How realistic is "Global Peak" series now?

[ArmorPierce]

Driverless cars were not "almost there" 20 years ago, not by a long shot.

Thats the point, despite plenty of people predicting they would be at the time.

There's a pretty huge difference between the people predicting it being fantasy writers and layman versus scientists and engineers. Fact is, there are already driverless cars on the roads, tesla recently released a beta software update for self diving cars.

[Stormin]

For the bottom end of the job market there's always talk every time the min wage being increased comes up where it is often said that minimum wage type jobs do not create enough value for the person doing it to be paid enough to survive off of it. How long can such jobs be forced to continue to exist at all if this is the case? In a way the current system reminds me of stories mentioned about the Russian Gulags, where extra food could be earned for a certain amount of extra work beyond the required minimum but was carefully calculated so the calories burned doing the work was more than the calories gained from the extra food so the prisoner was killing himself quicker.

Living in the rough end myself I know a fair number of people with horror stories, one former coworker had to work 5 part time jobs (this includes under the table housecleaning work) to survive + pay off student loans. Another is a highschool friend who last I checked on him (lost contact years ago) he was working for an under the table asbestos removal company and had resigned himself to the fact that because of the job he only had a few more years at best before he was likely to be taken out by cancer he could not afford to do anything about. There's a lot more, and I might be having a biased view of things because it's the strata I live in, but I don't see any belief in a better future from anyone I know.

It just feels...bad. Like we've already gone off the cliff and only need to look down to realize it and start falling.

[Alferd Packer]

Does anyone thing nuclear fission using existing tech might become politically feasible in America within a generation? Especially if it's touted as a solution to energy production that causes climate change?

Within a generation? No. A couple, three generations? Maybe. Certainly once we start seeing some more drastic effects of climate change. But the anti-nuclear lobby over all branches of society has contaminated that source of energy pretty inescapably for the near future.

I'll tell you when it'll happen: when we lose Miami. I don't know when exactly that's going to occur--if I had to wager, I'd say that we lose Miami with my lifetime, but it could very well take longer. But Miami is going to be the first major city that we lose, followed by New Orleans. After that, what remains of the fossil fuel industry will be shitcanned. Probably 50-60 years too late, of course, but better late than never.

[Zixinus]

'm smack in the middle of this.

The fundamental problem we have is that we're trying to educate everyone, including people who are at best marginally employable even now because they have severe behavioral problems or are just plain unmotivated. These are going to be some of the first to lose their jobs to automation (say, by 2025). And that's if they haven't already lost them, which some have, which is why we currently have high-ish permanent unemployment.

And because of this, we have to dilute and divide our resources, and accept excessive levels of disruption to the learning environment, as the cost of doing business. Thus, the children close to the median in aptitude and motivation have bad examples set in front of them on a regular basis, and don't get the level of rigorous, disciplined instruction that would prepare them best. Then they leave high school inadequately prepared and lacking critical thinking and analytical skills...

And this is the problem: the realization that there are "useless" people who there is no point to educate. Or the very least, would require much more resources to do so than an average student (behavior correction, extra classes, etc.). This is an idea that traditional educational systems can only handle one way "the person is mentally disabled". And if they are not but still a "not worth it" person? You have to set a system up for them.

So no to that and then you have this situation where society declares a class of people "useless" even though they did not do anything wrong. Say you do the efficient thing and just get rid of them whenever possible. Congratulations, unless there is life-long social security for these people, you have created a permanent underclass who will turn criminal and have a legitimate grievance against society. If you do have generous social security, that social security will be cut in the next few elections because they are "leeches to society that need to find a job" and you get back to making them an underclass. The only way out of that then would be to create artificial, make-work jobs that these people can do and is worth educating them for.

That's one thing I seriously doubt that we are going to see happen in the next century or so: the realization that there will be people that, trough no fault of their own and having no real disability, is pointless to employ so he must be paid, housed, fed on the everyone else's dime. Almost all culture around the world is too deep-rooted in the idea of working to live. Hell, look at the disdain people have against aristocrats in Europe, about class of people that had the same condition.

[Guardsman Bass]

I think it's worth pointing out that industrialization didn't simply lead higher-skilled workers to become ever richer with technology - it actually undermined them in many cases, allowing lower-skilled workers to get higher incomes and higher productivities. In fact, that's one of the main reasons why some economists are concerned about the worldwide decline in possibility for manufacturing employment (even in poor countries). Manufacturing allows you to add machines to low-skilled labor to increase overall productivity.

If automation turns out to be as good, then there's no reason why that couldn't happen for the Services Sector as well, generating a lot of jobs in the process. It's not like automation is an either-or thing, either - most set-ups combine it with human labor because it's cheaper than trying to completely automate the entire process end-to-end, and has been for while. Low-skilled labor is pretty cheap, too, especially for jobs where you currently have to pay some highly educated specialist a ton of money (imagine being able to replace a $300,000/year doctor with five $50,000 technicians who can do ten times as much work as the doctor at a higher quality).

But let's take the worst possible scenario, one where robots can essentially automate away completely 99% of tasks to be done. In that case, what you'd probably get would be a shift in labor set-up - most likely a drift away from everyone being employees to most people being self-employed/small business owners again, like how it was in the US before the second half of the 19th century. It'll be just as wrenching as that first transformation was (especially since so much of our safety net and rules are built around most people being employees), and there'd be an immense amount of inequality involved. But human beings would still be making a living, even if they're just "generalists" supervising ever more complicated arrays of automated machinery.

[K. A. Pital]

"Human beings would be still making a living"? What happened to human dignity, and the concept of human the creator and master of his own destiny?

Who is the master of human destiny now? Capital? The stock market? An impersonal machine?

I see no reason to put up with these grim predictions.

[Guardsman Bass]

Ironically, they would be more in direct control of their destiny, although much less secure economically in terms of income.

[K. A. Pital]

Ironically, they would be more in direct control of their destiny, although much less secure economically in terms of income.

Social darwinism as a value system wants to replace the concept of a human in the general-humanist sense, the concept of human as a part of humanity, with the concept of many humans, some less deserving to live than others. The humans are not in control of their destiny in such a system. The impersonal market system is governing the totality of human action and society - but personal responsibility is likewise considered total. In this system, you are ultimatelt responsible for being crushed by it, because you were not strong enough.

There are no virtues to this order, at least not from where I stand.

[Zixinus]

Here's a question: self-employed doing what? Back before industrialization, that could mean something like taking unused and (hopefully) unclaimed land and turning it into a farm, maybe be employed as a farmhand until you manage to do that. Or taking a trade like becoming a trapper/hunter or becoming an apprentice to someone and then starting your own business once you know enough.

How would that work in the modern world?

They'd become criminals, that's what. That would be the only jobs that would not, could not be easily automated and thus available to people that are smart and competent enough to do it but not enough to get legitimate work.

[Darmalus]

The answer is we just keep redefining (legally, socially and morally) who the labor force is to hide that fewer and fewer people are employed. Compared to previous eras when 100% of humanity worked from the moment they could walk until they died, we have only about 50% employment (US population 325 million, labor force 157 million).

When only 10 million out of a country of 300 million are employed, we just have to convince them this is perfectly normal. It's worked so far, today no one questions <50% employment.

[Guardsman Bass]

Here's a question: self-employed doing what? Back before industrialization, that could mean something like taking unused and (hopefully) unclaimed land and turning it into a farm, maybe be employed as a farmhand until you manage to do that. Or taking a trade like becoming a trapper/hunter or becoming an apprentice to someone and then starting your own business once you know enough.

How would that work in the modern world?

Probably a whole ton of odd jobs and the like - think what self-employed folks do in the developing world cities. Some of them would be slightly better and run their own side or main businesses, and so forth.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Here's a question: self-employed doing what? Back before industrialization, that could mean something like taking unused and (hopefully) unclaimed land and turning it into a farm, maybe be employed as a farmhand until you manage to do that. Or taking a trade like becoming a trapper/hunter or becoming an apprentice to someone and then starting your own business once you know enough.

How would that work in the modern world?

They'd become criminals, that's what. That would be the only jobs that would not, could not be easily automated and thus available to people that are smart and competent enough to do it but not enough to get legitimate work.

Art and science. Sex-work and psychiatry. I don't know, what do people in post-scarcity sci-fi stories do?

[Guardsman Bass]

Good question. The robotics change this a bit, since if they're cheap you might be able to use them to amplify what you can earn beyond just the old "day labor" stuff that you see in the present and past.

This is a weird comparison, but an example of the whole "everyone is self-employed because robots" thing might exist in Star Wars. Have you noticed how basically anyone in the Star Wars movies who isn't a government employee/politician, slave, or rebel is self-employed?

[K. A. Pital]

Art and science.

Art is not a job; this is a competitive field where people sell (by now) some freaky stuff, totally worthless from a usability standpoint, and where dozens become ultra-rich while thousands get nothing and go broke. Science - more than ever before - requires intellectual capabilities way beyond the norm.

Sex-work and psychiatry.

As if sexbots are not preferrable to prostitution?

I don't know, what do people in post-scarcity sci-fi stories do?

In Western post-scarcity stories they keep doing the same stuff as under capitalism, with rare exceptions - the lack of imagination is clearly visible. In the East, we thought about humans exploring space or being "uplifted" via brain tampering to make them all smarter, stronger etc. (because only if the advancements of the uplift are spread equally, the people can take up new, more demanding jobs, otherwise only the select few will benefit while the rest keep crawling in the dirt).

Probably a whole ton of odd jobs and the like - think what self-employed folks do in the developing world cities. Some of them would be slightly better and run their own side or main businesses, and so forth.

That is what I am talking about. Few people realize just how horrific the life of a "self-employed" person (peddler, prostitute, etc.) in the Third or Second World is. Especially the First Worlders. So they are blindly hurling their own society towards an ugly future.

This is a weird comparison, but an example of the whole "everyone is self-employed because robots" thing might exist in Star Wars. Have you noticed how basically anyone in the Star Wars movies who isn't a government employee/politician, slave, or rebel is self-employed?

It is indeed a weird comparison: Star Wars demonstrates that robots, despite the automation advances, are worse than biological soldiers - they are worse at decision-making and generally clumsy and incompetent. A bunch of human servants exist, as well as human soldiers, policemen, bodyguards etc. Human or biological battleship operators instead of Siri-like central computers as in Star Trek: TNG. The social construction of Star Wars worlds seems to be ordinary capitalism with nation-states coexisting on several planets, or nation-planets. Humans and biological workers run Lando's mining operation, as an example. There is no indication that everyone is self-employed whatsoever.

[Zixinus]

The answer is we just keep redefining (legally, socially and morally) who the labor force is to hide that fewer and fewer people are employed. Compared to previous eras when 100% of humanity worked from the moment they could walk until they died, we have only about 50% employment (US population 325 million, labor force 157 million).

Yes, because they are either retired/too sick (no longer able to work and in some cases forcefully stopped working so younger people can take their place to work) or students that are preparing to enter the labor market as skilled workers as opposed to unskilled workers.

Those that can work and don't live on a social security may or may not be slashed in the next election cycle to garner the votes of those that do work and in order to balance the budget. Even in Europe, social security for the unemployed is considered a temporary thing until you get a job. And many European countries are struggling to upkeep just that, with constant grumbling about the topic (look at the UK, there isn't a day where there isn't criticism or propaganda about the system).

In my country, they thrown it out and told that unemployed should work for the government as "common-workers", barely-paid people who work in terrible conditionsthat is remiscient of Soviet times. What's worse is that those that get into the system have are inhibited from finding proper jobs.

Art and science.

Both are technically skilled workers. They need to be taught to be able to do either and you need above-average talent/ability/investment to make it work. And no, being self-taught still requires investment to do because they take tiem.

Look at webcomics, where you would think there would be a low barrier in entry: the people that manage to make a living out of it are usually well-educated comic-book artists.

Probably a whole ton of odd jobs and the like

Which is actually an unreliable, unstable existence even in the first world.

think what self-employed folks do in the developing world cities. Some of them would be slightly better and run their own side or main businesses, and so forth.

Again, self-employed doing what? In your example 99% of all jobs is automated and the remaining 1% requires extraordinary skills and abilities. What do the people that don't have that do, what can they do that cheaper robots can't?

Art and science. Sex-work and psychiatry. I don't know, what do people in post-scarcity sci-fi stories do?

Whatever the writer imagines them doing and how idealistic does the writer imagine things. In more idealistic settings people live in communism. In slightly less idealistic settings they turn to violence and self-destructive excess out of sheer boredom. In not very idealistic settings they became punks, beggars, criminals and people that live in constant poverty while the select of the population lives in luxury.

So, not very encouraging comparison.

This is a weird comparison, but an example of the whole "everyone is self-employed because robots" thing might exist in Star Wars. Have you noticed how basically anyone in the Star Wars movies who isn't a government employee/politician, slave, or rebel is self-employed?

That's because of story-writing reasons: it's easier to garner sympathy about self-employed or family-business working characters than it is people that work for the many faceless corporations that exist in Star Wars. Not to mention the abundance of people that work the galaxy-spanning government whether it's the Empire or Republic.

[Battlehymn Republic]

By art, I mean all of entertainment. How much training do YouTube Partners have? Twitch streaming champs? Fanfic writers like Erika Mitchell or Stephenie Meyer? Internet meme celebrities?

[Zixinus]

By art, I mean all of entertainment. How much training do YouTube Partners have? Twitch streaming champs? Fanfic writers like Erika Mitchell or Stephenie Meyer? Internet meme celebrities?

How many of them can make their entire living off of it? From out of how many of all the youtube contributors, twitch streamers, fanfic writers and so on out there? How many can make enough not just to pay the bills but to support a future, like paying debts, buying homes, providing for their children, etc.

Thing about it .Even those who were amateurs that got big usually self-taught themselves if by nothing else than by doing their craft. The more serious youtube contributors that regularly get donations and such also usually made serious investments in equipment to improve their content, buying studio-quality lightning, cameras, microphones and such. Sure, fans will donate, but in a world where most jobs are automated, how much those that are employed can afford? How much money can be made by advertising? Can they afford to provide a livelihood for everyone? What do they do if the people's fickle interests shift to something else and a successful content-creator suddenly finds the money coming in at such a low ebb that they can't pay the bills? What if there is a crisis, like a baby or a sickness or hospital injury or whatever that forces the content-creator to be unable to do their thing? How many of them can be so successful that they have savings as well as just live day-to-day with their thing?

In the end, they'll be no different from other artists and entertainers troughout the ages. Only the better ones will be able to consistently make enough to do what they do for their entire life. The rest may do it for a time, may happily keep at it as a hobby, may have five minutes of fame, but how many can they plan their livelihood on it without needing more stable work?

[K. A. Pital]

I've fixed the tags in Zixinus' post above. Other than that, I would like a serious answer from people who talk about virtues of self-employment.

And no bullshiting, please. I was self-employed, and I was basically successfully making money. But when the income is not obscenely huge, it is downright impossible to plan your future. Even when your self-employment is a complete, honest to god success generating several thousand US dollars a month!

[Alferd Packer]

I imagine that its strongest appeal is the sense of independence. Some people chafe so greatly when subject to the whims of their employer that they would rather risk starvation than take a standard job. Is that a virtue of self-employment? For those people, sure. Not for me, but I can understand that if one's priorities lean so heavily in that direction, one might see it as such. I have to imagine that's fairly rare, like the homeless person who prefers being homeless and shuns aid. I also have to imagine the staunch individualist's enthusiasm for self-employment is affected at least to some degree about the amount of success she is having.

[Battlehymn Republic]

Weirdly, none of this previous conversation mentions the concept of basic income.

[Ace Pace]

I've fixed the tags in Zixinus' post above. Other than that, I would like a serious answer from people who talk about virtues of self-employment.

And no bullshiting, please. I was self-employed, and I was basically successfully making money. But when the income is not obscenely huge, it is downright impossible to plan your future. Even when your self-employment is a complete, honest to god success generating several thousand US dollars a month!

I can only speak from a good friends experience as a freelancer. Pretty much the only virtues is more control over who you work for and the ability to schedule yourself. Other than that, everything is crap but depending on your personality, the pros may outweigh the cons.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

I think people are underestimating the amount of time it will take for automation to obsolete a significant chunk of human labor. Yes, a lot of current jobs will be replaced by machines in the next 20 years, just as they have in the past 20, but AI and robotics are so far from being able to replace the decision-making and adaptability of an average human that no one can even predict a firm time frame for when the shift will take place. By the time significant parts of the labor force are being pushed out, the voters most adamant about not providing income without labor will be dead and the younger ones will have had years to get used to the idea. The consequences of doing nothing will be an easily visible increase in poverty.

[K. A. Pital]

The adaptability of humans is overestimated. Conveyor belt workers, packaging line workers, etc. are basically living machine appendages who execute the same simple operation repeatedly from start to finish. Who is next? Translators, I think, or at least the vast majority. All restaurant menus are translated by Google translate nowadays. You can't help but notice it when traveling. It looks funny and often has horrible mistakes. But the small diner does not care if it does not translate well enough; it just needs a very basic service that the machine offers for free. Eventually, as machines move on to more complex texts, the next tier is out of jobs, until only the best and brightest remain in very specialized areas. Tour guides. Who needs them when you can download a bunch of MP3 with information which let you explore the town, museum etc. at your own pace? And so on.

[Darmalus]

The social and economic consequences of having the "bottom rungs" of employment removed will be interesting (in the same way a nuclear war is interesting). If teenage me had lived in a world where a Masters degree was required for a minimum wage entry-level position, I would have just dropped out of high school (or only selectively attend interesting classes) since formal education would have been functionally worthless to me. This is a nerd who thought an afternoon in the non-fiction section of the local library was a good time.

But progress is hard to stop. Let's bring on the automation and see how things shake out!

[Zixinus]

The problem is precisely that progress is hard to stop and we don't know what will happen exactly. It might be good, it might be bad and probably will be a mix of the two we didn't quite expect. It's what happened so far. Nobody could have quite predicted how computers will enter people's live and become part of human civilization. But they did. It took some jobs and left jobs that require skills to do.

The best short-term solution would be a revolution or at least mayor reforms to how education is done, especially mid- and higher education.
Already computer-related skills are becoming more and more essential. What was the most they could teach me in school is now the basic required of every worker (namely, using MS Office pack). In a way it has involved itself more than many other technologies, usually of which people experienced the products of but not the technology itself (things like plastics or medicine).

But what would be required is a restructuring of everything, from attitudes about education trough changing the nature of the curriculum to retraining teachers. There needs to be a system for people both work and study, so they can balance the two and still have a life. There needs to be a system where people's curiosity is raised and their minds engaged in lessons, not just the information poured on them (perhaps a bit of this already exists). There needs to be something that autodidact learning isn't only useful for interested amateurs but something that people can earn (and by that I mean meeting the full requirements) degrees and certifications that grant access to more jobs.