Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label robotics. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 26, 2016

Defusing the Ticking Time Bomb Known As Men

As I have noted in at least two previous posts, men are currently in decline and are becoming increasingly redundant.  That trend essentially began in the 1970s when men's real wages, employment rates, and labor-force participation rates all peaked and have since been falling, gradually at first but accelerating recent years.  For a while, only a few pundits (mainly those in the Matriarchy movement and other feminists) have picked up on this erstwhile subtle trend, but now even Larry Summers has noticed it and is growing concerned.  He predicts that by 2050, roughly one-third of men between the ages of 25-54 will be out of work, and even proclaims that "a disaster is looming for American men" as a result.

We can all see the writing on the wall at this point.  Women are rising, while men are falling.  In fact, women have already crossed the Rubicon in terms of education and are well on their way to becoming the richer gender, meanwhile us fellas are falling away and falling apart.  We are being gradually replaced by both women (for higher-skilled jobs) as well as robots/machines/AI (for less-skilled jobs), our wages have been falling, our once-great labor unions have been torpedoed by the powerful men at the top who threw the bottom 80-90% of us under the bus, and we are thus are becoming increasingly redundant as a result.

So what should be done with all of the redundant drone males after Women finally take over?  Ultimately, it will be up to the Women of the future, of course, but now is the time to start discussing the best course of action to take in both the near- and long-term.  Currently, we are witnessing the death of an obsolete system, one that has been kept on life support for many years now, and sooner or later we will have to pull the plug on it.  Continuing to prop up that woefully moribund system in the hopes of propping up men is clearly not a sustainable long-term solution.  And while men are slowly going extinct due to deterioration of the Y-chromosome, that will take thousands of years to occur.  So what to do from now until then?

As for how to defuse the ticking time bomb (think crime, violence, civil disorder, and stuff like that) that rapidly-made-redundant men would bring in the near-term, one should note how there are two circumstances in which men become particularly dangerous creatures: 1) when they have too much power (whether on an absolute basis, like the oligarchs, or relative to Women, like most ordinary men), and 2) when they are desperate for money. (The 1996 movie Fargo illustrates the perils of the latter case.) As men become increasingly redundant and un(der)employed, the first circumstance will gradually decrease while the second one will rapidly increase at least at first. And while this will likely happen before Women take over completely, it is indeed a ticking time bomb.  Thus, if there are only two policies that can be implemented, they should be as follows:

  1. A Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all is an idea that is LONG overdue.  This would eliminate or at least take the dangerous edge off of the kind of desperation that male redundancy can bring, and solve many other problems in addition.
  2. The Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which was passed in 1978 but never fully implemented, should be revisited as a way to guarantee full employment without significantly increasing inflation.  In other words, the government should create a Job Guarantee program.
These two things alone would go a very long way towards reducing such a problem in the near-term.   Other economic ideas include the following:

  • Raise the minimum wage to $15/hour in 2016 dollars, and index to inflation from then on.
  • Create jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, green energy, and ecological restoration.
  • Overhaul the tax code to make it simpler and more progressive, or at the very least remove perverse rewards for corporations offshoring jobs as well as hiding trillions of dollars overseas.
  • Improve our education system, and make all public colleges and universities tuition-free.  Do the same for trade schools as well, as plenty of young men would probably benefit more from those.
As for dealing directly with any supposed crime wave that may result, I would recommend that we "get tough on real crime".  There is plenty of room to legalize, decriminalize, or deprioritize the numerous "victimless crimes" that currently exist on the law books, and redirect those resources toward tackling violent and predatory crime, especially violence against Women, children, and animals.  Men need to know that such behavior will not be tolerated and that they will face swift and certain justice for their misdeeds.  Crime that pays is crime that stays.

Failing that, well then I guess the redundant men of the future can go join the circus, lol.  Free the animals and replace them with men--and I am only half-joking about that one.  Clearly we will need to have plenty of "bread and circuses" in the future to keep the drones occupied while they party their way into extinction.

Wednesday, February 24, 2016

The Drone Problem, Part Deux

Uh oh.  Looks like men are becoming redundant even more quickly than I had predicted, according to the latest predictions about technological unemployment.  According to the White House, who keep in mind would typically want to paint a rosier picture than is actually the case, if you make less than $20/hour today, there is an 83% chance that robotics/automation will eventually take your job.  And if you make between $20-40/hour, there is a roughly 31% chance that you will lose your job to technology in the future, which drops to negligible levels for those making over $40/hour.   And whether enough new jobs will be created in the meantime to offset such job losses still remains to be seen.

Of course, those figures are for people of both genders.  But there is good reason to believe that things will be significantly worse for men in that regard, since Women are leaving men in the dust in terms of educational attainment and are thus more likely to get the best jobs of the future.  That is especially true for higher-paying and higher-skilled jobs, but also true for any jobs that can't be outsourced or automated and don't require much brute muscle power.  And as the general pace of life continues to accelerate, more and more multitasking (which men aren't exactly known for) and speed will be required in nearly all jobs.  Thus if technology doesn't take your job, Women eventually will, fellas.  And when the next big economic crash happens, it will likely be you who needs to be rescued by the better half of humanity.

So how does knowing that make you feel, fellas?  If your answer is "like I want to worship Women even more, and help them take over", you're basically golden.  Otherwise, now is the time to do some serious soul-searching, because in the not-too-distant future (sooner than you think) there will be "no country for burly men".  And remember, as the saying goes, "don't be a fool, stay in school"--even if that is no longer a guarantee of anything anymore.  Failing that, I suppose you can always go join the circus, lol.