patrick.net

gsr says

You guys get a lot of help from the government. So you have already created a society of two groups of people: super rich people controlling the government, and super poor people perpetually under welfare.

I am sure that is the best way to survive and prosper, as it has been proven in the history.

The survival of any safety net, monopolistic or otherwise, depends on productivity of middle class. Without productivity, everything falls. Do you even realize who build and design machines?

Do you really believe machines and all consumer products just lie on earth, and it is the job of the government to dole out to the populace?

I am not sure what kind fund you are running. I am sure as hell won't put any money there.

I was once an engineer. Granted, it feels like another lifetime but starting a few years ago.... I understand this, there's a quantum world of difference between those who make things (engineers, machinist, architects, etc) and the money changers (banking, trading, DC/insiders, etc).

The people with real money, basically some of our clients, do not living in the world occupied by the middle class. They can do pretty much, whatever they want, & whenever they want. And second, we only solicit their money, not that of the general public, and thus provide 'em with some 'alpha', as a counter balance to their standard portfolio of private equity, commercial businesses, etc. This isn't some Vanguard index fund and isn't for public consumption.

With that said, I can see clearly, where our society is going. There's a drive towards full automation & during this drive, the ownership classes do not care about the headcount of their corporations. Therefore, the concept of caring for the middle class is more political bantering than anything else by our elected buffoons. If the govt doesn't figure out how to get all the people, dispelled by automation, into some sort of social sponsorship, then the remaining DCers, traders, salesmen, and bankers will need RoboCop bodyguards for the avalanche of homeless ppl, out there and on the loose.

I didn't create the world around me but now that I've arrived, I'm gravely concerned about the decades ahead.

gsr says

New Renter says

My brother in law had a mid 90's Mercedes. Also a horrible POS.

Are you really that dense to compare Mercerdes and BMW with Trabant?

Perhaps a link to another time magazine article will help you about that.

Google is your friend.

Just tell this to a German, and he/she will laugh at you. Better yet, tell that to a former east German.

Did you even read my post? My point was even BMW and Mercedes - icons of supposed GERMAN super wonder engineering sometimes make crappy cars. I could include a few Porsches, VWs and Audis as well if you like.

But OK, lets do a comparison of apples to apples. Lets look at Trabant to some of its western contemporaries:

East Germany - Trabant:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabant_601

West Germany - Auto Union (Audi):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto_Union_1000

Sweden - Saab:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saab_96

(The latter is an example of a car made by a nearly country whose industry was NOT devastated by war.)

Three companies, two western one communist, two countries rebuilding after a devastating war one untouched yet they all made similar vehicles.

In 2008, Time magazine rated the Trabant as one of the 50 worst cars ever made.[4] In the West, much has been written about the Trabant, mostly negative. Emphasis was placed on the shortcomings of the Trabant, rather than its good points, such as that it could be easily fixed with duct tape. However, many of the former owners of the Trabant still emphasize advantages such as high capacity—the Trabant being able to carry over 1000 kg of cargo.

In 1997, the Trabant was celebrated for passing the "Elchtest" ("moose test"), a 60 km/h (37 mph) swerve manoeuvre slalom, without toppling over like the Mercedes-Benz W168 (1997 A-class) infamously did. A newspaper from Thuringia had a headline saying "Come and get us, moose! Trabi passes A-Class killer test".[19]

It had its good points too.

To gsr, Dan, and others, part of the reason why I'm posting here is that I'm experiencing a sort of survivor's guilt. Yeah, I'm aware that STEM careers (most applied sciences/engineering areas. not just software & related services) have been decimated by corporate America and that the middle class is being continually eroded.

Yet, unlike everyone else, I've survived because a few friends and I have figured out how to get some ppl to make money, simply by sloshing money around between boundary conditions. And as a result of that bogus work, my mortgage is paid off and in a couple of years, I may never have to worry about money, ever again, as I live simply and don't have a profligate lifestyle. Does it make me feel good that in a few short decades that much of the American middle class will be living on skid row, while a few persons like myself [ who made it during the final Gilded Age ] will have Auto-matron sentries posted outside our houses to prevent break ins? No, that doesn't give me a warm and fuzzy.

Rin says

And given the 5-6K of present-time flying drones, with some ~10% having some expert systems guidance, I'd say that we're not too far away from a Skynet future in that dept either.

I will have to rewatch that movie. I think I have the first one on DVD. I really do not recall it from the first Terminator movie.

But it's on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skynet_%28Terminator%29

Skynet is a fictional, self-aware artificial intelligence system which features centrally in the Terminator franchise and serves as the franchise's main antagonist. Scarcely depicted visually in any of the Terminator media, Skynet's operations are almost exclusively performed by war-machines, cyborgs (usually a Terminator), and other computer systems, with its ultimate goal the extinction of the human race.

Obligatory:

I'm not sure fembots were C3PO's type...

Another 'bot posting.

http://patrick.net/?p=1225054

Let's stick to one robot thread, the one which discusses the outcomes, and not let the posts scatter around.

A panel agrees with a guaranteed income / widespread welfare:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/KOoHRircmhM

curious2 says

Even Max Headroom had human helpers.

Bwahahaha.

Rin says

I didn't create the world around me but now that I've arrived, I'm gravely concerned about the decades ahead.

But the Baby Boomers say it's all our fault for not working hard enough. You know, the usual far-right drivel.

The Space age the Jet age the (blah blah blah) age.

This wont end any different. At first in the 50's and 60's both of those concepts were over thought.
Folks imagined jet engines on ever car, a personal jet engine back pack. Then the space age, we were all supposed to be living on Jupiter Terraces by now. A Space Station condominium in Space.
What we got in reality was far more practical. But nothing nobody prognosticated would really happen correctly, even though equally fantastic.

.

More on this subject ...

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/robots-artificial-intelligence-jobs-automation