H LV <[email protected]> wrote: > the other automation you speak off will proceed slowly as long as social > security for "working age" men and women is linked to paid employment. > The people developing this technology are doing it to make money. They don't care whether their products put people out of work.
Let me be blunt and say that I developed many software products which put people out of work. I was automating work that was previously done by people. I knew that. Everyone knew that. It did not slow us down. To be honest, it did not bother us. We did it to make money, and to save the customer money. At present, Amazon.com is taking jobs away from enormous numbers of people in retail. Far more than the total number industrial workers, or miners being put out of work by the decline in coal consumption. Retail has lost about 100,000 jobs from October 2016 to May 2017, which is more than the total number of miners. ". . . [D]epartment stores have lost 18 times more workers than coal mining since 2001." https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/the-silent-crisis-of-retail-employment/523428/ This is deeply regrettable for the people losing their jobs. I hate to think of it. I sympathize with them. I hope society can help them, and I hope they find other employment. But I am not going to stop using Amazon.com. I seldom went to malls in the past, and I am going to go to them now, out of charity. I do not see how anything can slow down this trend, and I do not think it would be a good idea to try to slow it down. Amazon.com will not do anything to "ensure security" for "working age men and women." No corporation would. Any corporation that tries would be bankrupted by the competition. That is how capitalism works. Capitalism cannot solve this problem. Society as a whole must address it. I doubt there are any clean, neat, quick or inexpensive solutions. - Jed
