Wonder if they'll find their way here once they're laid off?

for long.

One could hope.

The nature of work is changing.

And people are not going to starve. Something will have to give and I don't think gated communities and compounds will be particularly safe.

How do we determine who gets what and who does what in a world in which a lot of work is done by machines not by us?

It's not a philosophical question. That question is more and more our reality.

Toilets will probably always need cleaning. It's getting easier to cook what with timers and machines that chop food, etc.

How do we find meaning in life without work?

And why are so many people working such long hours when there aren't enough jobs for everyone?

And why don't we make sure that people can spend more human time with each other, with family, with friends, in social situations if they choose now that machines are doing so much of our work?

and not for the benefit of the worker

since most of us have experience being replaced by either mechanization or foreign workers. I know I have.

The remaining employees will be worked to death and the people without jobs will be nonpersons, in debt, without any support at all.

If they think they're actually going to get away with that, I have a few history books for them to read.

And not just the laid off workers. The ones doing the laying off need to read them even more.

Oh wait....

It's called "hurry up and die"

of the living?

soon few people will have the money to take them on and return to a world where corporations, who own these computers, pay decent wages and taxes around the world.

prone to support NAFTAs and TPPs too: the wage race to the bottom was even called a "golden standard" by one of this year's Democratic Candidates.

enough to boost up the middle class and workers, and ensure that they get to participate in the wealth created by trade deals.

Kindly update your worldview, please.

and other pro-corporate policies?

And when capitalism replaced mercantilism.

When we no longer have enough jobs for humans to trade work for basic necessities, we will need a basic guaranteed income, sort of a social security for everyone, to keep people from starving. Those with special skills may still be able to find employment to earn extra income. Maybe the government will need to assign busy-work to people to keep them out of mischief. But the idea of working for a living may be on the way out.

Or the robots decide we humans are a bunch of worthless freeloaders and harvest us for the raw materials.

then they will roll in their Blackwater types to help out their lapdogs in blue. They think they will be safe. Welcome to DU

Local and state law enforcement will probably side with the people.

local law enforcement treats the people? Nah, they won't side with us, they will be busting our heads while laughing about it.

The examples have been hard to miss. But times are changing, as is the political landscape. A lot of local and state law enforcement are strongly Union and anti federal government. People's priorities change quickly when they remember their last meal in days rather than hours.

never bring up police unions? No, those will be the last unions that are touched, because the need the cops on their side

if that was true everything would be self serve. Most humans still like t talk to humans. We hate outsourced call centers to India even though they are more knowledgeable and fix issues better than Americans.
Don't we all hate phone trees and wouldn't we prefer someone answering the phone.

Go call a law firm or an accounting firm. they still have humans answer the phone to this day. It is delightful.

being more knowledgeable and fixing issues better. There are times when I politely hang up or ask for an American because overseas call center personnel follow the "script" to the point where I'm frustrated. In fact, when I called Directv a few weeks ago, I got a nice man from the U.S. and told him I thank his company for employing fellow citizens.

You say your desired options into a voice recognition system and the Burgertron cooks it, assembles it, and wraps it up for you to pick up at the automated food window.

And I bet Wal-Mart has RFPs out for robots that can trundle around their stores restocking shelves.

It makes healthy quinoa bowls for cheap.

http://www.businessinsider.com/eatsa-fully-automated-restaurant-chain-2016-2

The piece implies that they'll be among the first, but human beings have this a thing about wanting to communicate with a real person. Even when human reps behave a bit robotically, as when they're obviously reading from a script, most of us get seriously pissed off. As far as doing analytics by hand, vs by a sophisticated interface, of course that's going to happen sooner rather than later.

vocally, so it doesn't sound robotic at all. And is sophisticated enough to respond appropriately and I would be out of a job.

I think such a computer is a while off, but a lot closer than people think.

Though funny story, I actually got a call, on the job, from a guy who sounded EXACTLY like a fucking recording/computer, complete monotone, absolute nothing excitable or human about his voice. Only his responses clued me in that he wasn't a recording.

Douchebags who previously would have gone into finance are instead making nuisances of themselves in Silicon Valley, because there just isn't that much opportunity there anymore.

The article implies that $350K a year is like the top 5%, which is true - but . . .

Too many money stories don't explain the difference between household incomes and individual earnings. The median income in the US is less than $28K per year or about $2300 per month for a worker. This is less than $15 per hour. Household incomes are higher, by more than twice the single worker amounts as households combine two working people plus any other income coming into that residence - Aunt Jane's SS check or junior's job at the paper hat burger shack.

If you make $350K you are well into the top 1%. 90% of workers earn less than $85000 per year. Income numbers are almost inflated in these stories.

Is going to be a tough pill to swallow.

It is only projected that about 8% (BLS-2014 to 2024) of bank teller jobs are going to disappear over a 10 year span, and this article states that somewhere between 33% and 50% of finance employees will lose their jobs to automation software.

Before we hit a breaking point. After all, if you automate too much, the people doing the automating won't have very many customers/clients since few people are getting paid for anything :-P

Synonymous with our idea of progress. We don't know where we're going, but we have to get there. Like anything else humans think up, it'll have positives and negatives.

There will not be enough people working and so there will not be money to spend on the products these robots will be making. The businesses will collapse and we will go back in time to where there are many jobs.

Or, we will have to figure out a new economy that does not depend on us having money. I am pretty sure this will make the heads of the GOP followers explode. Imagine not just one "welfare queen" but all of us, including them, are "welfare queens". Imagine going through the store and getting steak for free or a free car at the dealership. Can you imagine that? I can't. We will turn into a country where we would line up just for bread and toilet tissue. I think the first scenario is much more likely than the second.

This isn't going to end well. AT all.

The success of "Rugged Individualism" depends on people with disposable income. Actually, the success of economics, period, depends on people with disposable income. It depends on customers with money coming through a door.

Take that away by the millions upon millions and what do you have?

Millions of starving and homeless people, that's what.

You think the banks, creditors, Republican politicians and Cold-War fighting America are going to stand for "I'm sorry, but what am I supposed to do? Everything's automated and I have no money to better myself through your expensive universities. Even if I did, where are the jobs? The CEOs offshored and fired everyone, still practice ageism and do more with less. What am I supposed to do??"?? Think they're going to accept that? "Fuck you, pay me." "I CAN'T!!!!!" "Fuck you, pay me!" And then you get jailed or shot, because that's how shit goes in America and it's not going to change. You're going to lose your roof and starve. That's what's going to happen.

I just love the online Buckminster Fullers that think this is going to lead to fair re-distribution of wealth, a guaranteed minimum income, a "clean start over". I JUST FUCKING LAUGH.

Where do you people think you live? Who runs America? Who supports those who run America?

What are you going to do, run for office? WITH WHAT MONEY??

You think you'd get support from THAT purchased media? You think you'd get support from the people still fighting the Cold War? Child, PLEASE.

Anyone thinks what I'm saying is bleak? Lotsa "hair on fire" paranoia? REALLY?? I'm RIGHT ON THIS, and you know I am. Deep down inside, you know that should the economic catastrophe of everything not nailed down being automated and offshored WON'T lead to a clean start, it's going to lead to mass homelessness and murders. Most likely a lot of y'all will be murdered, because the police and the military are nothing but lapdogs for the wealthy and will protect the wealthy at all cost and with blunt force. There'll be no revolt, there'll be slaughter.

"Fuck you, pay me". That's America. That's the America everyone voted for. Everyone thinks conservatives and their brand of "hand-ups, not hand-outs" economics is so fucking awesome. "Soshulism is grate untel u run outs of udder peeples money haw haw haw", right? Is that what they like to say? I say "Capitalism's awesome until you realize robots can't buy products". Inevitable conclusion, folks. Give the money to the non-caring and sociopathic Once-lers of the world, and this is what's going to happen.

If your net worth qualifies you, he'll save a berth or cabin for you, post-you-know-what.

The Really Creepy People Behind the Libertarian-Inspired Billionaire Sea Castles

The stinking rich are planning billion-dollar luxury liners that keep the land-based Americans they've plundered at a safe distance.

AlterNet / By Mark Ames
June 1, 2010

What happens when Americans plunder America and leave it broken, destitute and seething mad? Where do these fabulously wealthy Americans go with their loot, if America isn't a safe, secure, or even desirable place to spend their riches? What if they lose faith in their gated communities, because those plush gated communities are surrounded by millions of pissed-off Americans stripped of their entitlements, and who now want in?

The first such floating castle has been christened the " Utopia"--the South Korean firm Samsung has been contracted to build the $1.1 billion ship, due to be launched in 2013. Already orders are coming in to buy one of the Utopia's 200 or so mansions for sale- -which range in price from about $4 million for the smallest condos to over $26 million for 6,600 square-foot "estates." The largest mansion is a whopping 40,000 square feet, and sells for $160 million.

SNIP...

Both Thiel and Milton Friedman's grandson see democracy as the enemy--last year, Thiel wrote "I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible" at about the same time that Milton Friedman's grandson proclaimed, "Democracy is not the answer." Both published their anti-democracy proclamations in the same billionaire-Koch-family-funded outlet, Cato Unbound, one of the oldest billionaire-fed libertarian welfare dispensaries. Friedman's answer for Thiel's democracy problem is to build offshore libertarian pod-fortresses where the libertarian way rules. It's probably better for everyone if Milton Friedman's grandson and Peter Thiel leave us forever for their libertarian ocean lair--Thiel believes that America went down the tubes ever since it gave women the right to vote, and he was outed as the sponsor of accused felon James O'Keefe's smear videos that brought ACORN to ruin.

SNIP...

While neither Bush nor the Bin Ladens are principals in the Frontier Group, its founding director, Frank Carlucci, is a name they know well, and you should too. Carlucci ran the Carlyle Group as its chairman from 1989 through 2005, right around the time that the wars started going undeniably bad, and floating castles started to look like a viable plan. But Carlucci's past is much weirder and scarier than most of us care to know: whether it's his strangely timed appearances in some of the ugliest assassinations and coups in modern history, or serving as Carter's number two man in the CIA, and Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Defense, if Frank Carlucci (nicknamed "Creepy Carlucci" and "Spooky Frank&quot is the founding director of a firm that's building floating castles, it's a bad sign for those of us left behind.

I'll get into Carlucci's partners in the Frontier Group in a moment, but first, let's reacquaint ourselves with Frank Carlucci. From an early age, Carlucci learned the importance of getting to know the right people in the right places. He studied at Princeton in the mid-1950s, where as luck should have it, Carlucci roomed with Donald Rumsfeld. Both Carlucci and Rumsfeld shared a passion for Greco-Roman wrestling at Princeton, and both went on to serve in the Navy after Princeton. Their paths would split and merge several times over the next few decades, even as they remained close personal friends throughout their lives. In the late 1950s, Carlucci briefly served as an executive at a lingerie manufacturer, Jantzen (the Victoria's Secret of its day), but quickly left to join the State Department.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/147058/the_really_creepy_people_behind_the_libertarian-inspired_billionaire_sea_castles

when it's all said and done.

.... as a software engineer as far back as the early 80s and probably earlier there was a lot of talk about "code generation" and "AI created software".

It hasn't really happened though. The devil is in the details.