177 Comments
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Poly_Ester's avatar

As an R&D-type with over 30 years of industrial experience, I can confirm replacing middle management with robots would be an upgrade.

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JaaaaaCeeeee's avatar

This week he asked, "What if our 2016 election ends up being between a socialist and a borderline fascist — ideas that died in 1989 and 1945 respectively?"

Then he wrote that worst of all, nobody running to be president is worried about the things that Thomas Friedman is worried could happen, while simultaneously talking about, "how we generate growth, jobs, security and resilience".

That opedgenerator is brilliant. But Friedman is Sarah Palin with syntax and punctuation, which no one can fully automate.

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Doloras Funkette's avatar

Of course the mega rich didn't see the Star Wars prequels, the help are there for the dirty jobs.

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Doloras Funkette's avatar

Marx would say that it's impossible to replace human labor altogether because only labor can make a profit. You can't build totally self-sufficient machine workers, in other words - or, if you could, they'd be intelligent enough that they'd be humanoid and therefore you could recruit them to join a union. The fantasy of totally programmable people (as in Joss Whedon's sadly-cancelled "Dollhouse") will always be a fantasy. If not, we're boned as a species.

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Doloras Funkette's avatar

And the wimmins in the kitchen making sammiches.

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Doloras Funkette's avatar

And what happened to the Roman Empire when it became entirely reliant on slave labour and mercenaries? There is always hope.

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𝔅𝔢𝔢𝔩𝔷𝔢𝔟𝔲𝔟𝔟𝔞's avatar

As the cost of manufacturing your widgets drops, you're supposed to be able to sell more widgets. Simple market economic theory is obviously lacking some important inputs, but simple-minded libertardians don't want to hear about it.

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Comrade Wingtardd's avatar

Is there some real, pressing reason why we, just one fucking time, can't do something actually nice somewhere?

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Comrade Wingtardd's avatar

Why are we always looking to replace the wrong jobs with robots and computers? Managers and executives should be replaced by robots.

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Hutch's avatar

At the first location in Eugene, on the menu board outside in the sixties, someone scratched out "spiced" meat tacos to read "cat" meat tacos. I always loved that.

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bobbert's avatar

E.g., "Neptune's Brood".

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bobbert's avatar

How would you tell?

From a former manager.

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witsended's avatar

We play among you.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

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witsended's avatar

You throw us out as scrap but we never die just mutate.

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

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Naytch's avatar

Oh, that is perfect! And even better, you got a response from an internet 'bot!

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Naytch's avatar

Preferred boarding pass, even.

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