*promote and discuss

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Wednesday, August 13th, 2014 6:27am PDT - promote requested by original submitter RFlagg.

Genius video. As for topic, it's all for the best I believe. Less use for humans means less humans right? Overpopulation is number one problem in the world, so that helps. Worst case though is never adjusting our economy and ways of thinking, which leads to massive poverty and all the useless people slowly dying out and rioting all the way - which is going to happen most likely.

*geek *history

Adding video to channels (Geek, History) - requested by ant.

Once food and accommodation are put to one side we see the bulk of our economy is consumerism. Wonder what would happen if we weren't so concerned about having the latest shiny... Automation is inevitable, no getting away from that, but what happens if the majority of automation is made obsolete because we give up our desire to buy stuff we don't need, and instead choose to be content with what we've got?

I don't think that will happen. A new model of economy/society would have to emerge.

Yes. An information / Energy based economy...

TurboSift 3000 !!!

The time of my people will come. You will exist to service us.

Yes, automation is inevitable.
But I have no idea what shape an automated economy would take.

Let's assume this comes to pass and in 100 years only the very best and brightest humans (i.e. 0.001%) are employable. If there's no point in employing humans and they don't get paid.... who will drive demand? No point being able to super efficiently produce cars, smartphones, hell even coffee if no-one can afford it.

Essentially in an economy like this, the capitalist model completely collapses.

The bots will probably eventually realise the futility of this, wipe us all out and head off to explore space.

I for one welcome our robot overlords. If anything, we need to make the transition ourselves. Being organic is pretty lame. Firstly, we are extremely high maintenance. You have to eat, drink, sleep, breathe, pee and poop on a regular basis. Exercise and a balanced diet are also necessary if you want to delay health issues. Our bodies are incredibly frail and can break in so many ways. Once they do break, they are incredibly hard to repair. Then there's aging. When we're born, we're effectively useless. It takes over two decades of training just to turn us into productive members of society. But after that point, our bodies deteriorate and eventually shut down irrecoverably. All the knowledge and skills we've accumulated throughout our lives disappear just like that. Speaking of knowledge and skills, it takes way too long for us to learn stuff. Becoming a master in any given skill shouldn't take years of practice. It should take a quick download.

The sooner we figure out how to digitize our minds and transfer them into robotic bodies, the better.

Who needs a job when you have your health? According to Nancy pelosi, no job means you can spend more time with your family, chill, and develop your artistic side.

win/win

There is no such thing as a useless person.

I don't see how everyone else let this comment slip.

Less "use" for humans doesn't mean less humans. People are not a use-based entity. But perhaps that's simply my value system.

What this potentially all means is massive pain and poverty to intrinsically valuable human life, not useless people.

Also, there will always be a need for human to human care, empathy, and love. Something a bot would never be able to do that would be acceptable by a person.

Useless in the sense that they would no longer be required to advance society. It does mean less humans because, like in China now with the one child per family law, we'd be forced to not produce so many - maybe not by law, but the cost of raising a kid would be astronomical.

And no, there won't always be a need for human caring, empathy and love. Look at Japan now with non-human surrogacy on the rise and birth rates dropping. It's more efficient than dating and we have drugs to make us happy otherwise. I doubt it will ever completely go away of course, but there it is.

capitalism only really functions well (with regulation) in a world where resources are limited and a lot of manpower is needed to get things done. Thanks to technology, it's only a matter of time before resources are so easy to come by and manufacture into needed things that the supply and demand model will be obsolete.

I suspect that within 100 years, if not sooner, manual labor will be a thing of the past...unless you're an artist or something. Robots will be able to do virtually everything..and better than humans are capable of.

The only people who will still need to have jobs are engineers and maybe technicians, but even then, eventually robots will be able to repair themselves so maybe not even technicians will be needed. Hell, given enough time, nurses and many health care jobs won't be needed anymore because basic healthcare could be delegated to robots.

It's just a matter of time. We're already starting to see the effects of automation in the workforce, we just don't need as many people to get things done. Hell even technical jobs aren't safe because as computers get better and better, They'll be able to analyze certain things better than humans.

The question just becomes what do you do about it? A whole new economic model will be needed. Because we'll eventually be living in the world where unless you're in the academic top tier, you're just not going to be needed in the workforce. At the same time, again, because of technology, we're going to have the ability to feed and clothe AND shelter you for a minimal amount of effort so the prospect of being able to being born, living, and dying without ever NEEDING to work is a real possibility in the not so distant future.

Isn't that what you would call...a utopia? You want freedom? there it is. You'll be able to spend your time doing what you WANT to do instead of what you HAVE to do just to survive. I suspect at some point, there will have to be SOME procreation laws put into place to keep the population growth in check. But hell, even that won't be so bad once we have the ability to colonize other planets.

People will still work, they'll just do it because they want to do it, but they'll be jobs where they're not a necessity or anything. even in an age where a replicator can make all your food, people will still want to cook, or do other artisan style jobs.

But hey, we'll still need defense, gotta blow up or deflect any stray asteroid that comes near us. or just send a bunch of robots up to mine the rock to smitherines so we can use the resources to build our mighty space fleet and our other grand works That Dyson Sphere won't build itself after all

In other words, the human race....has won. isn't that a good thing?

No, "we" don't need to figure out how to employ 45% of the workforce. Each individual can and will look to his own work opportunities and how to expand, or meet those opportunities. Global central planners need not apply.

I wrote an interesting paper in college (got an A) about the 'fallacy of the intrinsic value of human life', which in short said because 'value' is a capitalism term derived from a demand/supply function where any ratio <1 lowers value and anything below a certain point makes the 'value' a negative, or said another way when the supply becomes so much greater than the demand, having more of the thing has a negative value (costs more than it's 'worth'), and we met that criteria for humans at least 4 billion people ago, if not far more than that, in my opinion. (I understand I'm not normal) That's not to say there isn't potential value, just that there's a 'glut' in the 'market' so bad that more people have no current positive 'value'.
(It's all an exercise to point out that using economics terms for people (or other things with 'intrinsic value') doesn't work in the way expected)

Hey, more people = more Videos to sift and more Sifters !!!

WIN ! WIN !

VideoSift, a prototype for a future without Scarcity.

Ahhh yes, the Culture / Star Trek / super happy awesome future ending.

It's possible this may come to pass. I'd love to think that we may even see the beginnings of it in my lifetime.

The way I look at it, there are essentially two issues that need solving.

1: population growth needs to actually reverse. Ideally over the next few generations, the population would drop by a few billion. (note for the idiots in the crowd, I'm not talking about genocide or some draconian laws, I mean simply that people will choose to have less kids and the population will drop naturally).

2: energy. We need fusion. There are no two ways about it. We either develop fusion or we abandon our energy rich lives (cars, electronics, media, home appliances, etc)

Both of these are tough tasks, but with enough political will and some ingenuity, they are not insurmountable.

I am simply not that optimistic that we as a species can get our shit together enough to see this come to pass. Collectively, we can pretty terrible at adapting to change... just look at the media or transport industries for an example.

Any new economic model will meet with extreme resistance.

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