reply to post by ButterCookie
Teachers? Believe it or not, but there's software to teach you a new language. Etc.
Pilots? Unmanned aircraft are slowly becoming available. Even autonomous aircraft.
Drivers? They're making autonomous drivers too, slowly, but steadily.
There're many other examples of this trend either towards more desperate people (overseas poor populations, taking advantage of laws in other
countries) or machines/software/etc.
It's a race against man and machine and integrated circuits.
You're right.
We either become more desperate in the US or we gain skills that're less common and/or simple.
Bottom line, it's a dog eats dog world. You have to look out for yourself and have good friends. The moment we come into this world we struggle to
survive. All the way from a few cells on up.
Money makes the world go round. Money is just another word for work. Work can be anything so long as others want it. Things aren't free, so we have to
work. Things are getting cheaper though. But we're always adding more complexity to keep costs level. For example, it used to be that people didn't
need computers. But nowadays we need em. It used to be that a variety of mundane illnesses would kill you or permanently disable you. Now they don't.
It used to be that we needed 1000 men to produce X product. Now we only need 5 men and some machines that in their lifespan will produce 100 times
more value (profit) when compared to the 1000 men from past years. Fact is, we can produce magnitudes more product than we could historically. If men
and woman were content to have what they had 100 years ago, we would barely have to lift a finger in our day to get by. But we strive to move forward
and progress to a brighter more developed future. We will never be happy in repose. And if we did happen to only work for 2 hours in a day, we would
probably become extinct.
Most of the productivity improvements over the past 50 years are reinvested in further improvements. We're a future thinking people. We will probably
always be this way.
Those old science fiction stories where machines run everything and men and woman sit all day and play were actually realistic portrayals IF men and
woman were content to sit all day AND we were to live as we did then. In their time, it would have been acceptable to live as they did but work far
less. So they would naturally assume it would destroy everything because people would stop learning and society would stop evolving and then write a
book about it. What they got wrong was that people want to progress themselves and their society. These were their own fears being expressed in a
story. That people would just shut off and stop progressing. Fortunately, they were just fears.
People want computers. They want to live long lives. They want to travel into space. They want to wear fancy clothes. They want to have the best
things. They want to run around. They want to experience things with each other. They want to dream beautiful things into being. They want too much.
This is why we will always progress and move forward and be future thinking.
If we were happy JUST existing then we could accept living with minimal computer access and minimal heating/air-conditioning and minimal healthcare
and mass transit only and stained patched-up clothes and minimal electrical consumption and small apartments and so on and so forth. IF we were
willing to live that way then we wouldn't have to work so much. But we WANT more than that! And surviving on our past accomplishments as a species
will only get us so far too. There's a limit to it. If we were to suddenly live minimal lives so that we only had to work 2 hour days and we spent a
good bit of that time not being productive then where will new technologies and progression come from? What happens when a new epidemic arises or a
asteroid impacts earth or something similar?
We need to spread our species off planet to ensure survival. We need to progress.
edit on 13-5-2012 by jonnywhite because: (no reason
given)