The Core
Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: rcjordan on July 22, 2014, 12:55:40 AM
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“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/07/21/were-heading-into-a-jobless-future-no-matter-what-the-government-does/
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Great read thanks.
“enough work for all who need work for income, purchasing power and dignity.”
This is core and the bit that gets forgotten so often imho is dignity.
I do think he is wrong in thinking the week will shorten. History says imho that fewer people end up working harder. Its just that if you are on the wheel, you are terrified of falling off, as there are so many skilled young thnigs behind you wanting your place. They dreamed of that Utopia in the 60s and 70s I am told :)
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>Utopia
I have a friend/mentor who is a great futurist (though I DO tease him a lot about my having to pick through his wispy grasp of reality to find the gems).
Over the past year of so, we've been debating the future of jobs, mostly as they relate to the US/EU demographic. His reply:
> I was pretty interested until i go to this: "but we could also create the
> utopian future we have long dreamed of, with a large part of humanity
> focused on creativity and enlightenment."
>
> Predictions about the future are usually wrong Utopian predictions are
> ALWAYS wrong.
>
> Still, it makes me think- Such change can't happen without a HUGE downside
> that no one expects.
>
RC:
I think the editor said "This is too goddamn gloomy! Make it a happy
ending or toss it in the trash." But the points about job-loss are
good. Basically, a lot of people can see this train wreck coming but
no one can see how to get out of its way. The only thing I can see is
massive population loss.
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Within two decades, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water
I think those predictions are wildly over-optimistic, to the point of being irresponsible.
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>almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water
I'd argue we're close to that now, or at least the potential for it. The problem is squandering resources, poor or no infrastructure for distribution, and doomed because of money.
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> "with a large part of humanity focused on creativity and enlightenment"
We tried that already, ended up with the Kardasians and funny cat videos.
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>We tried that already, ended up with the Kardasians and funny cat videos.
1 out of 2 ain't bad...
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We've talked a bit about how there is going to have to be some type of shift in the social-welfare systems around the world as employment opportunities collapse. I don't think it's going to be a utopia, but a very painful adjustment. People with wealth aren't going to want to give it up, people who are hungry aren't going to want to starve. Ultimately, we're going to end up with people receiving pay checks just for breathing and some will want to spend that money in the wrong way.
>humanity focused on creativity and enlightenment
We did get Linux, Kikipedia, the internet, open source software, Archive.org & the Gutenberg project. Sure, most people will spend their time doing meaningless sh##, but not everybody.
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Whew! Where to start? I'm a historian (16th-century Europe), not a futurist. But when I see how people who know little about history project backwards it gives me an idea about how people who know little about the future (that is all of us) project forward.
The largest point is certainly right - many jobs will be eliminated. As information systems get smarter, there will be fewer and fewer jobs where humans reign supreme. I was once considered one of the premier French paleographers (reader of old manuscripts) in the world. Paleography is basically like solving the CAPTCHA from Hell. But as I told my students in this summer's seminar, I would expect that in 20-30 years computers will be better at paleography than humans. It's mostly a horsepower problem.
That said, his vision of a future only a couple of decades away is farcical.
Everyone interested in thinking about the future should read Stewart Brand's book "The Clock of the Long Now." One of the points he makes is that the primary utility of long-range forecasting is to identify present needs. The forecasts are always wrong because they always discount the 1 in a billion events. And yet, played out over billions of events over a hundred years, one of those 1 in a billion events that changes everything is bound to happen.
-- the general problem with the article --
The general problem is that people project current trends way out into the future. I see this a lot with non-historians thinking about the past. They think that because their parents familes were larger and their grandparents' families even larger, that in the distant past families were generally very large. It's simply not the case. The typical household in Renaissance Florence was 4 persons, including servants (see Herlihy and Klapish, Les Toscans et leurs familles). This "futurism" is a similar sort of project.
Stewart Brand illustrates the problem with a nice anecdote. In the 1980s, the Swedish navy received notice from the national forester that their trees were ready. Nobody in the navy knew, but in the 18th century, the navy had identified a key strategic problem that would cause Swedish military power to decline: an impending shortage of trees suitable for building masts. So the navy ordered the forester to plant a forest so that in 200 years they would still have trees to harvest for masts. Of course, 200 years later, masts had no strategic importance. However, old growth forest had a value all its own and Sweden now has an old growth forest thanks to long-term thinkers in the navy. That's what I mean about the utility of long-range planning being useful for setting current priorities. Huge trees had a value in 1785 and in 1985. The reason was totally different, but the long-range thinking allowed the value and the need to be identified. It did not, however, result in anything like an accurate picture of the future.
As to the details in the article...
Starting at the top....
Within two decades, we will have almost unlimited energy, food, and clean water; advances in medicine will allow us to live longer and healthier lives; robots will drive our cars, manufacture our goods, and do our chores
Let's start with the obvious... In two decades....
-- "robots will drive our cars" --
The average age of a car on the road today is 11.4 years[1] and that number has been generally rising as cars last longer (remember when it was a feat to get 100K miles out of a car). If ALL new cars become robot-driven 8 years from now, that means that two decades from now at most half of the cars on the road will be robot-driven. Do I need to say that 8 years from now, few if any production cars will be robot-driven. Verdict: utter fantasy.
-- "unlimited energy" --
How about this quote: "Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter."
-- Lewis Strauss, 1954 [2]
When I was in high school 25 years later, we were seeing the fastest rise in energy prices in history, not free electricity. I did a term paper on nuclear fusion. From everything I read, nuclear fusion and crazy cheap electricity were two decades away.
I believe that "free" energy will always be two decades away. Energy, as a proportion of personal income, is astronomically cheaper today than it was in the past. According to one study, the cost of 1000 lumens in ancient Babylon was 58 hours of labor for a typical worker. The cost in 1992 for a 1000 lumens was equivalent to 0.00012 hours of work for a typical worker [3].
By historical measures, we have "almost unlimited energy" today. Raise your hand if you feel that your energy costs are approaching zero and if a survey of geopolitics suggests that energy feels unlimited currently?
-- food --
Climate change is stressing all of our food systems and our food systems are feeding climate change. Beef in particular can't become "unlimited" if we are going to actually keep the planet from zinging past 10 degrees Farenheit. And looking at it from the other side, the best projections are for food production to decline. There are all sorts of inefficiencies in the food production and distributions systems, but I don't see unlimited food. We are likely, at some point, to see a falling planetary population and possibly planet-wide deflation as a result, but first we need to get over the "hump" in the form of African population explosion (European and North American and Japanese fertility have cratered already, South America and most of Asia are, I believe, slowing down, but Africa is poised for a population explosion if it ever gets past its political problems. If you've seen the Hans Rosling TED talks, we can guess that's coming.
-- clean water --
Read Cadillac Desert. America is pumping its aquifers dry. Most people don't realize that about half of the water used to grow food in the Great Plains is pumped from the ground, mostly from the Oglala Aquifer. That is a bank of water left over from the last Ice Age. The best data suggest we've used most of it up already. Is there another 20 years in there? Another 30? Similarly, the wells in the Central Valley of California are going dry. Many have gone dry this year. The drought is driving it because it's forcing people to pump more, but a few years of rain will not replenish ancient underground water. In other words, the drought has only accelerated the draw down. It's been many, many years since Californians were pulling water out at the replacement rate.
If energy becomes super cheap, then desalination becomes an option, but it's going to take a huge amount of energy to desalinate it and then pump it to eastern Colorado. If the energy prediction doesn't come true, we can guarantee the water one won't either. And if the water prediction doesn't come true, say goodbye to the food prediction.
-- advances in medicine will allow us to live longer lives --
That's probably true, though at the moment the current generation of kids in America is the first one in history to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents due to preventable diseases related to obesity and sedentary lifestyle. But if it does come true, it exacerbates the food, water and energy problem. It will also divide the haves and the have-nots unless prices truly crash. We will need a lot more Theranos-style innovation for that to happen.
1. http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-ihs-automotive-average-age-car-20140609-story.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_cheap_to_meter
3. http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6064.pdf - Table 1.4 (pp. 46-47).
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You guys keep focusing on the utopian stuff, as 'Debbie Downer' (who *ahem* was right about that 25% loss in home values, pre-bubble) I'm waving that off as feel-good bullshit.
>stressing
>>The only thing I can see (as an answer) is massive population loss.
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History says imho that fewer people end up working harder.
Modern industrial societies work far more hours per day than hunter-gatherer societies, that's true. But after that I'd say that observation is wrong.
In general we work less than in the West than we did 100 years ago thanks to the labor movement, the two-day weekend and the 40-hour work week, the eight-hour day. Remember, it was only about 130 years ago that workers striking for an eight-hour day were shot to death by police, resulting in the Haymarket Affair and the celebration of May Day everywhere except the United States were anti-labor forces succeeded in making sure it did not become a labor holiday. ( http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/571.html)
There has been a rise in the workday in recent times in America, but the best time-diary studies show that it is minimal and not close to what the popular media would have you believe. Part of the perceived rise in working hours is because people consistently overstate their work hours and the more they work, the more they overstate, especially women - http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2011/06/art3full.pdf
Then if you go back further... I can't recall the book, but there was a man in 18th-century France who started as a farmer and then moved to the city and became reasonable educated and well-off. Reacting to the "noble peasant" idea prevalent at the time, he wrote the story of his earlier life and the backbreaking toil of a peasant at the time. And in the city I study, the city rang the bells at 4am in the summer to wake people for work and many worked until late in the day. In the winter, the day was shorter, but to make ends meet, peasants were often busy with handcrafts indoors if they could afford the light to keep working.
So I would say that historically speaking, the general trend in hours worked has been down. As the author of the article implies, though, the downward trend has not been fast enough. As a culture, we've chosen to work more and have more. Most of us live lives that kings of old could not even imagine with all manner of comfort and entertainment and food from distant lands. What we have not been willing to do is bring hours down faster and have a lower standard of living. The French tried the 32-hour work week, but just couldn't get it to stick in the context of a global economy. Someday, though, I think the 32 hour work week will be the norm. There will still be people working 100 hours per week, but the norm will drop below 40.
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>> What we have not been willing to do is bring hours down faster and have a lower standard of living.
that's the issue. I won't pretend I'm better at this than anyone else, but we need to be more realistic in our expectations, I had a quite heated discussion with my best mate who says he has the "right" to one foreign holiday a year minimum, and my cousin, she of 16 types of benefits and prone to not repaying money you lend her has the "right" to a new car on HP because otherwise her two kids get wet walking places.
None of us have the right to anything but heat, food and an element of comfort. I would be really reluctant to give up my extras for which I feel I work hard but I do understand its irresponsible to make some of the choices I do. But hell I'm not giving stuff up if everyone else is having fun!
In 20 years time I suspect we'll be living in a global version of animal farm. I feel like there should be a link to that preppers thread here!
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>In general we work less than in the West than we did 100 years ago
I don't think that is anywhere near correct. Maybe the "poor" work much less, many not at all. The "don't want to be poor" group much much harder and for proportionately less reward.
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>In general we work less than in the West than we did 100 years ago
I don't think that is anywhere near correct. Maybe the "poor" work much less, many not at all. The "don't want to be poor" group much much harder and for proportionately less reward.
Professionals work a bit more than they did 50 years ago, but very few professionals work 6x12, which was a common factory worker schedule in the 19th century.
People feel stressed and overworked, but time diary studies show that most of the "lost" time since 1970 has gone into television and other diversions rather than work. In general, work hours have bee stable throughout the industrialized world since 1970 and before that they fell dramatically over the course of the 20th century.
Plus you have to realize that at the beginning of the 20th century women's kitchen working hours alone were estimated at 42 hours per week. So even people who spend more time at work are actually working less because of convenience foods, power mowers and things like that.
These are based on research and data rather than just subjective impressions and show a slight rise in leisure and a decrease in overall work over the past 100 years. The idea that people work more today than ever is not borne out by any data I can find.
http://econweb.ucsd.edu/~vramey/research/Century_Published.pdf
http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@dgreports/@dcomm/@publ/documents/publication/wcms_104895.pdf
http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/WagesandWorkingConditions.html
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As Ever, isnt it a case of where and when you compare it from? like the climate really.
Early industrial work was hard and long, and farmers, when they are bringing in the crops, have always had to work hard then. However, come the winter months in the hemispheres the work load reduced. (My impression, happy to be put right on this but it does still with Charlie who works the fields behind us)
As for calculating working hours now I know I can count child care, and parent care in the equation, then my hours go up even more. TV? little time for that.
My point is not really comparing with hunter gatherers or railway builders, just that those on the wheel now, generally, are going to have to work harder to stay on it. There will likewise always be niches that people can exploit, and governments changing working directives.
A job is/will be a luxury, that gives you a bit extra. Otherwise why work? I can site here, catch fish and play with my grandchildren?
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There is work and there is hard labor. In historical times, physical labor was hard, there were no machines, and just keeping house was hard work. If you were rich enough you might have servants do the hard work for you. Farm labor, without electricity and machines was back breaking and not all that rewarding. During the industrial revolution, people flocked to the cities and factory jobs which seemed easier than farming.
Today we work, but few people do the kind of hard labor that was done 100, 150, 200 years ago. Today we move columns of numbers around electronic spreadsheets, or move paper from our inbox to our outbox, its work but not hard physical labor.
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Good distinction that Brad.
i do think it would be a nice job though in the one man factory. I like dogs. It would be company
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All points well taken, most of which I agree with.
There are two separate issues - the assertions about the past and the assertions about the future.
To say "people work more today than ever" is testable. We have data and that assertion is not supported. Nor is the assertion that we have less leisure than ever. But neither would the assertion that people in industrial economies today work less than ever, which is also testable and false. As for the seasons of agriculture, that depends on the time and place. As the home wool industry spread and inflation set in during the sixteenth century in particular, peasants many places found themselves compelled to weave in the down times to make ends meet, as just one example. The book whose title I can't remember was written partly to dispell the notion of the easy winter of the 18th-century peasant.
In terms of counting childcare and so forth, it's common to do so because if you don't you distort the entire household work picture dramatically once you include women in your calculations.
Then there are the assertions about the future, which are not testable and seem mostly far-fetched in this article. In the 1930s John Maynard Keynes posited that the grandchildren of his generation (so roughly speaking, us or for some of you, your parents) would have a work week of only a few hours and mostly live a life of leisure.
So respected economists and thinkers have been making the same prediction as the article author since at least 1930 and yet last I checked nobody considers a 10-hour work week to be "full time." So basically I think the article is likely to be BS from start to finish.
That said, I can't help but think we'd be better off with fewer iPhones and fewer work hours, but historically we've chosen to reduce work slightly and increase material conditions dramatically. It is possible that we will reach a point where we decide we don't need to increase our material wealth and we just want to reduce the amount of work, but there will always be people who will want to work 80 hours a week for as much as they can get and most people will probably always want to allocate a substantial portion of their day to having a handful of luxuries. Pretty much as Rupert said.
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> isnt it a case of where and when you compare it from
I feel like this is a 1st-world perspective ...sort of like a gated community saying "We don't have much crime in our town."
Ergo's references don't match up (sorta) with my readings on the changes in work & home life brought on by the development of good artificial light sources. I'd think that running his pacific rim sweatshops 24/7 would have been very difficult for NFFC just a few generations ago.
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I once read about how the US Depression Era, Rural Electrification Program changed farming and rural living. Until farms got electricity most work was a sunup to sundown activity because of the need to see. Electric lights changed that, but it went beyond lights.
Suddenly you could pump water on demand with electric motors, electric tools made repairs faster, fans could be set up to move air through animal buildings and reduce deaths from heat, in the home vacuum cleaners worked, electric hot water heaters and more.
But it effected more than just work. Electricity paved the way for radio which made the world a little smaller, light - good strong light to read and learn by, safety because electric lights are far safer than lighting with glorified Molotov cocktails which is what oil lamps were.
Electricity liberated rural America from a nintenth century existence.
My point is we often take for granted how much one technological improvement can mean.
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>1st world
Sad to say but life is cheap outside of the First World.
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First of all, I should say that Ergo is still winning this debate because he's providing sources while I'm just blowing smoke out my a##.
>effected more than just work
Search on circadian rhythm and second sleep. It's amazing just how much lighting has changed our lives.
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>>Ergo is still winning this debate
Bah! Don't care about winning per se. My nickname should be your first clue that it's a topic near and dear to my heart, but I'm not invested in it one way or the other. I'm curious about the topic and if you have good sources that contradict mine, I would be genuinely curious. I don't care if what I said above "wins" or not, just presenting the info I have at hand.
There is a very prevalent idea oft repeated in the media that people work more today than ever and I have never found good support for it and from what I've read the time diary studies are the best and they often belie other claims. Electric lighting has dramatically changed our circadian rhythms and people most definitely sleep less. We may even has less "unprogrammed" time, but much of our unprogrammed time is not "work" per se.
I just got off on this as a sideline from the original article projecting tiny amounts of work in the future, which has been predicted over and over again, like many of his predictions. Just like people have predicted impending disaster over and over again.
Personally, I'm betting on a very difficult period of serious dislocation over the next couple of hundred years followed by a new takeoff that nevertheless falls short of the Polyanna ideas in the article.
>>"we often take for granted how much one technological improvement can mean"
Matches. Dramatically changed the lives of women in rural society, mostly for the worse.
>>second sleep
It was actually fairly common for people who could afford candles and who weren't clergy to get up and work for a couple hours between first and second sleep in the winter (in summer Matins would ring near dawn and be followed straight on by Lauds, but in winter Matins would ring around midnight and people might stay awake for a couple of hours).
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>candles
And, for those who couldn't afford them; sex. The average folk were sleeping in family-style bedding areas.
>tiny amounts of work
Oh, I agree that the average person is going to work far less. The difference between the polyanna views and mine is that I don't think they're going to get PAiD for the time off.
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the difference between the polyanna views and mine is that I don't think they're going to get PAiD for the time off.
Didn't you get the memo? In the future everything will be free ;-)
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>In the future everything will be free
Hhh, and how do we meld that concept with an increasingly capitalist world?
>don't think they're going to get PAiD for the time off.
Really, there's the crux of it.
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>In the future everything will be free
Hhh, and how do we meld that concept with an increasingly capitalist world?
Don't ask me. I don't believe it for a second... I'm just poking fun at certain polyannish pundits. I'd say in this regard I'm in your camp.
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Articles on this general subject are starting to pop up a lot in my reading sources. The Great Recession and the on-going jobless recovery (mostly the jobless recovery combined with a period of extraordinary & relatively inexpensive tech advances) are going to make this a hot subject for a good while. My own -biased- view is that the pollyannas are losing their optimism which did have supporting data from the past centuries of the Electro-Mechanical Industrial Revolution.
“Automation is Voldemort: the terrifying force nobody is willing to name,” declared one respondent quoted in the Pew report. “Good-paying jobs will be increasingly scarce,” said another, NASA program manager Mark Nall. “I’m not sure that jobs will disappear altogether,” allowed Justin Reich of Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, “but the jobs that are left will be lower paying and less secure than those that exist now.”
http://www.pewinternet.org/2014/08/06/future-of-jobs/
Expert opinion survey in which the researchers asked 1,900 economists, management scientists, industry analysts, and policy thinkers one big question: “Will networked, automated, artificial intelligence applications and robotic devices have displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025?”48 percent predicted that intelligent software will disrupt more jobs than it can replace.
Gleaned from Slate article
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/08/the_new_luddites_what_if_automation_is_a_job_killer_after_all.html
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>displaced more jobs than they have created by 2025
I think the chances of that are very slim, in the west at least. Too many huge companies/govt staffed by people with a common interest in maintaining the status quo.
I think we are fine for about 20 years. Then we wake up and it's much too late, Asia is already 15 years ahead and uncatchable, only play left is a damn good war like the old days.
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Yet another article on the topic:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/if-schools-dont-change-robots-will-bring-on-a-permanent-underclass-report
>Asia
You guys remember Foxconn announcing that it would replace one million jobs with one million robots? I think its going to get bad all over and the heavy dependence on manufacturing and huge population may make it harder in Asia than in the West.
I keep picturing a future where the new-poor of the world go back to subsistence farming. If it gets that bad living in a place with low population density will be an advantage. An odd thought, but maybe the people who will be best off will be in rural South America.
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I feel I need to explain my perspective a little. I honestly think that most of the experts are underestimating the effects of automation and I don't think any place on earth and any skill level is going to be immune to the change. Probably some countries will try to go down a humane path and provide a living base wage like we talked about, but most won't. So, there is going to be a huge divide between the wealthy who could afford the technology and the poor who can't. The vast majority of the poor will have no place in a world where the rich have advanced machines doing all the labor. Even the jobs for skilled labor will be limited. This is why I see the future-poor having to become self-reliant, feeding and protecting themselves -- basically 21 century homesteaders.
I know it is a particularly dark vision of the future, and I hope I'm wrong.
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lm I think along the same lines, it's just a matter of time.
I do feel the reality will be that the poor will more likely turn to crime/drugs and maybe organized crime at best. Homesteading is actual work, takes organization and planning and I don't think it will happen on a scale for it to work for the majority.
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I'm not convinced that 40 acres and a mule will be enough to satisfy people. These are modern minds and will require entertainments - bread and circuses to keep them quiet.
Markets can adjust. Government regulations about employment, taxes, subsidies can all change. But it might get ugly.
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>the poor will more likely turn to crime/drugs
Lets be honest, we are already at that stage. Many parts of town we just ignore or don't drive through. We have already decided how we deal with the sick, lame and lazy.
The question is what we do when they are in the majority?
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>The question is what we do when they are in the majority?
Exactly, that's the issue. That group is not going to change methods, but grow and continue on.
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This vid explains the problem pretty well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
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>Lets be honest, we are already at that stage. Many parts of town we just ignore or don't drive through.
The above came to mind while I was reading this:
"Fort Lauderdale's ordinance took effect Friday, and the city passed a slew of laws addressing homelessness in recent months. They ban people from leaving their belongings unattended, outlaw panhandling at medians and strengthen defecation and urination laws, according to Michael Stoops, director of community organizing for the National Coalition for the Homeless.
"I've never seen a city pass so many laws in such a short period of time," said Stoops, who testified at a City Council hearing on the issue.
Other cities are conducting routine homeless sweeps while some have launched anti-panhandling campaigns, according to the coalition. And many laws continue to target public feedings.
In Houston, groups need written consent to feed the homeless in public, or they face a $2,000 fine. Organizations in Columbia, South Carolina, must pay $150 for a permit more than two weeks in advance to feed the homeless in city parks.
In Orlando, an ordinance requires groups to get a permit to feed 25 or more people in parks in a downtown district. Groups are limited to two permits per year for each park."
http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Feeding-the-homeless-Act-of-charity-or-a-crime-5875172.php
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Ft. lauderdale arrested a 90 year old man and two pastors for feeding the homeless. For video.
http://youtu.be/qUeKlhpoF5o
That old man was arrested a number of years ago for feeding the homeless, the judge ruled the ordinance in place at that time unconstitutional.
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seriously? things like that make me so angry.
Its a bit of a pity that some of those people gawking in the background didn't step in and carry on serving, to be honest.
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seriously? things like that make me so angry.
Its a bit of a pity that some of those people gawking in the background didn't step in and carry on serving, to be honest.
I hope more local clerics will and maybe even a bishop or two might get arrested for feeding the homeless in the next few weeks in an act of civil disobedience.
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We have tens of thousands of elementary school buildings standing empty for the evenng. Or churches --damn, in the South we have more Baptist churches than Maryland has liquor stores (that's a *LOT*, eurotrash). We need to use them to help.
But I'm conflicted on the use of parks. Don't get me wrong, but it's sort of like feeding the pigeons. I know of one park that has essentially become a trash-filled hangout because the churches fed the homeless there.
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agreed, these thngs should happen in an appropriate place, or even better, these people shouldn't be homeless.
But on the balance of all things, unless they are handing out things in wrappers, all that they're doing is moving the same amount of litter from somewhere else to the park (in itself, feeding people there doesn't make more litter, just changes where they drop it) so is it a better use of public money to pay for police to arrest people, or to pay for community workers to manage a community payback schemen to pick up the concentration of litter? Or divert a couple of the pavement cleaners to the park.
I know thats simplistic, but the solution to homelessness isn't laws to make people even less cared for :(
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> laws to make people even less cared for
'Out of sight and out of mind' (and not out of my budget) is what these laws are trying to do. But if this thread is on-target, as I believe it is, the problem is going to increase to the point where it won't stay hidden.
>simplification
What happens, though, is (to modify a term) "class flight" and the public area loses its intended users.
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You guys keep focusing on the utopian stuff, as 'Debbie Downer' (who *ahem* was right about that 25% loss in home values, pre-bubble) I'm waving that off as feel-good bullshit.
>stressing
>>The only thing I can see (as an answer) is massive population loss.
Mother nature will take care of "massive population loss"
My guess is that volcanoes will do the trick as they have in the past.
[PREPARE]
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/~small/PopVol.html
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<tick tock>
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2016/11/21/wal-marts-dallas-optical-lab-loses-91-jobs-automation
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1st post this thread (2014):
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.”
Headline today:
JD, a Chinese e-commerce giant, has built a new fulfillment center in Shanghai that can organize, pack and ship 200,000 orders a day with 4 people — all of whom service the robots.
They forgot the dog.
https://www.axios.com/in-china-a-picture-of-how-warehouse-jobs-can-vanish-d19f5cf1-f35b-4024-8783-2ba79a573405.html
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drip... drip... drip...
Los Angeles dockworkers oppose expanded automation - Washington Times
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/22/los-angeles-dockworkers-oppose-expanded-automation/
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>“The factory of the future will have only two employees"
Getting closer.
One PlayStation can be assembled every thirty seconds in a robotic factory with only four people.
PlayStation's secret weapon: a nearly all-automated factory - Nikkei Asia
https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Companies/PlayStation-s-secret-weapon-a-nearly-all-automated-factory
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Amazon distribution center
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/lmr2j5/robots_at_an_amazon_distribution_center/
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<warp>
>>“The factory of the future will have only two employees"
Fully automated instant noodles production line
https://old.reddit.com/r/toolgifs/comments/129hgil/fully_automated_instant_noodles_production_line/