A libertarian open-borders economist asserts:
Smart people may excel in all activities, but as the law of comparative advantage reveals (see here and here) everyone’s better off if people with high IQs outsource their less challenging tasks to others. In a society of Einsteins, Einsteins take out the garbage, scrub floors, and wash dishes.
A nation of Einsteins would invent labor-saving devices for these mind-numbing tasks. And a nation of Einsteins wouldn’t make as much of a mess to begin with. How conveniently these libertarian economists forget the concept of externalities.
Stupid people do a lot to me. Have you paid taxes lately?
Smart people make technology. A lot of labour saving devices have been made. I do love science.
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Massive 3rd world immigration has been a disaster every western nation it’s been allowed.
For your viewing pleasure Friday in Paris.
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Maybe the point of this post is flying over my head. What are you getting at?
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Having a few people around who are comparatively dumb is probably a good idea. The question is how dumb and how many. For the former, I’d say the cutoff is generally around an IQ of 100. As for the latter, I’d say we would be better off with fewer dumb people.
BTW it appears that manufacturing is exactly the same % of U.S. GDP as it ever was, while manufacturing jobs have gone through the floor:
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/keeping-americas-edge
It looks like automation rather than NAFTA and the like are what is driving the loss of manufacturing jobs.
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Libertarians are all about pareto improvements. To a true libertarian, if a Mexican is made relatively better off than an American is made worse off, this is the pareto efficient outcomce and should be encouraged.
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So, a nation of “Einsteins” would create robots to do all the work for them. And holodecks for entertainment. And thus, that would be the end of Game and civilization as we know it.
The truth is, however, that we are not a nation of “Einsteins”. Ignoring the obvious indirect racism (let the Hispanics do the jobs the white people won’t do), we are nation of over-privileged idiots with an over-inflated sense of self. We create a bunch of useless tasks for white-collar, highly educated morons and pat ourselves on the back. Of course, it’s not coincidence that many of those useless jobs were linked to the government in some way (more so than just simple income tax withholding or generic job regulations).
Of course, the market seems to be self-correcting that mistake now, as described in this wonderful article: http://mises.org/daily/5256/The-Plight-of-the-MBA-Generation
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Jewish economist promotes open borders in white nations! Wow, that never happens!
Ask him what he thinks about open borders for Israel………..
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Looks like Chateau has figured out how to drive up traffic by trolling internet libertarians.
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labor saving device = a mexican
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The very premise of a nation of Einsteins makes for a dishonest argument because it’s science fiction. A working society has a bellcurve population with a few geniuses at one end, dullards at the other, with the bulk of its people of normally functional intelligence.
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Would it really be so bad if we had so many geniuses that we had genius janitors? What has been lost in the communism of the past century is that there is more to society than “work”. This is also what feminists either fail to understand or cover up.
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Look in most prisons. Look behind a lot of accidents and defects. Almost always you will find a person of below average IQ. Not always, but in a proportion so large only an academic like Caplan could invent a means of ignoring it.
Apologies to Orwell.
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“How conveniently these libertarian economists forget the concept of externalities.”
Wrong term
It’s called trade off. Externality means something else.
As for the so called libertarian economist. His shit doesn’t make much sense. It’s just senseless twaddle.
Amusingly enough, you’re stepping right on the libertarians position and don’t even realize it.
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That isn’t a Pareto improvement.
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In a nation of Einsteins, I would still be smarter than everyone.
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Does it? Seems to me importing cheap labor for an industry and letting the society at large deal with the fall out is exactly appropriate. The cost of the labor is not passed on via price when one of their razor wielding roosters gets loose and some in the appreciating audience requires vascular surgery au gratis.
Now libertarianism may answer the au gratis surgery, but not the fallout from importing a large body of Goths. You do know how that turned out for Rome don’t ya?
but then libertarian economists are not given to discussion of such things as “tragedy of the commons” because they are quickly torn to pieces.
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on May 2, 2011 at 11:36 am 3point5
labor saving device = a mexican
mexican = manuel labor
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Why the mockery of libertarian economists? Where do Rothbard or Mises state that it is allright to import unskilled immigration and dump the externalities to society? If anything this is a gross violation of property rights. The point of cheap unskilled migration is that it’s only cheap if you don’t pay health, insurance, education and all the amenities provided by the state’s welfare state. How can a libertarian be OK with that, let alone promote it?
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I believe in many libertarian principles, but as long as taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab of the unwashed masses shitting out their babies and problems, close the goddamn borders.
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You can add Milton Friedman to you mix, Antonio.
The problem is the most noisy of libertarians also tend to be stridently open-borders proponents. I guess this is because it gives them a means of distinguishing themselves from icky, white bread conservatives. At any rate, this group is notoriously immune to any sort of argument or evidence that runs counter to their atomized ideology.
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Wow, what planet is that guy from? First of all, he’s confusing IQ with accomplishment. There are plenty of very smart people who contribute little to society and vice-versa.
And then “if you produce less you earn less” — unless you happen to be in a union, particularly a public union.
Also “in a market economy, being less productive doesn’t make you a parasite”. Obviously, he didn’t understand comparative advantage.
I think he’s worried that with more smart people, *he’ll” be the one taking out the garbage.
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“Englishman(substitute where you come from) In New York(substitute where you are”
I don’t drink coffee I take tea my dear
I like my toast done on one side
And you can hear it in my accent when I talk
I’m an Englishman in New York
See me walking down Fifth Avenue
A walking cane here at my side
I take it everywhere I walk
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
If, “Manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
Modesty, propriety can lead to notoriety
You could end up as the only one
Gentleness, sobriety are rare in this society
At night a candle’s brighter than the sun
Takes more than combat gear to make a man
Takes more than a license for a gun
Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can
A gentleman will walk but never run
If, “Manners maketh man” as someone said
Then he’s the hero of the day
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
I’m an alien I’m a legal alien
I’m an Englishman in New York
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I
Hate
Taxes.
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Newsflash: The Einsteins (omegas) are not breeding.
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intp, you are right that high IQ people aren’t having enough babies. There are a lot of reasons for this, including, but not limited to an excessive tax burden and the very high cost associated with the status rat race among high IQ parents.
But you’re wrong about Einstein himself being an Omega. In fact, despite being married twice, he had numerous extramarital affairs. Einstein was alpha.
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You’re taking the “nation of Einsteins” analogy waaay to literally.
And most libertarians are strong on the border.
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The problem is the most noisy of libertarians also tend to be stridently open-borders proponents.
The problem is, such open-borders policies tend to be one way. The third world can march into the United States. But how many millions of Americans are willing to migrate to third world countries? The final result would see a radical transformation of American culture.
Another point is that open borders lead to massive property violations as the migrants trample through ranches and farmland on the southern limes. Not very libertarian, is that?
And if open-borders are ok, then should we be able to get on an airplane in the USA without being subjected to the TSA pervert routine? But even as the federal government abandons the frontiers, it clamps down all the more on law abiding travelers.
The open-borders argument comes down to another form of anarcho-tyranny. Liberty for the elites and globalized economies, more repression for the citizenry.
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So now you’re supporting eugenics, I take it? How American of you
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the libertarian party may support much more open immigration, but most libertarians ive talked with are not cozy with that idea. hence, you hear of big L and little L libertarian camps
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Milton Friedman said that you can have untrammeled immigration or you can have a welfare-state, but you cannot have both.
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“Borders should be the number one national priority, plain and simple. Does the federal government have something better to do?
Second, we must end birthright citizenship by constitutional amendment, if necessary.”
Ron Paul
Now please STFU and stop your tirades against libertarianism.
[Editor: That’s great. Ron Paul is a sane voice in a symphony of idiocy. Now where do we go from here?]
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Read “4 hour work week” by Tim Ferriss if you wanna learn about outsourcing minor tasks to others. Get shit done, stack bills, work less. Win
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Zippy
You can’t argue that meme with facts. The people who see themselves as lovelorn rejected betas require a cognitive crutch for their bruised egos, and so have banded together to form a beta-acceptance movement, much like women’s fat acceptance movement. The purpose is the same – to shame the other sex into loving them for who they really are.
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[…] Roissy: "Economists and liberatarians work to make economic theory fit human nature as they see it. What they fear most is that human nature will not bend to fit economic theory. And so they ignore human nature. Or whitewash it. Or demonize it. And they look sillier and sillier by the year…" He has more on stupid people here. […]
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To a true libertarian, if a Mexican is made relatively better off than an American is made worse off, this is the pareto efficient outcomce and should be encouraged.
This isn’t a Pareto outcome. More importantly, one of the guiding principles of free markets is called the Principle of Gains Through Trade. It states that both parties must benefit in any transaction; ie both parties must exchange value. Under laissez-faire, more immigrants would be a net gain to native Americans because their labor would decrease production costs and thus serve to lower real prices.
HOWEVER, this assumes a free society; ie not a welfare/regulatory state like ours. In our society, the dynamics are different especially given that the LEFT will use non-white immigrants to essentially create a Leftist socialist state. In today’s context, immigration is dangerous.
The better libertarians know this. Roissey is attacking something he has no knowledge of. When did he ever read von Mises, Hayek, Simon or Menger? He’s been too busy reading the ‘Red Queen’.
[Editor: The majority of libertarian mouthpieces — bloggers, pundits, newsmagazine writers, etc — are open borders. When that changes I’ll give em credit.]
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Zippy,
Did Einstein have extra-marital affairs because he was a sexual alpha or because his name was Einstein (a celebrity)? Any evidence he was banging chicks left and right before he became world famous? I agree he was an alpha in his field. At his age an “affair” likely consisted of having tea with a woman not his wife.
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I think the idea behind open borders from Libertarians is first there are no taxes to support a welfare state. This means that 3rd world immigrants are on their own. They can come, and work for whatever the market bears for their skills, and if the can’t make it here, then they can gtfo.
Minimum wage laws? Nope. The market bears the task of setting wages.
Of course, this isn’t happening anytime soon, so as I said before, get them out unless they (talented individuals, dr’s, skilled pros, unmarried 7s plus etc) bring value to the table they’re a drain.
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Jewish economist promotes open borders in white nations! Wow, that never happens!
Ask him what he thinks about open borders for Israel………..
Jews all over the world spread liberal, “progressive” filth to anyone who will take it.
But on the other hand, Jews remain ultra-conservative when comes to anything that might be divisive towards their own kind.
Look all the damned Jews advocating for illegal immigrant rights. But how many Mexicans are those same Jews installing into Jew-owned banks, law firms, and the U.S. government?
America is shit down the tubes.
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Yes, but the point is that if the Einsteins are shoveling dung and hauling trash, they don’t have the TIME or ENERGY left over to create those labor-saving devices in the first place. They spent it all doing labor that other people could do,
[Editor: All those Einsteins are going to make less of a mess to begin with than a country filled with peasant third worlders and a few Einsteins. Those are the externalities that blank slate libertardians don’t take into account.]
It’s simply more efficient and profitable for everyone to spend as much of their time and energy on doing what they each do best, and let someone else do the tasks at which they are not as good— even if they’d still do it better themselves.
Let’s expand on the concept. I’m an inventor, my best skill is inventing labor-saving devices. My second best skill is gardening. I hire a groundskeeper who isn’t even as good at gardening as I am… but we are still both better off. Why? Because the time I WOULD have spent gardening, I spend inventing…. and eventually I invent a labor saving set of garden tools that improves my groundskeeper’s productivity.
[So antiseptic… so tidy. Except 50 million gardeners blast ranchero music, litter, get into gang turf wars, traffic drugs, burden the health care system, squib out bastard spawn who suckle on the teat of welfare, and flunk out of school. But it sounded so good on paper!]
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Roissy,
With sufficiently advanced technology the whole world and beyond opens up as a viable place to live. Don’t like your neighbors? Hop in you jet-car and move somewhere else. With high-speed transport we are not forced to cluster in cities with people we dislike. Living space no longer becomes a scarce resource.
[Editor: $5 gallon gas will have the opposite effect.]
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Re: $5.00 gas
Cheap/free energy (inventions) should be the first goal. Everything else (leveraging technology to give us lives of ease and comfort) becomes much easier.
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I’m still sticking with mexicans doing stuff I’d never do…
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Libertarians are one thing. Globalists are another, and they come in many different flavors and occupy the entire political spectre. Why focus the mockery and hatred on libertarianism, when it is obvious that the ongoing demolition of white western civilization does not come from them? The Austrolibertarian writers I’ve read (which, I suppose do not write for Reason or whatever mainstream magazine passes for “libertarian” in the US) understand perfectly that for human beings economic expediency is almost always secondary to tribal, familiar, cultural and racial links between members of society, and that their property rights are to be respected. Hell, Walter Block (a big-time libertarian, and not certainly a fringe figure) has a big book called THE CASE FOR DISCRIMINATION.
My whole point is that is plain wrong to pick on libertarians for the open border madness in Europa or the United States.
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The best discussion of Elizabethan literature I ever had was with a guy who came to fix my heater. He worked his way through an MA in Lit. at a VERY prestigious University doing HVAC work that paid well. When the time came to get his PHD he said, “why bother” he was already making more money than a full professor doing work he liked, so he kept on doing it, smart guy.
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Someone has to dig the ditches and how would a team of these Einsteins go at catching or killing the likes of Osama?
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Yes, and a perpetual motion machine would be nice too.
I used to have as a hobby researching alternative energies. The trick is condensing your fuel into a high enough density that it can be used for transport – especially for air and boat. Some options are metals and alcohols. Hydrogen can’t be transported efficiently and when you include the storage equipment it has too high a weight cost per unit of energy. We could convert wind and solar, etc, into refined boron, or into synthetic hydrocarbons, but we’re never going to do so at costs similar to what we get from oil.
So if we work hard now at creating the infrastructure, we don’t have to run out of fuel. But cheap fuel is a thing of the past.
Unless you bring in that perpetual motion machine of yours.
It’s all well and good to have science fiction daydreams, but mixing them with reality is not planning. It’s fantasizing.
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Those who are arguing in favor of castes when talking about immigration miss the obvious point. White folks already have castes. We are not in need of a greater supply of white trash, or lower classes of any colors to do our lower caste work.
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Read some Hans-Herman Hoppe. Listen to Ron Paul.
A lot of libertarians understand that a state and a nation are two very different things. The former you oppose, the latter you cherish.
Want to know another things many libertarians are waking up to? The Zionist influence in turning the USA into a culturally Marxist shithole with a collapsing dollar.
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Unlimited wants, limited resources, and competition for those resources all have to be considered. Leftist failures (and omegas) ignore at least one of the above in every one of their schemes.
Einstein himself was alpha; for the genius omega, think Newton. Come to think of it, the less game scientists tend towards giving the world the most practical results, not circle jerk arcane theories that might pay off in 150 years, when a beta engineer finds out how to really use them.
For all their faults, Mexicans manage to both reproduce and work at reasonable levels. The combination just isn’t found much in Old America (whites and blacks).
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Better think twice about Ron Paul.
http://www.vdare.com/washington_watcher/110428_immigration.htm
Looks like he’s changed his mind about that closing the borders thing.
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Technology
I’ve worked at a couple of the large shipping co.s
asked some engineers there why they don’t replace much of the workers with machines.
their answer: Machines breakdown/jam more often then you think. the cost of machines, parts and mechanics salaries is higher than filling a warehouse with refrigerator-sized jamaicans that unload-sort-load the trucks.
[Editor: Japan is pretty happy with its robotics and a policy of not importing millions of third worlders. The mind boggles…]
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their answer: Machines breakdown/jam more often then you think. the cost of machines, parts and mechanics salaries is higher than filling a warehouse with refrigerator-sized jamaicans that unload-sort-load the trucks.
The cost to the company is less. The cost to society, much more. Those Jamaicans have all sorts of costly pathologies. It’s called privatizing the benefits and socializing the costs. Company X gets super cheap labor, the community sees lowered wages and higher law enforcement and public health expenditures.
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xsplat,
There is a perpetual motion machine. We live on it. Earth. A sphere with an iron core spinning, in a vacuum, generating its own magnetic field. Forever. Reportedly, Tesla had figured out a way to tap the Earth’s magnetic field and convert it into usable electricity. He wanted to build gigantic towers on Long Island, capture the electricity, and send it to peoples homes for power via a radio-like signal. His financial backers asked how much could they charge (metering). Tesla, reportedly, responded the charge would be nothing. The energy would be free. The project was quietly shut down. Presumably if this technology worked (or more accurately was allowed to work) high-capacity batteries could be continuously charged, remotely, via radio-like signals. That would solve industrial, transportation, and residential power needs forever. Though the existing energy cartel, who profits enormously from strangling energy resources (e.g., $5.00 per gallon gasoline), would be destroyed. They don’t even want to let high-efficiency diesel cars (made by Ford for the UK market) available in the USA. 100 years ago it was demonstrated diesel engines could run on peanut oil. During WW2 the Germans had 90% of their fuel needs met by synthetic oil, extracted from coal, refined in Romania. All blocked from use today. The barrier is not technological. The barrier is political.
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mr_mike,
Unreliable machines are like unreliable workers. If you have troublesome or sickly workers you either straighten them out or replace them. Same with machinery. Build more reliable machines. As Roissy observes the Japanese have no difficulty employing robotics for industrial assistance. The Japanese build machines of outstanding reliability. Their machines are like strong workers who never fall ill or screw up. Reliable robots could certainly be built for dock and warehouse work. I suspect, like with energy development, there are political forces (e.g., dock workers unions) blocking the deployment.
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on May 3, 2011 at 10:54 am intp
mr_mike,
“Reliable robots could certainly be built for dock and warehouse work. I suspect, like with energy development, there are political forces (e.g., dock workers unions) blocking the deployment.”
Yo Mike, is a robot gonna buy your sons CD?
is a robot gonna buy the novel your daughter just wrote?
Is a robot gonna be a pall bearer at your funeral?
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Yo Mike, is a robot gonna buy your sons CD?
is a robot gonna buy the novel your daughter just wrote?
Is a robot gonna be a pall bearer at your funeral?
No, but neither will the Jamaicans.
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Jajaj, robots will not give birth to 6 sons without any means to support them, dumping the costs to the rest of society.
Robots will not keep you awake blasting ranchera y reggaeton at 3 o clock in the morning.
There will not be robot Mara Salvatrucha gangs.
In sort, the japanese option seem to be the best, if you like civilized life.
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nation of einsteins = japan.
ergo, robots.
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A little OT but the best take on the OBL death out there:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24587
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intp,
temps, fob illiterate temps.
i have seen it, poor fuckers (you can tell if its their 1st day if they wear a suit/tie) spend ~4 hours in the back of a dirty 53′ trailer and are sent home for min. wage.
i’ve also worked at another place where there is substantial automation, and even there the managemant consists a bunch of fucktards that abuse the machines and are bewildered as to why they break.
fuck, they even bring in outside consultants to try and crack that mystery.
Japan has the bot’s partly because they’re xenophobic and the aging population. they’ve themselves started to outsource/expand production capability in china
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thwack,
i torrent my music, and shit load of pdf’s/ ebooks too
Polichinello,
also how is the cost to society more? they’re here would society be better off if they’re unemployed?
if the gov’t subsidizes the cost of robotics then we’ll all be paying for it too through taxation. on top of that you have the issue of the gov’t getting the best possible deal, which lets face it will be a rip-off whichever way you wanna slice it.
besides japans debt to gdp is what? (even before the quake/tsunami/fukushima)
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mr_mike,
If the workers and/or management are illiterate white (or other racial group) trash, who sabotage their equipment, then that’s the problem right there. Unleash the T1000s on them.
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A nation of Einsteins would destroy the Earth within decades, and perhaps that nation could even destroy the universe. Some people are just bad. The dumber the bad people, the better off the rest of us. The smarter a given society treats the bad people, especially by their (the bad guys) prompt removal from civilization, the better society is.
A world of idiots will soon be surrounded by nuclear weapons, as the knowledge is easy to find for cheap, although you do get what you pay for-in the production phase-and Stuxnet is proof positive of that.
I am grateful to be able to take my chances with our world of idiots as opposed to a nation of Einsteins.
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A nation of Einsteins wouldn’t be creating labor-saving devices. I’ve got a few of these types in my family, and know quite a lot of them also. They can solve incredibly difficult mathematical equations and write complex computer code, which are all extremely valuable (and very well-compensated) skills, but if you ask them to do something more mundane like disassemble and clean a rifle or cook their own dinner they’re totally helpless. Many of those types don’t have enough experience in the kind of labor which creates a need for those devices.
The Einsteins are very good at certain types of things like developing advanced military aircraft. But, if shit is pouring out of my toilet the Einsteins and their complex math are completely useless. For that I need a plumber.
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If anything, the presence of automation and labor-saving devices *decreases* the need for generic high IQ, because…
…(a) you can automate tasks that used to take a decently high g to carry out — E.G. it takes a lot less IQ to man an assembly line than to hand-forge parts artisan style — and
…(b) people can become very specialized in their endeavors, no longer requiring abstract generalized intelligence.
and, let’s not forget that a nation of einsteins would be 50% einstein-ettes, too. if you think that things like feminism are bad now? just you wait, son.
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Strict Immigration Laws ‘Save Denmark Billions’
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also how is the cost to society more? they’re here would society be better off if they’re unemployed?
Society would be better off if they weren’t here in the first place. That’s the point.
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Why wouldn’t a nation of Einsteins make messes? He didn’t even bother to comb his hair!
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