippy]

*shrug*

Give it twenty years and you won't see anyone in large scale manufacturing.

Robot repair would be service sector.

[RandomJ]

Originally Posted by CommanderRazor

And just what happens when all these lovely robots need maintenance? Build robots to maintain them, too? A self-perpetuating system of robots fixing other robots?

Robots that can maintain themselves or identical robots (for cases when robot is too badly damaged to maintain itself). Dedicated maintenance units for high profile repair.

Identical units maintaining themselves and each other (with self maintaining, peer-repairable specialist units for really tricky repair) have a proud history.
We often refer to this system as "medicine"

You don't need a "robot joint cleaning and oiling dude" when robots can clean and lubricate themselves and each other.

[Skyzeta]

The article does have a point, though it misses some critical global issues that are hardly unique to the US, that is simply that the skills required to keep the economy going simply don't exist in the population. Fundamentally, there ain't a whole lot of difference between our brains and the brains of the people who first thought settling in one place might be a good idea. Neurologically we're still optimized for hunter-gatherer society and it's made worse by history.

For most of human history, society has depended on a large class of unskilled laborers to do the scut work that keeps society running. For most of history, as long as you were willing to put in the sheer physical work and weren't a complete idiot, that was enough for you to sustain yourself and your family. Increasingly that's not the case though.

It's complicated by the fact that even those who win the genetic lottery aren't exactly guaranteed success either. And the more advanced society becomes, the farther and farther you have to push the human brain to keep up. And this ends up offering a devils choice: try to raise the people up who don't have the natural ability and in so doing severely compromise the ability of the people who might actually have the raw ability to get the job done or to exclude people and risk creating a caste society.

And culture lag only makes all this BS worse. Western society and humanity in general may be forced to slow or even halt technological process in the near future simply because it will exceed the ability of the population to maintain such a technologically complex society with such complicated social issues. The western world came within a hairsbreadth of annihilating itself (and most of the rest of the world in the process) in the 20th century due just to that inability to understand the technology until it had been demonstrated. It took two world wars and something like a hundred odd million dead for the US and Europe to realize that they, in quite literal terms, had the ability to destroy the world.

And yet take one look at Arabic saber rattling and you realize the fact we're not done with this shit. The west learned it's lesson when two hole generations, fathers and sons were horrifically mauled in the two bloodiest conflicts in human history. And even in the US, it left a cultural imprint and understanding of mechanized warfare that simply doesn't exist in many parts of the world. And you see it every time Osama Bin Laden or any of the other loonies get's on TV and proclaims about the infidels and you realize they just don't fully grasp the horror a western style industrialized society of the modern age is capable of unleashing. A modern western power quite literally has the power to remove almost all infrastructure from the air with almost virtual impunity against most non-western opponents and plunge the society into the stone age almost overnight with almost no risk to itself.

Look at what's happened to the craftsman in the modern era. You had people who were skilled with their hands, who were obviously intelligent and resourceful, knew what they were doing and most of all enjoyed it. But how much use is that to modern society and modern methods of production a lot of times? And what do you do with someone for whom that skill might be his or her primary skill?

The modern answer seems to be make him take calculus, English literature and then have him get a degree of dubious value and waste four to five years of his life in the process.

[ArchAngel]

Originally Posted by RandomJ

robots can clean and lubricate themselves and each other.

Sounds like robot porn.

[RandomJ]

Originally Posted by Skyzeta

And culture lag only makes all this BS worse. Western society and humanity in general may be forced to slow or even halt technological process in the near future simply because it will exceed the ability of the population to maintain such a technologically complex society with such complicated social issues.

This is a peculiar claim.
Never had the risks associated with progress have caused us to slow down.

In fact, we can't afford voluntarily slowing down.

Because then those less foolish and less affected by the precautionist disease will win, and win hard.

Anyone who "slows down technological progress" due to fear of a global socioeconomic catastrophe of some sort will simply get trampled by the less scrupulous, or whatever the latter happens to unleash.

Originally Posted by Skyzeta

The western world came within a hairsbreadth of annihilating itself (and most of the rest of the world in the process) in the 20th century due just to that inability to understand the technology until it had been demonstrated. It took two world wars and something like a hundred odd million dead for the US and Europe to realize that they, in quite literal terms, had the ability to destroy the world.

Um, no.

It took us to build up a stupidfucking amount of nukes, an amount that could end most eukaryotes in the ecosystem overnight, to change our modus operandi from "massive wars" to "standoffs".

Remove nuclear deterrents and you will get a full on WWIII (with more or less modern tech - sans nukes) before you can spell it.

Originally Posted by Skyzeta

Look at what's happened to the craftsman in the modern era. You had people who were skilled with their hands, who were obviously intelligent and resourceful, knew what they were doing and most of all enjoyed it. But how much use is that to modern society and modern methods of production a lot of times? And what do you do with someone for whom that skill might be his or her primary skill?

Eventually, craftsman's future is either starvation or wellfare, depending on how humane the society is.

Human labor, in the long run, is unavoidably obsolete.
It very well may be that it holds true for many intellectual skills as well.

[Robo Jesus]

Originally Posted by Skyzeta

Fundamentally, there ain't a whole lot of difference between our brains and the brains of the people who first thought settling in one place might be a good idea. Neurologically we're still optimized for hunter-gatherer society and it's made worse by history.

... [T]he more advanced society becomes, the farther and farther you have to push the human brain to keep up. And this ends up offering a devils choice: try to raise the people up who don't have the natural ability and in so doing severely compromise the ability of the people who might actually have the raw ability to get the job done or to exclude people and risk creating a caste society.

It's why the lure of Cybernetic enhancement of the Human mind is such an enticing thing for people. If the human mind cannot keep up with the capabilities of the computer, then figure out how to integrate the computer into the human mind.

[Big Orange]

WWI and WWII were truly devestating, but there was still three solid centuries of global/continental warfare before them, with millions of deaths, it was just harder to contain with advancing industry and weaponry that was a bad mix with insane/selfish European leadership. And then strategic nuclear arsenals made open conflict between the biggest nations almost impossible.

The economy employing less and less people is due to two centuries of automation progressing onwards, but in twenty years time Peak Oil and the potentially violent break down of Western Capitalism could slow or reverse technological progress, making automation harder to sustain. Capitalism in its current state demands constant growth and maximum efficiency even though the world's resources are finite, there's too many people now and the world's oceans are dying directly because of this. Why should the present economy be working so violently against social, political, and enviromental considerations? Little wonder the whole thing is imploding.

[Emperor Tippy]

Please, peak oil won't do a thing.

The only reason that we are still on oil is because it is cheaper than the alternatives.

The ocean's dieing is also irrelevant. We can feed 50,000 people in a single city block, and do so year round with only 7 employees without regard to weather or climate and do all of that at a cost comparable to the costs of regular farming.

We can power the US with nuclear power plants that can be almost entirely automated.
---
We pretty much have all of the tech needed to go nearly post scarcity. The implementation and social costs are currently simply too high. Give it 20-30 years and most of the implementation costs will be gone/much more reasonable.

The social costs are much more difficult to deal with.

[FBH]

Originally Posted by Esoterica

That's not gonna last forever. Cheap labor is only cheap for so long until that market develops. Robots are more efficient than pretty much everything but the cheapest of cheap labor. Hell, IIRC exports from China are only so cheap because the government purposely keeps the value of it's currency low. If the yuan was worth it's "actual" value, Chinese produced goods would not be nearly as cheap as they are now.

Interestingly, the majority of the recent labour disputes in China were settled in the Workers favour and fated in the state press.

That said: yes, America's rich have got to rich and desperately need to be cut down to size.

[RandomJ]

Originally Posted by FBH

Interestingly, the majority of the recent labour disputes in China were settled in the Workers favour and fated in the state press.

That said: yes, America's rich have got to rich and desperately need to be cut down to size.

You know, for the second (maybe third) time you strike me as painfully naive.

Who or what can live up to the challenge of "cutting them down to size"?

Government in which the entire electoral process is almost completely dependent on "campaign donors"?

Crazy survivalists with a gun collection?

An angry mob of poorly armed people?

That's silly.

[Emperor Tippy]

And it's not like it would change anything.

Give it a generation and you would have nothing more than a new class of ultra wealthy. And this class would already know that the people will kill them for no reason, meaning that they are a lot more likely to use their power.

[FBH]

Originally Posted by RandomJ

You know, for the second (maybe third) time you strike me as painfully naive.

Who or what can live up to the challenge of "cutting them down to size"?

Government in which the entire electoral process is almost completely dependent on "campaign donors"?

Crazy survivalists with a gun collection?

An angry mob of poorly armed people?

That's silly.

It's only dependent on campaign donors cause people allow it to be so. How do you think anyone ever made any progress against the elite?

We've gone from a system in which rich land owning males are the only ones who can vote are rich land owning males to a situation where everyone can vote. Are you seriously telling me that it is impossible to do that again?

Further, you do realize that the idea of corporate troops killing folks who do stuff against the corporations presented in that article would actually not be some new trend but a return to the situation of the 1920s right?

It shocks me how much the elite have managed to convince people that they're powerless. The conditions you see how are not permanent nor universal. There are entire countries without a strata of super rich on top of them, and we went through 30 years (30 years of continued massive growth in America) without such a class building up.

Over that time, formally disenfranchised groups such as Women, African Americans and so on gained a lot more political and economic power (not equality quite, but definitely the idea they should have equality). Do not tell me that political action cannot make progress against the power of elites, because it provably has. We have a black guy as president FFS.

It is you who is being naive in your cynicism. Elites love the idea that nothing can be done because if nothing changes they are elites forever.

[RandomJ]

Time will tell

[FBH]

Originally Posted by RandomJ

Time will tell

No. It already did.

History proves me right and you wrong. We have a black president of the USA. Some years ago we had a female prime minister of England.

It's a ongoing process yes, but we've had massive social change against the elite and towards the common man over the last century.

PS

[Emperor Tippy]

Originally Posted by FBH

It's only dependent on campaign donors cause people allow it to be so. How do you think anyone ever made any progress against the elite?

Generally by shooting them, with the support of other elite.

We've gone from a system in which rich land owning males are the only ones who can vote are rich land owning males to a situation where everyone can vote. Are you seriously telling me that it is impossible to do that again?

The fact that everyone can vote isn't relevant, and the only reason that even happened is because the rich land owning males saw a benefit in allowing it to be so.

Further, you do realize that the idea of corporate troops killing folks who do stuff against the corporations presented in that article would actually not be some new trend but a return to the situation of the 1920s right?

Corporations already have armies and kill people in the interests of the corporations. Look at Shells operations in Africa. Inside the US the corporations simply use the US police and military.

It shocks me how much the elite have managed to convince people that they're powerless.

They are generally powerless. The US is very much a two party system at the Federal level, those two parties candidates are generally picked by individuals who are owned by those rich (if they aren't the rich themselves). The media is again owned by the rich and simply doesn't give as much exposure to other candidates.

Sure, a third party candidate (or someone not chosen by the rich) can get elected but they are only 1 person out of 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. They won't be able to implement any real change.

The conditions you see how are not permanent nor universal.

Unless the rich and powerful start making mistakes then the conditions are pretty much both, at least in the US. And they haven't/aren't making those mistakes.

There are entire countries without a strata of super rich on top of them, and we went through 30 years (30 years of continued massive growth in America) without such a class building up.

Please, that class has been around since the founding and the last major change it underwent on a fundamental level was when the Robber Barron's joined in the early 1900's. Every nation has it's super rich, whether they are local or not and whether they are publicly known or not.

Over that time, formally disenfranchised groups such as Women, African Americans and so on gained a lot more political and economic power (not equality quite, but definitely the idea they should have equality). Do not tell me that political action cannot make progress against the power of elites, because it provably has. We have a black guy as president FFS.

No real progress has been made. It's pretty much a facade that is doing it's job, keeping those who want change operating inside the system in the belief that they can change the situation.

It is you who is being naive in your cynicism. Elites love the idea that nothing can be done because if nothing changes they are elites forever.

Not really. The Elites learned their lesson when the nobility and aristocracy fell. Having power and wealth concentrated in their hands wasn't the problem, the problem was having that be the de jure situation instead of just the de facto situation.

Those elites still have the power, they just used it to set up a system that the masses believe give them the power.

----
Democracy is one of the best ways to control a nation for a whole lot of reasons.

[FBH]

Originally Posted by Emperor Tippy

Generally by shooting them, with the support of other elite.

Civil Rights, Feminism, democracy, labour rights.

The fact that everyone can vote isn't relevant, and the only reason that even happened is because the rich land owning males saw a benefit in allowing it to be so.

They saw the benefit of it because massive social movements came together and forced them to do so. Without those social movements nothing would have happened.

Corporations already have armies and kill people in the interests of the corporations. Look at Shells operations in Africa. Inside the US the corporations simply use the US police and military.

Africa doesn't have the resources to defend its self. In the 1920s they operated that way in America.

They are generally powerless. The US is very much a two party system at the Federal level, those two parties candidates are generally picked by individuals who are owned by those rich (if they aren't the rich themselves). The media is again owned by the rich and simply doesn't give as much exposure to other candidates.

Civil Rights, feminism, the labour movement, and the fact that we've all got the right to vote proves otherwise.

Sure, a third party candidate (or someone not chosen by the rich) can get elected but they are only 1 person out of 435 Representatives and 100 Senators. They won't be able to implement any real change.

If a cause is popular enough then the parties will take it up in order to survive. As happened with civil rights, feminism and the labour movement.

Unless the rich and powerful start making mistakes then the conditions are pretty much both, at least in the US. And they haven't/aren't making those mistakes.

Wrong. There's tons of parts of the world where conditions are different and tons of parts of history where they are. This isn't anything to do with the elite, it's to do with what people will let the elite get away with.

Please, that class has been around since the founding and the last major change it underwent on a fundamental level was when the Robber Barron's joined in the early 1900's. Every nation has it's super rich, whether they are local or not and whether they are publicly known or not.

There are always rich people but not to the level we see now.

No real progress has been made. It's pretty much a facade that is doing it's job, keeping those who want change operating inside the system in the belief that they can change the situation.

Naive cynicism.

Not really. The Elites learned their lesson when the nobility and aristocracy fell. Having power and wealth concentrated in their hands wasn't the problem, the problem was having that be the de jure situation instead of just the de facto situation.

Those elites still have the power, they just used it to set up a system that the masses believe give them the power.

----
Democracy is one of the best ways to control a nation for a whole lot of reasons.

No, they do. If everyone was naively cynical then you'd never have gotten votes, or the equal rights movement for women or ethnic minorities or anything else.

[Fell]

Or we could get started on that world-nation. Just saying.