Social and political issues

[GirlySports]

Originally Posted by AltaGuy

This aspect of automation is true - automation increases surplus.

However, what happened during the major first wave of automation during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was that the surplus accumulated led to massive increases in wealth disparity. Capital accumulated at the top until the 1920s at a level not seen again until, well, very recently.

The Great Depression, massive government intervention, and WWII combined had enough of a disruptive effect to redistribute wealth and grow a middle class - which may have been an unlikely fluke of history, as the brief decades between 1950 and 1990 were the only time in human history that a middle class has developed, and the other millennia of human existence see massive wealth disparity as the norm. (Even then, the middle class only extended to Western nations, of course.)

But: inequality is destabilizing. Communist or socialist revolution, for instance, sure made a lot of sense to a lot of people when social mobility was zero and inequality pervasive before the Depression and WWII. Indeed, much of the horror of the two World Wars, the Communist Revolutions in the USSR and China, the rise of militant nationalism (etc etc) can be attributed in large part to inequality as a primary motivating factor.

The private sector and private wealth - if they want to keep it and keep the rule of law protecting property rights - will need to play ball with the government in some fashion to redistribute wealth. Not sure if this is UBI or not, but high numbers of unemployed or underemployed people don't lead to good things historically.

I understand people who had a social mobility of zero ended up supporting communism. Problem was it just made everyone's social mobility zero.

[dobbles]

Was reading that example of not being able to automate a plumber and/or the support services related to that job... One bit of anecdotal info regarding automation and how smart it already is...

6 or 7 years ago I got a job as a business analyst at a large insurance company. Our department wrote the rules that allowed the company to automatically process all correspondence between homeowners and their mortgage lenders. Instead of having an army of workers that had to read, file, and respond to changes, the computer software the company developed was able to automate that process. It could read and interpret the documents that were sent and then act accordingly. If there were documents it couldn't understand those were still processed by humans. But the system generally handled 90% of the workload. My recollection is the computer had a lower error rate than human workers as well.

The reason I bring it up, is I feel many in this thread don't realize that back office functions already. This was a non silicon valley company years ago. Heck, they hadn't even managed to upgrade computers off of Windows XP, but they had this system in place as it was that important to them. I can only imagine that in the years since things have gotten even more automated.

Automation is no longer just about machines that repeat simple tasks. Computers can already handle the formerly complex things that we assume we need humans for. But at some point there are just not enough jobs that need humans to do, so no amount of retraining can prepare you for not being needed at all. That's why discussions like UBI need to happen.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by GGG

I'm not sure what you are asking here when you say sole contributing factor?

I’m asking how the surplus created from job losses, assuming you’re referring to a surplus in capital, was previously split between wages, profits and lower prices. The surplus as I see it would result from the savings in wages alone. Those savings would then contribute to both increased profits and creating greater capacity for maintaining lower prices but I don’t see how you’re coming to the conclusion that it’s the other way around where either of those things are contributing to the surplus. They will both benefit from this surplus, but they don’t contribute to it.

[you&me]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

...

I've been thinking one of the ways the corporate world may prime the pump to keep the wheels spinning is to subsidize their own customers in exchange for market share. A person could sign a contract with Amazon or Walmart or some other retailer (or maybe a package of aligned sellers) in exchange for steep discounts in price. No idea how feasible that would be, but it's just an example of how consumer capitalism will need to evolve dramatically to succeed in a world where only highly skilled labour has value and only the highly skilled have money.

I've attended several tech conferences and 'talks' where that exact model has been discussed and is actively being developed. The fast food wars depicted in in Judge Dredd are nigh

[GirlySports]

when you go to Mcdonalds do you order through the cashier or the touch-machine?

The cashier seems faster to me.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by you&me

I've attended several tech conferences and 'talks' where that exact model has been discussed and is actively being developed. The fast food wars depicted in in Judge Dredd are nigh

Cool. Sounds like I better get cracking on that dystopian SF novel I've been working on before all my ideas are no longer fiction.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Cool. Sounds like I better get cracking on that dystopian SF novel I've been working on before all my ideas are no longer fiction.

Or before a computer writes that novel first.

[GGG]

Originally Posted by iggy_oi

I’m asking how the surplus created from job losses, assuming you’re referring to a surplus in capital, was previously split between wages, profits and lower prices. The surplus as I see it would result from the savings in wages alone. Those savings would then contribute to both increased profits and creating greater capacity for maintaining lower prices but I don’t see how you’re coming to the conclusion that it’s the other way around where either of those things are contributing to the surplus. They will both benefit from this surplus, but they don’t contribute to it.

I think I agree with you. The surplus is the savings in wages. What you do with that Increased Profits, increased wages, Increased Taxation, or lower prices is the societal decision that needs to be made.

If 100% of that surplus was used to cover job losses it would fund itself though provide no incentive for automation. Essentially a tax on automation giving money to the poor is not inflationary because the total money in the system remains constant.

[RichKlit]

Very interesting discussion! Lots of food for thought!! Great job to all you smarty pants!

[CliffFletcher]

A good article this weekend in the Guardian, of all places, laying out in detail (and backed by research) the self-defeating folly of the American left's program of identity politics.

Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left

Once the other party becomes an enemy rather than an opponent, winning becomes more important than the common good and compromise becomes an anathema. Such situations also promote emotional rather than rational evaluations of policies and evidence. Making matters worse, social scientists consistently find that the most committed partisans, those who are the angriest and have the most negative feelings towards out-groups, are the most politically engaged.

What does all this mean for those who oppose Trump and want to fight the dangerous trends his presidency has unleashed?

The short-term goal must be winning elections, and this means not helping Trump rile up his base by activating their sense of “threat” and inflaming the grievances and anger that lead them to rally around him. This will require avoiding the type of “identity politics” that stresses differences and creates a sense of “zero-sum” competition between groups and instead emphasizing common values and interests...

...More specifically, research has linked cross-cutting cleavages with toleration, moderation and conflict prevention. This too has implications for contemporary debates about “identity politics”. Perhaps ironically, identity politics is a both more powerful and efficacious for Republicans (and rightwing populists more generally) than it is for Democrats, since the former are more homogeneous.

As long, therefore, as politics is a fight between clearly bounded identity groups, appeals and threats to group identity will benefit Republicans more than Democrats, which is presumably why Steve Bannon infamously remarked that he couldn’t “get enough” of the left’s “race-identity politics”. “The longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em ... I want them to talk about race and identity … every day.”

In addition, Americans are more divided socially than they are on the issues; there is significant agreement even on controversial topics like abortion, gun control, immigration and economic policy. Promoting cross-cutting cleavages and diminishing social divisions might therefore help productive policymaking actually occur.

Is our ultimate goal ensuring the compatibility of diversity and democracy? Then promoting the overlapping interests and identifications that enable citizens to become more comfortable with difference and thus more tolerant and trusting, is absolutely necessary.

- Sheri Berman, the Guardian

[2Stonedbirds]

Was the Jordan Peterson thread removed?
Here's CBCs hit piece errr clever take on how to get a wider range of opinion and diversity on campus. By removing/ignoring those with a difference of opinion of course! Bravo CBC on the contradictory article, well done.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...nius-1.4745486

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by 2Stonedbirds

Was the Jordan Peterson thread removed?
Here's CBCs hit piece errr clever take on how to get a wider range of opinion and diversity on campus. By removing/ignoring those with a difference of opinion of course! Bravo CBC on the contradictory article, well done.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manit...nius-1.4745486

The thread's name was changed to the Intellectual Dark Web to cast a wider net.

https://forum.calgarypuck.com/showth...166570&page=68

[Ashasx]

"Peterson has gained notoriety through his open hostility toward trans rights and feminism."

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by GirlySports

when you go to Mcdonalds do you order through the cashier or the touch-machine?

The cashier seems faster to me.

surprisingly the machine has always been faster for me, and I've never gotten a screwed up order from the machine.


I go to the machine, tap some buttons, pay for it, grab my food and I'm good.


Some day soon the entire McDonalds will be automated and there will be one employee or two to do spot checks on food to ensure quality and keep the place clean.

[Lanny_McDonald]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

A good article this weekend in the Guardian, of all places, laying out in detail (and backed by research) the self-defeating folly of the American left's program of identity politics.

Why identity politics benefits the right more than the left

This "identity politics and labeling" stuff happens on both sides, they just do it in different ways and do so in ways that make the appeals seem more effective depending on the audience. The psychology behind this is pretty complex, but can also be distilled down to bite sized concepts for people to follow. Basically, this boils down to framing. The right is extremely good at framing, because those who ascribe to that ideology are driven by simplistic (mostly binary) choices and will align easily behind messages framed in this way. The left is extremely poor at framing because their take a much more complex and nuanced approach to processing information, both before message formation and then during interpretation.

I will agree that the right does benefit more because the messages that appeal to them are very simplistic in narrative, and their consumers are more likely to accept the message if framed properly. We see this with the quick adoption of Trump as the standard bearer for the conservative cause. Trump is the antithesis of the archetype long held as the standard for conservatives, being more like someone they would reject in the past for all of his "sins." But the RW has managed to spin Trump as a solution to the long held anxieties of these people, making them accept his weaknesses, so long as he addresses their immediate fears. The RW has had to compromise their core principles to accept Trump, but they have readily done so because of the message design, many of which rely on these supposed identity politics conservatives hate.

The left, OTOH, sucks at narrative development and, worse, finding the core values that will activate people's emotions to get behind their cause. They continue to work on complex messages and flood the consumer with inconsistent information which prevents their target from adopting the narrative. The left is horrible at simple, but that is the rub. The problems facing us are anything but simple and require some level of complexity and nuance to understand. These issues require more information, not less. But that is not the left's biggest problem. Too much information can be handled, so long as it is presented consistently.

This is where the battle is won and lost. Message discipline is the key to any of these campaigns. Conservatives have a simple message and they maintain message discipline to the nth degree. This is their strength and always has been. Liberals have always been poor with message development, even when many of the core values they are pushing align with that of the vast majority, and even worse with message discipline. The differences between Sanders and Clinton were not that massive, but it was enough to make the narratives inconsistent and confuse consumers. The DNC should have worked with both candidates (like the RNC does with everyone in their party) and demanded message consistency and discipline. This was a major failing and why the libs lost. The lib message was a mess and continues to be a mess, even though identity politics rages on throughout all campaigns.

[Flash Walken]

Populism is the identity politics of white people.

[CliffFletcher]

Good thing we don't have to pick one kind of identity politics or other - we can reject them all. As recently as 10 years ago our politics weren't obsessed with this ####. But social media seems to act as a kind of supercharger to the most primitive parts of our brains, including the part that thinks aping the worst traits of our enemies is a winning strategy.

The far right doesn't care if politics and government are rendered toxic and ineffective. They think government is bad regardless. But you'd think people whose program requires collective public and government effort might want to think about how they're going to actually reach popular agreement on important policies. Casting politics as a struggle between immutable group identities of race and gender is reckless folly if your policies require broad support. You couldn't dream up a more effective way to hamstring egalitarian politics if you tried.

[Red Slinger]

I think there's a place for identity politics but the issue with the current landscape is that they are overused. The civil rights, suffragette and gay rights movements all relied on identity politics. These movements were all predicated on the notion that basic rights were being withheld due to the identity of these groups. Many of the identity politics we see today are further down the spectrum of withheld rights and instead are inching closer towards arguing about luxuries with the same importance as previous identity politics argued about rights. While doing so these luxury rights activists are minimizing the more important issues by treating them with the same zeal. I suppose it's the next natural step though: once everyone has their basic human rights you move on to fight for the next rung of "rights". Not that we're there quite yet.

[blankall]

The major problem with identity politics is that it's not inclusive and ignores the major impact of social class. It's one thing to ask actual privileged people to think about their position in life and compromise their rights to help less privileged people. It's quite another thing to ask the same of the poor working classes.

You basically have a situation where poor working class people are excluded from the left's vision of society, and then people act shocked when they end up supporting populist candidates. Throw in some tax cuts to the rich and some lip service to the evangelicals, and you have a sure fire way to ensure a populist conservative win in any election.

The focus should be on equity and social mobility. There is some place for identity politics within that, as certain groups do feel the effects of multi-generational poverty more than others, for example indigenous people and the descendants of slaves. However, you can't operate with strict rules based on gender/race and need to look at actual experiences when forming social policy.

[CliffFletcher]

I don't regard the rights revolution of the 20th century as an identity politics movement. Traditional conservatism treated people differently based on their gender, race, and sexual orientation. The post-war liberal movement was a move towards regarding people people as individuals, and challenging the notion that citizens should be treated as members of groups. Gay marriage was the last barrier knocked down by liberalism, the last case of institutional treatment of individuals differently based on immutable group identity.

The identity politics of the left today is a fundamentally different and fundamentally illiberal movement. It rests of the credo that systemic inequality and oppression are so systemic and so intransigent that treating people as individuals is ineffective. That the Western Patriarchy has fostered such a powerful hierarchy that even without formal barriers its privileges are impossible to overcome. So it's hopeless to rely on liberalism.

The ideologues driving the bus of identarian leftist politics were never liberal to begin with. Much of the rest of the left, captured by tribalism or going along complacently out of vague feelings of guilt or compassion, have abandoned liberalism without even realizing it.