Even the CEO's Job Is Susceptible To Automation, McKinsey Report Says (networkworld.com) 176
colinneagle sends word that according to a new report it's not just blue collar workers who need to be concerned about being replaced with a robot, top execs should be worried too. According to Network World: "Global management consultants McKinsey and Company said in a recent report that many of the tasks that a CEO performs could be taken over by machines. Those redundant tasks include 'analyzing reports and data to inform operational decisions; preparing staff assignments; and reviewing status reports,' the report says. This potential for automation in the executive suite is in contrast to 'lower-wage occupations such as home health aides, landscapers, and maintenance workers,' the report says. Those jobs aren't as suitable for automation, according to the report. The technology has not advanced enough."
Wouldn't people notice (Score:2)
the lack of humanity in RoboCEO's decisions? (cue jokes)
Re:Wouldn't people notice (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Wouldn't people notice (Score:5, Insightful)
CEOs operating for the long term good of their corporation instead of pumping their stock short term to get a stock option payout would be a marked improvement.
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Actually, given our current crop of sociopathic CEOs, the humanity would actually probably be higher.
Yes, that is indeed the obvious joke. Well played.
*golfclap*
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Yeah, Right. (Score:5, Insightful)
The actual non-clickbait article http://www.mckinsey.com/Insigh... [mckinsey.com] says: "For example, we estimate that activities consuming more than 20 percent of a CEO’s working time could be automated using current technologies."
That's called a tool, rather than a threat to a CEO's job.
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Or maybe enough to get rid of a VP or two.
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Yes. Plus, the CEO has final say in hiring a contractor, so
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you (Score:2)
>> management consultants McKinsey and Company said that many of the tasks that a CEO performs could be taken over by machines
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. "I think we should hire some management consultants," said no one other than top executives ever.
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>> management consultants McKinsey and Company said that many of the tasks that a CEO performs could be taken over by machines
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. "I think we should hire some management consultants," said no one other than top executives ever.
Management consultants are there to make or save the company money, they don't care about the individuals involved, even if they're the CEO.
Won't ever happen .... (Score:2)
Even if it was possible to computerize the job of the CEO and have flawless efficiency processing reports and interpreting data? There's the expectation that a business have a human being at the top to talk to for negotiations.
Say another company wants to propose an arrangement to work together with them to produce a new product or provide a service. Do you really think it will suffice to submit the request to a computer system for processing and an ultimate yes or no decision? No way.
The company wasn't cre
Consider Google/Alphabet (Score:2)
If I were Sergey Brin, Larry Page, or Eric Schmidt, I would be looking into this as a way of taking the drudge work off my desk so I could do more of the fun, world-changing stuff.
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If I were Sergey Brin, Larry Page, or Eric Schmidt I'd have a veritable platoon of specialist lackeys to do all that stuff for me and just feed me the gist.
Do you think Ike looked at all the maps and photos himself when they were planning for Overlord?
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Even if the other guys insist on meeting face-to-face; someone who has reasonable charisma, isn't an idiot; and knows how to wear a suit and an unobtrusive earpiece should be a great deal cheaper than a CEO; and an attractive UI for Our Expert System Overlords.
If doing so makes people uncomfortable, there is no need to actually remove the human face from the company; the question is just how much you actually need its input vs. how much it is just
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Even if the other guys insist on meeting face-to-face; someone who has reasonable charisma, isn't an idiot; and knows how to wear a suit and an unobtrusive earpiece should be a great deal cheaper than a CEO; .
Someone who has reasonable charisma, isn't an idiot, knows how to wear a suit, and knows all the nuances and detail of the company strategy, is the CEO.
And if you have these skills, why would you offer them for less than market value?
Use a correctly seeded random word generator (Score:5, Funny)
Seeking to manage synergy through actionable enterprise wide initiatives with all shareholders in the loop. This will drive market capitalization through our managed shareholder proxy model and improved salesforce engagement pilots. Customer satisfaction is a priority and therefore will be a prime driver of profit margin in the upcoming quarter. We expect to take a one-time write down of fiduciary costs related to acquisitions and duly reported on form X-11.
(include ginormous "forward looking statement" boilerplate here)
Re:Use a correctly seeded random word generator (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the late last century, I worked for a company that was just starting to look at Web apps on its intranet. They held a contest (mainly for fun) to nominate the best internal web site in the company (mine got honorable mention, but that's another story). One of the most voted sites was basically a mission/vision statement generator web page that would do what you have posted. Basically a copy of the old 'spew.exe' program with some HTML wrapped around it and the vocabulary database populated from a corpus of internal company memos.
The story goes: A few groups actually generated group mission statements based upon this guy's output and that fact was never noticed.
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Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Sorry (Score:2)
I can't get this [blogspot.com] image out of my head.
CEO is a legal title. . . (Score:2)
So... (Score:4, Insightful)
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What will happen is the CEO will do even less work, and reap in more money than before. Fired? Lmafo! I've heard straight from the lips of more than one CEO that the goal is to set everything up so they have absolutely nothing to do.
No, the best boss I ever had also said on his first day that he wanted to arrange things so that he had nothing to do.
You hire other people to do all the planned, day to day work, because there's always a load of unforeseen stuff that comes along.
Difference between aid and replace (Score:2)
Certain jobs will never be replaced by a non-sentient machine (and you would have to pay a sentient machine to do a job - or they would rebel and demand equality, as that is the effective definition of sentient machine).
Politician, Upper level management, name artist (many modern artists are 'anonymous' workers who work for a 'name' artist - think ghost writer for a novel, or art 'assistants' like Andy W
Great strides have been made in CEO automation (Score:2)
You look at the old primitive systems that were little more than a mannequin and a bad toupee and compare them to what we have now.
This app easily passes the Turing Test for CEOS http://projects.wsj.com/buzzwo... [wsj.com]|34|37||1||1
If you add in an electric fan and a heater it's indistinguishable from your typical CEO or Politician.
Can automation fix corruption? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the last vestiges of the Old Boys Network is company boards, where even after making a wreck of the world economy and a few decades of screaming for reform has yield squat: the SEC prosecutes with a velvet glove and shareholders are either scheming themselves or left wondering what the next golden parachute will do to the stock price. It's easy to make 4000% more than the underlings when all your CEO friends sit on other corporate boards as well.
No one sane believes that most CEOs are worth what they are paid, and their performance has proven that mostly correct. Shareholders can't even make inroads at disciplining executive pay, so I sincerely doubt most executives are at risk of losing their jobs.
What I can see is maybe automation playing the role of the 8 year old adviser, correcting the most egregious fuckups that come down the pike (which will be a vast improvement) but short of armed revolt the moneyed class will not go quietly into the night.
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What I can see is maybe automation playing the role of the 8 year old adviser
So, this won't replace the CEO, it will replace the one person keeping the CEO from being even worse at their job.
Armed revolt won't happen (Score:2)
The only hope I see is birth control (especially for men).
Not quite there yet (Score:2)
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Machines are better at high-stakes poker than people are. Lack of nerves, plus infinite memory of each opponent plus the ability to math superhard and fast.
How do you feel about a minimum income now? (Score:2)
Pay it straight from inflation and adjust fed rates accordingly so new money is slightly more expensive for banks and no actual increase in the inflation rate occurs.
Increase as we are able. We are the wealthiest nation in the world, let's automate the crap out of our work, outsource the rest, and establish a model for the rest of the world to follow when it catch
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"Replace the minimum wage with a minimum income of $15/hr for every man/woman/child in the US with no requirements or limitations save citizenship."
What would that serve for? Say you can live *now* on 15x8x5=600$/week. Now, give everybody 600$/week for free. Next week prices will be adjusted so you now need 1200$/week as a minimum. Economists usually don't know that much for a prediction, but that, they can guarantee you and be true.
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That isn't accurate. Prices haven't gone up in Europe and China, etc where our goods and services come from. If anything they go down because employers no longer need to be concerned about the minimum wage and many of the homeless can now return to functioning roles in society.
Additionally, prices go up as a result of inflation but there is no net increase in the amount of money floating around just in who has it. Well there is more
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Wrong.
There have been numerous long-term studies that did exactly that, gave everybody in a community a guaranteed income regardless of whether they were working.
Such studies happened all around the world, generally over 5 and 10 year stretches. The most famous ones in North America was Nixon's 5 year study in Detroit and the MinCome experiment in Canada.
Quite a lot of things universally happened when they did this - a sudden inflation rise was not among them, in fact - no study anywhere has recorded one. I
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This sounds like the "rising tide causes inflation" theory, which runs on Underpants Gnome logic as far as I can tell. Prices would have to rise uniformly across the entire country, or even the entire world as people would begin importing as many of the things they need as possible from countries unaffected by this mysterious phenomenon.
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"Replace the minimum wage with a minimum income of $15/hr for every man/woman/child in the US with no requirements or limitations save citizenship."
What would that serve for? Say you can live *now* on 15x8x5=600$/week. Now, give everybody 600$/week for free. Next week prices will be adjusted so you now need 1200$/week as a minimum. Economists usually don't know that much for a prediction, but that, they can guarantee you and be true.
You seem to think that (a) almost everybody will stop working, (b) the banks will print twice the current amount of cash in circulation and (c) you won't increase taxes significantly for companies and higher earners.
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Don't need automation (Score:2)
Old news (Score:2)
It's easy (Score:2)
Fire 20% of workforce.
Get bonus based on money saved.
Use money saved to perform stock buyback.
Sell individual options based on increase in value from buyback.
Repeat until hired by another company to be CEO.
Idiots (Score:2)
Do they really think that replacing jobs by automation is about increasing productivity? It's about increasing the concentration of wealth. From my experience, CEOs are on the other side of that equation.
One critical innovation is necessary (Score:5, Funny)
OSCEO: Open Source CEO (Score:5, Funny)
Brawndo! Thirst Mutilator, it's got Electrolytes (Score:2)
The stock went to zero and the computer did that auto layoff thing, we're all unemployed!
Golfing robots? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say the CEOs job is pretty safe.
Also, the only point in getting rid of the CEO would be cost reduction, and companies are not actually interested in cost reduction. They just want to do whatever Management Weekly says to do and also keep their cronies and brother-in-laws employed.
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Goody (Score:2)
Just imagine how the stockholders can be serviced when the salary of those CEO's goes away. Every penny counts, and that is capitalism, and the invisible hand of the free market in action.
It would take a socialist to try to say that CEO's are somehow privileged to suck at the stockholders teat.
Robot-writer? (Score:2)
Huh? Was that abominable paragraph written by an idiot human, or rather the human's 'replacement algorithmic article-writer'?
The article disproves its own point for you.
So they have a robot that plays golf? (Score:2)
And makes small talk in the country club locker room with other execs?
CEOs job will never be automated (Score:2)
Bah ... (Score:2)
You mean using a ouija board and sheer dumb luck to manage a corporation?
Because, really, just how many short term strategies have we all seen the CEO announce only to see them not work? How many bad acquisitions or other bad decisions?
CEOs act like they do Really Important and Difficult Things. Watching major corporations who have been through several CEOs
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The value of a CEO (at least, a good one anyways) is strategy. IMO a really solid example of a good CEO right now is T-Mobile's John Legere. Sure he may come off as a clown to some, but you can't argue against his results. Not only is the quality of their network surging to new levels, but they've turned a long streak of customer losses into a long streak of even bigger customer gains.
And for what it's worth, often engaging in trolling myself I really loved his "You mad bro?" tweet at the Sprint CEO after t
Re:There will still be CEOs (Score:5, Interesting)
My father has long worked in a variety of CEO and president roles for different large companies, on the very fields that this software is designed to optimize. My thoughts?
1) This is nothing new. It's called operations research/operations management, and it's been around for a long time.
2) Except for in perhaps small companies, CEOs don't do this themselves. They direct the team of experts that manage the system.
3) The systems don't run themselves. They require significant setup, maintenance, and ongoing improvement. In particular the ever-changing data streams that can play a role need to be worked into the model. And they're often based on very complex issues that require specialist understanding.
These are tools that help you make the right decision. They're not people. People are the ones who run the tools.
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A CEO is... wait for it... a person.
The CEO represents the highest level of strategy. For example, if their models led them wrong in regards to a particular decision: why did the models lead them wrong? What did they miss? What additional data could we have provided them or what refined formulas could we have used so that it would have helped us account for this better? How can we get that data? What sort of processes can we set up to prevent similar instances from occurring in the future?
Computers can crun
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You don't need an ant brain.
Ant brains have to deal with a whole lot of stuff (moving six legs in coordinated fashions), maintaining breathing and circulation, digestion etc. etc. etc. that a computer AI has no need for.
About 99% of what an ANT brain is spent on are things that an AI won't ever have to do.
With humans that scale goes up because the systems that need to be managed are far, far more complex. Bipedalism makes ballance a key process - that's almost entirely automated, processing all those sensor
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On top of all of that, synthetic brains are much better at working with numbers, they can outperform any brain at arithmetic hands down, which is what business analysis is.
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Um.. they don't need to (Score:2)
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Who's going to make all the insider trading/leaks, illegal dumping and shredding of disliked health/safety reports? Not to mention...
A robo-ceo would be be ideal for all of these!
insider trading/leaks = hack and data breaches
illegal dumping and shredding of disliked reports = disk/storage failures
Didn't have the right backups in place? Oh, the CEOBOT cut that from the budget to maximize blah blah blah market speak. Can't blame him for a hardware failure.
So how do we live? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, automation can wipe out most jobs in manufacturing, production, computers, law, medicine, etc, etc. So it's time to start thinking about how we will obtain the necessities (and niceties) of life. We will be a fabulously productive and rich country but all the money will go to the top, the owners of the automation companies. So now it's about the post-scarcity society perhaps as illustrated in Star Trek. But for real, Finland is now working on the idea of a national guaranteed income. This may upset the puritan types who think that hard work is somehow connected to morality. You know, dancing is sinful because it's too much fun.
So yes, this means taking money from the extremely wealthy and providing an income and services to those who are not. Is this socialism? No, not the Marxist version anyway because that means the ownership of the means of production by the state. But this definitely is redistribution of wealth, just as has been done by every nation on the face of the earth in all of recorded time.
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Yes, automation can wipe out most jobs in manufacturing, production, computers, law, medicine, etc, etc. So it's time to start thinking about how we will obtain the necessities (and niceties) of life. We will be a fabulously productive and rich country but all the money will go to the top, the owners of the automation companies. So now it's about the post-scarcity society perhaps as illustrated in Star Trek. But for real, Finland is now working on the idea of a national guaranteed income. This may upset the puritan types who think that hard work is somehow connected to morality. You know, dancing is sinful because it's too much fun.
So yes, this means taking money from the extremely wealthy and providing an income and services to those who are not. Is this socialism? No, not the Marxist version anyway because that means the ownership of the means of production by the state. But this definitely is redistribution of wealth, just as has been done by every nation on the face of the earth in all of recorded time.
Unfortunately, in all of recorded time, we may not have faced disruptive technology like we're facing in the very near future.
Consider simply one disruptive technology on the horizon; Amazon Air. We already see tons of B&M stores plagued with people snapping pictures of price tags only to walk out of the store buying nothing to go home and buy it cheaper online. Today, that is disrupting enough to local business because consumers are perfectly willing to wait two days (Amazon Prime) for a product tha
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Amazon so disruptive people are already forgetting B&N's name.
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Amazon so disruptive people are already forgetting B&N's name.
You mean Borders, Media Play, and Waldenbooks?
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I hadn't heard about Amazon Air, but yea, when things can be delivered that fast and cheap, it will put even more local businesses out of business.
Its interesting to note that an oft quoted statistic from politicians is that small businesses are the real employers and drivers of local economies.
Imagine a "local economy" when there are only huge megacorporations to work for, and you are lucky to work at all...
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Imagine a "local economy" when there are only huge megacorporations to work for, and you are lucky to work at all...
Except that is the opposite of what Amazon is doing. By offering a global "long tail" marketplace, they enable far more small businesses to thrive, by producing niche products that would never be viable in isolated local markets. The only thing we lose are dead end unproductive retail jobs.
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The only thing we lose are dead end unproductive retail jobs.
But they're not all going to suddenly become engineers are they?
Re: So how do we live? (Score:2)
Amazon air will drive large chains like Walmart, Borders, JC Penney etc out of business. Basically your large mall stores will disappear. Instead you'll have boutiques like the Apple Store or Verizon store where you go and 'meet' the product, touch it, get your measurements etc to then purchase your customized version online.
But on topic, full-information decision making (who to hire/fire, what to buy/sell and where it is cheapest) will lie with Watson-type machines while people will make the gambles of bus
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These kinds of disruptions to local economies we are not prepared for. At all.
Speak for yourself. As retail is shifting online and offshore, we have seen massive increase in local transport industries to cater for all the shipping.
We've also seen an increase in demand for quality local made goods as cheap Chinese brands bring no bragging value among the middle class eg local microbreweries, coffee shops and butchers are taking off here, because it's now cool to have boutique, quality foodstuffs over generic global brands.
So just like the rest of history, it's swings and roundabouts
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I'm not going to buy any more books because they're delivered quicker. If I buy from Amazon instead of B&N does it make any difference to the economy as a whole?
There is the problem of monopolies being created, of course, but that is a problem as old as capitalism, and requires state intervention to fix it.
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B&M wasn't a typo, it is Brick and Mortar. He is speaking of store fronts, not just B&N which is a specific B&M store.
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This may upset the puritan types who think that hard work is somehow connected to morality.
When this happens, and it will, the number one social concern will be to figure out how hard work can still be incented. Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy. As gleeful as you are to disparage Puritans, they understood this aspect of human nature well.
To use an example you're likely comfortable with, imagine those trust fund babies whose life lacking struggle results in them being intolerable douchebags.
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When this happens, and it will, the number one social concern will be to figure out how hard work can still be incented. Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy.
I think they've figured out quite well how to keep people occupied.
What is it that lots of people, and a lot of younger people especially like to do a lot, and for long periods of time, and if they could, they would be doing it all the time?
Video Games.
Just wait until truly immersive VR gaming takes off.
Jobs? Career? Family? Life Goals?
Who needs any of those when there are no jobs, people "live" on a small stipend, and rarely leave their video game pod.
That is the future.
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Yeah, simulated accomplishment is something. And it may be enough for some, particularly since the simulations are getting more and more convincing.
I think that sooner or later they'll snap out of their virtual farms and the meaninglessness of their life will hit them. Then they'll need a dose of Soma to stave away the despair.
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Yeah, simulated accomplishment is something. And it may be enough for some, particularly since the simulations are getting more and more convincing.
I think that sooner or later they'll snap out of their virtual farms and the meaninglessness of their life will hit them. Then they'll need a dose of Soma to stave away the despair.
Much of what makes life meaningless (or at least tedious and pointless) is having to spend half your waking hours at work. Most people derive meaning from things external to their work, something I know is heresy on slashdot where the asshats who live on site at Google are held up as role models.
Friends, family, supporting a football team, going to church, playing computer games, reading books, engaging in politics, gardening, marathon running or whatever gives meaning to their lives has no connection to
Can you support this? (Score:2)
When this happens, and it will, the number one social concern will be to figure out how hard work can still be incented. Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy. As gleeful as you are to disparage Puritans, they understood this aspect of human nature well.
(*) Do you have any references or studies for this?
It's clear that the end-game of productivity is complete automation. Image a huge factory complex that produces everything anyone needs on a monthly basis. Each month everyone is given $1000 of the machine's production that they can spend to get things, and save up for more expensive things. The factory is self-sustaining, and self-sufficient. Only a handful of people - 100,000 perhaps - are needed to maintain the system.
This may or may not be the end resul
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When this happens, and it will, the number one social concern will be to figure out how hard work can still be incented. Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy. As gleeful as you are to disparage Puritans, they understood this aspect of human nature well. To use an example you're likely comfortable with, imagine those trust fund babies whose life lacking struggle results in them being intolerable douchebags.
They're douchebags because they're privileged enough to do what nobody else can and they know it. If being a deadbeat slacker was something everyone could do it wouldn't have the same effect. And I think you vastly underestimate how much people can find personal goals that don't contribute anything meaningful to society, I can totally waste a whole weekend doing nothing "productive" yet not be "listless and unhappy". Probably years too. I could easily get hooked on a MMORPG and spend 8 hours/day becoming th
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"Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy."
Yes. Ancient Athens' agora probes your point.
Oh, wait!
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"Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy."
Yes. Ancient Athens' agora probes your point.
Oh, wait!
Most people here would consider actual Ancient Greek democracy as evil communism.
The only problem is that the economy depended on slavery, but as Oscar Wilde pointed out in The Soul of Man under Socialism, once machines do all the work this will no longer apply.
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imagine those trust fund babies whose life lacking struggle results in them being intolerable douchebags
Alternatively, imagine all those aristocrats in the past who have contributed to science, technology, maths, painting, poetry, philosophy, philanthropy and the rest.
An intolerable douchebag with a job is still an intolerable douchebag. A genius without a job is still a genius.
Logically, just because some X are Y does not mean that all X are Y.
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>Without hard work, humans become listless and unhappy.
Actually - most people will find something to occupy their time, generally something they find personally fullfilling.
If you were right, hobbies would not be a multi-billion dollar industry. Even people who HAVE hard work spend time and money on other interests for which there is usually zero economic gain to themselves (just a big cost).
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Have you met any humans? Try it some time. They're a strange bunch.
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Have you met any humans? Try it some time. They're a strange bunch.
And the strangest ones are those who actually believe in the brain-washing of their masters.
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If puritans actually _followed_ their religions instead of cherry-picking what they like, they would find that their religions expressly and clearly tell them to spread wealth as much as possible instead of accumulating it. And it's not like it's in the fine print -- there are 2000 verses in the bible dealing with poverty and social justice (in comparison, there are only six dealing with homosexuality). And this doesn't just apply to Christianity, it applies to most major religions. Islam for instance has t
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Is this socialism? No, not the Marxist version anyway because that means the ownership of the means of production by the state. But this definitely is redistribution of wealth
But if you end up with just a few big automation companies being the whole economy, you are in effect putting them into public ownership by having the state take almost all of their profit in tax and sharing it out amongst the population (rather than private shareholders).
I don't see this as a bad thing, I'm just not sure that you need to panic about the label of socialism/Marxism. It's certainly not going to work if you make the resdistribution voluntary, so in effect you will end up with the state contr
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No, it's not. Socialism means that the government owns the means of production. Countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are no longer socialist. France is still somewhat socialist. But there is nothing about having a guaranteed national income that requires socialism. The American right has intentionally distorted the definition of socialism to imply that any re-distribution of wealth is part of a socialist system that has never worked anywhere. There is a real problem when government tries to run
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Wrong. Socialism at heart is the people owning the means of production. While often this means the government, in the name of the people, owns the means of production, many socialists want nothing to do with (big) government. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Socialism means that the government owns the means of production.
It's irrelevant who actually owns the means of production if the state taxes it all at 99.99 something % anyway.
You can have a system where capitalists make a modest profit, limited private property exists and so on but you still have universal health care, state pensions, affordable housing and the rest. It might not technically fit some definition of socialism, but who cares?
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> Socialism means that the government owns the means of production
No it bloody well does not. It means the WORKERS own the means of production.
Bolshevism is the system where the state is used a proxy for the workers to attempt to achieve that goal. Bolshevism has been a disaster where-ever it was tried.
THIS is socialism: http://www.energid.com/about-u... [energid.com]
Nothing in socialism requires a state and the best versions of socialism on the beyond-one-company level are actually anarchist.
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in many revolutions they put the rich up against the wall and took their stuff. However, invariably, those countries just ended up with different rich people.
The alternative is gradual revolution. For instance, Britain in 1945 democratically elected a socialist government that, by consent, created the National Health Service. Did the rich have to pay a lot more tax? Yes. But they weren't strung up from lampposts.
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you think *Trump* will save you? That's so sweet!
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If the 99% lets that happen, we deserve it. We'd have to be bred into a nearly different species of complacent sheep to let things reach the point where this is possible.
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The rich generally have a small income. When you are talking about the top 1% in income, usually it is doctors and lawyers you are talking about, not the idle rich like Trump.
If you want to slam the rich, you would have to tax all forms of saving, which will hurt the middle class and rich equally. You have to tax stocks, savings accounts, 401k, and wherever else the rich people store their money and invest. Taxing income always hurts those who work hard and make a lot of money, not the people who are tru
Old - Busted (Score:2)
Even the CEO's Job Is Susceptible To Automation ?
That's old and busted :
http://cbsg.sourceforge.net/cg... [sourceforge.net]
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This is true. But his (her) functions can be automated. This would leave the CEO to serve as the hostage [wikipedia.org] or scapegoat [wikipedia.org] for contractual and legal [wikipedia.org] purposes.
The AI fucks up and somebody has to go to jail.
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More and more CEOs *are* the "souless corporate automaton running the business".
Those using technology to rachet-up online and television ads without considering societal costs found their comeuppance with technology (Adblock and Netflix respectively).
The same way, CEOs whose sole aim is to maximise personal and shareholder profit must reap what they sow... they will be automated and/or outsourced.
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Of course shareholders don't like this. People who actually do something at an organization tend to want to actually focus on improving the organ
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Probably doesn't hurt to point out that while successful at making money, they are also gene