Futurist Predicts AI Will Take Jobs, Benefiting the Rich But Not Workers (venturebeat.com) 340
Citing "significant" new corporate investments in AI technology, futurist Gary Grossman argues that AI "may be the fastest paradigm shift in the history of technology -- and warns there's a counter-argument to the theory that AI will create as many jobs as its displaces.
"The other view is that this time is different, that we are not just automating labor but also cognition and many fewer people will be needed by industry."
KPMG claims more than half of business executives plan to implement some form of AI within the next 12 months... The disruption is already beginning, with fully 75% of the organizations KPMG surveyed expecting intelligent automation to significantly impact 10 to 50% of their employees in the next two years. A Citigroup executive told Bloomberg that better AI could reduce headcount at the bank by 30%. In the face of all this change, many companies publicly state that AI will eliminate some dull and repetitive jobs and make it possible for people to do higher-order work. However, as a prominent venture capitalist relayed to me recently on this topic: "most displaced call center workers don't become Java programmers." It is not only low-skilled jobs that are at risk. Gartner analysts recently reported that AI will eliminate 80% of project management tasks....
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
A New York Times article noted that while many company executives pay public lip service to "human-centered AI" and the need to provide a safety net for those who lose their jobs, they privately talk about racing to automate their workforces "to stay ahead of the competition, with little regard for the impact on workers." The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans. The figure is expected to climb to 72% by next year.... The net of this dynamic is that workers are not a major factor in the economic calculus of the business drive to adopt AI, despite so many public statements to the contrary.
So perhaps it's not a surprise when the Edelman 2019 AI survey shows a widely held view that AI will lead to short-term job losses with the potential for societal disruption and that AI will benefit the rich and hurt the poor.
He also shares a sobering quote from historian, philosopher, and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari on why Silicon Valley supports Universal Basic Incomes.
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
"The Single Most Obvious Thing About AI" (Score:4, Insightful)
That's great. (Score:4, Interesting)
They'll only need a few million bodyguards.
AI destroys labor (Score:5, Insightful)
The previous automation revolution, ie robots in factories at least required robots be built. The AI revolution only requires someone at Google or Amazon to push the deployment button and could wipe by this single action loads of jobs.
As such is unlikely we can consider the AI revolution as something that will replace old jobs with new jobs, It will simply destroy them. End of story. A very small team of engineers and data scientists could actually wipe a whole type of job... worldwide.
Is it really that grim? (Score:3)
IANAE (economist), However I see this large deployment of AI and manufacturer reducing cost of everything. These are businesses and need to make money. Once an entire supply chain is managed by AI from mining ores to having a end product say a phone, no labour and unions to deal with, you are left with cost of maintaining such machines. So instead of selling $200 iphone for $2000, and again, that $200 components may drop to few cents and the iPhone ends up costing $20 to manufacture. Then Businesses will be
Re: (Score:3)
Who is to say some philanthropist won't set up auto manufacturing that gives free cars to everyone.
Charity reinforces hierarchy. You think giving some individual philanthropist control over whether everyone has cars is a good idea?
The only difference between your idea and the standard Hunger Games/Elysium impoverished-99% dystopia is the free cars and perhaps other goods from a few hypothetical philanthropists, at least until they get bored with it or die off or anything happens to break one of the incredibly fragile threads dangling your society over the pits of hell.
What's better than giving to charity
Re:Is it really that grim? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pretty much the nail on the head. The main reason that something will have to change is that all these companies that are having these thoughts will have to realize (and quite quickly) that if a large portion of the work force is jobless, they are also going to have no money, ergo no one will be able to purchase from the company. Now, one could argue that this creates an oppressive loop where they give out and take back the money in just such a way as to keep the world turning, but not allow anyone a way to the upper class. However, that is a bit hyperbolic. It would also require a lot of other things to go awry before that situation would come to fruition, and I would hope the people of the world would see if before it happens.
To illustrate how quick it would have to change, remember when unemployment was at 8 and 9%? Imagine if it suddenly jumped to 15% how much it would crush some of the these industries. There is a vested interest in keeping the system running the way it does now. It would require some very radical things to create the dystopian future that so many fear AI will bring about. Remember, only a few of those stories with such a terrible future actually even show or explain in any real depth how it got to that point, and even then the writers can literally control for everything.
Re: (Score:3)
Saying that supply-side economics has been "debunked" is an understatement, it's been tried exhaustively in numerous experiments and found to be ruinous to the bottom 90% every single time.
Re: (Score:2)
So, why will this benefit the rich? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not like the AI they're talking about will have any use for rich people. Seriously, what do "the rich" bring to the table that "AI" needs?
Other than the plot of yet another Terminator movie, of course....
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
It will benefit the rich because we are transitioning into an ownership-based economy rather than a work based one and AI helps with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Are transitioning? Have nearly finished, you mean.
Re: So, why will this benefit the rich? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about these fields, usually plumber is included in the list, is that as people are displaced from other employment, they will en masse pursue the jobs on this list that are not easily automated. The wages for the roles on this list will then lower. The employer (wealthy upper-class) benefits from the abundance of cheaper labor available to do these automation-proof jobs. Because the labor cost diminishes on these jobs, they will become even more impervious to automation, though that job security doesn't benefit the worker who is making much less in their job than they did prior to the arrival of automation in other fields.
Re:So, why will this benefit the rich? (Score:4, Interesting)
In benefiting the rich it is not so much different to other waves of increasing productivity – productivity gains always profit those owning the means of production first, never those who do the jobs, and even less those who'll be out of a job because of those gains.
Re: (Score:2)
Hrm. You don't know how taxation works. Interesting.
Re:So, why will this benefit the rich? (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism is in need of reform. The United States is known as "The Great Experiment" and is after all a "baby" historically speaking. It is a mistake to think that the great experiment could mature without some mistakes happening along the way. Achieving perfection on the first try is something that does not exist.
There have been more than a few billionaires that see the possibility of a revolution because of income inequality. The lastest is Ray Dalio:
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2019-04-07/dalio-says-capitalism-s-income-inequality-is-national-emergency
Our Democracy is in danger. The Great Experiment could fail without some corrective action. Maybe Universal Income is the answer, maybe it's not. But it is becoming apparent to those that care to examine it, we could very well be in serious danger and the will to intervene does not seem to exist.
Re:So, why will this benefit the rich? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you miss the last 30 years or so?
Productivity is massively up in almost every job sector, and wages are flat or declining when adjusted for inflation.
At the same time, wealth inequality has skyrocketed, and now the 3 richest people in the United States have the same amount of wealth as the bottom 160 million people.
Think about that for a second. Three people have as much wealth as the bottom 160 million people in the country while wages are flat for those workers, despite the fact that their productivity has skyrocketed.
What factors can you point to that would call into question the assumption that this trend will continue, and that future productivity gains will similarly enrich only the ultra-rich? What's different about AI, or what's changed in the world so that this trend won't continue?
Not very sophisticated research (Score:3, Interesting)
Already got it wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
The article also cites a Deloitte survey from 2017 that found 53% of companies had already started to use machines to perform tasks previously done by humans.
I'd say it's closer to 100%. Do you still have switchboard operators? Elevator operators? Calculators (it used to be a person, not an object)? No? Then you've already replaced humans with machines. Ever send an e-mail or fax? Then you've replaced the postman and the telegraph operator, too...
Re:Already got it wrong... (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
* It is weighted towards the wealthy.
* Inflation is down right now at 1.2% but it was 2.8% summer of last year which leaves 2% for the worker, wow. This year gas will be more expensive so inflation will probably exceed last summer.
* Exceedingly many jobs are temporary and term positions.
Re: (Score:3)
Being more productive means you should get paid more
No it doesn't. Being more productive means your labor time can produce more, and the labor trade can purchase more.
If we raise minimum wage with productivity, we'll compensate people fairly: we need burger flippers, grocery baggers, shelf stockers, people who are unproductive but are more productive nevertheless than trying to get machines to do these jobs in a clunky and even-less-efficient manner. Those people deserve a fair share--they invest their time to do necessary work, and they deserve a bas
Re:Already got it wrong... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying that the minimum wage should vary by the employee's age?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Since you have correctly observed that companies are paying adults like kids and won't pay adults like adults out of the goodness of their hearts, that sounds like a yes. I'm willing to entertain this idea, it's certainly far from ideal IMO, but it could bring needed material improvements. So do you have any age/wage bracket ideas in mind?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone used to actually make the food you eat too, now many of us eat production line items...
Farms require less labor...
Clothing manufacturers...
Machines have been taking jobs for a long time...
Yes, and we've also been fortunate enough to create jobs at a dizzying pace, but that will not be sustained going forward (or at least we won't be creating human jobs).
The next iteration of technology is coming for your mind, so please stop ignorantly pointing to history as if it really means fuck all here. This time is different, and we will not be creating jobs as quickly as we will be destroying them. You won't be telling the recently unemployed to go get an education/learn a new trade like you have fo
Futurist predicts $RANDOMTECH (Score:5, Insightful)
Futurist predicts $RANDOMTECH will benefit the rich not the poor.
There you go. I just built the first AI based title generator about AI and obvious facts...
Obviously (Score:3)
Tractors benefited land owners who could buy them, not farmers using them.
panem et circenses (Score:5, Interesting)
Tractors benefited land owners who could buy them, not farmers using them.
Massive numbers of slaves benefitted large land owners, not the common wage workers of Rome who became welfare cases on a Universal Basic Income.
... or does it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The slave-ification of the Roman economy was a process that in many ways was similar to automation since it was a massive infusion of extremely cheap un paid labour so here are historical precedents indicating that this is not guaranteed to end the way you predict. UBI in Rome was simply a mechanism the wealthy slave owners used to keep the masses from arming themselves and coming for them. This was an ever-present danger since many of Rome's free citizenry were veterans of Rome's constant wars to secure resources and pre-emptively neutralise potential competitors which was one of the few career options still open to those who wanted something more out of life than just subsisting on a UBI. That last part about constant wars over resources of course has no parallels in post WWII US history
Re: panem et circenses (Score:2)
In the mid to long term there will be no benefit. Fewer workers mean fewer people spending. That is fewer things to be built and sold. Thus less money for those who build and sell stuff.
Re: panem et circenses (Score:3)
Historia docet non historiam docere.
Re: (Score:2)
"Futurist" (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Congrats, you pointed out one namespace collision out of the two dozen listed on wikipedia. [wikipedia.org]
I'm sure your mother will print out your post and put it on the fridge next to your fingerpainitng.
Re: "Futurist" (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Surely we are at peak "calling everyone fascist" by now. Show of hands, who here has never been called a fascist? Socialists called George Orwell a fascist...while he was himself a socialist. While he was fighting literal fascists in Spain.
He was working as fascist he could!
the problem they dont think about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the problem they dont think about (Score:5, Insightful)
Even if you think about the problem, there's no other answer. You cannot hire a bunch of people and give them a decent salary if your competitor makes the same widgets with fewer people, and offers them for a lower price.
Re:the problem they dont think about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Not as long as they are part of a market where they "have to" make more profit.
But that's never going to change. People are greedy and those that make more profit can afford more nice things.
Re:the problem they dont think about (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except for realizing that the proletariat is just as greedy and lazy as the bourgeoisie, but just less successful.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Then Marx was mostly right about capitalism.
He gets high Marx on his insight?
I'll just show myself out.......
Re:the problem they dont think about (Score:4, Interesting)
Not as long as they are part of a market where they "have to" make more profit.
But that's never going to change. People are greedy and those that make more profit can afford more nice things.
This isn't likely to end well. First thing is, we need to understand the goal of waves of automation.
As an example, the industrial revolution wasn't designed to eliminate people doing work. Even though it ran concurrently with a lesser need for farmers, the goal was an increase in productivity. A displaced farmer might just slide over into a factory job.
The specific goal of this automation effort is to replace "expensive" labor with a less expensive way to accomplish the same work.
So if more human jobs are created, the automation revolution has failed.
My own concerns are that with perhaps 90 percent of humanity rendered unemployable because they are humans, that society is going to have to adjust two things:
Goods and services produced will have some disruption because there will be an ever dwindling market for those goods and services.
That 90 percent of zero value humanity will need addressed. With humans in the loop, that suggests to me that the excess humanity will be eliminated. Probably not in a peaceful manner either.
Fact is, in an automated economy, we simply do not need heading toward 8 billion people http://www.worldometers.info/w... [worldometers.info]
There are peaceful ways to achieve this depopulation, but humans seldom do things in a peaceful manner. We're going to be damn lucky if we don't bring about our own extinction in the depop wars.
Profits justify investment (Score:2)
If people are going to give their savings to companies to invest (i.e. buy stock in) they will expect a return on their money. Companies will only spend money on a project if it is going to produce a return on that investment. Because sometimes companies win big as a result of the risk they take, they are encouraged to take risks that benefit all of us. The alternative is state capitalism where only the state is allowed to invest - and does so badly because it's risking the taxpayers' money. So don't knock
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, as a person who has built many useful things in his personal time, no, you don't need the lure of great wealth for people to innovate. You just need people that enjoy what they are doing or actually want to help. There are plenty of them out there.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course you can, you'll just make less money. Why couldn't you?
Oh, you don't understand how businesses set prices.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:the problem they dont think about (Score:5, Insightful)
No they don't, because they don't need money. Money is a means to an end. If I own an everygoddamthingonearth factory I can just tell it to make me whatever I want. If there's anything it can't make (or I need raw materials and shit like that) I'll call my buddy who owns the everyfuckingthingelse plant and we'll meet up to arrange swapsies and laugh at all the poors.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: the problem they dont think about (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: the problem they dont think about (Score:4, Interesting)
The mountain of skulls resulted from the Leninist idea of the "dictatorship of the proletariat".
On one hand, we must recognize that Leninism _worked_, in the sense of successfully overthrowing several feudalist (or proto-capitalist) governments. On the other hand, it instituted a bunch of goddamned dictatorships. And we all know what happened with that.
Socialism - and even small-c communism - is not the same thing as Leninism. Many people believe there are evolutionary rather than revolutionary routes to socialism. The oft-cited examples are the European welfare states, which achieved a weak (and long term unsustainable, it seems) form of socialism - without piling up a mountain of skulls.
I know lots of small-c communists. None of whom think it would be a good idea to repeat the experience of the Soviet Union.
Re: (Score:3)
Long term unsustainable? You do realize those countries have some of the strongest economies in Europe [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:3)
You know the next step (Score:2)
Employees training their AI replacements as a requirement to receive their termination pay. (Hint: you don't have to train them right...)
Strangely enough, it seems like management jobs would be easiest to replace with software.
Re: (Score:3)
Strangely enough, it seems like management jobs would be easiest to replace with software.
At maximum automation, 90% of management function ceases to exist. Management is largely about keeping track of what a bunch of humans are doing. No humans, no need to track what they're doing. The machines self-report accurately and completely, and what little "management" is still required is a very small shell script.
No raises as tech gets better (Score:5, Insightful)
What would lead anyone to believe the workers will get anything out of automation but more work to do for the same pay and just to be thankful for a job.
Re: (Score:2)
If prices of goods go down and your salary goes up, it's the same as if you got a raise and prices stayed the same.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If for one our work you get twice the goods as compared to what you got before, then you do benefit. Of course this requires that all goods producing businesses optimize, but overall that is happening (e.g. nobody has a switchboard operators on staff anymore). Before the industrial revolution, you worked more than 10 hrs a day and owned maybe 10 shirts in your lifetime, today you can buy 10 shirts a month if you so desire while working 8 hrs a day. So yes, the shirt making seamstress got displaced by machin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
they do need us (Score:2)
"The message is: 'We don't need you. But we are nice, so we'll take care of you.'"
but they do need us, who else is going to buy all their products/services?
a bit like when factories used to own the house you lived in, and all the stores and pubs in town were owned by the factory. you got your paycheck, but you spend (almost) everything on the services that the factory provided in your town.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do they need people to buy their products services? Why would they even interact outside their circle? They'll have their in-home fab make whatever they want, and own gardens tended by robo-farmers
Purchasing power? (Score:5, Interesting)
The US is way ahead of anywhere else in the world with regards to killing jobs. To be honest, Iâ€(TM)m envious. Due to vast amounts of cheap and untrained labor, the US has made incredible progress towards to a Wall-E like society. People like me have no need to go to the mall or the grocery store or pretty much anywhere else since you can order anything online and get it quickly.
The malls are replacing retail shops with services and entertainment. The roads are littered with abandoned retail shops except those catering purely to poor people lacking credit cards or novelty. The decline is very obvious to an outsider.
Automation and centralization has made it so the people are forced to work in almost entirely service oriented jobs.
America is the logistics powerhouse of the western world. The country is famous for its ability to move things from place to place efficiently. This is glorious to watch. Compared to Europe, America is years ahead with regards to killing off jobs because in Europe, logistics companies are not yet able to offer dirt cheap delivery options. This is because outside of England, there arenâ€(TM)t enough uneducated people in Western Europe to handle all the logistical tasks manually for slave labor wages. We need the machines.
That said, once logistics is automated, both Europe and America will face a huge problem. The issue will be that if products can be delivered by drone or self-driving vehicles or whatever else, a HUGE number of jobs will disappear.
This will cause governments around the world to place many people on unemployment or social welfare because unless people open massive numbers of vanity oriented services like theme restaurants and eyebrow plucking shops, there simply will be no jobs to go around.
As the governments dilute their currencies via deficits, the value of their money will plummet. The ripple effect through the world will be that eventually companies will no longer see a clear path to profitability by manufacturing, distributing and marketing useless shit.
The people will focus on purchasing necessities rather than novelties therefore collapsing markets for endlessly disposable crap. This will hurt financial markets as well as the general import/export markets. Unions like the EU will become a matter of survival and will make it so as the market adjust, the governmentâ€(TM)s will be able to balance their deficits (not reduce, but increase systematically) until people are still being fed and kept healthy but with far less purchasing power than before.
The rich will be hurt because the vast majority of their sources of income will dissolve. The mass dilution of currency will mean that everyone will move progressively towards the middle or many will die because governments dependent primarily on manufacturing will lack the resources to balance their deficits as their exports will become unimportant.
The end result will be somewhat chaotic. Countries will unite to mega corporations who no longer see the financial benefit of producing and distributing necessities. Companies like Amazon will become more similar to a welfare system.
This of course is a doomsday scenario and if I were to write five more pages, I would add predictions that would include the one month work year which will make a big difference. But the point is that rich people are only rich because their money is perceived to have purchasing power. As that perception erodes, so will their wealth.
Your understanding of England is flawed (Score:2)
We have the people to fill the logistic jobs because we are importing them from elsewhere in Europe. We're doing the logistics thing because on the whole our unions are weaker. OTOH it's remarkable how often my Amazon packages come from elsewhere in Europe, so I'm not sure your perception is valid at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the thing. I used to be really interested in all these kinds of scenarios. There was a time I was super spooked on the level of debt in countries.
This is the same with jobs in general. I used to sit around wondering what jobs will people do or who will they keep people in a good condition given free trade and automation.
Now, I just sit back and think well, maybe they can manage it all and maybe they can't. It's not really a resignation to ignorance. It's more like this is such a complex system and th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Universal Basic Income (Score:2)
Took all the way until the end of the post for what this was really all about.
Re: (Score:2)
The companies will gladly pay for it as long they're the only ones you can spend your money on and they're the ones that decide who gets the UBI or not.
Post-scarcity economy. (Score:2)
The end-goal will be neat, the path going there will be ugly. And hurt.
The usa needs single payer healthcare or Medicare (Score:2)
The usa needs single payer healthcare or Medicare For All
Re: (Score:2)
Trusting the government to do anything right is quite naive.
They will either fail to pass something like that, or fail to implement something like that.
It probably would be better off to just limit the power the patents have at a point you can actually have some competition in the sector.
There's a labour shortage. Yes really... (Score:2)
This rant at the Economist argues that most of the West is facing a labour shortage. Then we hear this. Someone's going to end up with egg on their face... https://www.economist.com/fina... [economist.com]
Or we could fight back (Score:3)
What would stop us from building an AI that could process the same material as the task force and producing the legal foundation for prosecuting tax fraud by the ultra-wealthy. There are lots of other wonderful targets one could work on while whiling away the hours on UBI
AI will benefit everyone (Score:2)
Woah! (Score:2)
Thank you, futurist!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. We are nice. There's a howler. The Big Lie, say something outrageous. Silicon Valley, the home of intolerance, is telling us deplorables that it's nice and will care for us? Show of hands, who believes this?
In this context, taking care of us means what it means when mafia says they will 'take care' of someone
Re:We are nice? (Score:5, Interesting)
*) Read "Manna" by Marshall Brain, a free short SF story on this very subject.
Re: (Score:2)
And perhaps at some point they'll slip a sterilizing agent into your food, because who the hell needs more deadbeats.
The poor will discover this at some point. They aren't allowed the space or the resources to grow their own food, but there is a lot of Homo Sapiens on the hoof, if you know how to treat the meat for prions... and the rich variant tastes a lot better and doesn't have the sterilizing agent.
There has to be a dystopian TV series in this.
Re:Discussion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Discussion (Score:2, Insightful)
My brother in law who fled Venezuela three years ago, and talks about his neighbor killing and eating his own dogs, begs to differ.
Failed Petro-state != Socialism (Score:4, Insightful)
Venezuela is not a socialist country. It is a failed petro-state that would have actually succeeded if:
1. Oil prices didn't collapse.
2. Horrible mismanagement by Maduro and previously by Chavez in his later years.
Saudi Arabia does the same system as they do and they've pulled it off for decades. No one is calling Saudi Arabia "socialist".
This whole Venezuela is an example of how socialism can't work is total horseshit told by people who have an audience of people who can only understand things on a bumper sticker level.
Venezuela's predicament is extremely nuanced and complicated that has nothing to do with socialism. Their problems were decades in the making - waaaay before the "socialism".
Re: (Score:3)
2. Horrible mismanagement by Maduro and previously by Chavez in his later years.
That is the crux of the problem right there, and is the simple point that the socialist want to ignore. Socialism is the concentration of financial power into the hands of individuals that don't have the expertise to deal with it. Does anyone truly want to turn our purchasing decisions over to Congress? If you do, have you actually listened to those morons talk?
I'm being unfair. They're not all idiots up there, but the ones that are intelligent are still not geniuses. Which is what is required to be an
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
My wife who was saved by "socialist medicine" twice begs to differ with you.
Socialist medicine paid for by a capitalist pig always works.
Re: (Score:2)
Different meanings (Score:4, Informative)
Sigh.
This argument will never go anywhere, since different people use the word "socialism" to mean different things.
I blame the libertarians, actually. They started accusing any action where a government does something with the intent to benefit its citizens as being "socialism!", and the word has now almost completely lost the original meaning, "worker ownership and control of the means of production."
If two people don't even have the same idea what the word means, however, it's impossible for them to come to any consensus on the trade-offs of benefits, if any, and costs.
Re: (Score:3)
Do not ever conflate charity/generosity with government confiscation and redistribution. The confiscation is backed by force, and the benefits of the redistribution always goes to the politician pushing for it. There is not force in charity, that the recipient's gratitude goes to the one who is making the sacrifice.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Discussion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
>Dad why do some people get a lot of money even if they didn't earn it but simply took it from others by abusing their position?
>Because we are dumb and naive and we let them, son.
socialism = capitalism = democracy = fascism = same bullshit buzzwords designed to distract suckers while you steal their life and time away
Only used by 'academics' while real life works differently.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The rich are parasites, they didn't get to wealth by their efforts, they tapped into and exploited workers and the state to steal from both.