Nice Inc.com article re: the recent Amazon outcry

[twdavis]

http://www.inc.com/john-brandon/dea...oyees-please-start-a-company.html?cid=sf01001



Enjoy.

[emoji16]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

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[RHL]

What we're heading towards is an advent of a new kind of feudalism. Margret Mitchell was full of shit when she claimed that the old system of lords and ladies, rulers and serfs, was gone forever. The 21st century will see a handful of innovators controlling an army of scripts, landing pages, drones, or autonomous cars, rulers with subordinates who will never get tired, never revolt, never do less than their best. There will never be any Ghandi or MLK to free this new group of "oppressed" workers, any more than there was a movement to end the oppression of printing presses and sewing machines. All to satisfy the hunger of a working class which has the same needs and wants and hopes and dreams as ever, but, for the first time, not a single marketable skill that they can offer (which performs better than a robot/drone/block of code) to satisfy those needs. Today we have a dichotomy between the free and the burdened, the well paid and the well worn, but those Amazon employees should thank God on their knees after reading this, because in 25 years there will be no wake-up call for people like them, there will be no alternate route. There won't be anything at all. Whether that will herald some sort of revolution or apocalypse, I don't know, but I know there's no way in hell that I would look a young person in the face today and approve of their going to work beside machines rather than being the fastlaner who buys and purposes them to free her or his time. One has an incredible opportunity to make history. The other will be history. It's only a matter of time.

 

[NVious]

What we're heading towards is an advent of a new kind of feudalism. Margret Mitchell was full of shit when she claimed that the old system of lords and ladies, rulers and serfs, was gone forever. The 21st century will see a handful of innovators controlling an army of scripts, landing pages, drones, or autonomous cars, rulers with subordinates who will never get tired, never revolt, never do less than their best. There will never be any Ghandi or MLK to free this new group of "oppressed" workers, any more than there was a movement to end the oppression of printing presses and sewing machines. All to satisfy the hunger of a working class which has the same needs and wants and hopes and dreams as ever, but, for the first time, not a single marketable skill that they can offer (which performs better than a robot/drone/block of code) to satisfy those needs. Today we have a dichotomy between the free and the burdened, the well paid and the well worn, but those Amazon employees should thank God on their knees after reading this, because in 25 years there will be no wake-up call for people like them, there will be no alternate route. There won't be anything at all. Whether that will herald some sort of revolution or apocalypse, I don't know, but I know there's no way in hell that I would look a young person in the face today and approve of their going to work beside machines rather than being the fastlaner who buys and purposes them to free her or his time. One has an incredible opportunity to make history. The other will be history. It's only a matter of time.

Did you simultaneously read Marx and MFL while tripping on acid and listening to Alex Jones?

 

[RHL]

Did you simultaneously read Marx and MFL while tripping on acid and listening to Alex Jones?

 

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[NVious]

http://www.theguardian.com/business...ore-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census

 

[throttleforward]

http://www.theguardian.com/business...ore-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census

From the article...“Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labour than at any time in the last 150 years.”

I disagree with this completely. We have already seen "bots" take over increasingly "creative" roles, like writing articles for AP.

"...The obvious tell doesn't come until the end of an article: "This story was generated by Automated Insights." According to AI's public relations manager James Kotecki, the Wordsmith platform generates millions of articles per week; other partners include Allstate, Comcast, and Yahoo, whose fantasy football reports are automated. Kotecki estimates the company's system can produce 2,000 articles per second if need be."

Machines replaced physical labor. Machines are replacing creative labor. What other kind of labor is there left, save for irrational human desires to see humans in certain positions of trust (for example, a "train operator" for an autonomous train, because humans feel better with another human "in charge")?

I don't think it's crazy to question the notion that "well, there were a bunch of jobs created after the industrial revolution, so therefore we will see new jobs (for humans) post computing revolution."

 

[RHL]

An autonomous truck fleet for one employer will eliminate, say, 600 jobs, 500 drivers, along with a few police, EMTs, insurance sales and adjusters, highway maintenance that no longer has to fix guardrails etc. after accidents. It will create maybe 30 jobs for mechanics (if robots don't do that too), coders at the company, and so on. At no point in the last 140 years has a computer been smart enough to truly replace a person. I coded a waypoint path into my drone the other day so that it could take perfect cinematic shots of a dealership while I was inside talking to the staff. It's not hard to see a future in 10 years where I send a $40,000 drone to work at 6 AM and stay home reading. Shit, if the software wasn't so finicky I could probably do that now.

 

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[NVious]

An autonomous truck fleet for one employer will eliminate, say, 600 jobs, 500 drivers, along with a few police, EMTs, insurance sales and adjusters, highway maintenance that no longer has to fix guardrails etc. After accidents. It will create maybe 30 jobs for mechanics (if robots don't do that too), coders at the company, and so on. At no point in the last 140 years has a computer been smart enough to truly replace a person. I coded a waypoint path into my drone the other day so that it could take perfect cinematic shots of a dealership while I was inside talking to the staff. It's not hard to see a future in 10 years where I send a $40,000 drone to work at 6 AM and stay home reading. Shit, if the software wasn't so finicky I could probably do that now.

All wasting human capital.

From the article...“Machines will take on more repetitive and laborious tasks, but seem no closer to eliminating the need for human labour than at any time in the last 150 years.”

I disagree with this completely. We have already seen "bots" take over increasingly "creative" roles, like writing articles for AP.

"...The obvious tell doesn't come until the end of an article: "This story was generated by Automated Insights." According to AI's public relations manager James Kotecki, the Wordsmith platform generates millions of articles per week; other partners include Allstate, Comcast, and Yahoo, whose fantasy football reports are automated. Kotecki estimates the company's system can produce 2,000 articles per second if need be."

Machines replaced physical labor. Machines are replacing creative labor. What other kind of labor is there left, save for irrational human desires to see humans in certain positions of trust (for example, a "train operator" for an autonomous train, because humans feel better with another human "in charge")?

I don't think it's crazy to question the notion that "well, there were a bunch of jobs created after the industrial revolution, so therefore we will see new jobs (for humans) post computing revolution."

And lmfao @ "replaced physical labor" Notsureifsrs because I never see humans doing any manual labor, stores are cleaned by robots, buildings are built by robots and all the humans sit around twiddling their thumbs.

And yes one fantasy football article written by AI=GAME OVER MAN!

Of course not, it's the end of the world as we know it. In the same way printing presses were the devil, cars were the devil and planes were the devil (printing presses putting scribes out of business, cars putting horse backed carriages out of business and planes putting ships out of business....although those jobs still exist in some capacity today), but yes you're right jobs will forever disappear and what will we do then when everything is so cheap, so plentiful and able to be done by AI???

I shudder at that thought.

[HASHTAG]#BanProgress[/HASHTAG]

 

[throttleforward]

stores are cleaned by robots

http://www.intellibotrobotics.com/products/

buildings are built by robots

http://www.cnet.com/news/worlds-first-3d-printed-apartment-building-constructed-in-china/

And yes one fantasy football article written by AI=GAME OVER MAN!

"Kotecki estimates the company's system can produce 2,000 articles per second if need be."

[url]http://mashable.com/2015/08/12/robot-evolution/[/URL]
"The researchers claim that not only did the robot mom build better moving children,
it cooked up configurations that might never have occurred to humansit cooked up configurations that might never have occurred to humans."

No one is saying the world is going to end. What people are saying is that the notion of living a middle class life doing low skill physical labor is coming to an end (if it hasn't already ended), and that certain professions which are currently high-skill jobs will likely become lower paying as computers take over much of the complex and creative work the job used to require.

Tl;dr: idiots will get a lot poorer, most smart people will probably make less money, and the few people who figure this out early and start investing in autonomous workers will get filthy rich.

 

[NVious]

Tl;dr: idiots will get a lot poorer, most smart people will probably make less money, and the few people who figure this out early and start investing in autonomous workers will get filthy rich.

According to you, except that nowadays even the "idiots" have things like AC/refrigeration/tvs/laptops and smartphones so this notion of getting "poorer" is very interesting considering that technology has been headed in the exact same trajectory since the industrial revolution and people have bigger homes, more leisure time, safer work places, way longer lifespans and more technology in their pocket than 99.9% of history's wealthiest leaders or:

 

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[throttleforward]

According to you, except that nowadays even the "idiots" have things like AC/refrigeration/tvs/laptops and smartphones so this notion of getting "poorer" is very interesting considering that technology has been headed in the exact same trajectory since the industrial revolution and people have bigger homes, more leisure time, safer work places, way longer lifespans and more technology in their pocket than 99.9% of history's wealthiest leaders or:

That's a fair point - the quality of life (i.e. what a dollar can buy) has been going up for poor folks in first world countries for decades.

However, I still maintain that as the economy changes, people will start to lose access to these cheap technologies (edit: they may still have access, but in ways that we would consider somewhat lower class today. For instance, unlimited data vs a data cap; access to air conditioning, but via a central AC in their apartment vs. through their standalone AC attached to their single family home)

In my view, the advent of a middle class coupled with a technological explosion between WWII and now has caused some economic anomolies that will not persist. The idea that a man can drive a truck, support his wife and family on his income, afford a single family home in a safe neighborhood with 2 cars in the driveway and a retirement plan is going to go away. Instead, he might have to move to a small apartment, forego retirement, his wife will have to work, he may sell a car, he may move in with his brother, he'll trade his cable package for Netflix, etc.

We will redefine what "normal" is - and I'm thinking it will look like what we see as "poor" living today.

For instance, "A record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population of the United States, lived in multi-generational family households in 2012, double the number who lived in such households in 1980.1"
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014...continuing-rise-in-multi-generational-living/

 

[Mr. L]

there's no way in hell that I would look a young person in the face today and approve of their going to work beside machines rather than being the fastlaner who buys and purposes them to free her or his time

That's all nice but can you imagine the world where everyone is a fastlaner?

It doesn't exist.

What's your point RHL, is the world doomed? Will the working class rebel and kill us all?

So sad man, so sad.

 

[NVious]

That's a fair point - the quality of life (i.e. what a dollar can buy) has been going up for poor folks in first world countries for decades.

However, I still maintain that as the economy changes, people will start to lose access to these cheap technologies (edit: they may still have access, but in ways that we would consider somewhat lower class today. For instance, unlimited data vs a data cap; access to air conditioning, but via a central AC in their apartment vs. through their standalone AC attached to their single family home)

In my view, the advent of a middle class coupled with a technological explosion between WWII and now has caused some economic anomolies that will not persist. The idea that a man can drive a truck, support his wife and family on his income, afford a single family home in a safe neighborhood with 2 cars in the driveway and a retirement plan is going to go away. Instead, he might have to move to a small apartment, forego retirement, his wife will have to work, he may sell a car, he may move in with his brother, he'll trade his cable package for Netflix, etc.

We will redefine what "normal" is - and I'm thinking it will look like what we see as "poor" living today.

For instance, "A record 57 million Americans, or 18.1% of the population of the United States, lived in multi-generational family households in 2012, double the number who lived in such households in 1980.1"
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2014...continuing-rise-in-multi-generational-living/

Epitome of 1st world problems.

 

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[hellolin]

Epitome of 1st world problems.

Exactly, what he described was a "good life" in any third world country, people live in the US really ought to understand that they are all the "1%" in the world regardless how much money they make right now.

 

[NVious]

Exactly, what he described was a "good life" in any third world country, people live in the US really ought to understand that they are all the "1%" in the world regardless how much money they make right now.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...obal-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.html

America IS the 1%: You need just $34,000 annual income to be in the global elite... and HALF the world's richest people live in the U.S.

• Global median salary is $1,225, says leading economist

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

 

[Hassen]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2082385/We-1--You-need-34k-income-global-elite--half-worlds-richest-live-U-S.htmlt kn

America IS the 1%: You need just $34,000 annual income to be in the global elite... and HALF the world's richest people live in the U.S.

• Global median salary is $1,225, says leading economist

http://www.globalrichlist.com/

I think he'd make a much better point if he were to say that the income gap/quality of life gap in the US would widen, instead of simply stating that the middle class would get poorer - & "poorer" in the sense of being viewed from a first world upper middle class standpoint.

I'd agree that the quality of life gap in the US would widen in the coming decades through, but I don't know what that would mean for the American society.

 

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[NVious]

I think he'd make a much better point if he were to say that the income gap/quality of life gap in the US would widen, instead of simply stating that the middle class would get poorer - & "poorer" in the sense of being viewed from a first world upper middle class standpoint.

I'd agree that the quality of life gap in the US would widen in the coming decades through, but I don't know what that would mean for the American society.

Technology will just expedite inequality because you'll have two camps (with people falling all sorts of in between):

Those that use technology in THE smartest ways; networking, learning and creating tremendous value ALL from the comfort of their own home
And those that use it to just satisfy their base desires; porn, watching tv, conspicuous consumption, hero worship and wasting their time in pointless debates with people they don't give a damn about

If people want to see the root cause of this, ask:
Who/what do most people spend the majority of their lives with/on?

 

[hellolin]

Technology will just expedite inequality because you'll have two camps (with people falling all sorts of in between):

Those that use technology in THE smartest ways; networking, learning and creating tremendous value ALL from the comfort of their own home
And those that use it to just satisfy their base desires; porn, watching tv, conspicuous consumption, hero worship and wasting their time in pointless debates with people they don't give a damn about

If people want to see the root cause of this, ask:
Who/what do most people spend the majority of their lives with/on?

Short answer: TVs

Almost all the bio/motivational books I have read, they all have one common theme: Cut down the time you watch TVs, and pick up the books, doesn't even matter what book it is, pick it up and read and shut that TV off.

 

[NVious]

Short answer: TVs

Almost all the bio/motivational books I have read, they all have one common theme: Cut down the time you watch TVs, and pick up the books, doesn't even matter what book it is, pick it up and read and shut that TV off.

True, but most people associate reading/learning with school, at least tv is voluntary which school is not.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

America IS the 1%: You need just $34,000 annual income to be in the global elite... and HALF the world's richest people live in the U.S.

This is why I can't stand the whiners that moan about "the 1%" here -- for them that means the following...

"I don't want to work at a shitty job or climb ladders!"
"I deserve the best for existing!"
"I shouldn't have to walk around with this gen-3 iPhone!"
"My boys have Nikes, I can only afford Reeboks!"
"Sucks I can't afford HBO to watch Game of Thrones, gotta go to my neighbors!"

 

[NVious]

This is why I can't stand the whiners that moan about "the 1%" here -- for them that means the following...

"I don't want to work at a shitty job or climb ladders!"
"I deserve the best for existing!"
"I shouldn't have to walk around with this gen-3 iPhone!"
"My boys have Nikes, I can only afford Reeboks!"
"Sucks I can't afford HBO to watch Game of Thrones, gotta go to my neighbors!"

Dan Ariely talks about this cognitive bias (comparing ourselves to our immediate surroundings instead of objectively)

Personally I grew up in pretty much a third world country and even though for Western standards we definitely must've been "poor," seeing as me and my parents only lived in a 1 room apartment, had a 16" tv with no cable, but from my perspective, I thought we were doing really damn well because I compared us to where we came from.

I.e ok we only have like 15 channels (no cable), but I was used to two
ok we just have a regular computer, but it's better than nothing
ok I don't have a game system, but I have plenty of friends who live close enough that do

It's actually crazy what is considered "poor" in the west considering the above was nearly 20 years ago and technology has gone HAM since then

http://i.imgur.com/GytkSup.gif

http://i.imgur.com/DtfKXhF.png

http://i.imgur.com/HMM4ZHq.png

http://i.imgur.com/gSVK2gh.png

http://i.imgur.com/7AwnjSV.png

http://i.imgur.com/59xmdwE.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/ueOX9xx.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/kfrcEnl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/uUTDPzR.gif

http://i.imgur.com/xnhwT9r.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/8Bhsmek.gif

http://i.imgur.com/NSGbfDs.png

http://i.imgur.com/WnSi8y8.png

31 minutes in "poverty" in a wealthy country....99.9% of humans past are ROFLing in their grave at what poverty means nowadays

And the nail in the coffin:

http://i.imgur.com/r1UlhLk.jpg

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/20/opinion/sunday/from-rags-to-riches-to-rags.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0

In order to answer such questions, Thomas A. Hirschl of Cornell and I looked at 44 years of longitudinal data regarding individuals from ages 25 to 60 to see what percentage of the American population would experience these different levels of affluence during their lives. The results were striking.

It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution.

Yet while many Americans will experience some level of affluence during their lives, a much smaller percentage of them will do so for an extended period of time. Although 12 percent of the population will experience a year in which they find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution, a mere 0.6 percent will do so in 10 consecutive years.

It is clear that the image of a static 1 and 99 percent is largely incorrect. The majority of Americans will experience at least one year of affluence at some point during their working careers.

 

[Deleted21961]

Most of those "prophets of doom" are overlooking one thing. They are thinking of humans as of frozen in their capacity to do things.
As a species, humans WILL necessarily evolve. To adapt to new world.
Human evolution was slow up to this point, because there wasn't true necessity to evolve. But when things are changing faster and faster, our evolution also speeds up. We are starting to see it in the most recent generations.
Sure, current most common genetic configurations will probably suffer in the process and become extinct. That's awesome!
People will become inherently more powerful than ever, thanks to machines and software.
Am pretty confident that's what will happen soon.

 

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[Time And Again]

I was drawn to this statement from the article:

"There is a whole new level of stress when you leave the comfort of a pension plan and a regular paycheck. Here's my word of hope to you. Life is always about exchanging one stress for another. Anyone who has graduated from college knows this basic truth. You had the stress of exams and you exchanged that for the stress of having to provide for yourself. Anyone who has found a spouse knows this. You exchanged the stress of living alone and feeling lost for the stress of dealing with another personality. You will exchange the stress of a hostile workplace for the stress of having to rely on your own skills and instincts. "

Keeping your current "Job" stress points will only lead to more of the same type of stress. Creating your own future will lead to stress as well but a different type of stress that you are responsible for and that, with hard work and accountability on your part, will eventually dwindle away.

These are the types of things I had never thought of before. Sounds like a rerun to some of you I am sure but for me it is like discovering a alternate reality I never knew was there.

 

[throttleforward]

people live in the US really ought to understand that they are all the "1%" in the world regardless how much money they make right now.

This is accurate, and Americans should realize this.

However, they don't and they won't. Or they do, but they don't care.

No US politician is going to get elected on a message of "Suck it up, you entitled global 1%-ers! Don't you realize you should be happy with clean tap water?!"

At some point, IMO, after experiencing continued wage stagnation (relative to inflation), watching low-skill/low intelligence jobs being taken over by automation, and increasing gaps between them and the top 1% (in the US), they will vote people into office to "fix" these things for them, regardless of how good they have it in this country vs. Somalia.

And those "fixes" will probably have unintended, deleterious consequences. 80% of government-driven fixes do.

 

[Joseph Wilson]

I don't know about you guys but I'm a big fan of machines doing stuff that humans don't want to do. In the oil industry they're building machines to do the most dangerous jobs and while the technology is a long way from being more cost effective than humans they're getting closer every day and from what I've been told they have already seen a big decline in injuries which sould make up the cost difference over time.

There are still people working on the rigs, they're just doing less strenuous and less dangerous work.

Once upon a time people thought power tools would put everyone out of work... Hell Obama still thinks ATM's are the downfall of our economy lol...

It's hard to imagine what kind of work humans will end up doing but the more work machines are doing the less work humans have to do and I'm a big fan of doing less work.

 

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[WestCoast]

I remember reading about humans being 'cognitive misers'. i.e., the brain wants to use as little energy as possible to do tasks (drive to work, eat, shower, whatever).

Imagine an economy where most people are sitting at home with nothing to do.
(sort of conjures up images from the move Wall-e, but still)

I don't know how the future will play out, but less employees to deal with would be a wonderful thing.
More importantly - WHAT ARE YOU ALL GOING TO BE SELLING TO THESE PEOPLE ON THE SIDELINES??

That's what I'm thinking about.

 

[Joseph Wilson]

I remember reading about humans being 'cognitive misers'. i.e., the brain wants to use as little energy as possible to do tasks (drive to work, eat, shower, whatever).

Imagine an economy where most people are sitting at home with nothing to do.
(sort of conjures up images from the move Wall-e, but still)

I don't know how the future will play out, but less employees to deal with would be a wonderful thing.
More importantly - WHAT ARE YOU ALL GOING TO BE SELLING TO THESE PEOPLE ON THE SIDELINES??

That's what I'm thinking about.

Work from home ebooks of course! lol...

And weight loss pills for sure.

And probably ED pills too.

Maybe a 2 in 1 weight loss and ED pill?!?!