Posts made by Arkandel

@Coin said in Mudstats:

@Arkandel said in Mudstats:

@Roz ... I lose.

That's because it's Friday (i.e. a day ending in Y).

(You're a loser. I'm calling you a loser.)

No, you!

(It's also Comebacks Friday)

@Roz ... I lose.

@Roz My assumption is not enough people care any more these days. Their visitor count is probably tiny so it's producing very little money so it'll just keep running while someone's paying the hosting bills, and then it won't.

We're in a dying hobby. But look at the bright side, it's Friday!

@tragedyjones BILBO HAD NUMEROUS UNEXPECTED GUESTS! WHO WERE DWARVES! ALL CAPS!

@Ganymede There are two types of jobs I'd say are largely immune to either automation or globalization.

1. Specialized manual labor; no robot will replace plumbers any time soon, every project is too different and requires flexibility and improvisation.

2. Positions requiring specific legal certifications; civil engineers or lawyers come to mind, you can't just grab a guy from overseas to do it.

However that's not always a good thing. For instance when the economy in Greece began to implode people like myself could seek employment abroad; as it turns out code parses the same way in Toronto as it does in Athens. I have however friends whose professions don't allow them to do that for exactly the reason described in (2) above.

@Ganymede http://www.businessinsider.com/carls-jr-wants-open-automated-location-2016-3

@tragedyjones Were they dwarves planning to reclaim their long-lost treasure from the dragon who stole it?

I think a good side-question to 'can this UBI thing work?' is 'is some form of it not inevitable?'.

Automization :Technology has put people out of work before but it's always meant one type of mass manual labor (say, corp farmers replaced by farming machines) switching to a different kind (factory workers). However these days even mainstay unskilled worker positions - waiters, cooks, janitors, etc - are progressively turned redundant by technology so what will all those people do when McDonalds starts hiring only a fraction of the people it used to? No corporation will be able to resist the lure even if they want to, else their competitors who do so will eat their lunch (sorry).

Globalization is also huge. Any job that can be subsidized and shoved off-shore is. Once again companies who resist are swallowed by the ones who do and turn higher profits.

What happens if western-world countries don't choose to do this in the following years? Assuming nothing else unforeseen changes unemployment will cause an enormous strain on society.

At some point the notion of "why do we work?" has to be examined as well. Is it that much better a human being pours gas into your car than a machine? Is it fulfilling for that person, did he/she grow up hoping to do that? So if we give the same salary and let the machine do its thing failing the bootstrap dream?

I think the decisive factor here is the growing unemployment induced by both technological advancement and globalization; for instance the fast food service industry, cashiers etc will most likely be largely redundant in the next few years (or the number of positions will have scaled back very significantly) so something will need to give.

Not that such things haven't happened before but there is obviously a threshold past which abolishing manual labor further will cause unemployment to reach critical levels. As we reach that point some interesting decisions will need to be made either way.

@Ganymede Also 'basic' will be a hell of a variable to define.

@Three-Eyed-Crow I think it's because such a hard sell, politically.

Even if you could (I'm not necessarily saying you can, or that it's feasible, but assuming you could) prove mathematically it would save money, it's still extremely difficult for some people to vote for what is perceived as them funding a bunch of people to sit and do nothing while they work for a living.

How do you feel about that? For the obligatory wikipedia article on UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

And just to spark the conversation, https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/04/21/1853216/vc-entrepreneur-says-basic-income-would-work-even-if-90-people-smoked-pot-and-didnt-work

@Autumn And thus he'll never die! Well played, George, well played.

Also, while I admire this rookie's sass... http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/15285077/stanley-johnson-detroit-pistons-says-definitely-cleveland-cavaliers-star-lebron-james-head

... come on man, you are in his head and you played great defense? LeBron had 12/18 and 27 points. You're just gonna make him mad.

... and you don't want to make playoffs-LeBron mad. Do so and this happens:

@Vorpal Well, at least we know Keith Richards will be there to witness the thermodynamic death of the universe. Too bad he won't remember it afterwards.

@Vorpal 2016 is being a total asshole.

@Ganymede More ammunit information is necessary here.

The way I see it, @Kanye-Qwest is the latest confirmation that ideas are not responsible for the people who believe in them.

TIL @lordbelh is an elite game-destroying hacker.

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

@Arkandel

When in the long time that you've known me here have I been afraid to air my opinions, right or wrong?

Four minutes ago.

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

I still have many issues about what just happened, tho, and I'm still afraid to express them.