We know Trump doesn't care about the majority of Americans. He can't even come close to relating to them. And the majority of the people who are attracted by positions of leadership are from the clueless class. To give a great example:
Those audience members only got to come back for Ellen's 12 Days of Giveaways shows because Ellen is nice, she's a real person who did not grow up rich and she probably doesn't want to be president. Why not? I mean seriously! Can you think of a president who would be better? If Gates were left to his own unbelievable grocery obliviousness, those audience members woulda got jack-o-diddly! They are lucky Ellen has a spirit of giving. Where'd she get that? From growing up broke. People who grow up rich are separated from regular people their whole lives and are socialized to think of them as inferior. Other than a little noblesse oblige here and there, all us regular folk experience from the rich is a spirit of taking. That's how they get rich. We are customers to them. Consumers. Chattel for their businesses. And we are kept well beyond arms length so they think nothing of screwing us over for an extra buck because they don't know us.
Now you might be saying, "Hold on there Dave, Bill Gates gives more to charity than anybody!" I'm not going to say that's all his wife Melinda, but it could be. Actually, I think Bill might be starting to enjoy the feeling he gets from sharing his wealth. And good for him! But even his billions in philanthropy aren't really coming close to what he should be paying in taxes. But not to belittle the wonderful wave of rich people becoming charitable, here's a list of pretty good American billionaires. They're out there. I mean, they didn't have to give ANYthing. So, kudos to them! Really! But again, if things were the way they should be, if we had Ellen as POTUS, not Whacka-cheese-doodle Trump, these guys would all be paying their fair shares of taxes and wouldn't NEED to be charitable. Also, their taxes would go to a fairly transparent, regulated, non-corrupt government that would spend them properly.
SIGH! Seems like a dream, doesn't it? If this were the case, even Joe Wallmart worker would own his house that has a two-car garage and a swimming pool. This isn't as big a pipedream as some people would have you believe. The people who would have us believe this ARE the people in charge of most countries, banks and businesses in the world today. Most, but not all. There are some places where they do things right. And if we don't hurry up and follow their leads, we're all going to be swamped by the age of automation. It's coming folks, and countries like Canada, the U.S., China, and many others, are being run by small groups of people who want to force automation onto the public without paying us for it.
That's a bit of a confusing statement so let me cite a couple of things I've found in my research that help explain it. Some I've taught of and blogged about before, but some I haven't. In 2013 Oxford University did a study that published the scary statement that 47% of all U.S. jobs are at risk of automation. They studied 702 occupations, what they reckon worked out to about 97% of all jobs in the U.S., and found that the jobs most at risk were repetitive, low skill, replicatable through machine learning. A LOT of the jobs we're focusing on with the new and crappy math/science-heavy education systems in North America. The jobs that are safest? The ones that require creativity and social intelligence. Now I bet you wish you didn't allow your kids' schools to eliminate art, P.E., literature, music and languages, don't you? I remember when this disastrous trend began in Canada and I really hated it. Do you think this was done innocently? I'll come back to that.
Certainly there will be new jobs that take the place of old jobs. Remember when bank machines came out? People thought they stole tellers' jobs. Actually tellers just expanded their duties. (I still don't think we should have to pay to use them though!) This will happen for some. And others will need to retrain. But it's gonna suck for a 40-year-old truck driver being replaced by a self-driving vehicle to go back to school and become a social worker. Especially with the present state of education nowadays in which schools, like governments, are run like corporations and care less about good education than money.
I know this is still sounding really negative, but hang in there. Here comes the hope. Sorta... In 1930, John Maynard Keynes, maybe the best known economist ever, wrote a letter to the people of 2030 that he called his grandchildren. In it he predicted (in the midst of the depression!) an economic output of 8 times what there was in 1930. While that has proven to be very likely (we're over half way there already) he also, naturally, assumed we'd all be rich. Also, and this is the huge snag in his fortune telling, Keynes figured people would be down to about a 15-hour week. Yeah. While still rich. And producing way more. Old Keynes made one massive error in expecting humanity to follow the social path of working together in brotherhood and recognizing the greed for money as what it is: a "disgusting morbidity." He didn't think chrematistics would dominate world commerce. He foresaw capitalism as an ugly, temporary, but necessary stage in human development in which a generation or two work hard to make an easier future for our kids. By now we should be concentrating our time and efforts on more noble pursuits in the development of humanity. And we could be. SHOULD be! If not for just a few people.
Whether you agree with me and Keynesy or not, and whether you agree with that Oxford study or not, automation is coming and it's going to be a very, very, very, very hard thing to ask our employers if they would kindly give us more money for working fewer hours in exchange for this automation. But that is exactly what needs to happen. The days of increasing wealth and working our arses off are over! We've EARNED automation! It really should not be something to fear, rather, it would be welcomed in a proper society. But our societies teach us that robots are stealing our jobs. I don't like using the damn self-checkout at the grocery store or the friggin' slow, malfunctioning automated order boards at fast food restaurants. I honestly want to rip them all out of the floor and run them over with a truck. And we all really should think that way because Safeway, McDonald's, Burger King, THEY didn't buy those things, WE did. If they want our permission to use the automation, they need to pay us more and lower our workweeks.
Remember when Trump promised millions in tax credits to the Carrier company and promised new jobs? Then they just screwed the workers, cut jobs and bought machines to replace them? This sort of shit happens ALL THE TIME! So instead of giving us easier lives in which we will have the time to spend our wealth, machines will make it harder to find work and people will actually become LESS wealthy. Because of the unsustainability of capitalist greed as a way of life.
But, okay, let's finally get to the good part. I promised positivity and I will deliver. There really IS a way to get the social development that we need to happen concurrently with automation. And it doesn't require violent protests, strikes, or even government overhauls, though we might see them. As mentioned, there ARE some countries already preparing for automation. They're making their 2030's brighter than Canada or the U.S. will experience. And they're starting with (well DUH) education.
I have difficulty watching this next video without shedding a tear. It's like paradise right here on earth! Where is it? Finland!
It's the longest video I've tried to put on this blog before so it might not work, but it describes how Finland has cut the average school time for kids to a few hours a day. Some days they don't go at all. And they study useful things. They have fun. The best part and the very first step every country needs to take is Finland has no private schools. They're illegal. This way rich kids go to the same schools as poor kids. Although there are no "poor" kids, just kids who are not as rich. Rich families want their kids to get the best education like every country in the world, so the rich families make sure the public schools are the best. Financing is not a problem. Finnish kids have almost no homework and more time after school to develop socially. With their friends. Friends from school. Rich and not as rich kids become friends. So when someone becomes a banker or politician or CEO and he/she has an opportunity to screw somebody over, it's going to be a friend. So probably not as easy. You wanna know how everybody in Norway got rich off their oil? The government charged the drillers high tax rates and actually gave the money to the people. This is how that happens, folks! It doesn't happen in the socially maladapted cultures of the U.S. and Canada and we both have way more oil than Norway.
Finland and some other countries who are properly progressing are used to short work days and short work weeks in schools and workplaces. Any skeptics might see this as the hole in the system. Au contraire mes amis. It has been studied to the hilt and ignored way past the hilt and all the way down the handle of the sword, that in school as well as on the job, people are just not productive working 8 hour days and 40 hour weeks. So if you think Finnish students or workers lag behind, you'd be wrong. They get more done by studying and working less.
People pay taxes because the taxation is fair. The rich have no problem paying high taxes because they are helping friends and their own kids by making their country better as we've seen in the example of the schools. Everybody's lives are just better. Any country who tries these things will have the same results. And they know it. But they choose not to let us enjoy our lives like the Scandinavians.
We have countries in which the separation of haves and have-nots is just increasing. This increases the competitiveness of the people. Strangers are seen as competitors and enemies, not as friends and brothers. Computers and machines are viewed as job-stealers instead of conveniences and quality of life improvements. Mistrust leads to violence, stress and overworked/underpaid, shitty lives. And our governments, banks and rich people make sure our schools suck and our jobs suck. They keep things this way on purpose.
Maybe this could partly explain the intriguing "Hitchbot" experiment.
Here's what happens to some robots in America. It appears 2030 is farther away in some countries than others. Unless you want to end up like Hitchbot, let's eliminate private schools. That's where we need to start. I am the result of the good school system Canada used to have and has eliminated, otherwise I might not know this. Time to turn that around. All over the world. Because things are getting way out of hand and 2030 is coming fast.
You are a genius, Dave.
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