Amazon Robot Contest

https://www.technologyreview.com/ne...-contest-may-accelerate-warehouse-automation/

On the way to replacement of personnel at UPS, USPS, Fedex sorting facilities, fast food workers, etc.

This is inevitable, the replacement of live workers with machines/automation in any job where it is possible to do it.

So if you have 100 million citizens that must work to make their way in the world and it only takes 50 million people to perform ALL of the necessary/required work; what do you do with the remaining 50 million?

This is happening right now and nobody seems to be even asking the question, much less trying to find an answer.

One political party has the answer: tax the heck out of the ones who are working and give handouts to the rest.

Bat-mite said:

One political party has the answer: tax the heck out of the ones who are working and give handouts to the rest.

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Unfortunately the other political party’s answer is for everybody to become an entrepreneur. And make millions. Which if we just tweak the babble, babble, babble and adjust the yakety, yakety, yak will be possible.

Which is right up there with; everybody becoming a professional sports star or everybody becomes an Oscar winning actor or Platinum Record winning musician.

Let’s face it nether political party has an answer for this that is actually workable.
Heck; I don’t either but at least I’m aware of what the real problem actually is which appears to be more than the halfwits in Washington.

Well this will get locked down shortly.

I read an interesting story... sorry, can't remember the name, but maybe someone here will... where all needs and most luxuries were cheaply made via automation. The economy flipped such that everyone had a consumption quota... you were supposed to use at least a certain amount of product. Actual jobs were scarce and highly prized. The greatest luxuries were hand-made artisanal products.

boomtube-mk2 said:

This is inevitable, the replacement of live workers with machines/automation in any job where it is possible to do it.

So if you have 100 million citizens that must work to make their way in the world and it only takes 50 million people to perform ALL of the necessary/required work; what do you do with the remaining 50 million?

This is happening right now and nobody seems to be even asking the question, much less trying to find an answer.

Click to expand...

That is exactly the question I was asking as a kid reading scifi where, for example, everyone was waited upon by robots and no one worked if they didn't want to. Eventually, virtually free energy might make this possible, as from a highly advanced fusion power generation system.

Winston said:

That is exactly the question I was asking as a kid reading scifi where, for example, everyone was waited upon by robots and no one worked if they didn't want to. Eventually, virtually free energy might make this possible, as from a highly advanced fusion power generation system.

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Fusion is no more free than fission was. We have already spent billions on it.

[YOUTUBE]7Pq-S557XQU[/YOUTUBE]

Marc_G said:

I read an interesting story... sorry, can't remember the name, but maybe someone here will... where all needs and most luxuries were cheaply made via automation. The economy flipped such that everyone had a consumption quota... you were supposed to use at least a certain amount of product. Actual jobs were scarce and highly prized. The greatest luxuries were hand-made artisanal products.

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I remember that book. It is a better know work of Science Fiction, but the title eludes me at the moment.

Marc_G said:

I read an interesting story... sorry, can't remember the name, but maybe someone here will... where all needs and most luxuries were cheaply made via automation. The economy flipped such that everyone had a consumption quota... you were supposed to use at least a certain amount of product. Actual jobs were scarce and highly prized. The greatest luxuries were hand-made artisanal products.

Click to expand...

I too remember that short story but I can’t for the life of me remember its name or author.
The entire economy was based on consumption and the poorer you were the MORE you were required to consume. And this was not easy to do as you couldn’t just receive stuff and then throw it away.
The solution came to one man who put robots to use wearing out the very stuff they produced, thus saving the world’s economy.
I’ve done a little investigation into two authors that first came to my mind which were Isaac Asimov and Clifford Simak as they both wrote extensively about robots and their effects on humanity. Another possibility that didn’t pan out was Cordwainer Smith.

Now Mack Reynolds wrote “Commune 2000 Ad” back in ’74 which told of a world where it required only 10% of the working age adults to produce and provide any and all of the required and necessary goods and services.

The novel was about with the remaining 90% of the adult population was doing with themselves while basically living on the “Universal Guaranteed Income”.

"The Midas Plague" by Fredrick Pohl.

https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_1954_04#page/n7/mode/2up

FC

Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut runs along similar themes. Virtually all skilled work is done by robots and top-tier professionals who are identified early by aptitude testing. Everyone else is given a soul-sucking job filling potholes. It was written a couple of decades back, but is pretty applicable still. Fahrenheit 451 is another good one to read if you get spooked by social media.

Wow!! I would never have guessed Fredrick Pohl as the author as he was never know for robot stories.

Just how did you pull that one out of your. . .Motor tube?

Somewhere (maybe it was here) I read a similar thread about robots and cheap abundance. Someone mentioned "The Midas Plague" and I looked it up, though it couldn't have been here, because a search doesn't bring it up on TRF.

FC

boatgeek said:

Fahrenheit 451 is another good one to read if you get spooked by social media.

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F 451 in my opinion does a better job explaining the ills of censorship...especially censorship that we bring upon ourselves. But Bradbury's main rant was against TV and it's offshoots that would take away from reading, see here:

https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/...eller-ray-bradburys-180-on-fahrenheit-451.ece

On the other hand, especially for you anti-mobile device fans, this RB story is very prescient :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murderer

There are a few of you here who I can quite imagine being the protagonist in this story.

FC

boomtube-mk2 said:

Wow!! I would never have guessed Fredrick Pohl as the author as he was never know for robot stories.

Just how did you pull that one out of your. . .Motor tube?

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Frederik Pohl was a genius. I highly recommend all of his books, especially the Heechee saga. Gateway is my all time favorite read.

Amazon Robot Contest=Meh'.:yawn:

Amazing Robot Contest=AMAZING!!!:y::jaw::clap::surprised: