Interview with former KGB agent

[senseamp]

The epidemic you speak of extends well beyond red states. The former manufacturing cities of coa8stal CT, the Inland Empire, Bakersfield, Oakland and most of industrial NJ, upstate NY and even MA are facing similar challenges, and the Democrat firewall will continue to splinter.

Good to know that the tech oligarchs are as heartless as their industrial and financial predecessors. I see a Butlerian jihad as a likely future.

It's definitely decision time for manufacturing belt. They can try to be progressive like Seattle and Pittsburgh and evolve, or they can be regressive and increasingly suffer. Tech elites are not heartless, we vote to raise taxes on ourselves to allow the government to deal with the negative side effects of increased automation, but it is not our role to save Republican voters from themselves. Our role is to automate, which is a net positive, since more goods and services can be produced cheaper. Distribution is for all American voters to figure out, not just techies. You want to give us a tax cut, instead of taxing the profits we make automating away your jobs, that's your prerogative, we may disagree, but we will take the money and invest it in more automation.

 

[Starbuck1975]

It's definitely decision time for manufacturing belt. They can try to be progressive like Seattle and Pittsburgh and evolve, or they can be regressive and increasingly suffer. Tech elites are not heartless, we vote to raise taxes on ourselves to allow the government to deal with the negative side effects of increased automation, but it is not our role to save Republican voters from themselves. Our role is to automate, which is a net positive, since more goods and services can be produced cheaper. Distribution is for all American voters to figure out, not just techies. You want to give us a tax cut, instead of taxing the profits we make automating away your jobs, that's your prerogative, we may disagree, but we will take the money and invest it in more automation.

Increased production of goods and services will only accelerate the destruction of our climate. Finding quicker and cheaper ways to make shit is a self serving and myopic view of technology.

Given that automation and tech is largely responsible for the conditions and platforms that led to a Trump Presidency, tech has a lot of penance before it can claim net positive...and delivering organic free range grass fed beef via unmanned drone to soccer moms in gentrified urban neighborhoods is not my idea of utopia. I was promised flying cars, time travel and interstellar colonization, and instead I got robot vacuums and intrusive devices.

Also, Seattle is hardly a model for the future. You don't fix rapidly growing unemployment, gentrification and obscene wealth disparity by paying more taxes.

Tech liberals will start to care about the harm they are creating in the name of disruption once someone figures out how to automate baristas and yoga instructors.

 

[senseamp]

Increased production of goods and services will only accelerate the destruction of our climate. Finding quicker and cheaper ways to make shit is a self serving and myopic view of technology.

Automation will help reduce climate change because it will leave some of the biggest CO2 polluters per capita, truck driving Americans in rural and suburban low density areas, without means to afford fossil fuels or big cars and houses. But also, it will make manufacturing of energy saving and alternative energy products cheaper. Plus self driving electric cabs will take a lot of cars off the road.

Given that automation and tech is largely responsible for the conditions and platforms that led to a Trump Presidency, tech has a lot of penance before it can claim net positive...and delivering organic free range grass fed beef via unmanned drone to soccer moms in gentrified urban neighborhoods is not my idea of utopia. I was promised flying cars, time travel and interstellar colonization, and instead I got robot vacuums and intrusive devices.

You got way more than stupid flying cars and useless interstellar colonization. If the future sucks for you, that is your problem, not the future's.

Also, Seattle is hardly a model for the future. You don't fix rapidly growing unemployment, gentrification and obscene wealth disparity by paying more taxes.
Tech liberals will start to care about the harm they are creating in the name of disruption once someone figures out how to automate baristas and yoga instructors.

How about you Republicans fix problems in your cities and states, which are always last in everything, before you lecture others who are kicking your ass in everything on how not to do it?
If someone successfully automates a barista, tech liberals will be fine with it.

 

[Jhhnn]

While I understand your sentiment, and share your frustration with Republican voters clinging to their prejudices and fears while their own communities spiral into the abyss due to lack of education and dwindling job prospects, comments like this certainly wont help them see the error of their ways.

Thank you. I think you underestimate the toll that automation takes on employment & overestimate how education will change that. When the number of qualified people exceeds job openings the very nature of capitalism dictates that wages will decrease due to competition. There's always somebody who'll do it cheaper. That's been the fate of skilled tradesmen of all kinds since the Reagan years. It's actually inhibited training younger workers because nobody will hire apprentices over journeymen unless the union decrees it. We already know what's happened to unions.

 

[senseamp]

Automation is a positive sum game. Meaning the winners win more from it than the losers lose. For example if I automate away your job, I get to keep your salary, you lose your salary but gain free time. So net effect is we have gained free time, so as a society of two, we are better off. Now, you aren't better off if we just leave it at that, but if I give you a small stipend out of your saved salary so you don't kill me, I am still better off, and you are OK, you have less money than before, but more free time to enjoy life.

 

[Starbuck1975]

Automation will help reduce climate change because it will leave some of the biggest CO2 polluters per capita, truck driving Americans in rural and suburban low density areas, without means to afford fossil fuels or big cars and houses. But also, it will make manufacturing of energy saving and alternative energy products cheaper. Plus self driving electric cabs will take a lot of cars off the road.You got way more than stupid flying cars and useless interstellar colonization. If the future sucks for you, that is your problem, not the future's.
How about you Republicans fix problems in your cities and states, which are always last in everything, before you lecture others who are kicking your ass in everything on how not to do it?
If someone successfully automates a barista, tech liberals will be fine with it.

Who are going to buy all of these wonderful goods and services if you automate away all of the jobs foundational to the middle class that enables them to do so.

I live in a blue state that fortunately remembers the New Deal and is economically diverse enough to weather the storm when the speculative tech bubble inevitably bursts.

You are not talking to a red state Trumpster. I am an Eisenhower conservative that respects the European model of liberalism, not the insanity of American west coast liberalism. So I am more than happy to point out the failings of your utopia. I travel to Seattle often. I see the drug needles in the alleys, spaced out homeless teenagers wandering the streets like packs of wild dogs and the uncomfortable glances exchanged between the local progressive hipsters and code bro Amazonians.

 

[senseamp]

Recipients of Universal Basic Income + Healthcare will buy cheap and abundant automated goods and services. Anti intellectualism, attacking people who are successful because they are smart, and voting against your own self interest to troll liberals will only keep you in a hole. Amazonians are people like you who picked up a programming book and made themselves more productive. A lot came from far worse circumstances than most Americans.

 

[Jhhnn]

Automation is a positive sum game. Meaning the winners win more from it than the losers lose. For example if I automate away your job, I get to keep your salary, you lose your salary but gain free time. So net effect is we have gained free time, so as a society of two, we are better off. Now, you aren't better off if we just leave it at that, but if I give you a small stipend out of your saved salary so you don't kill me, I am still better off, and you are OK, you have less money than before, but more free time to enjoy life.

"Small" won't really cut it because it won't support the necessary sales volume to keep the automation running at a profit. Not in the end game, anyway, not at extreme levels of automation. And it sure won't work in the context of the debt loads carried by all too many Americans.

 

[senseamp]

Unless free time is completely worthless to you, somewhere below your previous salary, a stipend and free time will be a better deal for you than going to work full time for full pay. And it's also a better deal for your employer. So there is net value created. That is the progressive approach. The Conservative (with exception of Charles Murray) approach is your stipend is zero and your previous employer gets a tax cut on the extra profit from firing you.

 

[Jhhnn]

Unless free time is completely worthless to you, somewhere below your previous salary, a stipend and free time will be a better deal for you than going to work full time for full pay. And it's also a better deal for your employer. So there is net value created. That is the progressive approach. The Conservative (with exception of Charles Murray) approach is your stipend is zero and your previous employer gets a tax cut on the extra profit from firing you.

Having more Poors on assistance isn't the answer & that's likely all your scenario will produce. One way or another, ordinary Americans need a bigger piece of the pie if we're to prosper, not a smaller one.

You also misunderstand a lot of American headsets entirely. I worked with people for years who'd take the overtime over the free time nearly every time because it gave them "better" leisure when they took it- take the kids to Disneyland, send 'em to summer camp, tour Machu Picchu, drive newer & nicer cars, buy a boat or a cabin where they hope to retire if they don't work themselves to death first. You'd automate away their livelihoods & leave 'em enough to take the kids to McDonalds once in awhile.

 

[senseamp]

I get that average Americans want to feel self reliant, which is why they fall for every charlatan promising to bring back the good old days, if you only give him a big enough tax cut. But that ship has sailed. If you aren't automating, you are getting automated out. Now the question is do you want redistribution of a bigger pie or destitution and a smaller pie in the hands of a few?

 

[Jhhnn]

I get that average Americans want to feel self reliant, but that ship has sailed. If you aren't automating, you are getting automated out. Now the question is do you want redistribution of a bigger pie or destitution and a smaller pie in the hands of a few?

Either way, Ordinary Americans get screwed unless we redefine how the pie gets divvied up. If business owns the means of production then the govt of the people needs to assert a sort of ownership over business itself, a new New Deal.

 

[senseamp]

Either way, Ordinary Americans get screwed unless we redefine how the pie gets divvied up. If business owns the means of production then the govt of the people needs to assert a sort of ownership over business itself, a new New Deal.

Or just tax the profits and distribute to the general population.

 

[Jhhnn]

Or just tax the profits and distribute to the general population.

That would be a new New Deal, would it not?

 

[senseamp]

That would be a new New Deal, would it not?

Not sure what the right nomenclature is. But we will have to go through a lot of pain before the country is ready for it.

 

[JSt0rm]

senseamp is right. The future will be a future with little work. How we deal with the masses of unwashed heathens (alr right trumpers with some liberals mixed in) will dictate what kind of future we have. A minimum income for those who cant get work for whatever reason (ie they dumb) will keep them from killing me for my food.

 

[WelshBloke]

Oh, I dunno, push socialism and Marxism in schools and have idiots push that as a form of government, all while saying America is evil.

Go F off.

It's excellent. Trump and current US politics is doing more for the cause of International Socialism than anything else in decades.

 

[HomerJS]

Oh, I dunno, push socialism and Marxism in schools and have idiots push that as a form of government, all while saying America is evil.

Go F off.

Unfortunately Trump already beat you to the punch calling the U.S. evil.

You F off first.

 

[JSt0rm]

senseamp is right. The future will be a future with little work. How we deal with the masses of unwashed heathens (alr right trumpers with some liberals mixed in) will dictate what kind of future we have. A minimum income for those who cant get work for whatever reason (ie they dumb) will keep them from killing me for my food.

 

[dainthomas]

While I understand your sentiment, and share your frustration with Republican voters clinging to their prejudices and fears while their own communities spiral into the abyss due to lack of education and dwindling job prospects, comments like this certainly wont help them see the error of their ways.

Taking the high road has a long history of not working with these people.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Fucking right. Politics has self-selected for sociopaths. The only thing they understand is personal pain. Time to break out the guillotine, or worse.

 

[Jhhnn]

senseamp is right. The future will be a future with little work. How we deal with the masses of unwashed heathens (alr right trumpers with some liberals mixed in) will dictate what kind of future we have. A minimum income for those who cant get work for whatever reason (ie they dumb) will keep them from killing me for my food.

Automation doesn't care about political orientation. Libs don't get a pass when the factory shuts down or relocates. If anything, it works the other way as with union busting, the Auto industry or Boeing's efforts to relocate to N Carolina.

 

[xthetenth]

Automation doesn't care about political orientation. Libs don't get a pass when the factory shuts down or relocates. If anything, it works the other way as with union busting, the Auto industry or Boeing's efforts to relocate to N Carolina.

It'd be pretty sweet if we could reliably pressure states to take collective action rather than sell our futures out in a race to the bottom.

 

[Thebobo]

Well this is what Russia is now

"These are the journalists critical of Putin that have died under mysterious circumstances."

 

[agent00f]

Who are going to buy all of these wonderful goods and services if you automate away all of the jobs foundational to the middle class that enables them to do so.

I live in a blue state that fortunately remembers the New Deal and is economically diverse enough to weather the storm when the speculative tech bubble inevitably bursts.

You are not talking to a red state Trumpster. I am an Eisenhower conservative that respects the European model of liberalism, not the insanity of American west coast liberalism. So I am more than happy to point out the failings of your utopia. I travel to Seattle often. I see the drug needles in the alleys, spaced out homeless teenagers wandering the streets like packs of wild dogs and the uncomfortable glances exchanged between the local progressive hipsters and code bro Amazonians.

European liberalism is to the left of American west coast liberalism so I'm glad you see the way now.

Btw, Eisenhower conservatives are for the history books ever since the GOP saw democrats backstabbing racists as an opportunity.