As more and larger industries become automated we will have all the free time we can handle. What we do as a society today will determine whether that free time is spent pursuing our personal interests, or fighting over the last scraps of a dying planet.
Agreed. I also believe we should all stop showing up for work until we are guaranteed health care, a living wage, and reasonable housing prices. We shouldn’t contribute to system that works against us.
I wish this were true, but frankly I don’t buy it. In the last 50 years, thanks to automation and technology - productivity has nearly doubled, and yet people have to work more than ever to make ends meet or buy a home. Automation just means that the ultra rich can produce more with the same workforce. The global economy is built on the idea that GDP has to be constantly growing, and the more growth the better. Why let perfectly good workers sit idle when they could be making you more money?
Some industries get fully (or mostly) automated, sure and jobs dissapear from those industries, but new ones always pop up so that the folks at the top can continue profiting off the labor of those at the bottom. You think all the folks who used to have job titles like “Calculator” just retired at the age of 30 and enjoyed not having to work anymore? Nah, they were just forced to take new (often shittier, lower paying) jobs.
When an individual company looks to increase profit margins they can either increase the price of their product or reduce the cost it takes to produce it. For the vast majority of companies the primary cost for their product is labor. Employees require a living wage, health care, paid time off, and also create additional costs like payroll taxes and an entire HR department.
With automation you have a high initial cost, but it pays out exponentially over time. Sure you still have software costs, repairs, retrofits, and all that goes into maintaining your typically modern assembly line, but you don’t have to worry about your robots suing you for sexual harassment or wrongful termination. You don’t have to worry about busting unions or hazardous working conditions. You can fire your entire HR and payroll departments, too, which is even better for the bottom line.
Because it’s so financially appealing to so many industries to cut out human labor, I consider it an inevitability. The rich will continue to do what’s best for themselves and they don’t really care if the rest of us all die off from starvation or war.
Now, that’s not to say that it will all happen over night. Over the next half century it will likely be as you say where jobs just get more and more concentrated as they squeeze every dollar they can from each individual employee, but if you look far enough into the future we will all become unemployable. And when horses became unemployable, we didn’t set aside 100 acres for them to live their best lives in. We made glue.
right - but you’re looking at it from a single-company perspective.
Individual companies will absolutely cut their work force wherever they can when automation makes it possible. My point is that new industries spring up to fill the vacuum. Things like instacart, Uber, and Doordash didn’t exist in 2005, neither did a myriad of other industries. Where there is unemployment, there is profit to be made in exploiting their labor (which is often cheap, thanks to the fact that they just got automated out of their niche), and as a capatilist society there will always be someone willing to make that profit.
they don’t really care if the rest of us all die off from starvation or war.
Not from a moral perspective, no - but from a pragmatic perspective they absolutely do. If 90% of the workforce was suddenly laid off and left to starve, what do you actually think would happen? That we’d all just sit at home and quietly die? Ask the french royalty what happens when it’s population realizes that it’s main hope to not starve to death is to dismantle the existing system and start over.
The rich of today absolutely squeeze the shit out of the working class for every penny they can - but not to the point where most are actually immediately concerned with starvation. It’s one thing to not be able to afford a home, need roomates, and to have to budget carefully to make ends meet (as is the case today), it’s another entirely to have significant portions of the population be told that there is no job for them, and likely never will be again.
But all that is mostly besides the point anyways, because until literally every possible human job is completely automated, there will always be profit in exploiting labor. And there’s only profit to be had in any case if there are people with money to buy things. If 99% of jobs are automated - that just means that for any given population of workers, they’ll be able to produce 100x more goods for the same (or less) pay. A Capitalist society is never going to say “that’s ok - we have enough productivity”, they’ll just scale up and make even more money
An interesting note about those new industries you mentioned: they’re all contractors. When people talk about working for Uber or door dash they typically aren’t saying ‘this is what I want to do for the rest of my life’, it’s more of a holdover until something better comes along. As these individual companies begin the process of automation it may be that contract work is what most of end up doing. Once most of us are contractors it will become a supply and demand situation where we all seek to underbid one another in order to feed ourselves and our families. We would still be working, but it would be like fighting over scraps.
If 90% of the workforce was suddenly laid off and left to starve, what do you actually think would happen? That we’d all just sit at home and quietly die? Ask the french royalty what happens when it’s population realizes that it’s main hope to not starve to death is to dismantle the existing system and start over.
You’re right, of course, but I doubt that it would happen suddenly. The process of automating 90% of the work force would likely take decades and be a long, slow process with a lot of half measures a long the way to appease the masses, much like we experience today. I imagine full-time work will be redefined to fewer hours and eventually we will need something like UBI to supplement us and drive the economy. Tax burdens will likely shift to corporations in order to keep the government running as human labor will slowly phase out.
And there’s only profit to be had in any case if there are people with money to buy things.
I think that this is the crux of the argument. As automation becomes cheaper than human labor, human labor becomes intrinsically less valuable. This means that any paid work will simply pay less, which gives the lower classes even less purchasing power. Wealth concentration will continue to worsen and the middle class will evaporate. If capitalism continues, it is at this point industry and economy will revolve primarily around the needs of the rich. The people will still be a consideration, of course, but more of a liability than an exploitable resource. A world war ending in nuclear holocaust would likely solve that particular problem, but I’m hopeful that capitalism will be abandoned before it comes to that.
“Virtue through suffering” is an interesting take on modern labor. I agree with most of what is posited in the wiki article you posted, but the book was written pre-pandemic and I think that our perspective on our own labor has changed significantly over the past couple of years. Gen Z in particular doesn’t seem to value pointless labor the way the Boomers do and I know many millennials would rather ‘cram and slack’ than do the 9-5 grind.
With the rise of automation our perspective will likely continue to change. I’m hopeful that we will go through a sort of Renaissance era where humans no longer tie their self worth to their labor and we can begin to view industry in terms of providing need rather than creating profit.
We’ll there was that time Kublai Khan tried to invade Japan with the largest amphibious assault in history (until D-day) and got absolutely wrecked by a typhoon.
Then tried again a few years later, with an even larger force, and got wrecked by another typhoon.
A pair of high fidelity earplugs (aka concert earplugs or filtering earplugs). You can get a good non-custom pair for $15–$40, and that’ll work well for the average person for a long time.
They’re excellent for live music, airplanes, and anytime you want the world to be quieter but still need to be able to understand speech. And for music specifically, they can bring the volume level down just enough to be safe without muffling the sound like traditional foam earplugs do. Protect your hearing, kids!
Seriously, PROTECT YOUR FUCKING HEARING. I was young and stupid (now I’m no longer young) and went to way too many raves, gigs etc. without any sort of hearing protection, and now I have a nice constant background track of EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and can’t hear higher frequencies worth shit
Right ear went to working in a call centre. Left ear seems to be trying to decide if it’s going to recover or not from some unaware idiot in Tesco suddenly walking up and slamming his stock cart shut right next to me. I really hope I don’t end up with stereo EEEEEEEEEEEEE but it feels like an inevitable matter of time at this point. There goes the left one again…
I’m no earplug connoisseur, but I’ve been using Westone’s WM16 for smaller venues, and Etymotic Research’s ER20XS dual-flange for louder situations. I haven’t tried much else, but these work well for me. I’ve also heard great things about Earasers, Eargasm, and Hearos.
Earasers are a bit more expensive and appear to have a unique ergonomic eartip. iirc you can get them for $40 elsewhere, maybe Amazon. I’ve read that Earasers’ “-19dB Peak” model has a very slight sound reduction, so I’d probably opt for their middle “European Standard” model. On the other end of the price spectrum, Hearos is particularly inexpensive at a glance. Idk anything about specific models.
Some brands have multiple types of earplugs (e.g. for music, shooting, construction work), so make sure you’re getting one designed for music or “high-fidelity” or something like that. Any of the “good” brands are probably going to work just fine. (Read the reviews if you’re unsure.) Most brands seem to include multiple eartip sizes in the package so you can choose the right fit.
Beyond that, there is some element of personal preference. For example, I first tried Etymotic’s classic triple-flange version and didn’t like how deep they stuck into my ears. It felt invasive. But the dual-flange model feels great for me.
And finally, there are different options for how much attenuation (noise reduction) you want. Like I mentioned, my “-16dB average attenuation” earplugs feel good for small/medium venues (a backroom venue of a bar, maybe a theater). For a larger venue (arena or stadium, or even just a really loud loud theater) you’d definitely want more significant average attenuation, probably in the low-to-mid twenties.
Most earplugs will be confusingly marketed with multiple attenuation values. One will be an official NRR value, which is apparently required but controversial, and the other(s) will be the average and/or peak decibel reduction “when the product is used correctly” as reported by the manufacturer. It seems people don’t talk about the NRR as often. But it’s fun that they’ve made it more complicated for us to compare products.
I should also mention that if you’re a performing musician or hardcore concert-goer, you may consider springing for custom-molded earplugs, which are way pricier. I haven’t made that upgrade yet, but everyone who does seems to think it’s life-changing.
I know it’s way more expensive, but the last gig I went to, I used my AirPods Pro in transparency mode, and it reduced the sound down from an insane ~110db to peaks of 90! Definitely worth protecting your ears.
Yeah, I can’t stand losing the high frequencies and overall feel of the music with “musician’s” earplugs. How anyone other than a drummer plays with them and is satisfied is beyond me. I have some Etymotics just sitting here.
Even regular earplugs at a loud concert work amazingly well for me. I can still hear conversation (people yelling over the music) but the deafening volume of the concert is brought down to acceptable levels.
I don’t understand why concerts are so loud. They’re just…so, so fucking loud…
I agree that is clearly broken and overused in many games but if we were able to actually control the walking speed on PC with a keyboard similar to what is possible with a controller, it would probably be more bearable tbh.
For all the annoyance, a silver lining is that lemmy.world is testing lemmy at a relatively high scale lemmy doesn’t see anywhere else and so aiding in the development of the software and architectural guidelines for instance management.
I graduated with a BS in electrical engineering in May of this year. We used Matlab in multiple courses in the program. We were encouraged to purchase the student version of Matlab. However, all three professors in the program were 100% ok with students using Octave or whatever software you wanted, as long as the work got done.
It could also be that some admin or department chair was getting some form of kickback for implementing Matlab, and required subordinate department professors to include it in their curriculum/syllabus. Just look at how Pearson shoehorned their garbage software into upper education, to the point where students are required to pay $100+ per classjust to complete homework, and it’s no secret that administrators and department chairs receive kickbacks for it.
Even though I’m generally for open-source software, I know that in heavy duty use, highly niche specialisations, and in industries in general it’s difficult to find equally competent software. That’s why I put emphasize on my specific situation, where it’s an introductory course. Heck, we ended up doing what could be done in Python anyway.
I dont think that is the case. Left leaning people are just much less accepting of authority, so there are more likely to move of of reddit. right leaning people also tend to be more conservative, so they are more likely to stay on there old platforms.
I didn’t follow mask mandates because I was required to or told to by any authority. I did it because it was the right thing to do based on the science, and still is (which is why I still mask up in enclosed or busy spaces).
If you’re old enough to remember when seat belt laws started/became more prevalent, you’ll remember the right-leaning folks were all up in arms because “muh freedom to do what I want if it doesn’t hurt anyone else” not realizing (or not caring about) the effect their choices had on their children. While center/left leaning people were just like “I already wear it because it’s the smart thing to do”.
I don’t use a mask currently, but if transmission levels of the flu or COVID were notably above average in my city I absolutely would wear one indoors. I think with really busy indoor places I’d just find something else entirely. I don’t know how I was ever okay with level of crowd density.
No, it’s just a matter of who they accept as legitimate “authority”.
If the Dumbass-in-Chief, their ministers, and their news had all told them to wear masks, they absolutely would have, but every single one of their primary authority sources were pulling in different directions and they don’t accept any “liberal” sources as legitimate authority. You can see it at a much smaller scale by looking at Church congregation sizes where some ministries focused on trying to protect their elderly and infirm members and those who didn’t.
Conservatives who had pastors who told them to wear masks were a LOT more likely to do so than ones who were getting mixed messaging.
My crazy fundie paternal aunt told me the only reason Trump said to get vaccinated was because he was “forced” to say it, and that she does not believe, to this day, he ever got vaccinated or that he even ever got Covid.
People on the “right” are vastly more accepting of authority than people on the left. For example, the people who didn’t wear masks were willing to die because Tucker (or whichever right-wing shitgoblin they listen to) told them to. It wasn’t some sort of anti-authoritarian expression, it was pure authoritarianism.
If we’re talking about acceptance of authority, right leaning folks are less likely to do so
Right-wingers love authority, especially if it’s the kind they approve of. It’s literally part of the ideology. A lot of them didn’t wear masks because the right-wing grifters (like Tucker) told them not too.
Wearing masks during the pandemic was just smart, common sense and had nothing to do with authority, in spite of the right-wingers trying to make it seem like it was.
There have been many right-wing exodus from reddit over the years. All of them have centered around a perceived “free speech” issue, and they have always flocked to the most promising alternatives (e.g. Voat). Obviously Lemmy with its origins was never seen as particularly appealing for that crowd. This time the issue just happened to touch the left-leaning part more.
Yeah, there’s that one shitty instance pretty much everyone defederated from a week or two ago.
It’s actually one of the oldest instances, over a year old. Because the worst far right trolls that got ip banned from reddit came here when they couldn’t make a new account on reddit.
Knock on wood, but Lemmy’s grown to the point now that it almost completely replaces Reddit for me. The only reason I still stop by Reddit is for more niche fandoms that haven’t taken off here quite yet.
I think it’s a different political dimension entirely isn’t it? You have left vs right economics, and then authoritarian vs libertarian governance. I don’t buy into that stupid political compass, but the axes do seem accurate.
Yup. A quick tap of the horn or double tap is fine. Even a 1 second blast. Once we get into 2 seconds blast territory, it transitions to rude, with 3+ seconds going up linearly on the deranged jackass scale
I saw some video of an infuriatingly positive and giggly guy mod his horn this way. To add insult to injury iirc (which is about 50/50 after so many years) he used an arduino to do it. Video got a gazillion likes and many supporting comments. It unexpectadly became the last straw before deleting my facebook account.
The only polite way is to lay on the horn non-stop while following them to their destination (so they know you’re there), when they stop, get out, approach them as quickly as possible (to be respectful of their time) to thank them for going
It’s hard to get an exact number but you can extrapolate based on the growth of Lemmy in the last few weeks. While not record-breaking, it is quite an impressive growth.
Also note that not everyone who left Reddit came to Lemmy. There is also Kbin, Tildes and alternative. Some never really left at all.
I think the real damage done to Reddit (ultimately by themselves) is showing the world that there are real alternatives (even if a bit rough around the edges). They are materializing and growing as threats and if Reddit doesn’t step up their game, they could be in some real trouble.
The other possibility is that some other company might step up and build a Reddit clone, much like what Meta’s Threads is to Twitter, once they see that there is blood in the water and a potential to displace Reddit as the “frontpage of the Internet”. Heck, even Threads is built on the Fediverse, maybe a bigcorp-backed Reddit clone might be as well.
Reddit will mess up again, and when they do, those fresh batch of refugees will find plenty of alternatives to choose from thanks to the current batch of refugees accelerating developments of various Reddit alternatives.
Yep, 100% agree. Reddit’s biggest mistake this time is mishandling PR so bad that they basically gave Lemmy, kBin etc a seat at the table for free. And with the poor management at the helm, it’s going to be a pattern of bad behaviors and Reddit is bound to mess up again.
Yes, it’s a positive feedback loop - people leave, start building alternatives, next round of leavers find the alternatives and start adding to it, next round find the alternatives are actually quite attractive, etc, etc.
In the end it’ll just be karma grinders and those who value convenience over pretty much anything else.
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