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sl4shd0rk writes:
"Bill Gates says everyone needs to prepare to be out of work in 20 years due to Robots/software taking over most jobs. In preparation for this, Gates recommends people 'should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans' and reduce operating overhead for businesses by 'eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also not raising the minimum wage'. Bill Gates, you may recall, is the former CEO of Microsoft whose business acumen has brought the technology sector such things as Metro, Windows Phone and Xbox One.
BusinessInsider took a similar theme earlier this year."
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Bill Gates: Prepare to be Assimilated
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @09:05PM
I think in 20yrs lots of humans will still be employed, but the majority of remaining human jobs will be working for the government. Don't under estimate government bureaucracy and inefficiency. Having worked for the government myself in the past, it is quite amazing how many people can be employed to just shuffle papers around and collect signatures. I can see a return of FDR style make-work programs.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @04:38AM
FDR put 15 million unemployed Americans to work when the Capitalists weren't hiring (and hadn't been hiring for years).
The Civil Works Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Rural Electrification Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps built/rebuilt badly needed/dilapidated infrastructure.
(Remember the I-35 bridge that fell into the river in 2007? The engineer's guild has been giving USA's infrastructure failing grades for years and years.)
The insides of public buildings of that era also looked awesome after the gov't hired artists. [google.com]
A demoralized working class that had been clobbered with 33 percent unemployment also had their morale lifted when writers, actors, musicians, and artists hired by the gov't brought their art to remote communities.
The greatest inefficiency is having working class people unemployed and with no money to spend. [wikipedia.org] 66 percent of the economy is just ordinary people buying ordinary stuff; a few yachts and mansions don't affect the big picture very much.
FDR's only big mistake was that he kept Capitalism alive when it had failed yet again [wikipedia.org] as it does every 80 years or so.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:28AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @11:06AM
True, it is a comparatively good economic system. But to copy the style,
Capitalism - one of the worst government systems around, just beats out Monarchy/Dictatorship.
I miss Democracy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 18 2014, @06:11PM
One of the giant problems with Capitalism is that people defend it when they don't even understand what it is.[1]
As the AC you replied to noted, Capitalism is an *economic* system, NOT a governmental system.
Capitalism:
You go to your workplace and you are told by someone what you will produce, how you will produce it, and you have no say in what is done with the profits from the production process.
Capitalism is dictatorial; you leave Democracy at the door.
Marxism:
You go to your workplace and you and your coworkers decide what you will produce, you and your coworkers decide how you will produce it, and you and your coworkers decide what is done with the profits.
Marxism is very democratic.
Where it is tried, Marxism is very successful. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [wikipedia.org]
Note also that that particular operation has been successful since 1956.
There's one region in northern Italy [wikimedia.org] where worker cooperatives are common. [google.com]
Here's an adjoining region [wikimedia.org] where they have lots of fruit, wine, and dairy cooperatives.
Now, here is what that brand of clueless defenders of Capitalism have missed:
The two systems are defined by who owns the means of production. (See also "Socialism", below.)
When the workers are also the owners, the owners don't export their own jobs.
Paris Hilton sitting on her ass waiting for a check to arrive is an example of Capitalism because she (and her ancestors) make/made money, not by doing labor, but by making money from money.
There's also a third system [googleusercontent.com] (VERY GOOD ARTICLE)[2](orig) [dissidentvoice.org] where the gov't (read: taxpayers) own the means of production; that is called Socialism.
Where democracy is working well (read: governmental transparency), Socialism also works great. [wikipedia.org]
(I have service from Edison and the capitalists suck by comparison.)
In a healthy economy, all 3 economic systems can exist concurrently.
[1] People often confuse Markets and Capitalism; if all the capitalists had died yesterday, markets would still exist without any capitalists.
[2] ...and none of the governments that have called themselves "communist" have been Marxist at all. As Mr. Johnston notes, those have been examples of State Capitalism; centrally planned economies, single-party governments, and top-down governance are antithetical to Marxism. Again, Marxism is very democratic.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 19 2014, @08:42PM
I don't really consider Mondragon to be Marxism. I think it's more a form of democratic capitalism (which is something that really hasn't been tried in the USA).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 20 2014, @04:40PM
Mondragon [is] more a form of democratic capitalism
The reason you think that that is Capitalism is because, again, you are one those who doesn't understand what Capitalism actually is (but will defend it anyway).
When SOMEONE ELSE owns the company and you are simply a disposable employee with no voice in the direction the company takes (e.g. whether your job will be exported), THAT is Capitalism.
Mondragon is nothing like that. Everyone there is an owner and everyone there makes money by his LABOR; there is no separate "investor" class involved (e.g. Paris Hilton sitting on her ass waiting for a check to arrive).
Note: I really hate it when I hear "Middle Class". That is bullshit; there are only 2 classes: workers who make their money from labor (The Proletariat) and capitalists who make their money from money (The Bourgeoisie).
.
hasn't been tried in the USA
You have a lot of opinions, but are seriously lacking on facts:
Because Der Bingle was already popular at the time, his little brother's name was the one used by the larger configuration of The Bobcats--but he was NOT "The Boss" [google.com] (indeed, he couldn't read music nor play an instrument, making him the least-able of the lot).
There were also other bands of that era that operated the same way (as democracies). That goes back about 90 years.
Here's one of my favorite recent stories about workers taking over a workplace [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [libcom.org] when a damned useless corporation tries to screw them.
When employee ownership in the USA comes up, Dunn-Edwards Paints springs immediately to mind.
For good measure, here's another 99 companies in the USA where the majority ownership is the employees. [nceo.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @07:25PM
No, I think you are actually the one who is misunderstanding what capitalism is. It's when the means of production are privately owned. It doesn't matter whether they're in the hands of one, or ten, or a thousand people. A privately held corporation that's wholly employee-owned is still capitalistic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @12:19AM
Employees == Capitalism
Worker-owned operation == Marxism
Your feeble Reactionary attempts to redefine words don't change the facts.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @06:31PM
Employees are a necessary but not sufficient condition for capitalism.
Worker-owned operation is a necessary but not sufficient condition for Marxism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22 2014, @11:46PM
You know absolutely nothing about the subject.
You're another of those "my opinions are as good as your facts" guys who conflate Capitalism with markets, profit, private ownership, and every other thing under the sun.
You don't even realize how ridiculous are.
You need to stop consuming lamestream media, particularly TeeVee and especially Fox so-called News. It fills your head with useless nonsense.
At some point you should try picking up a book and reading. Start with a dictionary and move on to a text on Comparative Economics.
Oh, and when you're in over your head, STOP DIGGING.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21 2014, @09:59PM
I didn't say there were no employee-owned companies (or cooperatives) in the USA. What I mean is, it's not the norm. Corporations are the last refuge of kings and their courts. We like a hierarchical, dictatorial style of management and Big Business is clearly the dominant form of capitalism in the USA today.