Job Automation and the Minimum Wage Debate 870
An anonymous reader writes "An article at FiveThirtyEight looks at the likelihood of various occupations being replaced by automation. It mentions President Obama's proposed increase to the federal minimum wage, saying big leaps in automation could reshape that debate. '[The wage increase] from $7.25 to $10.10 per hour could make it worthwhile for employers to adopt emerging technologies to do the work of their low-wage workers. But can a robot really do a janitor's job? Can software fully replace a fast-food worker? Economists have long considered these low-skilled, non-routine jobs as less vulnerable to technological replacement, but until now, quantitative estimates of a job's vulnerability have been missing from the debate.' Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years (PDF): 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff. There are other jobs with a high likelihood, but they employ fewer people and generally have a higher pay rate: tax preparers (99%), freight workers (99%), and legal secretaries (98%)."
tl; read anyway (Score:3)
One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I read somewhere an essay written around the time the minimum wage was being increased a few decades ago. This was during a time when there were still elevator operators. The author predicted that after the increase, elevator operators would get phased out in favor of automated elevators. That probably would've happened anyway, but raising the minimum wage probably helped speed up that process.
If it gets really bad there will be pressure to illegalize automation of certain classes of jobs.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think will find is the very bottom it will be the last to go. The guy standing over the grill of the burgle have a job, the guy actually scrubbed the toilet will have a job. The person taking orders will be replaced of the machine, the facilities manager at least have to do things like keep inventory of paper products and such will be replaced by automatic reorders and machines. Essentially the jobs will be further deskilled.
The very bottom rung earning minimum wage probably has less to worry the next rung up who earns a couple dollars above minimum wage today. The guy making 725 will certainly be making 10, the guy making 10 is going to get the pink slip.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
The higher the minimum wage, the more incentive there will be to automate those minimum-wage jobs. If it'd average out to $11/hr to have a robot do some cleaning, and the minimum wage is $10/hr, then a janitor willing to work for $10/hr will have a job. If the minimum wage goes to $12/hr, the robot will take the job instead.
I know you're right in the grand scheme of things, esp. in corporate employment, but for a dollar an hour difference I will keep my human.
I read somewhere an essay written around the time the minimum wage was being increased a few decades ago. This was during a time when there were still elevator operators. The author predicted that after the increase, elevator operators would get phased out in favor of automated elevators. That probably would've happened anyway, but raising the minimum wage probably helped speed up that process.
Talking 'bout the good old days, when maybe you had to get up out of the recliner to change the TV channel, but there was none of that tiresome button-pushing in the elevator.
If it gets really bad there will be pressure to illegalize automation of certain classes of jobs.
I desperately hope they keep their humans at the massage parlor.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know you're right in the grand scheme of things, esp. in corporate employment, but for a dollar an hour difference I will keep my human.
Why? It's a waste of human effort to be working for $10 an hour. Sure someone with no skills is willing to do it, but I think it makes more sense as a society to have only jobs that pay $20/hr, have all the other jobs done by robots, and have all those people learning new skills or just watching TV or something.
I know "more jobs" is on the lips of every politician, but actually the goal should be less jobs (for humans to do). We should be focusing on maximizing production using the least resources including human effort. I know that for all of human history we've had to work hard to get the stuff we want/need, but at some point we may just be able to get what we need/want with minimal effort or no effort at all. No one will have any money, but luckily we won't need money to buy things anyway. An economic system that gives the biggest producers more money was important for incentivizing production, but one day we won't need to incentivize production if it no longer requires human effort to do so. Rationing limited resources will be the name of the game.
But.. but, socialism! (Score:5, Insightful)
After 70 years of being told that Communism == Socialism == Hitler == bad it's just ingrained in American Society. It's really the only answer to automation. There just aren't enough jobs. The world _doesn't_ need ditch diggers, and we only need so many scientists even if everyone was the next Albert Eisenstein. But the notion that a job, any job, is better than no job is heavily ingrained in America.
Re: But.. but, socialism! (Score:5, Insightful)
That's known as the Luddite fallacy and has been wrong every time it has been stated for the last 200 years. You will need to explain why this time is different.
Ah the fallacy of the "Luddite Fallacy"! The problem is that the industrial revolution ushered in a period of drastically reduced living conditions for a period of at least 60 years - that is to say an entire lifetime, or two generations for the majority of British citizens. Ever heard of all those poor houses is Dicken's London? The unemployment rate among those teeming urban masses looking for work in factories was 50% or so.
It is striking that recent revisionist economic historians, pushing the argument that the Industrial Revolution really wasn't so bad, argue that the period of dramatic wage collapse only lasted 40 years, and was 'speedily' made up over the course of merely another 30 years. These are the guys looking on the "bright side"!
The fact of the matter is that the livelihoods lost by one generation were made up by their great grand children!
If we are as successful as the first Industrial revolution we can look forward to poverty and misery of the next 60 years.
Re: But.. but, socialism! (Score:5, Interesting)
In the United states you can get away with not working at all. You can take advantage of homeless shelters and welfare.
Oh the advantages of living on the street in America! I can't believe I am reading this.
Oh, and about the "welfare" thing. Do you have any notion of what the facts are?
TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families)... requires that all recipients of welfare aid must find work within two years of receiving aid [welfareinfo.org]. So no, welfare requires you to find work or you get cut off.
The wealth of our society makes it possible for more and more people to be non-producers. I am not saying this in a fox news "moochers are the downfall of society" kind of way. I am saying it in a "look we *can* actually sustain a fairly large moocher population, and how many we can support is continuing to grow.
Easy there. Don't dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on the back.
So it *has* already come true to some extent, and it is continuing to become more true as time goes on. Right now only about 50% of adults work.
If by "50%" you mean "63%" then yes, otherwise no. This "only 50% of adults work" meme, in addition to being actually incorrect, is a deliberately misleading misuse of economic statistics. The real meaningful metric is the labor force participation rate (all those working or actively looking for work), which is rarely above 70% in any economy, ever. The all time high in the U.S. was in 1997, with a rate of 67% which was temporarily inflated by the fact that none of the Baby Boom had yet retired. The current participation rate is only modestly lower.
It's doesn't take a leap of faith to imagine a world where only 10% or 5% of people are working, and the rest of the jobs are done by robots and computers.
And are the other 95% going to be living on $1200 a month welfare, or will that be cut off after two years?
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
>People, like dogs, are not ideally suited to leisure and no obligations.
And that's exactly why it will work - not why it would fail. See even such a nearly fully automated world would need new ideas, new technologies and maintenance of the existing ones to stay in existence.
In such a world though - what could possibly be the incentive for anybody (particularly the very smart and highly skilled people who we still need working -the engineers and the doctors) to do anything at all ? The fact that humans are not suited to leisure - they seek out challenge, they seek out meaning and knowledge and this is more common among the smarter ones.
As Buckminster-Fuller put it - the idea that we have to earn our right to live with labour is not just outdated but a ludicrously silly concept. It would take maybe 10% of us, given the initial resources, about 5 years to build the automation to provide abundance to all humanity, and maybe 10% of our future lives to maintain it. What we should be doing with the other 90% (and everybody else with 100%) is simple: learning stuff, solving the riddles of the universe, expanding our minds, spending time with our children again.
There are a billion better ways we could spend our lives than trying to produce wealth (whether for ourselves as businessmen or for somebody else as wage-workers). Instead of wealth, we could be creating actual value - and actual meaning.
The monetary system as a means of measuring value was incredibly useful to build the world we have today - but it is antiquated, the entire *concept* of *trying* to measure the unmeasurable no longer has any use to us -we don't *need* it anymore.
There is, in fact, only one thing to overcome - and it's not a technical or physical obstacle - it's cultural inertia - but every other revolution in how humans lived had to overcome it, and they all did. Some of our ancestors convinced the others that farming was better than hunter-gatherering once, and gradually changed the entire way humans lived. We've made changes on the same scale on average every 300 years since then.
Ironically - this kind of change to a technologically powered epicurean society would, in fact, be among the simplest in terms of what we need to *practically* do.
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A few decades ago was the 1980's maybe the 1970, push-button automatic elevators were introduced in 1894, outside of a niche market the job was already long dead by a few decades, a few decades ago
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:4, Insightful)
What you really mean to say is the higher the minimum wage the cheaper it will be to the chances (the psychopaths might lose and face the executioner) and go back to whips and overseers. The minimum wage in a sound democratic society will always be a properly survivable and rewarding wage, which provides for food, clothing, transport, accommodation and a reasonable level of entertainment.
So, automation, easy problem, should robots pay tax and should that tax per robot be exactly the same as the minimum wage and measured in human work units. If the robot does the work of ten people, it pays taxes to the tune of 10 times the minimum wage. We are after all a society if human beings not robots. A society for the majority normal people and not a society for the minority psychopaths, no matter that they are currently running our society as visible by all the purposefully created faults they promote in our society.
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Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:4, Interesting)
If it were simply finances that ran our Government, why in all blue blazes did we privatize the banking industry? The "creators of currency"
As we move forward with manufacturing and production technology, the economies of scale lead to an environment of material goods abundance. I feel any shortages at our present stages of this game are purposely created by those who are gaming the system
I can't see where employees should cost the employer anything... the employer should simply write them off against taxes - as the employee they hired now has the burden of paying tax on his income. ( that's taxable income which would not exist if the employer hadn't created a job in the first place! ).
In short, I personally feel there is absolutely nothing wrong with the present system that an overhaul of our tax codes won't fix. But I can tell you one thing... the people who are presently gaming the system won't like it and they will do all in their power to keep the status quo by "working with" our lawmakers to make sure those changes won't happen. If that is the case, I feel we are on the road to repeating the French experience.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
there is absolutely nothing wrong with the present system that an overhaul of our tax codes won't fix. But I can tell you one thing... the people who are presently gaming the system won't like it and they will do all in their power to keep the status quo
That's what an overhaul of our tax codes won't fix. To fix that problem you're going to have to fix the disparity in wealth, and the tax codes have only ever been a part of that disparity.
If that is the case, I feel we are on the road to repeating the French experience.
Yes, the wealthy forget who is in charge every few generations, and must be reminded with fire and sharp steel. This, more than anything else, proves that these people are not particularly intelligent.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Every time I hear someone claim they're "creating a job" when they hire someone I cringe. You're not creating the job. I create that job when I buy the good or service you offer. That's the only reason why you can even "create" that job. Because someone else is buying what you can offer due to this job existing. And that's also why it's not the employer but the consumer who needs the money if you want to create jobs.
Take the average plumber. Or hairdresser. Or janitor. Or, hell, anyone providing a service (i.e. what 3/4th of our GDP producing population does). That plumber will employ someone if, and only if, there is a reason for him to do that. Because if there is no reason, he's better off without that person. Why? Because he costs money, DUH! What reason could he have? Well, of course if there are more people wanting to use his services than he can fulfill himself. Then, and only then, he will be forced to hire someone.
As you can see, "creating" jobs isn't something employers do out of altruistic motivations. It's something that only happens if they're forced to do it. Forced by the very person that wants to use that service provided.
And that in turn will happen if, and only if, that person not only needs that service but also is able to afford that service. And services is the FIRST thing people cut back on when money gets tight. When facing the choice to get some food or get the plumbing fixed because there is only money for one of them, the faucet will keep dripping because I simply HAVE to eat. I don't have to have a non-dripping faucet.
So if you want someone to create a job, make sure people have money to consume. Because that's how you create jobs!
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Both sides have to work out for a market to be created and goods/services to change hands, i.e. to create trade. But we don't have any kind of shortage on the supply side. We have a shortage on the demand side.
It would be trivial to provide a far bigger supply. We have very well trained, experienced and able workers who are unemployed. We have no shortage in production materials. And there also is no shortage of investment money. What keeps them all from producing is a lack of demand. The economy is in a do
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both sides have to work out for a market to be created and goods/services to change hands, i.e. to create trade. But we don't have any kind of shortage on the supply side. We have a shortage on the demand side.
I covered that bit (here, a "demand" shortage for labor) when I wrote " Most of the ideas expressed in this thread ... get in the way of that." Money dropped from helicopters doesn't employ people. It creates some jobs as a result of the temporary increase in economic activity, but it also loses jobs through the destruction of the value of money.
Actively, discouraging investment in favor of spendthift behavior most certainly doesn't employ people (since when has encouraging short term thinking been helpful?). And of course, the research of this story, which claims that minimum wage laws encourage the elimination of low wage jobs for automation, implies that bit of law doesn't employ people either.
What keeps them all from producing is a lack of demand. The economy is in a downturn not because our production cannot keep up with demand, not because we lack the ability or willingness to invest and we certainly don't have a shortage in the workforce.
So what? Ever consider that lower demand is the right move to make in a recession?
Half the things complained about in the comments to this story are consequences of trying to stir demand at a time when it shouldn't be so stirred - eg, bank bailouts (and the highly leveraged adventures that lead to those bailouts), businesses not willing to act due to economic uncertainty, prioritizing economic activity and "stimulus" over generation of value (which is my complaint in my previous post), quantitative easing, and of course, minimum wage laws.
It's all pain management (with a large dollop of corruption and just plain incompetence, I wager) and it has a higher priority than the health of nation-level economies. In the medical world, that only happens when either the illness is inconsequential (like a cold) or the patient is about to die with nothing possible except a somewhat less painful send-off. Do you think either possibility is relevant here?
Recessions don't happen because there was a magic drop in demand. They happen because enough of us were wrong about the world and what things are worth. That massive shift in our collective worldview is what creates the uncertainty and the drop in economic activity characteristic of a recession.
Most demand management, whether in a recession or not, is an attempt to provide incentives to pretend that the problems of the recession didn't happen. That is remarkably foolhardy and wasteful. I hope we grow out of that some day.
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Or just use a drone to drop them some money.
FTFY.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:5, Informative)
I work in industrial automation, so I do PLC programming, robot programming, control system integration, etc. I've been doing it over 15 years now. For the first 10 years I bought the whole "luddite" argument, and figured that automation only displaced people to other, ultimately higher paying jobs.
However, in recent years I've really started to worry. Imagine the person who is barely functional: they can follow instructions but you have to repeat yourself a whole bunch of times, and even then they still make lots of mistakes. My experience tells me this is around 30% of the workforce, at least. Back when everyone was in agriculture, these people couldn't really do too much damage, and if they were strong, they were useful. The magic of the industrial revolution was that we were able to both magnify the strength of everyone, *and* reduce the chance of making errors by (a) breaking things down into tiny tasks so people only had a very very simple thing to do (tighten nut A on bolt B all day long), and (b) designing things such that they couldn't assembled incorrectly (the modern term is poka yoke). This "lower" 30% of the workforce became very productive, and they joined labor unions and owned big houses and boats. They retired with nice company pensions. Their kids got much better educations than they did.
So, if you look at the things that these people made lots of money doing (something extremely simple, repetitive, and designed to be error-proof), then that's exactly what is simple enough to automate with a robot. We recently had a job that was taking 3 operators to do and produced parts at the rate of about 3 parts per minute, and they couldn't meet the production numbers even with 2 shifts (total 6 people). We replaced all 6 of those people with a single robot, and we're up to about 8 parts per minute so we probably only need to run about 1 shift.
The difference is that this new robot assembly cell requires a semi-skilled operator to run it. They need decent troubleshooting ability, with a bit of mechanical knowledge and decent computer skills (not programming, but basic stuff like navigating screens, understanding slightly more abstract concepts, etc.). They need to be able to look at the robot gripper and determine if anything's worn and needs replacement. We happen to have someone who's almost overskilled for the position. So we keep shuffling those other 6 people around in the plant, trying to find something for them to do, and almost always realizing that whatever they're doing could be automated. Plus, I really need to stress that these aren't people with decent troubleshooting skills, computer skills, etc. Any process we put them in requires us to remove all human decision making, because we can't tolerate errors (or they're very expensive).
My point is that unskilled laborers are a hassle to employ. We have a hard time thinking up things for them to do, and we'd love to find something because, well, they're so cheap! (And we already have $10/hr+ minimum wage here.) But so are robots. It used to be that a bare robot (uninstalled) cost $50,000. Integration costs might push that to $125,000 or $150,000. That really limited the choices... you pretty much had to eliminate one operator for 3 shifts to make it a valid investment. Now those costs are almost cut in half. The robots are well under $30,000 and integration is getting cheaper, plus we're just getting better at it.
As we transition into this "new economy" where there are no unskilled manufacturing jobs left, I really don't know where these people are going to find employment. I don't just see it happening in manufacturing either. I'm pretty sure that truck drivers and taxi drivers will be the first to get automated by the kind of auto-drive technology that Google's working on. We're already seeing automated forklift trucks in factories. I just don't know.
Re:One thing's for sure... (Score:4, Informative)
You could pay them not to work but then that also encourages other people not to work.
Not if you pay the people who do work significantly more. After all, one other point behind all those robots is that they make things cheaper (as GP noted, the robot that replaced 6 people could do their job more than twice as fast), so there's more profit to be made selling them.
BTW, Canada ran an experiment [wikipedia.org] on guaranteed minimum income a few decades ago, and, interestingly enough, they didn't see a problem with people's motivation to work being significantly reduced.
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Never seen a government that wasn't actively sheeple farming. Some are just more honest about it.
No arguments here, but if you shear sheep too close, they just freeze. If you shear humans too close for too long, you get torches and pitchforks. Sheeple are more like pigs. Bacon is delicious, but don't fall down in the hog pen.
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If nobody values it, why are they paying at all?
If we want to just go with basic income, that's one thing, but otherwise, I don't care to subsidize some cheapskate's payroll. I would actually rather see someone 100% supported by public funds than doing work for someone paying starvation wages. This is for the same reason I don't care to pay their power bill for them or the repair bills on their machinery.
Arguably, the bare minimum worth of a person's time is the cost of a living (at least a minimum living).
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Yes. He had good argument.
No, he had shit argument. Here it is again, since you apparently failed to understand the ramifications the first time: "A handful of people that cannot feed themselves simply IS less important than keeping a whole society functional." Guess what? If your society can't feed its people, it isn't functional. It is, in fact, dysfunctional by definition.
This is not a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Many minimum-wage jobs are reportedly at high risk, including restaurant workers, cashiers, and telemarketers. A study rated the probability of computerization within 20 years: 92% for retail salespeople, 97% for cashiers, and 94% for waitstaff...
A few other jobs that were lost to technology:
The knocker-up [wikipedia.org] was a person whose responsibility was to go out to people's houses and wake them up so they could get to work on time. Alarm clocks eliminated the need for them.
Acoustic locators [wikipedia.org] were people who listened to acoustic mirrors to detect incoming aircraft before radar was invented.
And sure, we can talk about buggy whips. The point is, quite a few jobs and entire industries no longer exist as a result of automation. We can start throwing our shoes at the machines like during the industrial revolution, or we can enjoy the benefits they bring us, accept the growing pains, and adapt to the new world. Personally I don't want to have to pay some guy to come knock at my window every morning so I can go to work. I hope I live long enough to talk to the younguns about all the ridiculous jobs that used to exist when I was their age.
Re:This is not a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
"Excuse me. Why does God need with a Starship?" (Score:3)
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Personally I don't want to have to pay some guy to come knock at my window every morning so I can go to work.
I would pay for a cute gal to come knock at my window every morning, but not so I can go to work. Where do I look for that in the yellow pages, knock-her-up did you say?
Escort (Score:3)
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Not only will the poor have fewer options, but so will kids trying to find part time jobs, - part time jobs they use to help pay for their expenses while going to college. So now they can graduate in even mor
growing pains toward a better future, maybe? (Score:4, Interesting)
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I agree with your end goal, but if in our current economic model, the basic necessities of life (assuming we're talking stuff like taco Bell) were fully automated, former fast food workers would be unable to eat. The parent corporation has no business interest in operating a charity for their displaced workforce.
I do still think minimum wage should be higher. It's expensive to live in this world.
Surely you jest ... (Score:5, Insightful)
First --- I wish, that would be an incredible and ideal future.
But society is based on power and control, both in government and private industry.
Government and private industry simply isn't going to say "Dear commoners, robots will do everything and you don't need to work and you get a free ride" --- will never happen!
And --- even if it did, look at what people with too much time on hands do to this world: crime, gangs, terrorists, cults, drug users --- most of societies ills are AVOIDED by making these people have jobs so they don't have free time.
I'd love to get to a Star Trek TNG future, but the vast majority of the populace isn't going to start creating and researching or coding solutions to the world's problems in their spare time, which is why it won't work. And the power and authority would never support a free ride of "their creations" or their use of their power.
Re:Surely you jest ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of those problems exist now because too many people are in poverty and see no real prospect of improvement working within the system.
Give thyem a decent lifestyle now and prospects to improve it within the law and you might be surprised how many will go that route instead.
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Don't be put off because of its religious origin - it's the demonstration of a point that has been known for thousands of years.
America is boned (Score:5, Insightful)
With the vehement anti-socialist thread that weaves throughout the American culture, the US will be one of the hardest hit by the coming automation age.
More socialist countries will have a chance of moving to the age of leisure, while America, god bless her, will move to the age of the gutter.
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If you think America is not socialist, you need to stop reading propaganda.
We have:
Fixed income for the elderly and disabled (Social Security)
Single payer health care for everyone over 65 (Medicare)
Single payer health care for everyone under a certain income level (Medicaid)
Health assistance for children of parents who don't qualify for Medicaid (SCHIP)
Health assistance for people injured on the job (Workers' Compensation)
Food assistance for everyone under a certain income level (SNAP)
Direct payments to fam
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Only in poorly regulated capitalism do entities get too big to fail.
Changes but not automation (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in a country where the minimum wage is roughly $15USD. More crucially though, I live in an area with low unemployment so the practical minimum wage is considerably higher.
What we have seen is changes like such as smaller retailers only have a single staff member on during the week. This means that when the staff member goes to the bathroom or gets lunch, the shop closes briefly. For larger retailers there is an ongoing shift towards self-checkouts, but as they are constantly pushing their costs this seems independent of wage levels.
Other fields have seen similar pressure. Restaurants try and make do with less staff, warehouses focus more on minimising idle time and companies may consider how often they really need the bins empty.
All of these are fundamentally positive changes.
Re:Changes but not automation (Score:4, Insightful)
They can shove the self checkouts up their ass. I'm not scanning and bagging my own stuff. If it's one item or maybe two okay but I went to wally world about a year and a half ago and they pointed me at a self-checkout machine. I just looked at them and said they could check me out at a register or I'd just let them put the buggy full of shit I had back on the shelf while I drove over to Target. They didn't seem to like it much but they checked me on out. After I thought about it a while I really got more pissed and haven't been back to Walmart in the last 18 months. I don't miss the cheap bastards either. I'll spend a little more money not to be treated like shit.
Re:Changes but not automation (Score:4, Insightful)
Heh. I greatly prefer self-checkout.
I think it's mostly because I just don't like dealing with people. I'm not anti-social enough to refuse the exchange of pleasantries when I have to deal with someone, but I am anti-social enough that I really don't want to be bothered. Since I go through self-checkout 95% of the time (sometimes even waiting for a self-checkout lane when there's a staffed lane open), I also now find it vaguely creepy to have someone pawing through my stuff. I know that in either case the computers are tallying it all and my purchase history is being datamined, but I don't care about that. People looking through my stuff bothers me.
Guess who is replacing the low wage workers: YOU! (Score:4, Insightful)
Thinking of some 1:1 replacement of a human with a human-shaped machine is too simple. The replacement will be of outdated, job-heavy business models with self-service models.
The Luddites (Score:5, Insightful)
...were on to something. Not that mechanization is evil - it is progress. But what we're seeing now that we have not faced in the past is technology and automation advancing faster than society's capacity to restructure the economy so that everyone has an opportunity for some basic livelihood. Extremes of poverty and desperation are not a good alternative.
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Automation and mechanization have never produced mass unemployment and they have always resulted in great increases of standards of living. Why should it be different this time?
Re:The Luddites (Score:4, Insightful)
Because our economy is dependent on a continuously growing population and that is not a sustainable model in the long run.
Because companies are willing to spend less and less on training.
Because there is no longer a social contract. Companies making money will still lay off workers to satisfy Wallstreet
Because higher education is becoming an enormous financial burden
Because the unions that used to protect workers in the past have been decimated
Because more and more of the money companies earn goes to the C-level executives
Because a larger percentage of our population is too old to work
Because it's has become cheaper and cheaper to move jobs and manufacturing overseas
So what happens when there are no more jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Historically, some have speculated that with automation comes more and more leisure time, people not having to work because all of their needs have been fulfilled. What ends up happening in reality however (as we see now) is that productivity gains do end up with fewer people working but instead of more people working fewer hours, there are fewer people working more hours. What happens when there are not enough jobs to go around at all?
People won't have enough money to pay for goods. Will labor be parcelled out so more people work less? Will there be a perceived "non-need" for so many unemployed people? What happens then? I can't imagine it will be a pretty sight.
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A big missing something (Score:5, Insightful)
This doesn't take into account the one thing that most futurists never take into account. Maybe I'm not the only one who wouldn't enjoy going to a restaurant and not being served. Maybe I'd see that as a low-quality dive, and wouldn't be interested in a steak from a conveyor belt. Maybe the reason that I often go out to restaurants is specifically to be served by someone else. Maybe that's half the value.
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That's why I go pay for a cheap haircut from a cute girl instead of ebaying a Flowbie.
Re:A big missing something (Score:4, Funny)
He's saying that the Flowbie doesn't have breasts.
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I'm sure many people felt that way about gas station attendants and for awhile lots of stations still had full service pumps. Over time though, people got used to pumping their own gas and saw the att
Only in America (Score:5, Insightful)
Would an abundance of goods with no requirement for people to work their butts off making them would be considered a problem. What is wrong with just letting people enjoy fruit of the modern civilization without considering our collective wealth a downside? Plenty of people will still find a way to work in order to afford more exclusive stuff line posh houses, luxury vacations or whatever. Lots more would find something productive to do just out of boredom. For everyone else, we should just encourage responsible birth control in the sense that if you can not even find your own place in society you are not in the position to teach your children to do the same.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A naive thought. When people don't work for what they have, they take it for granted. Very quickly, it goes from being something nice, to something that they expect, to something that they demand.
This is just Cloward-Piven's strategy here at home. Cloward and Pivens were a married couple of radical sociology professors at Columbia University back in the '60's who advocated collapsing our economic system by overloading the welfare system. But wait, that could never happen. Hey come to think of it, didn't
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Insightful)
So it is about costs.. just the reduction of costs from increased efficiency and production rates caused by the automation
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well if you ignore the fact that the project didn't save money-spent overall, then yes, its about costs.
What you are forgetting to take into account is that you get significantly more production, at a higher rate of accuracy with machines. In some cases (not all), the accuracy and production increase is simply unfeasible with a human workforce.
Its like asking how many postmen would it take to deliver all the world's email. There simply wouldn't be enough resources to do the job, regardless of cost.
I don't think you understand "cost" - if the increase in production and better accuracy didn't make the program cost effective, then they'd dump the smart forklifts and bring back the humans. Few businesses can afford to turn the core part of their business into a speculative testbed for technology that costs more to operate than the human workers it replaced. The project may very well have cost more than the human workers it replaced, but that expense was made up by the factors you just mentioned.
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, in a holistic sense, everything a company does is about maximising money in, and minimising money out.
However, the point the OP is making is that this isn't a simple case of how much a computer/robot costs per hour or per unit vs the human cost of doing the same thing. Such that a change in the minimum wage would in some elastic way change the number of jobs that are automated.
His point is that automation is typically a fundamental change in the way of doing business, and will be driven by considerations far bigger than cost per hour or per unit.
In fact it may be that a business would automate even if staff would work for free. That may be the only way to compete. He gives the example of the inability of postal workers to compete with email for example, regardless of pay rates.
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So...production increased at a rate greater than cost increased?
Yeah, it's not about actual dollars spent. It's about marginal cost: cost per unit of production. Put differently, the company increased in output more than it increased its spending; that means it's now a bigger company, in terms of market saturation, and has a greater profit, both in absolute terms and likely a greater profit margin as well.
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:4, Insightful)
While it is tragic, I agree. Many low-paid jobs are low-paid because many people that do them do not care about the quality of their work. It is incredible what mistakes are made, products damaged and destroyed, customers made to suffer damage. This costs a lot and decreases service quality to a degree that you may lose customers. And you cannot use people with a passion for these slots, they will just leave again after a short while because they are bored.
Incidentally, a lot of outsourced programming suffers from the same symptoms: Code produced without understanding or interest in the matter. The few that care in outsourcing move rapidly to better jobs. The ones that stay are the dross and what they produce has negative worth.
On the side of how these people can participate in the economy, quite frankly paying them a stipend they can live of reasonably to _not_ work would be economically beneficial. It may sound harsh, but not working is the point of maximum productivity for them. And while we are at it, all bureaucrats should go the same way, the very core of what they do is destroying the productivity of others.
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I used to work in the IT dept. for a company that replaced forklift drivers with highly automated forklifts
An aside: From what I've noticed, it's not the 'low-wage/no-skill' jobs that are being automated out of existence, but more the mid-range work in both terms of skill required and pay rate: Forklift operators, machinists, welders, et. al. are the ones losing jobs to robots, not fast food workers.
We can fantasize all day about minimum wage based myths of automation, but the reality of the matter is that it's not the poor who are being automated out of work, it's the middle class.
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Informative)
Gonna be a long while till robots will be able to do all the shitty things nomadic, entry-level employees do.
It will be a while before robots can do all of those jobs, but many of them will soon be automated. If you go into a McDonald's, half the employees are taking orders, and the other half are fulfilling them. The people taking the orders could easily be replaced: Just turn the touchscreens around so that customers can enter their own orders, and then swipe a card to pay. Grocery stores have already done this, and so have banks. Fast food is next.
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May of them are already automated.
Here are some examples.
Tillamook Cheese.
http://www.tillamook.com/chees... [tillamook.com]
Wrapping, storing, aging, boxing, processing, cutting, trimming, etc.. all automated.
Much higher production with about 1/3 the workers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... [youtube.com]
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gonna be a long while till robots will be able to do all the shitty things nomadic, entry-level employees do.
It will be a while before robots can do all of those jobs, but many of them will soon be automated. If you go into a McDonald's, half the employees are taking orders, and the other half are fulfilling them. The people taking the orders could easily be replaced: Just turn the touchscreens around so that customers can enter their own orders, and then swipe a card to pay. Grocery stores have already done this, and so have banks. Fast food is next.
I don't understand why they haven't done so already -- I assume it's because they don't think their customers are ready for touch-screen ordering. Starbucks could do it too -- with their pushbutton espresso machines, they don't really need a human barista for most drinks.
I can tell you why... I witnessed it firsthand. My mall food court had this system in the early 1990's. People would place orders via the touchscreen and then the food would be prepared. I saw the place get trolled (someone ordered 10 large fries at once and walked away). Obviously, this was before credit card swipes were allowed for payment so it was a cash business, and payment was collected when the food was presented. Yeah, that system didn't last long. Now the likely issue would be trolls ordering bizarre combinations and then claiming there was a mistake/demanding a refund.
As for self-checkout, most places I saw experiment with those in the past two years (grocery stores and Costco) has ripped them out and gone back to using human cashiers. The reasons? Fraud/theft and speed (trained cashiers are faster, who would have thought?). Walmart and big box home improvement stores are the outliers still offering self-checkout in my area.
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Interesting)
As for self-checkout, most places I saw experiment with those in the past two years (grocery stores and Costco) has ripped them out and gone back to using human cashiers. The reasons? Fraud/theft and speed (trained cashiers are faster, who would have thought?). Walmart and big box home improvement stores are the outliers still offering self-checkout in my area.
That's not automation though. Self checkout is just making the customer do the cashiers job for free before realizing that customers suck at doing these things correctly because it's not their job.
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So what's the cashiers' excuse for not doing it correctly? :-D
No, seriously. I tend to order things with various customizations (e.g. no [insert ingredient]). I haven't done the math, but I suspect that I have at least a 10% return rate at many businesses. How hard is it to push "Only" followed by the ingredients that the customer specifies
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:4, Insightful)
You're a human being with a reasonably competent understanding of basic technological concepts. There is a LARGE portion of the population who does not meet this criteria. [/understatement]
There are people who cannot grasp the concept of putting 3 color coded wires from one box into the back of another box. There are people who cannot understand the difference between their tv remote and their cable remote, and are probably the same people who need someone to clearly show them how to use their remote even though the purpose of each button is clearly labeled. Switching inputs on a TV between a cable box and a DVD player is a challenge to these sorts of people. And these are some examples of a technology (the tv) practically everyone is familiar with, the examples I've given are not new technological developments for TVs, these sorts of capabilities have existed on TVs since the 90s, giving roughly 2 decades for people to become familiar with them. But it still confuses the heck out of a good 20% of the population.
These are people who have trouble working their microwave and you expect them to suddenly work a touch screen order taker, and not screw it up? Not likely. And guess who these people are going to blame for their failure to operate? I mean it obviously wasn't their fault that your machine didn't understand that when I said only ketchup, I meant I didn't want mustard, I still wanted the pickles and onions.
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A major grocery chain where I live brought in automated checkout machines. So instead of having by shopping scanned in by a trained professional, I was expected to scan in items myself in a poorly designed working area while a computer with the voice of a calm genteel London accept patiently and repeatedly insisted I scan the items again and again as the queue grew longer and longer behind me.
So, I started going to the shop down the road with people still behind the tills. The food is generally better there
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Gonna be a long while till robots will be able to do all the shitty things nomadic, entry-level employees do.
It will be a while before robots can do all of those jobs, but many of them will soon be automated. If you go into a McDonald's, half the employees are taking orders, and the other half are fulfilling them. The people taking the orders could easily be replaced: Just turn the touchscreens around so that customers can enter their own orders, and then swipe a card to pay. Grocery stores have already done this, and so have banks. Fast food is next.
I don't understand why they haven't done so already -- I assume it's because they don't think their customers are ready for touch-screen ordering. Starbucks could do it too -- with their pushbutton espresso machines, they don't really need a human barista for most drinks.
I can tell you why... I witnessed it firsthand. My mall food court had this system in the early 1990's. People would place orders via the touchscreen and then the food would be prepared. I saw the place get trolled (someone ordered 10 large fries at once and walked away). Obviously, this was before credit card swipes were allowed for payment so it was a cash business, and payment was collected when the food was presented.
Yeah, that system didn't last long.
But if they collect payment at the time of order, that problem goes away.
Now the likely issue would be trolls ordering bizarre combinations and then claiming there was a mistake/demanding a refund.
Seems like if their receipt says "Hamburger with extra strawberries", they'd have a hard time saying that they didn't order that - and really the cost of fast food is so low that throwing away a bad order every once in a while isn't a huge expense.
As for self-checkout, most places I saw experiment with those in the past two years (grocery stores and Costco) has ripped them out and gone back to using human cashiers. The reasons? Fraud/theft
I can see why it wouldn't work well at Costco - lots of incentive to swap barcodes to get a 55" TV for the price of a $5.99 lawnchair, and they can't easily do a weight check like grocery sto
Re:Who'll spit on my burger?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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As for self-checkout, most places I saw experiment with those in the past two years (grocery stores and Costco) has ripped them out and gone back to using human cashiers. The reasons? Fraud/theft and speed (trained cashiers are faster, who would have thought?). Walmart and big box home improvement stores are the outliers still offering self-checkout in my area.
Grocery stores are pushing these. There's one near work that has 20 of the self-check and two regular. The lines for the self-check are huge, and move very fast because there are so many machines (one line feeding all 20, and one employee handling exceptions and problems and directing people to empty machines in busy times, as it can be hard to see them all from the line). People love it. Much faster than the previous setup of 8 humans. This particular chain has had in self-checkers for 5+ years, so th
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Some places do this already. There's a chain in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere) called Sheetz; they are gas stations + fast food places, and they have little touch screens. You type in what you want, you pay for it, someone makes it and gives it to you. It's very well done; the folks are friendly and the food not bad for what it is. Other places have little paper tickets: you write down what you want (ticking boxes for things like "no cheese") and give it to someone, who takes three seconds to clip it to a rai
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The idea that we need to keep menial unsatisfying jobs around to "keep people employed" is stupid. Seriously stupid. If your version of human interaction is ordering a bugger at McD's you are a sad person.
If thi
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No, i
Re:You Will Be Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that most of the luddites were right-- they mostly died horrible homeless deaths of starvation. The fact is, they asked for training on the new machines and were refused (much as employers are today refusing to train employees). They were not just blindly rejecting new machines. The fact is they could see they were going to suffer terribly if the industrialists were allowed to go to the new technology with no social safety net for the luddites.
I think there are too many people for it to be as quiet this time.
And it is coming- it is unstoppable. It *could* be a utopia but it probably won't.
Space is too expensive to be a realistic proposition for more than a fraction of a percent of humans (a fraction of a fraction of a fraction). It's more about species survival than an SF wonderland of colonies with heavy meatsacks lifted out of the gravity well.
The automation coming on line *right now* is cheaper than human poverty level wages and can duplicate much of their labor. If so- with the exchange of labor for wages broken- you are looking at a fundamental challenge to the capitalist model.
Re:You Will Be Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
The fact is that most of the luddites were right-- they mostly died horrible homeless deaths of starvation. The fact is, they asked for training on the new machines and were refused (much as employers are today refusing to train employees)...
Quite so. The spinning jenny did the work of 200 spinners (and other textile machines did likewise) - thus wiping out virtually the entire employment of the largest manufacturing sector in Britain. Factory textile mills created some jobs, but not for the vast majority of those left without livelihoods (and naturally, an oversupply of prospective workers allowed the factory owners to pay a pittance for deadly dangerous jobs.). Those horrific Dickensian slums didn't create themselves.
By all means - let us recreate the slums of Charles Dickens in the 21st Century! Hurray for the job cremators!
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It is quite possible you responded to a post by a travesty generator; that is the post was a joke about what automation will replace.
If I've offended someone, sorry.
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This would effectively outlaw automation, given that the costs are not zero to operate such machinery. I can understand the argument that prices should be lower, but to say that they should be near zero is to argue that those who use automation heavily shouldn't be allowed to make a profit at all. I can't get behind that philosophically.
Re:Don't raise wages. Demand lower prices. (Score:3)
>Yes, this approach has been tried. It's called the Labor Theory of Value as per Marx. It's been a disaster everywhere it's been tried
You have no idea what you're talking about. The Labor Theory of Value was written by John Locke and pre-dates Marx by nearly 2 centuries ! It also is not communist - in fact it's the basis of BOTH capitalism AND communism (and a few other economic philosophies as well) - they all use Locke's labour theory of value as their starting premise - they differ in what they subseq
Re:Don't raise wages. Demand lower prices. (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine a world where a computer can always do it cheaper than a human. In that case, no humans will be employed. In this scenario, what is the harm in providing people with income via fiat money creation? I don't see much harm as long as it does not spend past the point of rampant inflation, and I sure as hell can see the harm in letting people go hungry without hope of income.
Public indecency laws (Score:4, Interesting)
just as I am not allowed to "demand" you purchase any particular good or servi... oh wait. I forgot we passed the ACA.
Public indecency laws, which mandate purchase of clothing, predate the Affordable Care Act by decades.
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:5, Interesting)
What about the impending failure of capitalism? The writing's on the wall, and it will fail for the same reason communism failed: Greed.
Get a handful of selfish sociopaths who rise to the top, change the rules, plunder everything, and ruin the system for everyone else. The only thing that keeps power in check is fear that they will be held accountable for their actions. This is why you see an agenda in the media and in government institutions to groom the public for control. The message is very clear:
Don't question authority.
Conform.
Give up your means of defense and do not attempt to defend yourself against anyone, even if your life is at stake.
Look to the State to find out what you are allowed to do and say.
Corporations and profit are more important than the individual. You exist to serve them.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:4, Informative)
What about the impending failure of capitalism?
You're confused. Capitalism is doing fine. It's government that's failing.
-jcr
Pure capitalism is letting the market decide which leads to the monopolization of industries. This leads to a dearth of choice for consumers. Some government interference is required to keep markets open. The reason why government is failing is because it has been bought by corporations and financial institutions.
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, it seems that government interference is closing the markets by making it more and more difficult for new companies to enter markets.
Is it not government interference that keeps new ISPs from entering many markets?
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:5, Interesting)
FYI, that is referred to as a "Barrier to Entry". Starting an insurance company these days is basically impossible due to such (for said industry the requirements can vary widely by state, and screw New York).
Another example of a "Barrier to Entry" is the pains the ride-sharing sites are experiencing (by state/local, livery is very regulated and fee-d).
Those past the Barrier have a lot of regulations, but they don't have to worry about the barrier itself.
Uh no... (Score:3, Insightful)
But hey, never let a little thing like facts and reality get in the way of a good right wing rant I always say. How's the joke go? Fact have a liber
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Funny, it seems that government interference is closing the markets by making it more and more difficult for new companies to enter markets.
Is it not government interference that keeps new ISPs from entering many markets?
"Sokath, his eyes opened"
Yeah, pretty much the case. You see, the problem with Capitalism or any other ism, is that unless protected from itself, will lead to one stop ruling.
Because when any group comes into power, it seeks to preserve that power. If a purely capitalistic society were formed, eventually th eindustries that were "best" would grow th elargets, and at that point would shif their goals to consolidation of their power, to use their power to crush the opposition. Predatory pricing, buying co
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:5, Insightful)
"Capitalism" does not mean "free from government interference". In fact, it thrives (and maybe depends on) on certain kinds of heavy government interference: IP laws, a solid banking system, corporate charters, and limited liability spring to mind.
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I see a lot of government-encouraged monopolies. Small players are trying to enter the transportation market by setting up bus services, and are getting hounded out of the market by the government. Uber and the like are fighting against the taxi cartels. New players in telecom are having to fight against old government-established monopolies.
Small players are doing just fine in many markets. There are small credit unions all over the place. I lived for years in Tucson on groceries bought from a local chain
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Corporations and profit are more important than the individual. You exist to serve them.
I'd say it's more analogous to the bacteria in your gut and intestines. They don't exist to serve you, but in serving themselves they benefit you.
That's what you call a symbiotic relationship, and to be honest I don't have a problem with it. Capitalism isn't failing any time soon.
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:4, Insightful)
Greed
I'd rather have millions of corporate overlords than 1 government overlord.
Re:Communism is the only way forward (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that the prime weapon against any populace is secrecy. Secrecy yields ignorance. Slaves were not allowed to read. Employees are forbidden from informing others of their earnings -- WTF? The governments all now have secret agencies. Actions can be dismissed as necessary for some other secret cause. Corruption requires power and secrecy, for without the secrecy the power soon fades.
Thus, those with power should be forbade secrecy of action when they wield it. Accountability depends on awareness and is inherently anti-secrecy. We should be able to prove our rulers are not working against us. Education is key in this regard and that of dealing with automation.
Let's face it: The more dangerous menial jobs are wasting entire human brains worth of potential. Eliminating the drudgery need not result in joblessness. Someone will be needed to design and maintain the automatons. Even simply expressing your humanity is rewarded by society in the arts. Teams of researchers will be needed to run experiments -- The problem is in underpaying researchers for their research. It takes the same effort to produce a success as to rule something out as a failure, and many discoveries have come by accident from mostly unrelated research.
The copyright and patent system are futures markets for ideas. Instead of marketing that which is scarce -- the effort to crafting and testing ideas -- these systems leverage artificial scarcity against humanity and the creators themselves. Corporations are thus able to cherry pick the individual products of creators to reward them. This is the Information Age! Your are on The Internet! Where is the Wikipedia of freely accessible Scientific Studies that the web was created explicitly to facilitate?! Hidden behind paywalls of Journals, and duplication forbidden to create scarcity of otherwise infinitively reproducible bits.
Instead of hobbling ourselves with artificial scarcity, we should market what is scarce and simply require the capitalists to pay the price that our efforts are truly worth. Enough secrecy in our salaries and governments; Enough artificial scarcity. As a cyberneticist I see secrecy and artificial scarcity as two sides of the same coin: Evil is Information Disparity.
When? (Score:3, Informative)
European socialism got pretty close, and they seem to be doing just fine except when they start acting like Americans and deregulating their banks.
Seriously, I know you're trolling, but there's a chance someone out there is taking your seriously...
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Well, maybe if they get to kill another hundred million people or so it will finally work!
-jcr
Communism just doesn't work. Just look at the shape that the former East Germany was in.
How can you take a nation full of diligent Germans, and manage to make a poor country out of it . . . ?
Russia != Communism (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Russia != Communism (Score:5, Insightful)
I believe the standard retort here is that despite many countries trying to implement communism over a 70 year period, all ended up with something with the general theme of authoritarian rule. It is reasonable to conclude that perhaps it is impossible to implement "communism" as Karl Marx envisioned - that it is a nice idea that cannot be realized with current levels of technology.
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It is, indeed, the standard retort, but it doesn't account for the fact that all those countries - every single one of them - derive their "school of socialism" from the Soviets. The only other independent root of socialism was German Luxembourgists, and their revolution was crushed in its infancy. Everywhere else, it has been Soviet advisors, and quite often Soviet troops. Sure, there were splits, like Mao and Hoxha and Tito, but they are still derivatives of the same core Marxist-Leninist idea.
Marx, by th
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Re: Prostitute? (Score:3)