The Majority do Robot Work

Someone had to run the harvesters in the rice and sugarcane fields, check the irrigation canals or robots, install things, fix things. Humans were still not only the cheapest robots around, but also, for many tasks, the only robots that could do the job. They were self-reproducing robots too. They showed up and worked, generation after generation; give them three thousand calories a day and a few amenities, a little time off, and a strong jolt of fear, and you could work them at almost anything. Give them some ameliorative drugs and you had a working class, reified and coglike. Again she saw: a big minority of Earth’s population did robot work, and that had never gone away, no matter what political theories said.

Notes:

Humans are mostly cheap robots.

Folksonomies: philosophy capitalism human nature markets

Taxonomies:
/business and industrial/automation/robotics (0.697970)
/health and fitness/drugs (0.434056)
/business and industrial/agriculture and forestry/crops and seed (0.194030)

Keywords:
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Entities:
three thousand calories:Quantity (0.010000 (neutral:0.000000))

2312

Books, Brochures, and Chapters>Book: Robinson, Kim Stanley (2012-05-22), 2312, Orbit, Retrieved on 2013-05-25

Source Material [books.google.com]

Folksonomies: speculation fiction science fiction

Schemas

25 MAR 2013

Automating Ourselves Out of Employment

As we automate people out of work, how will will deal with the unemployment? The science fiction utopia of a post-scarcity society can't work in a Capitalist system. How will we deal with the fact that fewer and fewer monopolists will control all the resources and have less and less need for employees? Alternative Titles: The Post-Scarcity Distopia

Folksonomies: employment automation