I read a piece recently by the mother of an autistic son about how Apple's "Siri" was so good for her son's development by being an ever patient listener who displays quirky wisdom, gently enforces good manners and on and on.

If a computer in a cell phone can do that what else can be done?

Unionizing fast food workers or forcing minimum wages on fast food employers. Who would pay someone 20 dollars an hour to push icons on a cash register, when you can train the customer to do that themselves?!?

There are many who overestimate their own worth.

My dream is automating the health care industry. Doctors are going to be disrupted along with others and good riddance to their monopoly and parasitic fees (mostly administration and insurance.). Reminds me of the time I had athletes foot and the attending doctor suggested I see a podiatrist. What a dumb ass.

Do We Need Doctors Or Algorithms?
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/10/doctors-or-algorithms/

I drove the grown-ups around me crazy because of my constant questions!

http://en.andreaseschbach.com/page11/page12/page12.html

Robots will be able to replace humans in all menial jobs. The only jobs that are safe will be:
- jobs where the salary is so crappy that a human is still cheaper than a robot
- jobs where customers are happier with human workers (e.g. restaurants)
- jobs that demand creativity (art, science)

What will happen to all the humans that can't find jobs because there are no jobs?
"Humans need not apply"
They won't have money, they won't able to buy things, the industry won't be able to sell things. (Billionaires won't buy 100,000 pairs of trousers a year just to keep a particular factory running so it can produce more trousers for the billionaire to buy.)

The solution is giving jobless people an unconditional minimum-wage.

In his novels, there is a universal basic income (referred to as Basic) that anyone can get. You actually have to qualify to go beyond Basic.

I think that's not far from the future we'll be seeing. There will be some skilled blue collar jobs, but they will be fewer and fewer.

I know people have the ideal where everyone would become self-actualized artists with all the free time and money we'd get as a result of being set free from wage labor, but I doubt it would go that smoothly.

One is plumbers, there is not enough standardization for a robot to do repairs on systems that are so diverse from place to place as to be readily programmed.

Pretty much everything else will be automated or robotized.

be to let the "useless" die off.

The dynamics of private ownership and other accoutrements of capitalist society are not going away.

Countries like China and India are gonna have massive problems.

Foxcon is already building a robot army for manufacturing. Robots that cannot kill themselves, so they'll save on suicide netting for one.

Foxconn is attempting to replace its human workers with thousands of robots

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/195556-foxconns-robotic-workforce-isnt-precise-enough-to-assemble-iphones

0.05mm accuracy for the first generation robot. Give it a year or two and they'll have worked out the kinks.

That way each human being is free to choose their labor of love.

The fed gives banks Trillions in loans at less than 1% interest and they buy bonds at 4% interest.Nice arrangement, same choice must be given to "We The People"

That solves a lot of problems right there.

Because ultimately the issue is that the jobs go away altogether. And increasing the cost of labor to unrealistic levels just encourages a more rapid shift to automation. Really, in the not-too-distant future, humans will be relegated to service industry jobs, and fewer and fewer of those. Skilled blue collar jobs will get rarer and rarer.

I don't buy the idea that there's a finite amount of work that needs to be done. The problem is that the payment system usually lags behind social need.

How many jobs really need to be done? Most of the things that people do these days is a want. For example, we don't need roads and bridges from a survival point of view. We want roads and bridges.

... it's down, down, down. And those jobs are being replaced by low-wage unskilled jobs.

Those jobs represent the future, at least until automation becomes cheap enough to replace them as well.

The fact is that if you don't have skills that a computer or robot can't replicate, your employment days are numbered.

Machines don't sue or strike. They don't need health care benefits, and they don't have pesky families.

Humans will only be needed for jobs where customers prefer a human interface. And labor pressures will depress wages for those jobs.

I'm not sure what the answer is, but the problem is staring us in the face and it's coming.

It's likely at the hand of a robotic cop and robot run prisons for those who are troublemakers.

The fact is the world won't need the billions of humans inhabiting this planet.

That is, if labor costs increase and productivity drops, how does that help in the face of increasing automation?

We need a shift in economic thinking, rather than misguided efforts to preserve the current system.

people would work shorter times or for fewer years of their lives.

That seems to be the idea anyway - most technology makes work easier.

The work ethic runs deep.

In the words of some... "Arbeit macht frei" - "work makes you free"

Religious or Puritan justification for work is unworkable in today's financial world. Being a Puritan self-made man is the repubs version of pulling up your bootstraps. It takes WE to make a country, not I.

Or find "work" that helps people and isn't paid to take up our time.

One guy actually told me that the notion of only having to work 15 hours a week would "drive him insane" because he would "feel worthless". It's really, really sad.

You can just buy a robot to do it for you.

Also, the work week is severely shortened. Full time jobs might become nonexistent.

Remember the time you flew without a pilot. That will happen.

on technology and medicine and he complained to me that in a few years he could be replaced by an algorithm.

The Capitalists appear to be triumphant, but, as Marx accurately predicted 150 years ago, Capitalism's compulsion to develop technological means to increase productivity and lower labor costs will result in so much technological unemployment that Capitalism's days are numbered.

Dem socialism = repub rejection

American capitalism = unworkable system, yet became nationally accepted

American socialism = waiting to be defined as our own. ( not European, Scandinavian or Russian socialism)

The USSR wasn't socialist, either, the revolution was betrayed by an authoritarian bureaucracy that Stalin was the front-man for. The USSR was a "State Capitalist" regime in which the state ran the economy like a giant corporation.

Socialism is the overthrow of the Capitalist system and worker control of the means of production.

Signed,
A Trotskyist nit-picker.

My point; after decades of brainwashing the US people with the Communist Socialist Doctrine, would it be easier and quicker to re-brand socialism with your explanation or define its principles as an American creation.

Terminator, except with the rich in control of the extermination machines.