this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023
523 points (98.9% liked)

Interesting Global News

2653 readers
1132 users here now

What is global news?

Something that happened or was uncovered recently anywhere in the world. It doesn't have to have global implications. Just has to be informative in some way.


Post guidelines

Title formatPost title should mirror the news source title.
URL formatPost URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
[Opinion] prefixOpinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.


Rules

1. English onlyTitle and associated content has to be in English.
2. No social media postsAvoid all social media posts. Try searching for a source that has a written article or transcription on the subject.
3. Respectful communicationAll communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. InclusivityEveryone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacksAny kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangentsStay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may applyIf something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.


Companion communities

Icon attribution | Banner attribution

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amazon's response to his sign: "we know, that is why we are working so hard to replace you with one."

[–] velvetThunder 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your comment sounds so negative. But aren't we all heading for automation in every corner of our lives.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is wholly negative, and I develop automation and AI stuff for a living. The issue is that as automation accelerates, population growth will still be exponential as it has always been. That means fewer and fewer workers needed while the population continues to explode. Without obscenely massive reforms to society and law, we are careening towards a social and economic collapse the likes of which we have contemplated. Stop for a second and think what just Amazon fully automatic packing centers would mean. A few million people are working in those facilities. What happens when they are all fired because Amazon automates their jobs? There are moved to automate fast food production as well. Burger flipping robots already exist. Cashiers are being replaced with apps and kiosks in every McDonald's. Those jobs make up the bottom rung in the economic chain.

In the US, 60% of the population already lives below the realistic poverty line (not the legal one, because that one is a joke). What happen a when you unemployed > 2% of the entire population in less than a year? That isn't the working-age adult population, that is all of us. At the same time, cut social safety nets, remove consumer protections, and deregulate rent.

I am not trying to be a doomsayer, I am just realistically looking at the whole of the trajectories of our society. Unfortunately, those trajectories carry us over a rather dystopian cliff. Tell me you honestly believe that a realistic and functional UBI will ever happen, even when there are 5 employees to every job, so 80% of us are finctionally incapable of obtaining gainful employment?

[–] velvetThunder 1 points 1 year ago

It sounded as if you were against automation only at Amazon. But now you cleared things up.

In an ideal society the burger flippers could get the education to be Burgerflipperrobot engineers and so on, while everybody has to work less. But we already see that only a few profit from that progress.