After America, over-education and perpetual adolescence

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:22 am

Ewwww. No. Don't buy any kind of food from China. Gahhhh.

Fortunately many specialty Chinese ingredients are also manufactured in Japan, which has food safety and purity standards. The local Asian store carries those as well as the Chinese ones. (Ewww.)

Post by **Dave_LF** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:12 pm

Post by **Dave_LF** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:13 pm

Thomas Friedman addresses the "what has changed" question and what it means to the average person:
Average is Over

But somehow he fails to appreciate his own point. After observing that unemployment rates get lower the more education you have, he opines:

In a world where average is officially over, there are many things we need to do to buttress employment, but nothing would be more important than passing some kind of G.I. Bill for the 21st century that ensures that every American has access to post-high school education.

No Mr. Friedman, if post-high school education becomes average, then the good jobs will go to those with master's degrees or better (as indeed appears to be happening). With machines doing more and more of the work, only the best of the best humans will be able to find secure, high-paying employment. And everyone else is just stuck.

Post by **axordil** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 5:36 pm

Which begins to raise a question I've had for a while: what happens when (as more than one SF author has asked) we need functionally NO humans to manufacture anything, as Foxcomm, the Saruman of Chinese manufacturing, is working on? At some point, if trends continue, a high enough proportion of the jobs society requires to function will be automated, such that it will be impossible to approach what economists have always considered to be normative levels of employment.

Post by **yovargas** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:42 pm

I assume that will be the point where machines start hunting us for food and we'll need to live in underground bunkers. Then you can get higher education in bunker-building as it will be a job in high demand.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:54 pm

I've thought a lot about Ax's question before, and I don't see an answer that doesn't involve a lot of human suffering, short of a Star Trek–style "free energy for everybody, plus you can use the free energy to make food and clothes" breakthrough. Which I don't think we ought to count on. . . .

If I were a conspiracy nut, I would see that as a good explanation for the upward flow of wealth over the past few decades. Secure walled compounds for the 0.1%, and outside, it's Road Warrior time.

Of course, that wouldn't be sustainable either, even inside the walls. They couldn't survive selling bundled mortgages to each other. And eventually the wine cellars would run dry.

Post by **axordil** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 7:54 pm

No, seriously. If even half the jobs devoted to manufacturing world wide were fully automated, that would put hundreds of millions out of work. What the hell are they supposed to do?

Post by **Dave_LF** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:05 pm

The options are:
-Massive population drop
-Massive demand for labor from new sources
-Find a way to at least partially decouple wealth distribution from labor
-Rampant poverty

I can't think of any others. The SF authors mostly imagined that when the machines could do the work, the rest of us would get to sit back and read, think, or create art while enjoying the proceeds. That's sort of what's happening, except only for the handful of individuals who own the machines.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:17 pm

I'd go with "Massive demand for labor from new sources." The aliens land in their huge spaceships and offer everybody great, high-paying jobs on another planet. Everyone files on board. Because they trust the aliens, because there's this book they all carry around, see—To Serve Man.

Naaah, that's too out there.

Post by **Frelga** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 8:17 pm

Maybe that's the point where capitalism becomes obsolete, as slave-based economy, and feudal economy both became obsolete. You can't have free market when most population has no buying power.

Post by **yovargas** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:13 pm

axordil wrote:No, seriously. If even half the jobs devoted to manufacturing world wide were fully automated, that would put hundreds of millions out of work. What the hell are they supposed to do?

But I was serious.

No, my "serious" answer would be the very boring "I don't know and I doubt anyone else does". That situation would look so different from anything else that's come before it that I doubt anyone could have a handle on all the variables to figure out the likely outcome.

Post by **RoseMorninStar** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:34 pm

Perhaps this is discussion for another thread.. but since we were getting all futuristic/Sci-fi.. I thought I'd drop it in here as it is something I've pondered for years.

For the record, I have no issue with homosexuality and I believe it has most likely been around since the beginning of mankind and is seen in the animal kingdoms as well. But I wonder if homosexuality increases in times like ours when there are stresses on society.. over population, etc..and if it is a way of containing population/part of natures purpose.

I suppose the same could be said for plagues/disease and overpopulation. (And I am NOT implying that homosexuality is a plague/disease!)

Post by **River** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:37 pm

It's an interesting question...that unfortunately we won't be able to find any reliable data for.

Post by **RoseMorninStar** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:19 pm

River wrote:It's an interesting question...that unfortunately we won't be able to find any reliable data for.

Perhaps that's why I've never brought it up.. there really is no way of knowing at this point.

Post by **vison** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:21 pm

Nature, as I and others have observed before, has her way of dealing with overpopulation.

I believe it is inevitable.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:26 pm

Anyway, what's the mechanism? Evolution doesn't "know" anything; natural selection works on a micro scale, it can't be affected by worldwide phenomena.

It seems to me that to the extent that being gay is genetically programmed, the incidence in the population would be decreasing at this point: people who don't want children don't have to have them, and people who don't want to marry someone of the opposite sex don't have to do it (to hide their status, or because they couldn't control their fate, or because, no matter what they really wanted out of life, they still needed heirs to support them in their old age).

Post by **Dave_LF** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:40 pm

There are examples of regulation in other species. For example, if I recall correctly, rats delay maturation in response to chemicals in their own urine (which are present in higher concentrations when population is high).

Post by **River** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:45 pm

Rabbits resorb their litters in response to environmental cues as well.

Post by **Túrin Turambar** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:49 pm

The issue at the moment seems to be we have a society of consumers enjoying a high standard of living in the west and a society of producers not enjoying that same standard of living in the developing world (plus, of course, another society of people in poverty who neither produce nor consume on anything like an industrial level in Sub-Saharan Africa). We are the global aristocracy, and beyond the fact that our demand drives the economies of nations like India, China, Indonesia and Brazil we seem kind of superflous. In those cirucmstances, can we maintain our standard of living?

Post by **yovargas** » Wed Jan 25, 2012 10:56 pm

Superfluous?? Yes, we may not be making that much stuff, but the "over-educated" west is still doing pretty darn well at inventing stuff to make, some of it just cool luxuries, but some of it stuff that legitimately does humanity a lot of good - yes, medicine being the big one, again. I'm hoping for/expecting a cure for AIDS in the next decade, as one example, but I'm not expecting it to be coming out of India, China, Indonesia or Brazil.