So, what do you think about basic income?

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:15 am

erik wrote:.htm, not .html

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

I think my favorite part is where people get fired and blacklisted forever for taking longer than the average time to perform a task. Because you know, that totally doesn't result in 100% unemployment in two days.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:53 am

erik wrote:.htm, not .html

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Ahh, so that's where the original l from url= went to. Fixed.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 5:55 am

The story definitely had some silly stuff like that, but I still enjoyed it. Hardly perfect, but the story only exists as a prologue to his proposed solution to mechanization.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 1:57 pm

Think about a normal fast food restaurant. A group of employees worked at the store, typically 50 people in a normal restaurant

I call bullshit right there.

And a google search backs me up: http://www.statista.com/statistics/1966 ... ince-2002/

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:41 pm

Just wait until you get to the point where image recognition using radar is trivial but image recognition using light requires a fundamentally different chip architecture.

I mean they don't actually take away from the basic point of the piece, but there are a lot of pretty painful errors. Also the dialogue hurts. But those aren't why the story was linked in this thread, so

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 3:52 pm

Kaelik wrote:
erik wrote:.htm, not .html

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I think my favorite part is where people get fired and blacklisted forever for taking longer than the average time to perform a task. Because you know, that totally doesn't result in 100% unemployment in two days.

Actually you'd fire about 50% of the workers right now and then more 50% of the remaining workforce once the new averages were computed. Keep repeating this process forever and you'll end with just one employee.

One thing that I find strange in these predictions about job market collapse and masses getting just minimum wage is that mysteriously somebody always keeps buying burgers enough for the business to turn a nice profit. In reality, a depressed job market should result in less people consuming and widespread losses in businesses like fast-food joints.

rampaging-poet · Post by **rampaging-poet** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:00 pm

I once read a short story where businesses solved that problem by automating consumption. Robots would make purchases based on human wants and needs to artificially raise demand. The result was a completely useless and wasteful closed loop that still made a profit on paper.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:29 pm

nockermensch wrote:Actually you'd fire about 50% of the workers right now and then more 50% of the remaining workforce once the new averages were computed. Keep repeating this process forever and you'll end with just one employee.

People are also fired and permanently blacklisted for offenses such as "being late once ever" and "Being idle." I am also assuming that when half of the workforce is fired on the first day, and half of the workforce is fired on the second day, that at that point pretty much everyone will just fucking quit which is for the best because with unemployment at 75% in the national economy your business is about to go under anyway.

My point was just that it literally would have taken half a brain to write a non stupid sentence like "Computers fired you if you took longer than the target time" where you just don't define target time. But instead they went the extra mile and defined target time as the average time it took for the task to be completed, which is the kind of dumb that you read about in stories, but never expect to actually run into. Because for fucks sake, average means a really obvious thing.

Like, I think there might literally be a Dilbert Comic where Pointy Haired Boss wants to fire people who are below average in performance. That is how dumb that sentence was.

icyshadowlord · Post by **icyshadowlord** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:43 pm

rampaging-poet wrote:I once read a short story where businesses solved that problem by automating consumption. Robots would make purchases based on human wants and needs to artificially raise demand. The result was a completely useless and wasteful closed loop that still made a profit on paper.

Please tell me that's NOT the future where heading towards...

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Tue Aug 19, 2014 10:02 pm

It's not. Companies will just make a shell company to buy the products because spending the $$ on robots is stupid when you can just have a paper that says there are robots.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Aug 20, 2014 1:23 am

nockermensch wrote:
Kaelik wrote:
erik wrote:.htm, not .html

http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
I think my favorite part is where people get fired and blacklisted forever for taking longer than the average time to perform a task. Because you know, that totally doesn't result in 100% unemployment in two days.
Actually you'd fire about 50% of the workers right now and then more 50% of the remaining workforce once the new averages were computed. Keep repeating this process forever and you'll end with just one employee.

Kaelik wrote:Like, I think there might literally be a Dilbert Comic where Pointy Haired Boss wants to fire people who are below average in performance. That is how dumb that sentence was.

There is, I immediately thought of it, because I read it when I was a kid and it amused me in an absurdist way.

Meikle641 · Post by **Meikle641** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 12:33 am

Just so we're clear, the story isn't some luddite thing. If you read past the half-baked extended intro it goes to his proposed solution.

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 3:16 pm

Meikle641 wrote:Just so we're clear, the story isn't some luddite thing. If you read past the half-baked extended intro it goes to his proposed solution.

"Wait, Eclipse Phase? But I thought this would be a Paranoia campaign!"

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Aug 27, 2014 4:31 pm

Meikle641 wrote:Just so we're clear, the story isn't some luddite thing. If you read past the half-baked extended intro it goes to his proposed solution.

I only made it through the first page until now and I just read the second one. Solution to what? A completely unrealistic environment that will never happen?

Good we need more solutions without problems.
Manna, as described, is a horrible manager. I don't just mean horrible as then it would be awful to work under, I mean it would be totally worse than a human manager. 50% repeating attrition aside anyone actually being that micromanaged would be far slower than left to their own devices.

We need solutions for the zombie apocalypse before the Manna apocalypse.

Edit:
I should backpedal some. Mechanization/automation is going to be a problem. Just not at all the way depicted. It really is like using world war Z as a guide for treating Ebola.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 7:41 pm

erik wrote:It really is like using world war Z as a guide for treating Ebola.

Didn't we have some people here who recommended bombing Ebola-infected population centers?

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Aug 28, 2014 8:45 pm

erik wrote:
Meikle641 wrote:Just so we're clear, the story isn't some luddite thing. If you read past the half-baked extended intro it goes to his proposed solution.
I only made it through the first page until now and I just read the second one. Solution to what? A completely unrealistic environment that will never happen?

Good we need more solutions without problems.
Manna, as described, is a horrible manager. I don't just mean horrible as then it would be awful to work under, I mean it would be totally worse than a human manager. 50% repeating attrition aside anyone actually being that micromanaged would be far slower than left to their own devices.

We need solutions for the zombie apocalypse before the Manna apocalypse.

Edit:
I should backpedal some. Mechanization/automation is going to be a problem. Just not at all the way depicted. It really is like using world war Z as a guide for treating Ebola.

Interestingly, my company recently undertook some anti-mechanisation. It was cheaper to hire minimum wage staff and get them to do rote work than it was to replace the expensive, fancy machinery.

I say "interestingly"; a more accurate term might be "infuriatingly", and a still more accurate term might be "amongst the most infuriating and depressing things I've come across recently." To use unskilled human labour in order to save expensive mechanical labour is to run civilisation in reverse, dammit. Not to mention being horribly exploitative.

Fwib · Post by **Fwib** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 12:46 am

Well, as computing continues to get cheaper, robots get cheaper and software improves, a lot of those minimum wage people may well be out-competed by automation anyway.

Did CGPGrey's 'Humans Need Not Apply' get linked earlier in the thread? In any case, here it is again.

Maj · Post by **Maj** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 12:56 am

Laertes wrote:To use unskilled human labour in order to save expensive mechanical labour is to run civilisation in reverse, dammit.

Why?

Edit: Nevermind. I'm watching the video.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 2:07 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
erik wrote:It really is like using world war Z as a guide for treating Ebola.
Didn't we have some people here who recommended bombing Ebola-infected population centers?

Nope. Not people anyway.

We do have a single troll who in addition to that, more recently tried to also offer up the view point that we should keep an open mind about letting people starve in the streets as being a good thing. It might not even be a person. I think it is a crude program that inputs random characters and converts them into despicable ideas of no redeeming value.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Fri Aug 29, 2014 6:03 pm

Maj wrote:
Laertes wrote:To use unskilled human labour in order to save expensive mechanical labour is to run civilisation in reverse, dammit.
Why?

Edit: Nevermind. I'm watching the video.

To reply anyway...

If someone is hired to for a job that's just "do a machine's work but cheaper", then not only is thought, creativity and imagination not required, but it is actively a thing they don't want. The only reason that person is there is to mindlessly repeat a rote task as exactly as possible, with no opportunity to make it their own. Since they're hired at minimum wage and on a rolling short-term contract, they're clearly not expected to develop any skills or any professional pride either. It's degrading.

(It's a very thoughtful video. I quite like it. The voice really adds to it too.)