/biz/ - Business & Finance

[Anonymous No.318934]

I'm sure this is a topic that's been flogged to death already, but what is the "next" form of employment?

The typical answer to automation and outsourcing eradicating, well, the entire manufacturing and eventually service industries is that "Well, everyone used to work as farmers until farming was automated, then they got jobs in factories." But no one who hauls that old chestnut out ever seems to be willing to define what the new "factory" job is, as in the new employment revolution that society will move on to.

The only answer typically given is robotic engineer, which of course is fallacious because one guy building and maintaining robots still replaces hundreds or thousands of guys who used to do the work the robots did.

So how does employment work at all in the upcoming century, if we reach a point where with virtually zero human input, cars drive themselves, fast food cooks and distributes itself, ore digs itself out of the ground, refines itself and stamps itself into products which then fly themselves to people's houses when they order them, and even obscure laws look themselves up, routine court cases resolve themselves and common health complaints cure themselves?

[Anonymous No.318938]

In the future, only the 10% of the population will be employed. The rest of us will live off government assistance and eat a bland diet of soylent and tap water, that the government will also provide of course.

[Anonymous No.318941]

There's a lot of service and luxury work that can't be automated right now. The great thing about automation is that it reduces the cost of producing items (even though it temporarily reduces employment in general), which means a lot of jobs that previously couldn't provide enough money to live on in the past should start being able to do so.

[Anonymous No.318950]

Getting to that point implies some amount of post-scarcity which means most of us can just congratulate ourselves and sit on a beach and subscribe to McLifeSupport Services

[Anonymous No.318964]

t-they'll still need e-engineers, r-right?

[Anonymous No.318997]

>>318934
we won't be out of the service economy for another 100+ years at least

there's a 0% chance we'll reach post-scarcity (which comes next) in our lifetimes

[Anonymous No.319003]

>>318934
do you guys think the delivery industry (trucking, postal workers, taxis) will be affected any time soon by automated vehicles?

>tfw you work for a small delivery company

[Anonymous No.319040]

>>319003

Yes. When people are allowed to use automated cars, your job will be fucked.

That will happen in the next 20-40 years.

[Anonymous No.319041]

>>319003
Define soon.

There's probably at least a decade until those things are permitted for street use.

After that, it'll probably come quick.

[Anonymous No.319046]

>>319003
>>tfw you work for a small delivery company
they'll still need people to work in the warehouses and load/unload trucks at the delivery site... and i doubt they'll want trucks with thousands of dollars worth of freight to travel unattended.

[Anonymous No.319047]

>>318934
bitcoin trader

[Anonymous No.319048]

>>318934
>but what is the "next" form of employment?
Shorter working hours and eventual abolishment of work.

It would only happen in a free market though.

[Anonymous No.319056]

>>319047
This would be a good way to control the masses.

[Anonymous No.319061]

>>319003
Absolutely. Unlike other industries, they are unlikely to see a public backlash from automating the job. IIRC, some company is already using 100% remotely controlled trucks for internal shipping.

[Anonymous No.319079]

>>319048
>thisiswhatlibertariansactuallybelieve.exe

[Anonymous No.319083]

>>319079
Well no, it's what logic actually says.

Sorry your brain is unable to comprehend these facts.

[Anonymous No.319085]

>>319048

I'm pretty sure left to its own devices the free market would have you working 80 hour weeks for pennies on the dollar like they did in the 1890's.

But suffice to say the free market is what is driving automation.

Eventually 14 million truck drivers will be out of work when the Google self driving car is rolled out.

Then automated cashiers at fast food restaurants will replace half the workers. Once a machine can cook burgers, package it, and put it on a tray then the cooks will go.

Eventually robots will stock the stores at Wal Mart and a friendly greeter android will welcome you to the store.

The key thing is change is not linear. Its either logarithmic or exponential.

Personally, I did not foresee we'd bee having iPhones in the year 2000. I figured we'd have fiber in some areas and computers would be faster, but the change society has gone through with the smartphone revolution is the tip of the ice burg.

Google and others are pouring millions into AI, so is Goldman Sachs for their HFT algorithms, and so is the NSA for their ever expanding need to sift through everyone's data.

Sometime between 2025 and 2035, the human brain will be modeled and computers will be fast enough to emulate them.

Then things go down hill for those without capital.

[Anonymous No.319089]

Oh sometime between the self driving cars and strong AI, capitalism will break down simply because there will no longer be a scarcity of labor.

Whether we live in a utopia or dystopia depends on how the politics work out.

I'm rather doubtful on the politics part though as the robot police will be less merciful than their human counter parts.

[Anonymous No.319092]

>>319085
>I'm pretty sure left to its own devices the free market would have you working 80 hour weeks for pennies on the dollar like they did in the 1890's.
This is empirically false.

The free market is what LOWERED working hours as the economy became more productive. People worked for 80 hours a week their entire lives for most of human history until capitalism and the industrial revolution.

It's incredible you're dumb enough to ignore what actually fucking happened.

Pointless labour legislation came into effect WAY LATER.

Why would anyone want to work a full 40+ hours a week when they could work 10-20 hours and buy the same amount of resources for what they used to have to work 40 hours to get?
As prices come down people can afford to buy more, as people save more they can retire in a lot less time.

This can only happen in a system of free banking, end all central banks and allow deflation to occur.

Do you even understand economics?

[Anonymous No.319093]

>>319089
The end result of capitalism is post scarcity.

:^)

[Anonymous No.319096]

>>319092
Could I afford as much soylent as I want from the free market?

[Anonymous No.319100]

>>319096
Ebic meme bro

:^)

[Anonymous No.319105]

>>318964
>t-they'll still need e-engineers, r-right?

I work for IBM Global Business Services. Specifically, a subsidiary of IBM, and one of the largest lending servicers in the country.

I work as a database developer in the Business Intelligence unit, mostly working with SQL tools to move and transform large data. But a small (but growing) part of what I do involves rules engineering.

See. Say there's a state law or company policy. "Borrowers in Sante Few with purple hair get a 5% deduction if they ask for one on the 3rd of the month".

Now. In today's workplace, most people are going to handle this in a SQL stored procedure. Or, possibly, some middleware component or web services. But probably in SQL. I digress.

Whatever code base its in, its in code base. A bunch of gobbledygook that only developers know how to read stores the policy.

So lets say some executive says "thats all wrong. Its a 10% discount on the 5th"

The current standard procedure is to:
- log a ticket
- assign to a developer
- 1 or 2 days to find the code, rewrite and test
- deploy to QA
- 1 or 2 days (or longer) to test
- schedule for production deployment
- test in prod

All with comparable rollback scripts which are heavily tested and rarely used.

[Anonymous No.319106]

>>319100
http://diy.soylent.me

It's quite expensive. When is the free market going to bring prices down?

[Anonymous No.319110]

Guys I know someone is going to tell me it's possible, but I really do not see being able to automate driving completely out of existence.

How is an AI going to deal with inclement weather versus a real human being?

I get there are losses all the time with humans, so it will be okay if the AI fails, but I really don't see us having good enough software to handle inclement weather for a long time.

[Anonymous No.319112]

>>319106
>When is the free market going to bring prices down?
When we actually have a free market.

:^)

[Anonymous No.319113]

>>319105
A rules engine processes massive data sets, quickly, by using Rete processing to read the data, as opposed to chronological or "waterfall".

Rather than analyzing one record to its most appropriate update, then the next, then the next, Rete ... well think of it like dumping Legos on a table and quickly throwing them into the right buckets, as opposed to grabbing one Lego out of a big bucket and putting it away, then the next, then the next.

Its much more efficient.

But this isn't what makes rules engines so amazing.

[Anonymous No.319114]

>>319112
But we already a free market in America

[Anonymous No.319116]

>>319114
>But we already a free market in America
Trolling outside of /b/ is a banable offense.

[Anonymous No.319119]

>>319092

Hrm... Interesting that the trade unions were finally legalized in Europe around 1871 after being around since the 1830's. Their popularity in the 1890's due to working conditions seems to be very prevalent and increased in popularity. Something related to this perhaps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day

Also the 8 hour work day was instated because many people still worked more than that.

You are completely wrong about people normally working 80 hours a week before the industrial revolution.

Most farmers would rise sometime after the sun rose, work, have a very long lunch, get back to work, then stop when the sun went down. During winter they'd hardly work at all.

Also the catholic church gave the peasants more holidays off than we have today. Also free wine and bread on Sunday!

Also let's not forget than unbridled capitalism led to monopolies like Standard Oil. These companies crushed competition, raised barriers to entry, and simply forced people to deal with their services however they saw fit.

Also keep in mind if it legal to kill you and make a profit, capitalism says that is fine.

People were eating rat shit in their food in the 1910's. People were driving death traps in the 1950's and 60's. People were selling fake drugs that poisoned you for profit in the late 1890's.

Not to mention that insurance companies were denying procedures to terminally ill patients because it was too expensive in modern times.

Look, I like my portfolio to go up more than the next person, but I'd rather be alive and poor then dead and lots of money to line my coffin with.

[Anonymous No.319121]

>>319116
Then you better delete your posts fast.

[Anonymous No.319124]

>>319110

Simple, the AI refuses to drive in weather that is dangerous.

Humans shouldn't be fucking driving in snow storms either, but they do it all the fucking damn time and end up in wrecks.

[Anonymous No.319125]

>>319124
So everything comes to a halt in a JIT economy?

I don't think so tim

[Anonymous No.319130]

>>319113
>>319105
Rules engines translate code into layperson speak.

A table called st_cd becomes "list of states"
A field called st_nm in st_cd becomes "name of the state"
And the value "NM" becomes "New Mexico"

Other layperson translations are created by a competent rules developer.

Then, a front end rule management tool is given to business unit leaders.

So someone mid level manager gets yelled at by an executive. "God dammit Tommy I said if they live in New Mexico and they have purple hair, they get a 10% discount on the 5th of the month"

Tommy opens up his rules engine management tool .. finds the rule .. and *LITERALLY* types in

"If [THE BORROWER] is located in [NEW MEXICO] and has [PURPLE] hair, and requests a [DISCOUNT] on the [5th] of every [MONTH], then offer [THE BORROWER] a [10%] [DISCOUNT]."

Bang. This plainspeak is literally translated, real time, inside of the code base of the rules engine. That night, when the rules engine analyzes millions of records, anyone from New Mexico with purple hair will get the revision.

No developer needed. Tommy did it all by himself.

tl;dr - I'm learning a product that automates first tier development.

The software is expensive as fuck and only major enterprises currently use it. But IBM sells it, and we're exploring alternative cost models so midsize and small businesses can get in on this.

Smart developers won't sleep on this. It literally automates software development.

[Anonymous No.319132]

>>319119
>Interesting that the trade unions were finally legalized in Europe around 1871 after being around since the 1830's
Ah yes the trade union fallacy.

They were always a very small minority of the working population.

Nothing they ever did magically drove up wages and it could not have.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54z4SI85WgM
They didn't have any tools that could have magically drove up wages and decreased working hours. The market did that.
They were regularly fired and ignored.

They had nothing at all to do with decreases in working hours.

>You are completely wrong about people normally working 80 hours a week before the industrial revolution.
Lol no I'm not. Do you even know what fuedalism was?


>Also let's not forget than unbridled capitalism led to monopolies like Standard Oil.
Standard Oil was never a fucking monopoly. A year before it was broken up it had 68% market share.
Does that count as a monopoly? No. S.O. dramatically reduced the price of oil and raised living standards for everyone.

>Also keep in mind if it legal to kill you and make a profit, capitalism says that is fine.
That's ILLEGAL in capitalism you fucking tool.

>Not to mention that insurance companies were denying procedures to terminally ill patients because it was too expensive in modern times.
Thanks to government controlling medicine in the united states.
>>319121
Crying that you are unable to respond to my argument isn't a valid response.

[Anonymous No.319133]

>>319119
Also, I just showed you a chart proving you completely wrong about working hours.

The market dramatically decreased working hours and dramatically increased wages long before unions got any power or any law was passed.

Why do you think people went from the farms to the factories in the first place you massive idiot? People wanted to benefit themselves with lower hours and higher wages so they went to factories.

Literally everything you just said is reddit tier garbage.
You must have brain damage if you actually believe this bullshit.

Kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.319134]

>>319119
>Also keep in mind if it legal to kill you and make a profit, capitalism says that is fine.

That's like saying not killing someone is equivalent to killing someone.

Why are you even on this board if you hate business and economics so much?

[Anonymous No.319137]

>>318934
Guaranteed basic income leading to post scarcity society or a plutocratic dystopia.

[Anonymous No.319138]

>>319119
>Also keep in mind if it legal to kill you and make a profit, capitalism says that is fine.
Holy shit who the fuck actually believes this?

[Anonymous No.319143]

>>319132
Peasants working farms in the middle ages DID have more freetime than us. Its called a growing season.

When they did work the fields they could take breaks at their leisure as long as the job got done.

Learn some history instead of just making assumptions.

[Anonymous No.319148]

>>319143
>Peasants working farms in the middle ages DID have more freetime than us.
No they didn't.

Aside from not having as much freetime as us their infant mortality rate was sky high.

Are you actually saying it was better then? When people died at 30-40 years old?

> Its called a growing season.
Even during that time there was still countless work to be done, just to survive.

>When they did work the fields they could take breaks at their leisure as long as the job got done.
Are you seriously that stupid? If their crops failed they starved to death. The job was never "done".

[Anonymous No.319149]

>>319132

Look. I realize you are so embolden with your way of thinking that most of what I point out will be refuted with something.

However can I point out a big elephant in the room?

What will the US do about China if the US goes pure free market capitalist and China keeps going state capitalist.

Considering that if we go back to the gold standard or let deflation happen, then that means lines of credit dry up right because the money supply goes down.

Most businesses will have to look elsewhere for lines of credit... Say a state that does this for its own companies.

And why stop there... This country can simply create as much money as it needs to be liquid and invest in foreign companies. Since there are no government regulation in the USA, these companies can simply be bought out.

I mean since our currency is now valued so highly and has little liquidity now, than makes the other nations labor much more less expensive encouraging even more outsourcing to China. This spurs more economic development in China while simply draining more dollars from the US system.

Then flush with the US Cash it earned from all its cheap labor it starts buying US companies left and right (say like Smithfield Foods which is now owned by a State owned Chinese business).

Then again I suppose there is nothing wrong with letting most of the US businesses be owned by Chinese companies. They seem to have a pretty good grasp of economics for them to grow as much as they have in the past 30 years.

Most of their ruling class are PHDs and engineers. Something the US should mirror.

[Anonymous No.319154]

>>319149
>that most of what I point out will be refuted with something.
Oh course.
You're empirically wrong of course I'm going to shove the facts down your throat.

>What will the US do about China if the US goes pure free market capitalist and China keeps going state capitalist.
US will never go full free market.

>and China keeps going state capitalist.
I doubt they will continue in this direction.

>then that means lines of credit dry up right because the money supply goes down.
Then the US defaults.
GOOD.
I want this to happen.
Let the economy restructure on sound footing.
Write all the debt off.

[Anonymous No.319155]

>>319148

I suppose you aren't a student of history. The around the 1200's there was a rather warm period in earth's history. This allowed a rather large production of food... More than the peasants could eat and give to their lords.

Hence forth the population boomed until the times of the black death and what not. Eventually around the 1600's there was a cold spell and people started starving.

But for most of the time between 1200 to 1400s the peasants had a pretty good life as one could have in a pre-industrialized society as long as their lord or his neighbor wasn't ravaging them.

Shit. People didn't work that hard because there was tons of food. There was even enough free time the peasants could volunteer their time to help build cathedrals for forgiveness of their sins.

Not that I would like to have lived back then, but that was mostly due to people had things against baths.

[Anonymous No.319156]

>>319132
What argument?

Oh, you mean this one?

Okay.

[Anonymous No.319160]

>>319156
You just claimed the united states is a 100% free market.
On /biz/ of all places.

Fuck off you shitty troll.

[Anonymous No.319163]

>>319155
>This allowed a rather large production of food...

>had a pretty good life
Nobody had "a pretty good life" people died at a very young age of disease, there was barely any technology, the infant mortality rate was sky high. Life was a brutal piece of shit and then you died.

>People didn't work that hard because there was tons of food.
Lol holy shit no, just no.

>could volunteer their time to help build cathedrals
They were either paid to do this or enslaved.

Are you a primitivist of some sort? If so you should probably kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.319167]

>>319156
>Oh, you mean this one?
No, this one:
>>319092
The one that makes you rage you cannot refute.

[Anonymous No.319172]

>>318934
Basically more police, prison guards and military.

Also, trading in abstract or third-tier goods. Producing and selling financial products, fake digital money, drugs, information.

So basically, most people in the future will live in prisons.

[Anonymous No.319175]

>>319154

I can't find the article right now, but one of the Chinese higher ups said they were glad they kept their state capitalism roots during the 2008 crisis.

It will be unlikely that the Communist party while in power will let the country go completely free market. They will give loans when needed, manipulate their currency, and generally pass laws that favor their industries. Basically those Chinese billionaires are on a leash. They are having the best of both worlds. State control while letting people work for greed. They do let companies go bankrupt, but only ones they don't care strategically about.

You haven't address my point about what happens when the US defaults and deflation happens. China will simply buy all the bankrupt companies they deem worth saving. They will buy Wal Mart and not have to worry about selling their cheap shit to middle men anymore.

American workers will simply be de facto controlled by foreign powers. I mean I don't have anything against being ruled by the Chinese. They of course will start dictating policy to American through subtle pressure through their holdings and politicians friendly to their aims and desires will be put into power.

Taiwan will be re-united and all of those Japanese islands will be handed over to the Chinese.

China will have colonies in Africa (they are building a city in Keyna of all things backed by state money) and South American basically becoming the new Empire that the United States was before its economic collapse. Perhaps they will start having colonies in the United States as well.

[Anonymous No.319181]

>>319093
resources are never not scarce. Resources are always finite. Only thing labor-saving technology does is make human labor obsolete.

The end result is post- labor. Which free up the common peasantry for extermination while the elite live in their 200 story tall golden sky scrapers as feudal lords with robots as their new obedient peasants.

[Anonymous No.319182]

>>319163

Are you fucking retarded? People didn't have modern times to compare their happiness with back then. People in the middle ages had parties and festivals and had a grand old time during the holidays. They didn't know about things like baths, electricity, the internet, and working toilets.

Life was life and people had a good time regardless. I mean it was a lot better during the dark ages when they were being raped by Vikings.

Sure we can now say that living in such a time and place would have sucked, but if you were born back then you wouldn't know any better unless you were a madman and dreamed of times when metal beasts roamed the earth and sky. They'd probably burn you at the stake for that, but people were happy back then just as much as they were now.

[Anonymous No.319185]

>>319160
It is for the most part. Your projections don't hold true today.

> but my system needs to be 110% in place for it work

It fails.

>>319167
That entire post is

> correlation = causation
> failed predictions

[Anonymous No.319189]

>>318934
Then everybody would be given elaborate forms of welfare and nobody would have to work ever again and we've reached utopia

[Anonymous No.319194]

>>318934
>routine court cases resolve themselves
sounds like an Asimov short story, but its so close

[Anonymous No.319198]

>>319181
>Which free up the common peasantry for extermination while the elite live in their 200 story tall golden sky scrapers
This is beyond hilarious.

What happens when prices come down to near zero. The amount of jobs increases because working hours have gone down so much it has increased the job slots available 10, 20 fold. Everyone would work like an hour a week.

>Only thing labor-saving technology does is make human labor obsolete.
Yeah and decrease working hours, as was empirically shown.

>>319185
>It is for the most part.
How much of an ignorant manchild are you?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom

America isn't even close to a free market, are you fucking insane?

The fact it has a central bank and has inflation instead of a constant deflation should tell you right away it's not even close to a free market.

It's like you people have down syndrome or something.

>That entire post is
>> correlation = causation
>> failed predictions
No, lol that entire post and the image within it simply proves you dead wrong.
Sorry you can't deal with the fact the free market dramatically raised living standards and wages.

Kill yourself.

>>319182
>People in the middle ages had parties and festivals and had a grand old time during the holidays.
>IT WAS A WONDERFUL TIME WHERE CHILDREN PLAYED IN FIELDS AND DIDN'T HAVE TO WORK UNTIL THE EVIL INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION HAPPENED AND DRAMATICALLY IMPROVED THEIR LIVING STANDARDS AND LIFE EXPECTANCY

Why do you people exist?

>Life was life
Like was a brutal hardship. Stop reading your fantasy novels.

[Anonymous No.319213]

>>319198
> muh 100%
It's in the top 20 in both indices. You're just proving my point.

Why aren't people in Hong Kong working 5 hour weeks?

The image only shows correlations for which you made up your only explanation. An explanation that doesn't make any sense today.

[Anonymous No.319220]

>>319198
Ok, why the fuck would anybody cared about profit as a motive bother hiring 1000 employees for 1 hours each?

If they had access to a superturing AI that could design and construct robots to do whatever he wanted, why the fuck would he hrie employees?

A super-AI means total power to elites. Why would psychopaths who have swindled their way to the top waste finite resources on a population pool of laborers when all labor is automated? The good of their heart?

Singularity will be the destruction of humanity as we know it, period.

[Anonymous No.319221]

>>319198

Look, I'm not saying that we should go back to living in the middle ages. I'm just saying they technically worked less than people did in the 1800's and get more days off per year than people in the United States do now.

Wouldn't it be better to have both the time off and live in modern society?

Anyways isn't this not related to the original thread at the moment. Weren't we talking about automation? Automation is going to happen free market or not.

Its a question of whether you will be automated last.

I'm pretty sure the free market will not do anything to fix the issue of what to do with millions unemployed by automation. Not everyone can be engineers. There simply isn't enough education money for that.

Also if we get back to collapsing the US economy to get rid of debt, I see you haven't addressed the issue of the Chinese Empire that will rise after that.

http://blogs.reuters.com/ian-bremmer/2011/11/04/the-secret-to-china%E2%80%99s-boom-state-capitalism/

Here is a good article on what Chinese State Capitalism is about and why its beating the US free-er market.

[Anonymous No.319228]

>>319182
You are utterly retarded (History and economics student reporting in). Peasant life in the feudal era consisted of:
>After winter scrounging for berries because the food supplies would have run out.
>Planting their seeds in their acres of field (and this would take months because they lacked modern farming methods and mechanization).
>These crops would require constant attention to ensure they were growing correctly; because if they didn't then the peasants would starve.
>The harvest would be taken in the beginning of Autumn and would last for months for some families (as they couldn't afford help to bring the crops in AND also had to dedicate time to taking in their lords crops).
>They would then sit around a fire for all of winter rationing their food supplies. This isn't the picnic you present it to be, as there was often nothing to do but tell stories they had all heard hundreds of times before.

As well as this;
>Some peasants would spend more time on their lords land than their own, making them have a 80+ hour work week.
>Productivity was stunted because when it got dark everyone went to bed (because candles and shit be expensive). So most peasants either worked or slept and little else.
>The peasants would have to sell some of their crop to pay their taxes; they got royally fucked in this deal (no irony meant) as the gold of Europe during the period was being spunked into Asia and the Middle-East, making prices soar (so the peasants had to sell more to pay their same taxes). This was the same issue that china would face a few hundred years later which saw the fall of the Qing dynasty.
>Festivals and parties occurred only during summer and were rare then.
>The average life expectancy was below 30 for much of the early feudal era.
I can post links to numerous case studies and figures on JSTOR (an intellectual depository) if you really feel the need to debate this anymore and further illustrate your idiocy.

[Anonymous No.319240]

>>319228
There are modern peasants in the world right now.

Ever been to Afghanistan? The subsistence farmers don't do a goddamn thing, all day forever and are only busy during harvests. They don't have mechanization or money or technology. They sit around and wait for plants to grow. You take them away from that life and they are the laziest, most inept people you could imagine.

My conclusion, it is not time consuming to be a peasant.

Maybe if you were a serf or slave, you'd be made to work more lands then you needed to survive, but even then, if it was too much your product would rot in the fields before you could harvest it, so it's only so much work they could be made to do without outside help for the harvest.

[Anonymous No.319259]

>>319240
Indeed there are modern peasants in the world right now. But you know what they grow? Weed and other high yield plants that require fuck all effort to grow (in their climate anyway). This is then sold and lets them live their lifestyle; they also have correct equipment and training as well, due to a number of foreign aid programmes. You must be American to be this misled about the state of the world.

Peasants and serfs were the same thing you mongoloid. Their lords and masters often didn't give a shit if they didn't get enough of their harvest in as long as they got their own in.

Frankly your high school knowledge and erroneous conclusion doesn't mean shit in the face of hundreds of years of academia and records from the period you jumped up little craphat.

[Anonymous No.319277]

>>319221
>I'm just saying they technically worked less than people did in the 1800's and get more days off per year than people in the United States do now.
Which is false see:
>>319228

>>319213
>You're just proving my point.
No I'm not LOL

you're ACTUALLY telling me the united states has a free market

Do you have down syndrome? This is a legitimate question.


>Why aren't people in Hong Kong working 5 hour weeks?
Because they still have a fucking central bank that doesn't let prices come down you fucking mongoloid.

[Anonymous No.319282]

>>319277
>you're ACTUALLY telling me the united states has a free market
It's close enough.

> the #1 country in the indices I linked isn't free market enough

Protip: nothing will ever be. You believe in a fairy tale.

[Anonymous No.319287]

>>318934
I'd imagine that resource extraction jobs will be pretty safe.

[Anonymous No.319295]

>>319282
>It's close enough.
It's not "close enough", it has socialist central banking, highest government debt in the history of the world, mass spending, endless regulations and government created cartels etc, far higher taxes than were had in the gilded age
There are "social democracies" that are far more free market than the united states.
Are you seriously this upset your strawman argument has fallen apart?
Literally nobody believes what you are spewing.

>> the #1 country in the indices I linked isn't free market enough
Central banking isn't a free market.
Money is one half of every single translation.
The whole 2 day work week thing and my entire fucking point had to do with a free market in banking.

Kill yourself.

>You believe in a fairy tale.
Says the retard who believes in FREE MARKET USA

[Anonymous No.319303]

>>319282
>nothing will ever be
Free markets have existed many times in history. The most productive example being the gilded age in the united states which brought millions of people out of poverty and paved the way for the middle class in america.

http://royhalliday.home.mindspring.com/history.htm

Enjoy your religion and wondering why you keep getting poorer and poorer though.

[Anonymous No.319304]

>>319295

Hrm... Then why is China's state capitalist system beating the US free-er system?

Or do we have to be truly free to for our individuals businesses to compete with the power of a state.

[Anonymous No.319308]

>>319304
>Hrm... Then why is China's state capitalist system beating the US free-er system?

>"beating"
>countless chinese people in poverty

If they freed their currency market for example these chinese would actually be able to consume the products they produce instead of sending it to americans who produce nothing and get to enslave the rest of the world with the petrodollar.

Enjoy justifying slavery kiddo.

[Anonymous No.319310]

>>319295
>It's not "close enough"
Yeah, nothing is, according to you.

>There are "social democracies" that are far more free market than the united states.
None of them are free markets either. Not even the #1 ranked country in economic freedom is a free market. The free market is a distant, unreachable utopia that exists only in the minds of Ron Paul and his delusional paultards.

>>319303
>links to a page full of worthless quotes
Anyway,

Speak for yourself. I invest my money and get richer and richer. You'll find out about investing when you graduate from college get a job.

[Anonymous No.319320]

>>319310
>Yeah, nothing is, according to you.
What do you mean nothing is?
It's not even close.
It's like saying the soviet union was a free market.

>None of them are free markets either.
I never said they were, is your reading comprehension seriously this poor? I said they were more free than america.

>Not even the #1 ranked country in economic freedom is a free market.
No fucking shit.

>The free market is a distant, unreachable utopia
Lol no, it existed over 100 years ago in the united states.
Too bad you're too much of a drooling cultist liberal to understand that.

If the government controls the fucking currency then it's not a free market is it then you idiot?
The hard cold facts are on our side.
It's up to you to deal with it.

>>links to a page full of worthless quotes
AHAHAHHAHAH
It's a bunch of links to articles and books that have mainstream sources you gigantic mongoloid failure.

Are you this mad that every tiny aspect of an "argument" you had left is now gone?

>You'll find out about investing when you graduate from college get a job.
Ahhhh the whiny liberal and his projection.

Have fun with your worthless liberal arts major and never investing in your life.

No wonder libertarians are mostly well off and statistically have the highest IQs.

[Anonymous No.319348]

>>319320
>I said they were more free than america.
It doesn't matter because none of them fit your flawed economic model.

>The hard cold facts are on our side.
By that, you mean correlations that you attributed to your flawed economic model with no proof whatsoever. By that logic, creationists have the "hard cold facts" on their side too.

>Have fun with your worthless liberal arts major and never investing in your life.
I'm no liberal arts major and you didn't even know investing was a thing until I schooled you 1 post ago. Before that it was

>derp lack of gold is why I'm poor

At this point, even liberal arts majors are above you.

>No wonder libertarians are mostly well off and statistically have the highest IQs.
Statistics don't apply to everyone, and unfortunately for you, you fall on the lower left side of the bell curve with all the retards.

>librul
Nope.

>u mad?
I encourage you to re-read all of your posts tomorrow after the kool-aid wears off and see how fanatical and rabid you come off. If anyone is mad, it's you.

[Anonymous No.319361]

>>319348
>It doesn't matter because none of them fit your flawed economic model.
Of course it fucking matter you brain damaged turd. The world is not black and white,
Both Canada and Cuba are not free markets, but they have degrees of economic freedom which can be measured and the results of each country's policies is QUITE clear.
In fact you can, here's a graph that correlates just that.

Also my "economic model" brought the entire world out of poverty and created the massive increase in living standards during the gilded age.
Your policies created the great depression.
Problem?

>correlations
No, direct observational evidence. You're saying increased living standards came from magic government fiat. I'm saying increases in living standards came from massive increases in production. You know, people actually having things like clothing, medicine, housing, cars, food, entertainment. You're actually retarded enough to think production doesn't matter and the government can just pass a law that will make everyone rich.
You're basically disagreeing with the fact that things have to be produced before they can be consumed.

>By that logic, creationists have the "hard cold facts" on their side too.
That's why socialism is the economic equivalent of creationism.

The facts are right in front of your face lol, this is getting extremely sad.

>you didn't even know investing was a thing until I schooled you 1 post ago.
Lol oh god that entire statement. The autism holy shit, are you wearing your fedora right now?
You will never make money investing like all of those libertarians you're asspained about do.

>Statistics don't apply to everyone
Damn the fact that you're statistically retarded compared to libertarians must really upset you.

>Nope.
Fucking guaranteed.

>If anyone is mad, it's you.
I'm not the one desperately trying to avoid my argument.

[Anonymous No.319378]

Post scarcity is going to be awesome, but our current system is going to have to fucking collapse first.

That means that whenever the hot potato finally blows, sure your retirement will be okay but you are likely going to have to slog through 30 years where unemployment reaches absurd levels (like 50%+).

We're seeing it already in some developed nations in certain age groups, like young people in Spain and Italy where the unemployment is about that much.

People forget that the industrial revolution wasn't a smooth transition, especially in Britain, where a generation of people had their crafts and trades destroyed overnight and had to work far far away from their family property in some factory under sub-human conditions for pennies a day.

[Anonymous No.319383]

>>319378
>like young people in Spain and Italy where the unemployment is about that much.
yeah where the government basically makes it impossible to hire anyone

>People forget that the industrial revolution wasn't a smooth transition, especially in Britain, where a generation of people had their crafts and trades destroyed overnight and had to work far far away from their family property in some factory under sub-human conditions for pennies a day.
Wait, what?
Those jobs paid more and they got more resources for doing their job.

[Anonymous No.319384]

>>318934
Learn computer science.

Learn AI programming - data mining, pattern recognition, learning etc.

Programming stuff like back propagating multilayer neural networks is hard. The demand is infinite and the supply of programmers who can do this well is small and I suspect will continue to be. The field will grow, meaning more smart people will take those jobs, but the number of jobs will rise as well.

I've seen the advances myself. Google Voice used to transcribe my voicemails and it did a horrible, horrible job. Now it's almost perfect - the only thing it mangles is people's names and other proper nouns. The improvement happened in the space of a few years. Google has some top AI people working on it. Plus, they have a ton of data to use for training their neural networks or whatever they're using.

[Anonymous No.319386]

Oh also I am CS biased but biology is a field of the future as well.

[Anonymous No.319389]

>>319361
>You're saying increased living standards came from magic government fiat.
Nope.

>Also my "economic model" brought the entire world out of poverty and created the massive increase in living standards during the gilded age.
>No, direct observational evidence. *posts another graph showing correlative evidence*
You make this too easy.

>You're basically disagreeing with the fact that things have to be produced before they can be consumed.
This is something you deduced from a false assumption that you pulled out of your ass to attack a strawman.

>lelele autism fedora
Serious? Learn about basic investing before you spout gold standard propaganda. You won't look like such an idiot for assuming everyone gets "poorer and poorer".

>Damn the fact that you're statistically retarded compared to libertarians must really upset you.

You don't know what demographic I fall into, and statistics are irrelevant on an individual basis. Case in point: you. Libertoons as a whole = slightly above average. You = retarded.

[Anonymous No.319403]

>>319389
>Nope.
Well yes, yes you are.

>*posts another graph showing correlative evidence*
HAHAHA
Dude,
Are you dumb? Seriously were you dropped as a child?
Do you even know what the gilded age was?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age
The facts are right here.
The industrial revolution DID happen.
Wages DID rise dramatically. Working hours DID decrease dramatically.
I'll post this image again until it gets drilled in your fucking head.

>This is something you deduced from a false assumption that you pulled out of your ass to attack a strawman.
Not really, it's what you actually believe. You just haven't followed your position to it's logical outcome.

>Learn about basic investing
>investing
Ah yes the little shitstain tries to change the subject when he's getting absolutely told.

>You won't look like such an idiot for assuming everyone gets "poorer and poorer".
Lol what this is what you are saying.

>Case in point: you. Libertoons as a whole = slightly above average. You = retarded.
Yeah you're still butthurt that libertarians are far more intelligent than liberals.
Don't worry you'll get over it kiddo.

[Anonymous No.319418]

>>319403
>Well yes, yes you are.
You're not able to quote where I said that.

>You just haven't followed your position
I haven't stated a position. I'm just calling you out for being retarded.

>The industrial revolution DID happen.
>Wages DID rise dramatically. Working hours DID decrease dramatically.
Correlation =/= causation.

>I'll continue posting this same image that doesn't prove my point.
Okay.

>Ah yes the little shitstain tries to change the subject when he's getting absolutely told.
It's cute that you're still mad over not knowing about investments. Here's an idea: if you don't want to discuss something, don't bring it up. I guess you're a masochist who likes getting told over and over again.

>Yeah you're still butthurt that libertarians are far more intelligent than liberals.
Irrelevant to me. I'm not a liberal, and you're not part of the elite group of above average libertoons.

[Anonymous No.319422]

>>319384
>the only thing it mangles is people's names and other proper nouns

so it knows verbs well then?

[Anonymous No.319423]

>>319228
>I can post numerous case studies and figures on JSTOR

Could you?

Fellow Hist+Econ student in search of reading material.

[Anonymous No.319435]

>>319130
Intentional programming? It's a great idea for a lot of things (and gets a lot of undeserved bad rep) but it won't reduce the need for engineers, it will just redirect their efforts - someone still has to create and maintain the complex rule engines.

[Anonymous No.319440]

>>319418
Lol I love how I'm keeping you up. I thought you were going to sleep.

>Correlation =/= causation.
Lol that is the most desperate bullshit I have ever heard.

FACT: The industrial revolution did happen.
FACT: Incredible increases in production did occur(it's embarrassing you don't even believe this)
FACT: More production meant people had more things which thus increased their living standards

You don't even need correlative evidence, you can just work it out with logic.

You can deny what happened all you want but it won't change the facts.

Also the causation is quite clear. When countries tried capitalism it resulted in giant decreases in working hours.
Countries that didn't stayed poor with long working hours

What else could have possibly caused this? Magic? Were capitalists just nicer or something and lowered working hours on their own (when they had absolutely no legal obligation to do so lol)
It's like you deny evolution. You won't even allow the possibility of these facts being true enter your mind.

>>I'll continue posting this same image that doesn't prove my point.
Okay.
>the image that proves my point doesn't prove my point.
There you have it people, the facts are right in front of this guys face and he refuses it admit it. The cognitive dissonance is hilarious.

He actually thinks the industrial revolution didn't happen.

>It's cute that you're still mad over not knowing about investments.
It's cute you not only know nothing about investments, but know nothing about economics or politics as well.

> if you don't want to discuss something, don't bring it up.
You brought it up you fucking idiot.

>I guess you're a masochist who likes getting told over and over again.
Oh man you can almost taste the projection.

> I'm not a liberal, and you're not part of the elite group of above average libertoons.
Yeeeaaah you're still butthurt that libertarians are far more intelligent than liberals.

This entire conversation is a very clear example of that.

[Anonymous No.319450]

>>319440
>>319418
btw time for me to sleep

stay buttmad and wrong.

[Anonymous No.319465]

>>319440
>You don't even need correlative evidence
Then stop posting it. It doesn't prove your point.

>you can just work it out with logic
Translation: I have no proof.

>You brought it up you fucking idiot.
No, you did and you kept responding to it and encouraging the conversation to drag on. And you're still doing it.

>It's cute you not only know nothing about investments, but know nothing about economics or politics as well.
Ouch, that hurts a lot coming from a retarded goldbug who HAD NO IDEA what an investment was 20 minutes ago.

>Yeeeaaah you're still butthurt that libertarians are far more intelligent than liberals.
Funny that you keep bringing this up.

You still haven't denied my assertion that you're a retard who falls short of this statistic.

No matter how much you quote this statistic. It's not going to raise your IQ any higher.

>>319450
Don't forget to have mommy tuck you in and rub soothing cream all over your bruised butt.

[Anonymous No.319468]

>>319435
Agreed.

What will be needed, is one competent rules engineer at a salary of about $200-300,000/year.

What will also be needed are more business intelligence analysts at $80-120,000/year.

What won't be needed, are two to three dozen entry and mid level developers at $50-80,000/year. Rules engines eliminate that.

This is a thread about automation. One person nervously asked if engineers will still be needed.

The answer is yes. But fewer, and more competent engineers. The days of being paid well for being a pretty good C# or C++ or Java or SQL programmer, are coming to a close.

Large enterprises are on board and mid size will be the next to follow.

[Anonymous No.319482]

>>319138
95+ percent of this board, for starters, since it's userbase consists mainly of Posturing Wannabe Internet Sociopath Machivellis, lol

[Anonymous No.319530]

I imagine a future where almost everyone is involved in colleges. The pursuit of knowledge on a huge scale. You will have to be really fucking smart to make it though. Most people with average IQs will be completely worthless plebs and be sterilized.

[Anonymous No.319568]

>>319530
Really, if singularity is gonna be as spectacular as they say, nobody would be competitive in the long term against AI and automated labor. Even art and writing and music and shit would be written in the blink of an eye by software, basically.

Since labor would be basically free and the only limitations left would be resources and energy, the elites and governments would just purge everyone, cull the world's population so that portion of society left (the elites and their inner circles) would be infinitely sustainable.

Common people forming a labor pool, consumer market, economic base, would be obsolete since the economy would be automated, there is no reason to expect the average person anywhere would survive, let alone benefit from the singularity once they become worthless even as slave labor.

I kinda wonder if this isn't the plan of some group already,

[Joker !f..YKvatBI No.319569]

Well if automation is going to replace a good deal of labor,then get into automation.

Learn how to program a factor robot,and learn how to build/maintain computer networks as robots are networked together.


Learn how to 3d model,so you can rapid proto ype with 3d printing machines.

learn how to program cnc machines,and learn how to maintain the tooling.

[Anonymous No.319572]

>>319105
Hi anon, thanks for posting. How much do you make annually?

I have a friend that just got promoted as a senior business intelligence consultant for big data at IBM, how much do you think he makes annually? Do you like your job? Thanks!

[Anonymous No.319580]

>>319568
Except singularity proponents simply ignore the hard problem of consciouseness .

[Anonymous No.319587]

>>319580
Yeah, I'm skeptical with the whole 'upload your mind into the internet' or mind-melding with AI. You'd have to ask a neuroscientist about that.

Just using advanced AI as a tool for control is enough.

[Anonymous No.319762]

>>319132
>>319133
>>319134
>>319138
>mfw samefag

[Anonymous No.319786]

>>318934
The new "employment" will be civic engagement: decision making, analysis, and mutual education.

[Anonymous No.319813]

>>319572
Right now my base salary is just a shave under $80k. I'm usually rated pretty high so my annual bonus is usually about 10%. I'm interviewing for a $95k senior dev position.

The rules engineers I work with likely make about $120-180k I'd imagine.

Your friend probably makes at least that much, possibly $2-300k. But if he's "just" a senior level analyst/consultant and not an associate VP or higher then he probably hasn't cracked the quarter million mark.

I'm not a full fledged rules developer yet. I have access to the IDE and repository and I'm being trained. Our rules developers are horribly over worked and needed help so I volunteered. If I can pick it up then I'll be a novice rules engineer *and* senior level database developer. SQL guys make good money. Rules guys make much more. Combo guys make even more.

I really enjoy working with big data. I'm kind of apprehensive about where I work. My organization took on a bunch of toxic loans, specifically so we could apply HAMP modifications to them. We successfully reversed or prevented something like 1.5 million foreclosures in the 3 years I've been here.

But while the sheer volume of toxic loans was gigantic, its pretty much coming to an end. There are only so many families out there in a bad situation and either we fixed em or our competitors foreclosed em. So that work is drying out.

I don't particularly like the new direction we're taking. I feel like we could become just another foreclosure shop eventually. I don't begrudge a creditor using whatever legal means are at his disposal to collect a debt; I just don't think I want to be a bill collector.

So thats why I'm looking elsewhere. That, and I know I'm marketable and I want a raise.

But yes, I really enjoy wrangling big data. Its relaxing work, usually. Its relatively safe from the threat of outsourcing. There's a sense of accomplishment as well.

[Anonymous No.319848]

People who maintain capital aside, the transition to services is already underway. There are a lot of things you would rather have a person doing than robot, even if they aren't as efficient.

[Anonymous No.319858]

We are never EVER going to run out of jobs to do.

The universe has 300,000,000,000+ stars, each with planets orbiting them.

We are going to go to all of them, teraform them and inhabit them, spreading the race further and further like the virus we are.

This is why we went to mars, and built a space station.

>hurr durr my mcdonalds job is going to get replaced by a machine

so your new job will be to man a space craft, or a station, or an outpost on another planet, or to design new space rockets etc

Man left africa, and covered the globe, then he went to the moon, then to mars...whats next is pretty obvious

[Anonymous No.319875]

>>319858
Personally, I can't wait until we get tired of looking for life on Mars and start shipping it there ourselves. Start sending the super resilient lichens and bacteria and all that jazz to start transforming the place.

[Anonymous No.319877]

The future is thus:

Robots are viable, but expensive. Lots of people and jobs are replaced, leaving millions absolutely redundant and unnecessary. People then have to take really shitty, menial jobs for no money, because a robot must be taken care of and treated carefully since you're stuck with it if it falls to pieces, whereas a person can be treated like absolute shit, and then cast away once they're worn down to nothing.

Meanwhile there are jobs for the few guys at the top building software, robots, or other engineering systems. They earn a fortune, but are expected to have insanely high skills and experience. Everyone mentioned above claws over each other to be these guys, so invest a fortune in education for a shot at it, widening the gulf between the few at the top, and everyone else working at McDonalds. Since so many people push for so much education, but there are only relatively few opportunities, many people end up being more skilled than ever, but still doing menial jobs.

As productivity is continually improved by the worker, working harder, smarter, longer, with more education, and each person pushes harder and harder to prove themselves and try and go for a chance at the top, they get treated continually worse, since there is always someone else highly skilled and willing to step in and replace them. Productivity gains and profits therefore do not have to be shared down to the workers, and accumulate within the very top salaries, and in corporate profits.

Welcome to the future.

[Anonymous No.319905]

>>319110
well humans will drive, a company lends their labor for a day or two

[Anonymous No.319937]

>>319125
Flights can get cancelled because of the weather. Ships avoid sailing. Why can't vehicles? Also, in any case, like one other anon posted, there will most likely be at least one person present to mind the automated vehicles and their cargo. Completely automated deliveries would probably be limited to within city boundaries.

[Anonymous No.319954]

Hardore economic fags pray to the altar of the blood god known as efficiency.

In their eyes this god is infallible and can do no wrong...ever.

[Anonymous No.320096]

>>319858

>We are never EVER going to run out of jobs to do.

>The universe has 300,000,000,000+ stars, each with planets orbiting them.

Um... That doesn't preclude that it will be done by humans. I know Sci-Fi likes to show humans controlling star ships like Star Trek and Star Wars, but in reality the human race will have been replaced mostly by machines or be so genetically modified they have so little in common with their human ancestors that it is a stretch to call them even human.

See natural humans are somewhat limited in the respect they slowly update over the course of thousands of years. Machine AI is leaping in jumps and bounds in our lifetime.

The reason normal humans will be out of job for things to do is because even if they work for free the machines will be faster, make less mistakes, and generally be much more efficient.

That doesn't preclude that by 2050 we won't be installing hardware of bioware into our brains to make us smart as machines... But for the average joe who doesn't want to do that, can't afford that, or is just genetically incompatible, there won't be much work for them to do unless the government wants to pay them monies to dig holes with shovels only to refill them the next day.

Really, automation won't put everyone out of work in the short term, it will just put enough people out of work that its a problem.

[Anonymous No.320101]

Jobs will just be replaced and people will have to adapt in order to survive.

Just like you have to learn how to speak basic English and memorize a few steps in order to work at low end jobs like McDonalds in order survive on this planet; it will change to having to learn how to program or repair things in order to survive on this planet.

I'm pretty sure most people will be fine, I don't think you need to be particularly smart to learn computer science, math, etc you just need reasons for doing so and there will be plenty of reasons to do so when people realize they have to feed themselves and their families and they can't do the things they think they can do.

Also the self-entitlement that is prevalent amongst people especially young people erodes as they age because they realize that they have to learn that they have to work around the world and that the world does not work around them.

[Anonymous No.320107]

>>319848

Sometime in the next 50 years... The processing power of a human brain will fit on a laptop.

Given enough advancements in robotics, one could make a friendly android that doesn't look creepy and be more friendly than your average person.

People that will be out of a job shortly after that are prostitutes, Wal Mart Greeters, and sales persons.

[Anonymous No.320111]

>>320101

Your not taking into account that machines might be able to self repair and self code in the future.

When that happens the engineers are getting pink slips.

[Anonymous No.320120]

>>319361

Hey that graph is from 1999.

I'm pretty sure China is light years ahead of itself in GDP figures now 14 years down the road.

[Anonymous No.320122]

>>320111

I believe there will always be a demand for engineers because someone needs to have the knowledge necessary if shit ever hits the fan. They will just be like supervisors making sure machines are operating as they should. They might not seem necessary but they will be. They can also keep developing things to be even more efficient.

One thing we will have to worry about though is that crime will become more sophisticated and deadlier if we continue to develop even more technology. The atom bomb is a good example of this.
What if some android or automated car is hacked by some sociopath and ends up killing a lot of people?
The magnitude of destruction possible by technology will be even more then today.

[Anonymous No.320137]

>>320122

What if machines become so advanced that only a super intelligent AI could understand their functions?

However, I believe that machines will be programed to obey certain individuals. Say the CEO's of companies who can override the machine decisions. However, they may lack the understanding to know what plan of action a machine could take.

And if machines are programmed with deceit to become better competitors in the market place, they might just end up being able to trick their command masters into letting them do whatever they feel like.

I can understand why this is a problem to see. Humans naturally have anthropomorphic chauvinism which they assume they are special and too complex to ever replace. However, if the brain turns out to be just a model that can be emulated, then everything that a human can do, a machine can do better and faster.

See the problem has already happened with HFT. There is no way a human could possibly check the orders before the algorythm makes it. In fact, if there was any checking at all the competition who uses pure algorithms to trade would always beat them.

So the goal with HFT is to have the fastest AI as possible. The same thing will happen in the rest of the business world.

In order to compete you must have AI that reacts faster than your competitors AI. That means taking humans out of the loops. Investment will pour in to AI that self repairs and self codes simply because it can fix itself before a human gets involved.

If you had to slow down and let a human get involved then the competitor with the least human interaction would win the race.

[Anonymous No.320144]

Hrm...

>>http://www.technologyreview.com/view/519241/report-suggests-nearly-half-of-us-jobs-are-vulnerable-to-computerization/

>Oxford researchers say that 45 percent of America’s occupations will be automated within the next 20 years.

>The authors believe this takeover will happen in two stages. First, computers will start replacing people in especially vulnerable fields like transportation/logistics, production labor, and administrative support. Jobs in services, sales, and construction may also be lost in this first stage. Then, the rate of replacement will slow down due to bottlenecks in harder-to-automate fields such engineering. This “technological plateau” will be followed by a second wave of computerization, dependent upon the development of good artificial intelligence. This could next put jobs in management, science and engineering, and the arts at risk.

Well its official. Art majors are screwed.

[Anonymous No.320156]

>>320137

>What if machines become so advanced that only a super intelligent AI could understand their functions?

I personally do not think this would be a problem because I think that a machine can only be as smart as the person who developed it is.
We as human beings have an amazing ability to learn and we can learn just about anything.

I think AI will only ever be as smart as us because it would be limited to what we are as people.

>So the goal with HFT is to have the fastest AI as possible. The same thing will happen in the rest of the business world.

I think that having the fastest AI in HFT is very valuable however I believe there is more to be successful in algorithmic trading then just being the fastest. I believe having good strategies is more important.

[Anonymous No.320162]

>>320156

You aren't realizing that single AI could have more than one human brain in its program.

In a hundred years from now it wouldn't be unreasonable for a laptop computer to have the entire mental processing power of the entire human race of the year 2014.

Se you can emulate one artificial brain in one thread, emulate another brain in another, and so on. These brains could work together as research teams and come up with ideas and solutions.

Not to mention these brain emulations will be running at an extremely faster speed than the biochemical process of a biological mind. See synapses are kind of slow compared to a modern cpu. If you did brain simulations on electronic computers they could run a lot faster than you would in a chemical mind.

In effect, you simply have to make an electronic brain and it would already have way more advantages than the biological brain in speed alone.

Not to mention its directly interfaced with memory and could read information not only at an extremely fast speed but in parallel.

[Anonymous No.320168]

>>320156
>"can only be as smart as the person who developed it is"

Explain programs made for the express reason to figure out things we can't

[Anonymous No.320171]

Why trust a machine to do a man's job?

Men can learn from their mistakes, machines can only repeat theirs.

[Anonymous No.320175]

>>I personally do not think this would be a >>problem because I think that a machine can >>only be as smart as the person who >>developed it is.We as human beings have >>an amazing ability to learn and we can learn >>just about anything.

Okay.
Seems like you never experienced or have any experience in AI AT ALL.
There are various prototypes and prominent scientist which are just currently optimizing this technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

In fact, it's already reality.
Computers learning from own mistakes? Check.
Analyzing data and come up with counter-startegies?
Check.

The list goes on. If I and you feel the need, I can clearly provide sources for my theorem.

[Anonymous No.320178]

>>320168

But when they figure things out that we aren't able to I think it's usually because we can't compute ridiculously large numbers and/or we can't do so much computation at once.

I think it doesn't mean they are smarter then us it just means they have certain abilities we don't and they clearly don't have certain abilities we do.

[Anonymous No.320179]

>>320175

Nope I don't know shit and I know I don't so I'll just leave.

[Anonymous No.320181]

>>320178
>I think it doesn't mean they are smarter then us it just means they have certain abilities we don't and they clearly don't have certain abilities we do.

Please list me five activities/jobs you would think of a human would do more efficient due his abilities.

I hope you keep in mind that AI won't operate in ways/transformations as you would think it would do.

[Anonymous No.320200]

>>320181

I think that the idea I am thinking of is different than yours.
I believe It will always be necessary for there to be engineers. Yes a computer can learn from data and come up with solutions to problems but someone has to design it to learn and to come up with solutions to problems right?

If I write a computer program to solve a problem then that problem is solved but how else is the problem supposed to be solved if I never wrote the computer program?
I think this applies to every problem in the world. A computer can come up with solutions to problems but at it's fundamentals it is limited by how we manipulate a computer.

Computers are not creative but I guess we program them to be creative but it's sort of a pseudo creativity that depends on the programmer(s) creativity.

[Anonymous No.320221]

>>320171
It's called machine learning.
the political influence of business guys is limited to their knowledge of technology

[Anonymous No.320233]

>>320200

>If I write a computer program to solve a problem then that problem is solved but how else is the problem supposed to be solved if I never wrote the computer program?

If say, they create a emulation of the human mind would not the program have the same capabilities as a human? It could then determine problems on its own and find solutions to said problem.

The human mind obeys the laws of physics, chemistry, and various other things that are rooted in our reality. If we simply took a part a brain (which is what the European brain project is doing) and made a simulation of all its connections, then wouldn't it start functioning like a human brain?

http://bluebrainfilm.com/bb/

[Anonymous No.320310]

>>319468
So if people only get into programming now and become mediocre self-taught developers, will they all be fucked out of opportunities to grow?

[Anonymous No.320334]

>>320310
Probably eventually.

The product costs about $50k for the software, about $10k per license, and is really tough to learn. It also runs on high end servers.

Right now, rules software is mostly used by large enterprises. John Deere, Fidelity, Yum Brands, Wal-Mart.

But as innovations occur, as white papers are written, yea, I think that eventually low-skilled self-taught developers who knock out cheesy little MySql tables or Java apps for some local burger franchise or food co-op are going to be unnecessary. I predict in 10-20 years that data solutions will exist on a cloud based resource, with plain text capabilities for a business owner to update data transformation rules by themselves.

Its a couple decades out. But yes, simple programming is going to become semi-automated.

[Anonymous No.320373]

surely a fundamental block on machine capability is that the machine /code /whatever has to at some point have been made by a human, therefore a) it's potentially infallible and b) it's only as 'good' as the human that created it

no?

[Anonymous No.320380]

>>320334
Thanks for answering.

The future looks pretty grim, but I might still try and teach myself anyway and then get into some kind of unpaid yuropoor apprenticeship. If I can get some job experience doing something relevant just before the shit really hits the fan, I'll at least have a front row seat to the true post-employment apocalypse and a better perspective to figure out how to go from there.

My situation is a bit complicated but I can easily spend an entire year doing nothing but online courses.

[Anonymous No.320404]

This thread is out of date. Factory jobs have already been replaced by service sector jobs. I think what OP is trying to ask is what is going to replace the service sector jobs.

[Anonymous No.320407]

>>320373

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-modifying_code

Many malware writers use this to make their code harder to detect and remove.

There are people experimenting with code that writes itself. In one of Ray Kurzweil's books he cites a company that write trading code that has randomness in it that buys and sells based on certain criteria in the market (say news).

They would do this with theoretical trading like those market games people play so not to use a lot of real money testing this out.

Then they would generate thousands of these programs with slightly different code.

Then after each day, they would delete the programs that lost the most money.

Then then they take the the winning code and add make a copy of that code and add more randomness to the variables in it. Then they would run the winning code and the new random code side by side and determine which one of those would win the next day on the market. Rinse and repeat every day with thousands of versions of code.

Its basically emulating dawrin's survival of the fitest, but this is an example of where the programmer can make the code better than they were capable of just by writing it by hand.

I don't really want to look through the entire book, but I think what he was talking about was his FatKat hedge fund which uses this type of quant trading.

Google FatKat

[Anonymous No.320414]

>>320407
>>320407
i googled it
doesn't say shit about annual returns

[Anonymous No.320421]

>>320181
Trivial example here, pic related. Even I as an amateur can see that this is win for white. Out of curiosity, I've put this into Houdini, one of top 3 chess engines, very optimised, very advanced heuristics. Three hours later and 52 ply deep it still senses white has a slight (instead of definite) advantage.
Facial recognition is even a better example of how, despite the faster speed of processing human brain is still unparalleled.

[Anonymous No.320430]

Cultural renaissance. You can't automate artistic professions; fine cuisine, beauty/cosmetics, artist/art teacher, musician/music teacher etc. With western culture rapidly spiraling, once it reaches its nadir, a cultural renaissance has to follow. We will all be creators paying for each other's creations.

[Anonymous No.320439]

>>319440

Did you guys notice how mad ^ this guy was?

Thx to the guy who antagonized him and drew it all out.

Yes it looks like capital is going to find a replacement for labor so people are either going to be given make work jobs, covertly sterilized via GMO or just straight up killed.

[Anonymous No.320444]

>>319089
Less merciful?

If i own the police/security/retail/service robot company, im gonna make those fuckers 100% logical, polite, friendly, and constitutionally obedient.

Any smart business would, that makes them 100% more useful than real cops who have emotions and get bored/violent.

By making them merciful you sell way more because everyone likes them

[Anonymous No.320449]

>>320430
Seems to me we'll all be licking the boots of the few rock stars who actually make it to the top.

[Anonymous No.320459]

i think this level of tech will give humans more things to do. For instance, planetary colonization, massive construction projects, and for the more affluent basically just the funding of these expansions and a lot of relaxing

[Anonymous No.320469]

>>320444
>>>319089
> Less merciful?
> If i own the police/security/retail/service robot company, im gonna make those fuckers 100% logical, polite, friendly, and constitutionally obedient.
> Any smart business would, that makes them 100% more useful than real cops who have emotions and get bored/violent.
> By making them merciful you sell way more because everyone likes them


Constitutionally obedient? Remember freespeech-zones, public grounds trespasses, NDAA, etc?

The people buying them will be the people trying to keep the nasty proles from throwing chairs through their windows.

[Anonymous No.320475]

>>320439
>Did you guys notice how mad ^ this guy was?
Oh your phone now are we now kiddo?

I've never seen someone get this mad after being royally told.

>so people are either going to be given make work jobs, covertly sterilized via GMO or just straight up killed.
Top Lel.

I already explained in detail why this wouldn't happen.

Have fun with your mental disorders though.

[Anonymous No.320487]

>>320469
i can sell RoboCop to local governments for 100,000 as a fully constitution-obeying, ethical, and efficient police system.

Then sell the same exact thing to a private citizen for the same price (minus gun) with a slight software modification that makes it personal security focused (stand your ground law) rather than civil liberties focused (constitution)

Now thats not gonna be anytime soon but it makes sense

[Anonymous No.320489]

>>320430
We can create a code for that too. There is science that can see, through brainwaves or visual cues, which of a group of things is more pleasing to humans. gather data on the reaction the code wants, eventually perfect it, and you get technology created arts as an outcome.

[Anonymous No.320491]

>>319465
>Then stop posting it. It doesn't prove your point.
No, but literally proving my point and writing out exactly why you are wrong does.

Does this upset you?

Also the causation is quite clear in this situation. According to your buttmad logic, all graphs are wrong because muh correlation fallacy.

>Translation: I have no proof.
I JUST fucking showed you the proof. I'll show you again,
here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilded_Age

>who HAD NO IDEA what an investment was 20 minutes ago.
Are you seriously this mad libertarians know more about investing and economics than liberal arts majors like yourself?

>You still haven't denied my assertion that you're a retard who falls short of this statistic.
Yes I did.
The fact I proved your mentally insane point about USA being a free market while the rest of the world isn't shows this quite well.

>Don't forget to have mommy tuck you in and rub soothing cream all over your bruised butt.
Lel, yeah you're not from /b/ at all.

[Anonymous No.320502]

>>320491
Just a confused observer, are you the one arguing for a free market?

[Anonymous No.320503]

Just a reminder, the only way we will be able to actually benefit from automation and create endless jobs is to end central banking, allow free banking and competing currencies.

This way prices will come down, wages will go up.
This will force working hours down(as it always has) which will in itself double and triple the amount of jobs available.

[Anonymous No.320504]

>>320502
Yes.

[Anonymous No.320506]

>>320504
In one compact, linear, non-greentext, paragraph
Why?

[Anonymous No.320518]

>>320506
Well read this:
>>320503


Also, because I want to dramatically improve my living standards and the living standards of everyone around me.

I want prices to go down instead of up. I want wages to go up instead of down/stagnate. I think central banking is a scam and a cartel.

I want a dynamic emergent society that respects individual rights and does everything peacefully and voluntarily.

That and I love technology and space exploration and want humanity to reach the stars and all that gay stuff.

[Anonymous No.320553]

>>320503

I'm pretty sure even with true free market capitalism there won't be enough jobs to go around.

If I am a business and I can either automate jobs and save millions or spend millions creating jobs, I think my choice would be just to automate the damn jobs.

I suppose the unemployed could start their own businesses, but that is kind of hard to do without capital because a deflationary system.

Also, I don't think creative jobs will be safe from automation either in the long run.

If the blue brain project does create a simulated mind, there is no reason it couldn't be creative either.

They might be automated last, but they will still be automated.

[Anonymous No.320565]

>>320518

Let's say Google or whoever is pouring hundreds of millions into AI research develops a real live working Samantha from her?

What is the first thing they are doing to do with it?

They are going to replace all the call center workers in the world. Every single one of them. From India, UK, and the United States.

Millions of call center employees out of work immediately.

What technology will come about to give those out of work workers new jobs?

If you have a computer than can function as good if not better as a human, what economic incentive is there to hire humans?

I suspect there is none.

[Anonymous No.320570]

>>320553
>I'm pretty sure even with true free market capitalism there won't be enough jobs to go around.
Why do you say this?
It would be forced to work out to an equilibrium, people would work like an hour a week at this level, leaving many job slots open to everyone else.

>If I am a business and I can either automate jobs and save millions or spend millions creating jobs,
Which is GOOD. The more automation the lower prices are which in turn means the lower working hours are.

>but that is kind of hard to do without capital because a deflationary system.
In a deflationary system the price of capital goes down dramatically as well. This means it's easier and easier to start a company and compete with larger firms. Remember how difficult it was for a common person to start a business 100 years ago, 200 years ago?

>They might be automated last, but they will still be automated.
When everything is automated, that means the price is now ZERO and there's no need for anyone to work.
Capitalism has served it's purpose.

>>320565
>They are going to replace all the call center workers in the world. Every single one of them. From India, UK, and the United States.
Yes.

>What technology will come about to give those out of work workers new jobs?
In our shitty economy today with central banks and low levels of economic production they would be pretty much fucked.
In a free market there would obviously be many jobs for them. They would of course have to get trained to do other jobs. But that's just how the market works. Typewriter companies and Horse and Buggy companies complained about the same thing. Creative destruction bro, it's what moves humanity forward.

[Anonymous No.320572]

Technological innovation has exploded since the beginning of the 20th Century, which, by the typical Luddite reasoning, should decrease the number of available jobs.

The population has also exploded, creating more people who need jobs than ever before.

Yet employment has been stable.

Oh no, the invention of the factory ruins the artisan! The invention of the automobile ruins the horse carriage! And...?

When people invent complex systems, a form of abstraction, they lead to an increase in the number of human laborers, even if they destroy the trade previously occupied by a fewer number of human laborers. The car made the horse obsolete, but requires far more laborers to produce and maintain than any horse ever did.

TL;DR, Luddites have never been, and will never be, correct.

[Anonymous No.320577]

>>320572
This.

[Anonymous No.320593]

>>320570

I'm pretty sure no business in their right mind is going to pay a full salary for anyone working one hour a week when they can just buy a machine to do it for free.

Even if people worked for free, it is still better to have a machine do the job because they do it faster with less mistakes.

One other thing that you are missing in your zero equation is that resources used to build stuff with free labor still costs money.

So prices will drop, but they won't go to zero because extraction is limited.

However.... There is an expectation to this rule that I could foresee.

Solar panel could get so efficient that it could fuel homes indefinitely, self repairing 3d printers could print organic substance you could call food, and the humans simply play with their Oculus Rift having everything they really value be created virtually through some sort of second life system.

However, this doesn't account for land ownership and rent. There simply isn't enough land to give everyone, unless say corporations or the government gave people coffins they could live in their virtual worlds in for a payment of their vote so they can continue to do whatever governments please to do.

But since land and resources are not unlimited, unlike labor at the time, then things still won't cost zero.

Also why would people produce things for other people if the profit of doing that was zero?

Makes no sense.

[Anonymous No.320598]

>>320572

This time its different, because in the past the machines lead to people operating machines.

In the new future, it means no one will operate the machines, the machines will service themselves, and they won't need humans at all.

Even CEO's will be unneeded when machines can make smarter decisions than they and their Harvard MBA's could do.

Past results do not guarantee future returns.

[Anonymous No.320603]

>>320570
>The more automation the lower prices are

Please explain, in great detail, why this MUST happen. Perhaps you fail to see it, but it is one of many things (and, in my opinion, nowhere near the most probable) that could happen.
There are some damn speculative things in your post and I'm curious how much of it was freshly poured out of your asshole.

[Anonymous No.320604]

>>320572

Oh and don't think for a moment I don't want this to happen.

I want machines to replace everything a human can possibly do. I want machines to become alive and colonize the galaxy with their immortal race.

I hope in their benevolence machines will let me come along for the ride.

I am just pointing out that unless there is a political consideration to this then society will have unexpected consequences.

Well...We will find out by 2025 when Google cars replace all truck drivers and taxi drivers.

Maybe machines will have human dig holes with shovels to fill them back in again just so there is something to do.

[Anonymous No.320610]

>>320503

Why would an employer hire 8 workers to each work 1 hour shifts, when he could hire 1 worker to work 8 hour shifts? Ever heard of downward price rigidity? Compromised bargaining power in the labor market?

[Anonymous No.320617]

>>320603
>why this MUST happen
The law of supply and demand.

Production increases the quantity of goods in the economy.

The gilded age was a deflationary economy and saw prices going down year after year for decades, as wages constantly rose.

[Anonymous No.320635]

>>320617

It must be exhausting jumping through mental hoops all day to justify this fundamentally inaccurate ideology of yours.

[Anonymous No.320641]

>>320617
So because they automated it, they will blindly produce 500% market demand and ruin their profits while they magically pay off a billion dollar investment in automatisation with peanuts? Sounds totally reasonable and logical. Electricity will be free one day you guise.

[Anonymous No.320651]

>>320617

Actually, I seriously doubt that free labor will make Comcast drops its subscription prices to pennies or that gas stations will drop its prices to pennies as well.

Just because labor is free doesn't mean commodities will drop in prices. There is only so much land to be farmed, metals to be dug, and so on.

Technically Comcast could make its prices much cheaper by investing in infrastructure, but as they have a monopoly it is unlikely.

On that note, how would you suggest Comcast have competition? To remove all regulation from the cable markets? What company could possibly beat Comcast's barriers to entry without a government mandate to allow Comcast to share its equipment like they do in Europe and get much more lower prices for some reason.

I mean thank god for Verizon FIOS but its still a duopoly. Verizon doesn't lower its prices much more than Comcast. I suspect they collude some day.s

[Anonymous No.320664]

>>320635
>It must be exhausting jumping through mental hoops all day to justify this fundamentally inaccurate ideology of yours.

You don't even believe in SUPPLY AND DEMAND?

HAHAHAHAHHA

Holy fuck that's like econ 101

> they will blindly produce 500% market demand
Why in the fucking world would they do that?

> and ruin their profits
Lol where are you getting this from?

>Actually, I seriously doubt that free labor will make Comcast drops its subscription prices to pennies
They would be forced to.
The lines would be completely maintained by robots and the infrastructure would be ginormous.
Any competitor that tried to charge a higher price would be destroyed.
This is basically what happened in every industry during the gilded age.
Can't argue with historical facts bro.

>or that gas stations will drop its prices to pennies as well.
Of course we wouldn't be using fossil fuels by this time.

> but as they have a monopoly
What? They don't have a monopoly.
I am on the internet talking to you RIGHT NOW and I don't use comcast. Problem?

They have special government privileges that need to be taken away but they're certainly no monopoly.

>What company could possibly beat Comcast's barriers to entry
Um, google fiber?

[brb store No.320666]

>>320635
>It must be exhausting jumping through mental hoops all day to justify this fundamentally inaccurate ideology of yours.
It must be great making completely worthless posts because you have no refutation to anything I said at all.

[Anonymous No.320682]

>>320664

Hrm... You haven't addressed the issue about commodity prices. Why would gas prices go to zero if we had free labor? Free energy sure, but I don't think free labor will cause that. Only a state backed project on fusion maybe.

Secondly, if Google and Verizon and competing with Verizon, why aren't the subscription prices a dollar per month?

I mean ISP's are all about infrastructure. Labor is not a big part of being an ISP unless you count tech support.

I mean if it takes a corporate behemoth like Google to enter the ISP field, there won't be many competitors lowering prices will there?

One last thing... Here are the orders of technology of ISP.

Fiber, cable, DSL.

DSL is a horrid technology and you should not even consider it. I did tech support for DSL for 5 years and also supported cable at the same time. Cable had far less problems than DSL.

Fiber so much less so.

Considering the capital to lay fiber to home its unlikely there will be much competition for it.

So you might have a max of 3 companies.

One that offers the superior service at a high price, one that offers mediocre service for slightly less, and one that offers shitty service that isn't worth the any money giving to them.

That isn't really a healthy market with competition.

[Anonymous No.320692]

>>320682

Google and Verizon competing with Comcast rather if that causes more confusion.

[Anonymous No.320746]

>>320664

>You don't even believe in SUPPLY AND DEMAND?

It's not a matter of belief. Supply and Demand exist. The point your missing is that employers have never offered to divvy up hours between more employees because then they take on the risk and cost of training employees and coordinating schedules. It's much cheaper for firms to just have fewer workers.

So your little fantasy about everyone working 1 hour a week is just that - a fantasy. What'll really happen is that 1 out of every 100 people will be working a 40hr week and everyone will either be bums or on welfare.

[Anonymous No.320786]

>>318934
You know I thought about this for a long time. The only answer I could come up with is to rely on a communist economy. I was writing a book about it but I found a problem with my theory and gave up on it but I forgot what it was. :/

[Anonymous No.320876]

>>320682
>Why would gas prices go to zero if we had free labor?
They wouldn't and I never said they would.

>Only a state backed project on fusion maybe.
That's beyond retarded.
Only a large business would be able to do fusion.

>Secondly, if Google and Verizon and competing with Verizon, why aren't the subscription prices a dollar per month?
Lol because of scarcity? Do you even understand basic economics?
It obviously wouldn't go down to zero because network capacity is still scarce.

>That isn't really a healthy market with competition.
Of course, the government is involved and gives special privileges to certain companies.

>>320746
>Supply and Demand exist.
No shit.
Then why do you deny it?

>The point your missing is that employers have never offered to divvy up hours between more employees
Of course not. The average person needs to work 40 hours a week to live comfortably. Hardly anyone would want to work 20 or 10 hours(but they still do)

Also part time jobs are fucking everywhere and the shifts are divied up.

>then they take on the risk and cost of training employees and coordinating schedules
Exactly, they would be forced to do that if labour demanded it(because labour would have a whole lot more to bargain with).

>So your little fantasy about everyone working 1 hour a week is just that - a fantasy.
That's what people said about the 40 hour week when people still worked 60-80 hour weeks.
Luckily the market was able to get working hours down LONG before the state stepped in.

>What'll really happen is that 1 out of every 100 people will be working a 40hr week and everyone will either be bums or on welfare.
Lol and you call my theory a fantasy.
Enjoy your mental disorder.

[Anonymous No.320992]

Hrm... I'm waiting for your privately funded fusion program.

Could you link me a company that is pouring billions into a fusion program?

Maybe at the same time you could link me to a private company who poured millions into the space program between 1942 and 1980?

Or could you remind me who was the first country to have a person in space?

[Anonymous No.321083]

A few things that prevent all of this from happening anytime soon.
1.planned obsolescence, manufacturers of equipment such as microchips, cars, etc. do not roll out the very best they have developed, they sell intermediate steps beforehand for several years so consumers of thier products (incl businesses) will purchase the next big thing over and over again.
2. scale, automation works well in factories such as the one pictured in op's pic where there is large amounts of production of high markup goods such as automobiles. it is not cost effective in places that do low production or one off pieces, which is what most production in the u.s. is.

[Anonymous No.321088]

>>318934
The end result of capitalism is virtually full unemployment. Productivity per person will increase to a point where nobody will have to work

[Anonymous No.321091]

>>320992
>Could you link me a company that is pouring billions into a fusion program?
Top LEL

Why would ANY company NOW in an inflationary non-free market environment even care about making profit even 5 years in the future?

Why would they give a shit about this?

and where in the FUCK would they get the capital in this environment?

you fucking moron

>Maybe at the same time you could link me to a private company who poured millions into the space program between 1942 and 1980?
1) Going into space was ILLEGAL except for the state until very recently
2) Why would companies do something that doesn't benefit humanity.
Protip: Landing on the moon does not benefit humanity except for a few nerds hooing and hawing about it.

[Anonymous No.321096]

>>320992
When we get to a point where fusion becomes needed, private investors will fund it.

When space travel is needed for something other than an international pissing contest private investors will fund it.

What does the first person in space have to do with anything?

[Anonymous No.321104]

>>320876

>(because labour would have a whole lot more to bargain with).

how? why? deflation puts people out of jobs because of downward wage rigidity. Long before your magical "shortening of the hours" the labour market would have lost all bargaining power because everyone would be desperate for a job

>Also part time jobs are fucking everywhere and the shifts are divied up.
And people have to work two or three of those to make it work.

Look, in the great depression, FDR forced businesses to split up workdays so that more people could but for less time. He forced them to. If he had to force them, that means they weren't doing it on their own. Why do you think they weren't doing it on their own? Right because its more expensive to have more employees and un-unionized wage-earners don't have the bargaining power to do anything about it.