Tomorrow all the unemployed?

Current Economy and Sustainable Development-compatible? GDP growth (at all costs), economic development, inflation ... How concillier the current economy with the environment and sustainable development.
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sen-no-sen
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Tomorrow all the unemployed?




by sen-no-sen » 20/05/14, 16:54

I think each of us has found that a number croissant jobs disappeared from day to day ....

In recent years, the trend towards automation has been omnipresent: "fast" supermarket checkout, automatic teller machines on the motorways, staff cuts in stations for the benefit of machines or the Internet (in the station in my village, the traffic at been increased by 3, result, no more wicket!) etc ... etc ...

Some information that leaves you thinking:


Foxconn begins to replace its human robots with real robots

Late on his schedule, but putting his ads into action, Foxconn began equipping his robot factories to replace his workers in the simplest and most repetitive tasks. The Asian giant, which has 1,2 million employees including 400 000 dedicated to Apple products, plans to install 1 million robots in its factories within two years.
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Last year, Foxconn announced its intention to equip its factories with a million robots, to replace part of its employees in the tasks of welding, assembly, and other spraying. The announcement prompted a burst of criticism on the basis of the company's social responsibility, but on the contrary we defended the idea that it was excellent news. Indeed, history shows that even when it creates temporary unemployment, mechanization allows men (and in this case, especially women) to no longer perform excessively difficult and repetitive tasks, and improves the quality of life Workers.

There is no point in opposing robotization in the Foxconn factories if the result is that the mechanical robots are replaced by an army of human robots, who spend their day always doing the same things, in physical conditions and most importantly psychological intolerable. If robots allow painful trades to disappear, it is to be welcomed, even if it is accompanied by a temporary social crisis. Among those who mourn the loss of Foxconn workers, how many would be willing to take their place?

According to Everything Robotic, Foxconn's first 10 000 robots arrived at the Jincheng plant in China's Shanxi Province. Each of them would cost between 20 000 and 25 000 dollars each, or about 6 years of net salary (on average, a Foxconn worker is paid between 215 and 300 euros per month). But if we consider that each robot has a work rate much higher than that of a worker, that it makes no or little error and never sleeps, that it generates no payment of social contributions, ... we can imagine that the investment is profitable much faster.

However, Foxconn is going much slower than he had planned. While it had announced 300 000 robots installed by the end of the year 2012, only 30 000 will be set up this year. Either 10 times less.

Officially, and recent strike movements would have convinced him to stick to it, Foxconn's goal remains to deploy 1 000 000 robots by the end of the year 2014. This represents an investment of about 20 billion, equivalent to two or three years of profits.

http://www.numerama.com/magazine/24263-foxconn-commence-a-remplacer-ses-robots-humains-par-de-vrais-robots.html

Isolated phenomenon? Certainly not ...
Some random examples:
Pharmacies: almost a quarter of pharmacies are in financial difficulties with the development of parapharmacies of hypermarkets and net ...
A robot coupled to a software package to manage a pharmacy

Case Study: A business management software package can sometimes find a useful extension in a robotic armed arm. Illustration in a pharmacy, which must deal with the daily many and varied product references and consequent stocks.


http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/un-robot-couple-a-un-progiciel-pour-gerer-une-pharmacie-39300121.htm

Army, the now "little mute":


Armed forces will be reduced by 2019 23.500 additional positions, plus 10.175 yet to achieve under the previous military programming law 2009-2014.

Long live the drones!
http://www.challenges.fr/economie/20131129.CHA7753/les-deputes-votent-pour-la-reduction-des-effectifs-dans-l-armee.html

Ditto for the doctors, Police (artificially inflated by the young 5ans contracts), staff of hospitals and all the sectors said tertiary.
Another example with the nourishing source of our nation: agriculture:There were almost 2 million farmers in 1970 against 650 000 nowadays!


The Raude Holstein GbR farm, located in Naumburg-Altendorf in central Germany, has doubled its quota in ten years, reaching one million liters today. When building a new building, the farmers chose to automate the feeding of their herd. Reportage at the heart of the exploitation of the Raude family.


http://www.web-agri.fr/conduite-elevage/genetique-race/article/avec-170-vl-la-ferme-raude-holstein-s-est-equipee-d-un-robot-d-alimentation-1175-92324.html

Fully robotic barn

At the invitation of equipment supplier DeLaval, Utili-Terre had the opportunity last November to visit five dairy farms in the Netherlands. These were all illustrations of the Swedish company's openings to realize [b] its large project of fully automated barns.
, the concept of "Smart Farming". We also captured scenes featuring other types of equipment that we present to you. Under the launch image of the video, you will have more details about the context.


I have so many examples that I can not all quote!
None, I say no domain escapes, even sex and reproduction (the decrease in human fertility is not a coincidence).

It is clear that if we project this phenomenon in time, we will soon arrive at a fully automated society.
Some say that humans are not replaceable ... is that so?




Present in science fiction, artificial intelligence could threaten science and society itself. This is the message launched on Thursday 1er May by the famous physicist Stephen Hawking, in an article published by The Independent (in English). The eminent scientist discusses the release of Transcendence in the United States, a film with Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman that tells the rise of a computer with a conscience and able to think independently, becoming omnipotent and uncontrollable.

What if men were one day overwhelmed by the intelligence of machines? "Are we taking artificial intelligence seriously enough?" wonders Stephen Hawking. A specialist in black holes, the researcher takes the example of Google's driverless cars, Apple's digital assistant Siri or even the IBM computer that won the famous Jeopardy game.

"Succeeding in creating artificial intelligence would be the greatest event in human history. But it could also be the last," warns Stephen Hawking. "The short-term impact of artificial intelligence depends on who controls it. And, in the long term, whether it can just be controlled," writes the scientist. "We can imagine that such a technology thwarts financial markets, exceeds researchers, manipulates our leaders and develops weapons whose operation we will not be able to understand," he adds.

http://www.francetvinfo.fr/sciences/high-tech/le-physicien-stephen-hawking-met-en-garde-contre-les-risques-de-l-intelligence-articielle_592435.html

Given the huge efforts made to create an AI, it is conceivable that the human being is possibly scrapped by his own inventions in a short time!
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by sen-no-sen » 20/05/14, 17:09

Ahmed wrote:

The items you provide are very interesting, but there is no indication that these choices testify a desire to change the system.

For my part, I see quite the opposite: in the ignorance of the deep functioning of the economy, it is about discovering new areas to get out of the stagnation of the valuation of money-capital.


This is the problem: the lack of choice ...
It appears that by a phenomenon of slippage, our society has gradually crossed a rather deadly horizon: that of its being thrown out ...

The system does not change, fundamentally it is identical, it is "economic exponentialism", however this one is in the process of deeply modifying the environment and the cultures which put it forward, if it is not not adapt, they will be "evacuated".
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by Ahmed » 20/05/14, 19:46

Thank you for opening this new thread which will allow more clarity! 8)

You talk about the dismissal of the human species, however, and I may have misspoken on this, things are very clear: what is being pursued is the accumulation of value (which it does not must not be confused with sensible wealth, value remains a metaphysical category of the order of fetishism), but this value can only result from the expenditure of human energy.

The machine, whatever its improvement, adds to the commodity only the fraction of its part consumed in the transformation and the cost of the raw materials mobilized; it is a perfectly counter-intuitive mode of operation, but constantly verified.

It is only because the underlying functioning of capitalism is misleadingly deciphered, both by its defenders and by its blinded critics, that they are by the quarrel immanent in the distribution of value, without seeing that the conditions that make possible the continuation of this system are more and more precarious and that the postponement of the final collapse only occurs at the price of acrobatics ever more perilous (and all the more as they are unconscious) ...

The envisaged perspectives of complete automation could only be conceived in a radically different framework, from which it is difficult to see where it could arise, since the idea of ​​an exit from capitalism is totally foreign to this vision *.
Even if this would be the case (school hypothesis!), It would in any case only be on the basis of a constituted capital whose growth has broken down: difficult to bring together worse circumstances!

* An unmistakable detail: if the arduousness of certain workstations is mentioned to justify this evolution towards robotization, it is never mentioned that the finality would be the well-being of humanity, which is 'elsewhere not consulted ...; the creation of value is so pervasive that it is indeed useless to explain it.
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by sen-no-sen » 20/05/14, 20:13

Ahmed wrote:
You talk about the dismissal of the human species, however, and I may have misspoken on this, things are very clear: what is being pursued is the accumulation of value (which it does not must not be confused with sensible wealth, value remains a metaphysical category of the order of fetishism), but this value can only result from the expenditure of human energy.


This accumulation of value to which you refer is to be related to the notion of "conceptual maximization": the concept of "accumulation of value" tends to maximize its capacity of influence independently of its "users" (us).
It is a purely mechanistic process that is a geometry whose only limit is physical.
This one tends to interfere by retro-action with humans,JP Baquiast Talk about techno-scientific superorganism.
Outside the latter is acting increasingly on the fate of humanity, and it is quite possible that it is free of this one.
It is for this reason that we see the appearance of an "artificialization" of life and that transhumanism is developing.

It is conceivable that the still embryonic system emancipates itself from its unfortunate inventors, hence the remark of S.Hawking about the danger of AI.

The machine, whatever its perfection, adds to the commodity only the fraction of its part consumed in the transformation and the cost of the raw materials mobilized; it is a perfectly counter-intuitive mode of operation, but constantly checked.


It may seem very avant-garde, but the simple "machine" can be brought to become "something else", which will lead us to a new paradigm, very difficult to admit!
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by Ahmed » 20/05/14, 20:32

You write:
The concept of "value accumulation" tends to maximize its ability to influence independently of its "users" (us).

Admittedly, the parallel is relevant, however, this superstructure which imposes itself on us, reaches it only because of our credulity, since it is our objectified creation, that it can not subsist without this collective and unconscious will.
How would you like to perpetuate a sub-system incapable of creating value within a system whose sole purpose is?

Of course, by abstracting other limits, physical ones, one can imagine such a world; on the other hand, how could the transition between these two antinomic modes of operation take place?
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by sen-no-sen » 21/05/14, 00:22

Ahmed wrote:How would you perpetuate a subsystem that can not create value inside a system for which it is the only purpose?



By the contamination of the upper system by the subsystem.
It may seem like science fiction but it is not impossible that it can happen ... in fact it has already begun ...

What is called capitalism is only the construction phase of such a process.
Capitalism as its "antagonist" Communism is only an ideology based on the creation of value, it is neither more nor less than a mode of development among others endowed with updating: liberalism , neoliberalism etc ...
History, or rather natural selection, has triumphed over other models, but it would be wrong to give it a special status, it is only one of many phases.


Of course, by abstracting other limits, physical ones, one can imagine such a world; on the other hand, how could the transition between these two antinomic modes of operation take place?


The transition is already taking place: we rub off on our creations, this is palpable.
The concept of productivity has contaminated many people, so it is common to hear people from modest yet modest backgrounds as well.
Except such a logic will quickly pushed us into our entrenchments and make us aware - I hope in time - the inevitable fate that awaits us!
How could this transition happen?
It's simple, she already has a name:the singularity.
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by Janic » 21/05/14, 10:31

Hello
History with a capital H should inform us since, since the dawn of humanity, everything has been functioning according to the same scheme, with the same systems. Now what do we see: classes of individuals with on one side the dominant by force, money, fear; on the other, the dominated for the same reasons with the desire to change category (the social success in question). The machine is only the replacement of one by the other without the risk of contesting the power confiscated for the benefit of a few. So it is not a question of making the unemployed (a category that has become without interest for the dominant) but of their pure and simple direct or indirect elimination. (The sciences and fictions are probably on the side of a future reality.) It is the choice of our societies which some (like us the pseudo well-off) profit from and which we will have to assume! soul to the "devil" it is very difficult, if not impossible to recover it.
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by sen-no-sen » 21/05/14, 11:01

Janic wrote: So it is not a question of making the unemployed (category become without interest for the dominants) but of their pure and simple elimination directly or indirectly. (science and fiction are probably below a future reality.)


This is what I noted above: humanity will gradually be evacuated from history.
I am not saying that it will happen, but that we are going down the road.
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by chatelot16 » 21/05/14, 11:22

does automation reduce the total number of people to do the same? before the mechanics the peasants did all their work entirely

then with mechanization the work of the farmer is faster, so there must be fewer to do the same thing ... but there are more people in the factories to build the material

it is clear that with a reasonable mechanization in the manufacture of solid and durable material the total amount of work diminishes: all the better! many centuries ago the peasants worked very hard without succeeding in avoiding famine every year

with good mechanization we work less and we have enough food to eat

but does excessive automation reduce total work? I do not think so: I have rather the impression that excessive automation is justified only by the work too taxed in Europe, and the Chinese who manufacture the material at low prices by working like crazy.

when the Chinese will calm down, the hi tech hardware will become too expensive and we will not even be able to maintain the bazaar too automated
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by Ahmed » 21/05/14, 12:49

Sen-no-sen, you write:
It would be wrong of him (capitalism) to assign a particular status, it is only one of many phases.

Without a doubt, but the completion of this phase that is inevitable may give way to a system even worse if it happens, as unfortunately it takes shape, in full unconsciousness of the large number.

Further:
The concept of productivity has contaminated many people, it is common to hear people, although from modest backgrounds, reason so.
However, such a logic will quickly push us into our entrenchments and make us aware - I hope in time - of the inevitable fate that awaits us!

I find it difficult to make the link between these two sentences: why would contamination be the cause of awareness when, by definition, it distorts the judgment by basing it on false premises?

Janic : The current eviction of a part of the population from what founds the social relationship at this particular moment in history, results only from a basic micro-economic calculation: the interests of a company are in contradiction with the general (macroeconomic) interest of all companies.
The continuation of this trend is in accordance with the logic of the system, but can only worsen in the short term the consequences which they claim to remedy: the fall in profit.
Another system can only come into being, mechanically speaking, on another support of the relation of domination.

Chatelot Your observations are relevant, but if we do not take into account the underlying mechanisms of capitalism, we condemn ourselves to celebrate a theoretical potentiality that has real substance only in the propaganda of the system. It is true that this system has produced a quantity of goods as never before, but these goods have never been intended to directly satisfy the needs of men, only to create value.
A bifurcation would probably have been possible, but it would not have been in this context.
If business costs increase as their profits decline, this is not a sign of clumsy taxation, but the decline of a system that becomes more complex as it sees its performance decline ( against its own criteria). Think of your reflection so just on the leaves and the wind! :P

* It would be obviously, and by far, preferable, that a conscious move toward empowerment vis-à-vis the capitalist categories of work, value and money is put in place ...
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