The agenda of the left

There has always been a shortage of Futbol referees. It's a very rewarding endeavor as you are constantly reminded by fans and players alike of your ancestry. The pay is great also...$30 for a 60 mile r/t that goes to cover expenses like uniforms, dues, and travel. Food is usually covered by catching any fruit coming at you. I loved every minute!

 

In more than one way we’re not doing evolution a favor by keeping so many people alive. Can we create a vaccine shortage in certain zip codes?

And you get the President’s full support!!!

 

Jeffrey Epstein.

 

The birthrate globally isn't the big issue anymore though. The Americas and Europe in aggregate are below replacement. Oceania+East and Southeast Asia too. Even India isn't that far above replacement (2.3 or so, which might actually only be replacement with their mortality rates). Population growth in excess of replacement is more or less limited to MENA, Sub Saharan Africa and Central Asia and it's dropping rapidly in those regions too.

Population increases now are down to the fact that fertility rates were so high 20-30-40 years ago. Even if there was no mortality until 80, there would be a lot more 30 year olds than 60 year olds in the world because of fertility rates 30 years ago. So thirty years down the road, the number of 60 year olds will dwarf the current number. All of the growth is occurring on the back end. In 2100, demographers are forecasting fewer births per year than we are experiencing now, but the population will climb another 3-4 billion in the next 80 years.

Growth at this point is pre-ordained until the people who were born during the high fertility period are gone. Dropping birth rates now another 0.5 kids per woman would have an effect eventually but that won't really contract the labor market for another 25-30 years it won't appreciably reduce global population for another 30 years after that.

 

I'm mostly pro-union. But I don't think most people will have jobs per se in 20 years...I think most people will be freelance workers. I don't know how a union functions in that environment.

 

The problem is that mgmt and unions never ever bargain in good faith. Union wants a 5% raise so they ask for 10%. Mgmt is willing to give 5% but thy offer 2%. Strike lasts 6 Mos til they settle on 5%. Win/win!!

 

The problem is a union has a purpose. And then when they've filled that purpose they don't dissolve, but rather continue into perpetuity, leeching off both members and employers. Union leaders are a lot like lawyers and politicians in that regard.

 

Yeah because forming a new union every few years when inflation has eaten up your last pay raise and you need to bargain with the employer again is such a good system. Get real man.

 

The old 19th century capitalism/socialism paradigm is breaking down. These labels are virtually meaningless now. If you look at Republicans, they're in bed with the industries that are most reliant on government "socialism" ... i.e. defense industry, energy and banking. Some of the strongest capitalist entrepreneurial energy in the country today is in uber liberal cities like San Francisco and Seattle. Another way in which the paradigm is breaking down is that the most anti socialist states in the country also happen to be the biggest "takers" of the federal budget. Add to that the Trump element, and now the right wing is suddenly the trade war party. Seems to me like our society is evolving in ways where Karl Marx's vocabulary no longer adequately describes our reality.

Another factor to consider is China. In as much as we want to remain competitive with China, is breaking up or hamstringing our biggest companies really the best way? I dunno ... it's debatable. There's definitely some pros and cons.

As much as I like the idea of unions, I'm with @Q*bert Jones III. I'm not even sure if the concept of "jobs" as we know them will be around in 20 years. I heard some data recently that 90% of the new jobs created post recession were part time/gig/freelance jobs. Another fact to look at is that our labor participation rate is at record low. And finally, one last factoid piece of data I find interesting is that about 66% of the people that do work don't like what they do.

Which circles back to the issue of automation/AI. Obviously America's companies don't need us the way they needed us in the glory days of unions. Frankly us workers don't have the leverage. This is where the idea of UBI comes in as something new that is neither capitalist or socialist. In one sense it's a capitalist idea because it's being paid for by a handful of massive capitalist corporations. Essentially the country becomes a corporate conglomerate, and each citizen is a shareholder. In another sense it is socialism because you're getting a handout. But isn't this the whole reason we invented robots? Wasn't the whole point so we can get more shit done without having to work so hard?

Maybe the answer is for us to lose this whole concept of a "job". Jobs are a relatively modern invention that was created during the industrial revolution. We did just fine as a species for 250,000 years without "jobs". Before jobs most of us had a profession or a trade. And most of us were a lot more self reliant. Who's to say that the job era is the final destination of human evolution? I think the population is slowly catching on, which is why you're seeing the record low labor participation.

I'm seeing more and more 25 year olds going into semi retirement ... bartend for a year, save up, go teach English in Thailand for awhile, come back and hike the Appalachian Trail, more to Austin to play in an indie rock band, meet a cute hippie chick that gets you into urban farming, sell raw honey at the farmers market, break up with hippie chick, move back with parents to help with dad who has Alzheimers, start playing around with dad's woodworking tools, start handcrafting pipes and selling them online, get back together with band for a reunion tour etc ... etc ... Seems like a perfectly reasonable path for me in the richest country in human history. Why should we be slaving away for minimum wage job at Walmart that a robot can do twice as fast for half the price?

 

Wait a second...is this the plot for the re-make of Reality Bites?

 

Three things:

1. If you think capitalism is about a leveled playing ground, you've missed the last 3 centuries of history. Capitalism is about tilting the field as much as possible and concentrate profits while socializing loses.

2. Automation is indeed the job killer and as you mentioned, UBI, universal healthcare and a better social net is a must if we want people to thrive instead of becoming corporate slaves. That's why we are fighting in the long term.

3. The reason we can't achieve that, is not because people is not getting a grasp of a new "jobless" future, but because corporations and the politicians that they buy sponsor are trying to make the transition into a more even society as difficult as they can. "******** you all rubes with all your demands for fair pay and healthcare! If you are earning too little I ain't no paying for you to go and milk cats and find empathy in WV!"

 

The thing is that we live in a free and democratic society (somewhat). There is nothing stopping us from fixing this and putting us on a better course, except our own stupidity.

But I agree, I don't put much hope in the collective IQ of the American voter. Right now the majority of Americans don't have $1000 in the savings account to cover an emergency car repair. This desperation is exactly what is making us behave more irrationally. And that irrationality is exactly what is fueling our dysfunctional government.

The only grip the the corporations and politicians have over us is the way they brainwash us and misdirect our attention through the media towards petty scandals, twitter feuds, culture wars and other forms of nonsense. They're turning our politics into a reality TV show almost completely lacking any substance.

When in reality there are 3 only existential issues facing us that make all the other dumb stuff we argue about almost irrelevant.

#1 the environment and how we manage the survival of the species as our population is exploding and we put more and more pressure on the planet. Assuming we've already passed the point of no return on "climate change", how do we make our species more resilient to survive in the fallout. And how can we find ways to live where we not only stop damaging our host planet, but maybe even start healing instead. #2 is still the threat of world war. We still live in a world where a push of a button could trigger an apocalyptic nuclear war. How do we eradicate war from our societies to make sure that never happens. And #3 is technology and all the drastic changes that it is making to our world, especially our economy. How do we harness technology to work for all of us instead of a few powerful corporations using it against us. How do we define our value as humans in a future where we won't be able to compete with robots in many areas. Technology touches many sensitive areas of our society like privacy or the ethics of genetic engineering. We need to start creating a framework of rules for what is happening because things are changing very fast.

 

Donald J Trump is the fvcking President of the US of A. That's all you need to know about our collective stupidity. To think Dr. Brown could not digest the notion of a mediocre actor being president, imagine what he would think about a sleazy reality TV star, son of a racist slum lord in the Oval Office.

Actually thanks to Citizens United Not Timid, they have a grip of the whole process, from campaign funding, to bill passing, to even conservative courts packing. They're not going to let go of the power so easily.

1. For the most part, we have done most of what needed to be done, regarding population. Yes, it is still increasing, but mostly due to life expectancy increase and access to vaccines, healthcare and clean water in many parts of the world, but by the end of the century the population will plateau at 9-10 billion. Off course there's a lot of pressure in our resource use and to change from an extraction economy to a more circular economy. Good luck getting Big Oil and Big Agr to change their ways while they're still in control of money, government and resources.

2. There will be wars over resources in the next few decades, not sure if they'll escalate to WWIII but putting madmen like Trump in charge doesn't help our case. I'll get back to you on how Bolton is handling the Iran "talks".

3. If we were able to do so, we'd be reaching for the stars. But we are a horrible horrible species and full of petty leaders and grifters that end up controlling the direction of our society. Hopefully we manage to change things in less than two decades, otherwise we will be fvcked up for the most part. Billionaires and politicians will still have their havens protected from pollution and scarcity, but the rest of us will have a hard time.

 

That makes unions more relevant than ever. Without them, the single gig worker in a car or at a home computer is far less powerful than a single factory worker who can talk to his co-workers and who may slow or stop work by not being there.

But more than that, the union acts like an employment agency (or to make Republican's happy have a employment agency act like a union - they can't complain if a corporation tries to get the most money it can for it's products, right?). If most jobs are gigs, then you need a more efficient way of connecting people to jobs - active agents instead of just job listings. You can take as an example the greatest gig job ever - dockworkers from WWII until the 1970's when containerization took over. The union made sure they pay was high, and you just showed up on days you felt like it and the union put you in a place to work. People could live reasonably for just three days a week of labor, and they decide when those days are. And you get all the watches you can stuff in your pockets, but that's a side benefit.

 

When you can't see how do you know when the fruit's flying at yer head?

 

I’m pro union but I’ve also witnessed and heard stories about unions being too greedy. Or lazy. And in my experience, the worst employees were always the ones advocating for unions.

That said, teamsters didn’t help things, nor did Reagan and the air traffic controllers.

 

I always had my partner watching my back.

 

There is a very vast majority of my home area that are only worried about whether they are doing g better than "those people".The drugs?Obviously the natives and Russian mafia.The economy?Farmers not getting paid enough by city folk for milk.
Benefits.Earned by whiteness as opposed to the undeserving others
Guns?The right of the farmer and hunter.By all means take the guns away from the "criminal classes."

 

Did read the article. But this:

This is all part of the lived experience in rural areas. It may well be that these places are doing better than we think strictly on a dollars-and-cents basis, but the subjective experience of living in a rural area is often genuinely depressing. Some of this is an illusion, but some of it is quite real—and that’s without even getting into cultural issues, where rural folks feel like they’re being overwhelmed by liberal city values and have no real chance to fight back. This too is something of an illusion—much of it ginned up by Fox News—but again, some of it is also quite real.

...I gotta wonder about.

Rural communities have a right to their dated values, but at the same time, they don't have a right to gate themselves off from the civilized world in defense of those values. The author seems to be almost sympathizing with them because there's more available to read than Grit and more to do than attend church and breed. Evolution is a feature, not a bug.