Minimum Wage Sucks Because

[DBTrek]

How about what ifs DB - What if automation does render 80% of the population worthless....what would Dear Leader DB do?

What if Industrialization renders an entire agrarian society obsolete?
Then what do we do!?!?

Oh wait.
Nothing.

Well, there you go.
Just like the farmers of yore, the masses of people displaced from the current economic paradigm adapt to the new economic paradigm and carry on.

[SuburbanFarmer]

what would Dear Leader DB do?

Probably seal himself in the man cave, and yell at a blank tv, pretending it's a football game, until the cheetos run out.

[Zlaxer]

How about what ifs DB - What if automation does render 80% of the population worthless....what would Dear Leader DB do?

What if Industrialization renders an entire agrarian society obsolete?
Then what do we do!?!?

Oh wait.
Nothing.

Well, there you go.
Just like the farmers of yore, the masses of people displaced from the current economic paradigm adapt to the new economic paradigm and carry on.

That analogy doesn't hold up - farmers could move to other occupations because there were occupations which they could outperform machines on.


I guess it really comes down to that Fife and DB do not believe that 80% of the jobs are about to become automated......

[DBTrek]

That analogy doesn't hold up - farmers could move to other occupations because there were occupations which they could outperform machines on.

It holds up fine. You're just imparting godly attributes to your supernatural AI. Not only can it automate 80% of all jobs (which no AI is remotely close to doing), but it can also replace 80% of all possible imagined future vocations. That's why this is an idiot discussion, I'm using reason and historical precedence here and you guys are operating off of faith and religion.

[heydaralon]

I have no idea if this will become a problem in the future or if something will needed to be done to re-orient society. The thing is, you guys don't know either, and you are just nonchalantly blowing it off with an ideological certainty that is only matched by Marxists. There are fanatics that think the government can fix any problem, but there are also fanatics that think the free market is an infallible god. Economic systems come and go. I have no idea if our current system is on its way out, but to just claim that people who are worried about this are lazy pieces of shit is pure Marie Antoinette. I hope you are right.

There might be people who relish the idea of not working, but I am planning my life as though UBI will never happen. If it did, I think it would be terrifying and humiliating to rely on the government for everything. Its not a solution I want. If the people who are predicting these mass automation scenarios are even partially right though, you will have a huge fucking problem on your hands that isn't going to be fixed by John Stossel economics. I would love to hear a libertarian lecture an angry unemployed mob. That would be about as funny as Dinesh D'souza going up to the biggest blackest inmate in jail saying "The real problem with African American culture is entitlement and lack of work ethic..." It doesn't matter if you are ideologically correct at that point. Again, I have no idea if automation will be a problem, but you guys seem to think its not even worth discussing and that anyone who disagrees is worthy of scorn, which is absurd.

There's nothing in your fear-based soliloquy that can't be solved with education and a modicum of rational thought.
Likewise there's nothing here incentivizing me to bestow an education upon you, nor to walk you down the path of thinking this whole preposterous hypothetical through to its logical conclusion, which in turn would demonstrate how ridiculous the whole premise is in the first place.

So I guess you'll just have to live in fear and ignorance or educate and think yourself into a calmer mental state.
/shrug

lol you do this on every thread. You post on this forum and then act like everyone who doesnt agree with you is an idiot piece of shit and you are above answering them. I'm not claiming to have the answers here, all I'm saying is that it is a discussion worth having. People smarter than both of us are debating it right now in thinktanks. You can draw some parallels between the current situation and the ag-industry shift, but I don't think its a perfect fit. There are differences. A good discussion would be to talk about how people viewed that shift versus how people view this one. I'm down to have that discussion. No one is impressed with the automation fears=marxist laziness comparisons though.

[DBTrek]

lol you do this on every thread. You post on this forum and then act like everyone who doesnt agree with you is an idiot piece of shit and you are above answering them.

That's not true . . . I only react that way in threads where people are actively being idiot pieces of shit.

You know . . . ones where I knock down irrational fear after irrational fear, but the panic monkeys just keep creating brand new fears, or bestowing their imagined Specter of Humanity with greater and greater powers. There comes a point, like where we're at now in this thread, where I'm supposed to answer stupid shit like "BUT WHAT IF FUTURE AI TAKES 80% OF ALL JOBS AND 80% OF ALL POSSIBLE IMAGINED JOBS THAT MIGHT EVER EXIST!?!?!".

It's not even based on reality anymore. Now we're arguing wizardry and demigods. At this point the answer is actually found within the question - in a world where DemiGod AI wipes out 80% of all possible professions in the cosmos, then 80% of humanity isn't needed for human society to function and the productive 20% will probably get tired of dragging the dead weight around fairly quickly.

Or - if we've exploited less than 20% of all possible professions when the AI takes over, then eventually the remaining 20% of all possible professions not taken by AI will be exploited until everyone is employed.

Simple.

Derp.

But what does any of it have to do with reality?

[Martin Hash]

(DB, daralon just trolled you.)

[DBTrek]

Odd, I don't feel trolled.
In fact, I'm having a ball in this thread.

[Martin Hash]

Odd, I don't feel trolled.
In fact, I'm having a ball in this thread.

Yeah, you're kickin' ass. I just told a new sign-up (a female, thank god) to watch how you and Hanarchy work. (That daralon is a tricky bastard though.)

[Speaker to Animals]

I guess if you think throwing childish invective whenever you lose an argument is a great idea, then you'd love DB's "performance" in this thread. But if you like actual arguments, then no, he lost this one (several UBI threads ago, in fact).

None of you offered a single coherent argument to address the points made in support of a future UBI.

This is what DB does when he knows he lost the debate. He starts insulting people instead of formulate a new counterargument or just admit he doesn't have a decent response. He's like that kid who tosses the Monopoly board across the room when he goes bankrupt.

It's silly that anybody would think this is somehow "kickin' ass". For a self-professed genius, you sure don't like logical arguments much, I guess.

I'd challenge you guys to post a coherent and polite argument in response to what Daralon and Hanarchy wrote, but I remain quite certain all of you have nothing to offer. It's just insults from here on out because you lost. Debate goes to Daralon and Hanarchy.