Better not live within 5 miles of an airport, cause it's completely, 100% illegal to operate a drone within the vicinity of an aerodrome without express permission. It's Amazon drones all over again
Domino's Tests "Drone-Delivered Pizza" in New Zealand
- Thread starter Steven Bogos
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Well ... 'millionaire' in that I have that amount in various investments. Whether I can easily divest in them or csn afford to is another question. Thing is I already pay taxes. This is why I made the argument that I live in Australia because I want to. Australian taxes are high and it's one reason why so many stocks are fully franked.Strazdas said:
So I already pay taxes. And I pay my fair share. I don't live like a queen, lording it others with my wealth because I put my profits back into the market. Thing is if you were to tax me twice as much... I'd have to go back to work if I still wanted to see my investments grow.
I'm independently wealthy. Not what you'd conventionally think of a millionaire. I don't ride a shit hot bike, I don't live in some fancy gated community, I'm basically what you'd expect how a lower middle class retiree would live. The difference is I achieved it in my early thirties.
Plenty of people like me who will stick their hand out also and expect this miracle no-work income. For starter ... no... it would be unreasonable to tax me more to yhe point where this miracle income is only a step below my own. Secondly, how exactly do you mandate a currency is worth something when it is backed by no jobs data, no labour, and no productivity? If automation literally means everyone producing the same shit at the ssme price, and the government merely taking control of industry to redirect whatever miniscule profits or processed goods back to the people, how does that do anything but allow mass wage slavery?
All this talk sounds a hell of a lot like communism... and frankly I don't want the government telling me I live a wondrous life because I get a choice of three different types of packaged cigarette and 14 different processed meal flavours. Nor do I want to pretend that a world without apprenticeships and full of robotic police officers is good for me.
Fair enough, thanks for explaining your situation. I think that given that you live like a middle class person your taxing should reflect that of a middle class person in such case.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Money has value based on demandand supply of products. And that is not going away with basic income. It is however being replaced by robots in example of this drone replacing a pizza delivery person and many other jobs. So you still have work and productivity, just not by humans. humans get to enjoy the benefits unless you want to go robots-rights route and pay them wages.
Im not sure sure what you mean with wage slavery there, perhaps you could elaborate? And please dont do that by building communist strawmen like you did there at the end.
I'm not saying I live in an area that has actual pizza places around. Best pizza I ever had was some authentic deep-dish pizza from Chicago. But in terms of the "fast food" pizza chains, if Dominos was "the best we had" then I guarantee you that a lot fewer people would eat pizza.Saelune said:
...........Dominos is fucking disgusting, is what I'm getting at, and if I saw one of these drones I'd do some random person a favor by throwing things at it until I knocked it out of the sky.
On one hand I can see one advantage since the drone won't have problem with "air traffic" compared to the ground counterpart for a delievery boy depending on the location. The other hand however is how during are the drones are against strong wind or are they only useable under calm weather (I doubt they will be used under lightning storm)?
As to your first bit, I already do. That's the irony. I'm wealthy and I don't need to work... precisely because I live within my means. I didn't get a mortgage, I didn't have a family, and I live in a studio apartment. There are dole bludgers who have lived in subsidised housing that *live better than me* (or at least in an actual house) just because I didn't get on a public housing wait list.Strazdas said:
Thing is, I still don't mind paying tax because I live in the vain hope that once as my mental health deteriorates further that I either have the courage to kill myself or someone might extend me the same courtesy (either a helping hand or someone to help steady my aim, at least). Fat fucking chance of the latter so I'm trying to build up a wealth pool that I hope will go to providing me some form of living worth living... and it is getting increasingly harder to do so. The episodes are getting worse. It is getting harder to focus my thoughts and by all calculations I'll probably need another million just to live as I am when I can no longer do my own finances and just live on dividends and savings.
I sacrifice and get nothing in return compared to those with a direct hand from the government.... you don't want to know how they treat you if you're on public mental health system in NSW... never again. If the government assumes that the people who did the right thing with the money they've gotten, lived within their means, saved, scrimped, and bartered their way to self sufficiency are going to subsidise the literal masses.... what is the point?
I'm telling you my background to let this sink in. My living is made on money that is taxed and taxed again... I didn't fall into that money. It wasn't given to me. It was saved, gambled, fought for. The fact that I'm keeping it together on antipsychotics and still making profits as a middling investor is not some fluke. Nor is my country doing me any favours by me living here. I am already doing my country favours by fighting my already addled brain into making sure nobody pays for me more than I am capable of giving.
I have spent the better part of my life by this point cultivating the right people around me. People willing to gamble, willing to be entrepreneurs, willing to go the extra mile and look for potential and smart margins. My country had little to do with why I'm staying afloat now. And that's the majority of people you're asking to sacrifice for the state. People who hsve repeatedly already sacrificed, gambled and fought.
I don't mind paying taxes. But if you tell me to sacrifice for the world... I'm not a saint. I give because I recognize there are people like me who can't. And what boils my blood most is that the government treats people like me like we were garbage. No government alive will say to me; "You know, you'll definitely need that money in five years time. So instead of taxing you we'll let you invest it while you can to alleviate the cost on both of us..." No, they'll still tax the shit out of me, and then pretend it's the benevolence of the state when they stick me in an abusive hellhole. Pretending that my handlers treating me like garbage is what I deserve and what they can afford.
But that's the world we live in. I figure while I'm in it with sanity still somewhat there, I might be able to inspire change. But then asking for largesse ontop of that ... largesse given without grumbling. Not on anyone's life and not while I have breath and cause.
Secondly... the reason why I bring up this point. Corporate taxation in this world of machines replacing up to 40% of human labour within a few scant decades... jobs and payroll are the real taxes a company pays. Companies do not better a society through their goods.... they better a society through the distribution of money in exchange for creative and menial energy. When you subsidise the injection of money once through payroll and transform it into state capital.... that is communism. This is why the Soviets said the same rhetoric as you are now.... technology will provide for all.... but technology is second to the direct empowerment of the person through capital in exchange for their energies. All while the trade unions in the Soviet states almost rebelled because they wanted a more appropriate syndicalist relationship where workers could directly own the industries and benefit from making them grow.
The end goal of automation is the concentration of wealth into fewer hands. Total efficiency.... which means that the goods produced will only ever have a sale price equal to their manufactured volume vs. The total costs in production. Ifvyour country says; "We'll produce lightbulbs by machine and use the money to bolster the accounts of all people..." that plan fails as soon as another country does the same thing. It then becomes a march for the triumvirate of quality, cost and supply. It becomes wage slavery as people are ever more divorced from the industries they once had a direct hand in capitalising from.
If you want equality... give workers shares in the companies they work for. Do not just assume that they can live without someone paying them for their energies. Automation is back to front.
Tools should make humans do more with less. Not simply do less. Because they will simply receive less.
I have said this time and before in other threads ... work need not be drudgery. Work should be educational and substantial. Provide for both material needs and provide the experience for a person to increase their personal value. Not merely their hip pocket but in order to cultivate the thinkers of tomorrow armed with all knowledge in their industry, or the pursuit thereof. As soon as we pretend a robotics major can satisfy this in all avenues of human life, it will be the death of human ingenuity and truly the signing off of our species as nothing more than mediocre.
Hell, you have scientists now contemplating whether VR and automation is one of the reasons of the Fermi paradox to begin with. That automation doesn't bring us Star Trek, but rather stifles creativity, natural growth of thought and progression of society and brings it back to satiating nothing but base needs. That societies simply consume rather than exploit the resources available to them (and yes, that includes the raw potential of humanity through consumer Taylorism).
Forgive me but i really dont udnerstand why you think paying your taxes would increase your chances of suicide. If anything, funding prevention programs would decrease them.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Thanks for explaining your situation, however its worth remmebering that people like you are extremely rare. The vast majority of wealthy people are in fact not like that. Heck, now that the secong hand wealth constitutes majority millionaires most rich people seem to be the opposite.
All this could be solved by basic income. If you have basic income given to EVERYONE, regardless of whether they are living in state housing or investing money or working in a factory you remove the wellfare trap. You stated that there are people living in state housing that live better than you. That would not exist with UBI because everyone would have equal baseline income and any interest you made would be on top of that. Unlike current wellfare system, you dont get the income taken away as soon as you find a job, thus there is no negative motivation to finding one, because as it is right now minimum wage jobs are just not worth it, you actually gain more being on wellfare (this is called wellfare trap). If you didnt stop getting same income after finding job, peoples motivation for finding a job would vastly increase. Meanwhile you could be safe knowing you will have money to live off regardless of your mental health state in the future.
Mental health care is low quality here in europe and i imagine even more so in Australia. However as much as we would like to think it is about people working there, it is mostly about funding. the mental health system has been completely ignored in budgeting matters for decades to the point where it only is remmebered after some huge scandal breaks out about horrible conditions people are kept in.
The whole reason social security became government run instead of letting private people to invest the money themselves is because most dont. People are not known for being forward looking in the long term. Most would end up with no savings by the time they can no longer earn money and starve to death. While government run system is not without sacrifices, it is better than the alternative.
See thats where we disagree. I dont think automation should lead to wealth concentration, but rather to better wealth distribution instead. And this is why capitalism is broken by design.
No, tooks should make humans do the same with less time. Also the kind of tools were talking about in automation future here is doing more without humans required at all.
Well the thing is work is drudgery for the vast majority of the population. and it will continue being so as long as we have social pressure of "Everyone must work" instead of letting people work in professions they enjoy working in and let machines do the rest. And no i dont think automation stifles creativity, quite the opposite. if your basic needs are taken care of you can spend your time being creative and inventative rather then spending 8 hours every day doing a job you hate and being exhausted to do anything else afterwards. Will some people turn passive consumers? sure. And thats fine, let them. There will be plenty of creatives. Satisfying basic survival needs is not what motivates people to be creative. They wont stop being motivated just because they are out of poverty.
Just as a clarification thing to address this bit before the rest of your post... the vain hope being that by me funding government coffers that it might at least give me the means to then use the capital in it or argue more effectively its use. At least once people stop treating the sick as criminals who might then benefit in the future. If they don't and I cannot raise the money necessary to see myself maintained by private healthcare initiatives and services to at least a calculated age of 110, then I would rather die. So I hope my money might afford me the services of someone who can make that happen, instead.Strazdas said:
It's the problem of distance. See, it's easy to recognize how you might need a hospital bed at some point. Whether you're young, middle aged or old. So people have no problem funding social medicine.
But nobody wants to recognize the potentiality of schizophrenia or younger-onset dementia. It's a those people problem. Nobody wants to confront mental illness, because it is terrifying. It doesn't have the basic idea of inevitability that old age, infection or injury has. Everybody knows they will get injured, sick and grow old. Even when you're a teenager and think you're invincible ... that thinking buys you a brush with death, and suddenly you recognize your inherent fragility. If it were 2 cms to the right it would have... If you were riding any faster you could have... if your BP dropped further we might have... We're indoctrinated very young that physical problems will arise and they will ruin you.
When I was in my late teens my answer to someone cautioning me was effectively; "Git gud..." to use modern gamer parlance.
Then I had a TBI due to a motorcycle accident which was a surreal enough experience. My helmet practically disintegrated (not just sprung apart at the mold, crushed) ... I have an inkling that's where it all began. I know for a fact I wasn't the same person when I woke up. I needed to relearn so much, how to order my thoughts, and reassemble my thinking into something conducive to a reality I hadn't experienced before but woken up to. It's hard to explain, and a part of me doesn't want to because I feel there is something darkly terrible in that place where simple numbers cannot express it. And having studied this, I know for a fact that this isn't an uncommon experience either for people that clinically die or go into coma. It takes only 10 seconds loss of blood flow to the brain for it to start shutting down. Those revived can go on like nothing happened, others lose half their memories and are forever changed by the experience.
All of us quickly realise, one way or another, that things can end us. Sometimes they do, and we're reborn ... we're different, or the world is at least. But we go on because living is self-explanatory.
Which makes mental illness almost seem random in comparison. It's terrifying, and not so inevitable as infirmity is considered, so we ignore it. It's the industrial pollution of public health. It's something that we know we should address, but the extent and the ramifications of addressing it are staggering. And so it becomes one of those never-ever things of social policy. There's few things more frightening than looking at someone and know they are degrading in ways not obviously visible, or in ways in which we are inculcated from youth as to be in all the ways that make us human. The mind and its search for truth. And that fear is something that doesn't just go away even when you're on the receiving end.
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As for total automtion. I think the superlative difference is we want both the same thing, but where I'm a skeptic you're an optimist. The key obstacles I feel is that humanity isn't ready for it. And I don't mean that in a holier-than-thou, psychosocial bullshit kind of way. I mean we're literally, technologically, economically, not ready for it. More over I'm not sure if we're going to like the results if even if we were.
See, where as I see total automation being a slow, ponderous thing that will make billions suffer worse before it gets better (simply more and more people slowly becoming un(der)employed) until the weight of suffering means we need to do something. You seem to be looking at the end goal ... which could be 50 years from now, or centuries.
More over I don't think it's where we need to be. We both agree that social guarantees are necessary, but where I uphold that work shouldn't be as it is, but rather should be a part of education allowing ALL workers a chance to reach the apex of knowing EVERYTHING about their industry (from the menial, to the creative, to the theoretical) ... you just simply want to cut out the menial. Now I can see the allure of cutting out the menial, but I also think hard work when young is beneficial to providing the basis work ethic when older.
I know for a fact that the military improved me. As much as I am philosophically opposed to simply living as a uniform of the state ... I can't deny I needed that discipline, and that the work ethic it cultivated in me wasn't to my benefit. I shudder to think what would have happened to me if I didn't have that paycheque coming in and the early age skills and discipline inculcation it had given me.
Someone telling me, "Well we can cut out all those push ups, marching, arms training, teamwork building stuff now ..." But I don't think society would be better for it. All people need to be taught to follow before they can lead by example. Which I think is a necessary trait lacking in a lot of those egotistical rich arsehole types out there to begin with. Leaders aren't born, they're made. The raw potential for the human is nothing before educators, trainers, and leaders show them the path to something better than anything now.
You only start caring for others when others pull you up and show you what you can become. Forcefully, painfully if necessary. As I was saying, not all work need be drudgery. Even menial labour need not be drudgery. I definitely needed someone to grab me by the scruff of the neck and scream; "Puke while running, multitask arsehole!"
Or maybe I've already become old well before my years, and this is the usual technophobia all experience in the late modern-information age era? Though I must confess, I have a certain desire to be an old timer on a stroller, with permed hair, staring at some hipster, airy, ultra-consumerist youths of tomorrow... give them a crooked smile and threaten; "Get a job, you filthy punks!" As I smack one of them off their hover-segways. But I feel as though reality may rob me of this furtive dream.
Thanks, i guess the experience Addendum has divulged was not representative of the system as a whole.Elijin said:
So based on this it seems that suicide is the option you would choose if you can afford to maintain yourself. Which still leaves the question how are paying taxes going to help that other than the basic influence of being able to vote or something, which isnt dependant on amount of taxes you paid as far as i know.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Also you assume you are going to live to 110? People born today are assumed to live on average to less than 90, let alone people born earlier like us two. Unless we get some kind of technological breakthrough in making humans live far longer i just dont see that happening to most people.
Which only makes me think government being in control of this is a good idea. People dont have the foresight for this, but of everyone is forced to have this foresight by government we got a safety net for these realizations.
Yeah, i think that sums up this conversation quite well.
I agree, we are in many ways not ready. The thing is, this is coming ready or not, so its time to do what we can to make sure it turns out best it can, rather than worst it can.
I think there are several important factors to consider.
1. Technological advancement tens to be exponential, the growth of automation is going to only be speeding up now.
2. Self driving cars are going to be a reality by 2018-2022 according to at least 5 competing automobile manufacturers that are going to release them there. Driving is the LARGEST industry in terms of employees. And we are going to automate it which also destroys the auxillary industries. Its not going to take 50 years, its going to take 5-10.
3. Advancements in AI are speeding up quickly. Most people make the mistake thinking we are going to see AI coming around. We wont. AI is going to be like a speeding train passing us by standing by the side of the tracks. We hear it coming, and we will see it racing towards us, but it wont stop for us.
When it comes to AI, Experts of AI were surveyed last year and the majority (63%) think that we will have FullAI (as in AI that is self aware and have congnition of humans) by 2050 and DumbAI (as in for example a factory that maintains itself without a single human but not be self aware) by 2030. If we raise the timeframe to 2011 the number turns 93%. (note: 3% said the answer is never).
AI is going to make an explosion of automation at the speed we never saw before.
So no, autmoation is not going to be slow in any sense of the word. Whether we, humans, adapt our lifestyles quick enough is the question. If we are too slow it will end up with human suffering.
Dont get me wrong, i want people to have access to all the knowledge, menial or otherwise. I however want those people to be given a choice whether they want to do the menial or not, make thier survival not dependent on it. Dont put them into this trap. they may be more useful elsewhere, or not. And its ok not to be.
There is a saying where i come from "hard work makes a horse beautiful" (translated). There is an extension of this getting popular now, that adds "but makes human back break". So no, i dont believe hard work when young is beneficial, good work ethics are. The two are not the same thing.
Which is wrong. Rural facilities for mental health have all but had the funding continuing to be cut. Numerous coronal inquests have been made due to deaths associated with untreated mental health concerns. The 'system' works if you don't have to work, don't mind having to stay in a handful of key capital cities or can afford to constantly travel. Moreover, draconian involuntary hospitalization rules and regs do little but make people frightened about what they say to people who might not even have passing familiarity with their case.Strazdas said:
That is why there is a stigma in asking for help. Because if someone misinterprets what you say, they can involuntarily hospitalize you with but a handful of phone calls and suddenly you'll likely lose your job, and you lose all control over your medication. Which means you might get forcibly medicated with earlier generation antipsychotics, even if you know they do not work as well as another you're on. That's the 'stigma' you face for asking for help. You're far better off paying for specialists who know you... people you can talk to and given they know you won't automatically leap to the worst possible scenario. But unless you have money you won't likely be able to get the timely assistance you need.
First point, there is a reason I call it a 'vain hope' ... and I figure it gives my argument a greater edge of I recount it to others. People like a taxpayer asking for a fairer go. More sympathetic-level. Also... keep in mind that the life expectancy in Australia is already 82.1 ... I'm in my 30s. I've been on heavy medication, so knock years off that. But frankly I'd rather have enough money to maintain private healthcare for a decade longer than I need it than a decade less.
Which I'm not arguing against at all. Just that having been through that system, never again. It needs to be improved before I can pretrnd my current relationship and engagement with private specialists is something that I want to sacrifice.
Right... but there's better, more available options to help build up greater wealth in the interim. I mean the key idea is a UBI ... to get where you need somrthing like.... government industry schools... for instance. Paid educational work. Which will limit the number of recipients and help create an academic didcipline of work.
In essence it's no different than the armed services in the distribution of labour and practical based educational advancement into a myriad of roles for the modern battlefield and various support roles. Which is probably one of the best models we might want to examine. What other industry workforce anywhere has the diversity and internal educational programs than the armed services?
1: Technology is only ever moderated by consumption, not potential. We see this now. You can get shit hot quality woodworking tools, but must people eill default to whatever cheapass Ryobi multi kit is available. Price and application, not merely potential. If few businesses can benefit or implement a better system... they won't likely upgrade any time soon.
We can realistic travel to Mars with current technologies. We still don't. And that is a question of gyaranteeing against extinction from a planetary crisis. The question is utility vs. Profit.
2: Eh.... Right... but apart from taxis what do self-driving cars provide for others? I would argue taxis won't disappear either, given the whole reason people use them is because they don't own/can't drive a car anf they missed the bus or train. Self-driving taxis? Hrm... unless they're self-fueling, self inspecting, self cleaning, self policing in terms of fares and refunds. And that just the stuff I can immediately think of. Give me 15 minutes and I'll find more.
3: Which is .... it's good to br hopeful, but it's bit hard to look at 50s science 'future' books and quite easily see we're not flying solar sailed spaceships and living on the Moon. Scientists are romantics because it is already a given in the field that if you're wrong, it's fine. If you saw historians speculate excessively they go for the goddamn eyes in respomse. It gets personal. All if someone is proven to have hypothesised with a high degree of fallacious logic. It's fantastic.
The important thing is people shouldn't starve. In any Western country. But I think holistic ideas of work (and progression of duty and responsibility) is pretty wonderful. Thing is, at heart I'm an anarcho-syndicalist. Which is why I make thevargument that workers should have shares in the companies they work for... let people work in the industries they want, any one they want... treat it as an apprenticeship.
Arm humans with the totality of cultural, scientific and social aspects of their industries and benefit from the trade this produces in addition.
Look, i dont know enough about it and thus am going to go by whatever info is given here. You can duke it out with Elijin if you want.Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Yeah, my plans for retirement also include overshooting the age area to compensate for the small chance ill live far longer than average. A thing to note is that it is 82.1 years for newbords. Your life expectancy, even ignoring your medical problems, is much lower.
No, the key idea of UBI is that everyone gets basic income needed to live above poverty line. Ideally this means that people not being afraid of starvation and homelessness if they cant find a job will spend more time staying in school, starting their own businesses and be more likely to actually survive on part time jobs. Futhermore, it removes the wellfare trap, since UBI does not go away if you find a job. Currently the wellfare system provides benefits that are equivalent of many existing job offers, so there is no actual benefit of getting a job. With UBI since you do not loose the UBI benefits any work will be on top without removal of existing benefits, thus more incentive to work there already. Also UBI would significantly simplify wellfare administration, meaning freeing up finds government spends on administration.
Why would you even buy woodworking tooks outside of hobbyism or basic house repairs (which works just fine with cheap ikea tools).
And are you really saying that there is no benefit for producers to automatization? really?
Trucking is the largest job market in US. Trucking, taxis, public transport will all have automation. Also since over 75% of taxi fare is actually wage for the driver, replacing that may result in severe reduction of taxi costs and far more people replacing regular driving with taxis at least for inner-city travel.
Self-fuelling is very much possible, though even if not, having one or two guys at a gas store do the fuelling is way less people than every driver doing it on themselves. Yeah, self inspecting is very much going to happen and cleaning will be much less of an issue when there are no humans inside for stuff like cargo trucks. We already have selfpolicing in terms of fares for stuff like Lyft and Uber.
The first cars wont be perfect, no. But they dont have to be. They just have to be better than human drivers.
If you look at hard-science fiction books instead of pop sci-fi crap churned out in the 50s... A heck of a lot of things actually happened. For example flatscreen TVs and video calls (skype anyone?). heck mobile phones itself was sci-fi back then. As far as the moon goes, if we had continued the space race at the same pace we would have been on the moon now. We decided to spend the money elsewhere, sadly. I say sadly, because NASA is the single most useful entity in known history in terms of benefit/dollar invested. And the best thing about that is that being a goverment institution they have let everyone use the tech, instead of grabbing it for themselves.
Yep, thats where UBI comes rearing its head again. I think your ideology is very flawed, but then again you probably think the same about mine.