The low and middle

So according to tracker stats some of you are reading this by choice which slightly amuses me and makes me question how you spend your time. But onto the rambling, lecturing, ranting even perhaps? As a heads up this one is going to be kinda long compared to the others.


Thanks to automation many simple tasks no longer exist or exist by the grace that paying a human is cheaper than creating a machine or piece of code. Two prime and modern examples are food services and manufacturing.

In food services wonderful devices like this exist. These devices will most of the time create exactly what you want without any issues, complaints, or other problems that can come with humans. The downside is these machines are expensive and complicated depending on the food type.

Manufacturing has the same issue. Before it was economical to ship manufacturing overseas we used machines here to automate it and now even China is looking to automate it's workforce because they are becoming to "expensive".

Lets ignore the rest of the world for now. These two job categories are traditionally held by two groups within the US, the uneducated or the young. For now lets focus on the what would be considered the uneducated. Also for our purposes we don't really care the why or how of why they are considered uneducated merely that they fall into the classification.

Historically people considered uneducated will pick a job and work their way from bottom upwards which up until recently worked pretty well. Lets take McDonalds for example. You could start out a cashier and eventually learn all the stations then move onto shift supervisor and then eventually store manager and depending perhaps even higher. Same with manufacturing you could start out cleaning and spend extra time helping and learning let say a milling machine and then progress into running the milling machine and then perhaps higher.

Now in both these instances lets say you stop at shift manager and milling operator. At both points you aren't making amazing money and you will never be considered rich but you've learned marketable skills and can count on decent living. This was lets say normal fifteen years ago and even possible a decade ago. However these days I would venture both are hard pressed to find.

Lets take the shift supervisor in fast food first. In my experience a large part of their job is scheduling and stock. Before the advent of the massive interconnectivity and computers in general this job actually required skill and depending on the company and level of automation still does. However at many companies this is all handled by computers with a human to just manually adjust, check, and input corrections. So ability and skill are of little to no consequence and anyone can do it. This lowers the pay, rolls the position into another, or removes the position period.

For the milling operator well they pretty much don't have a future. Either the job has been outsourced or more likely just completely automated by a robot. If they do still happen to be around they wouldn't be directly controlling one device and would be supervising the operation of multiple devices.

So technology is starting to remove or at least lower the pay of much of what used to be entry unskilled jobs and what would be considered skilled but uneducated jobs. As technology advances this will even apply to things like plumbers, electricians, who are in the middle ground between the classifications but are definitely skilled labor.

What is worse is unlike in the past there are no clear replacements for these jobs. The technology that is condensing the workforce for once is not also expanding it. Not that it isn't creating new jobs , it certainly is, however its not creating enough to replace the amount taken and nor are all of the new jobs created of the same level as those taken away.

So what are people to do? Move into what are classified as educated jobs? Is that even feasible? Are they even safe?

Ah tangents

Lets put "free energy and matter manipulation" behind us for now and look at some things closer to home.

In the past several centuries and earlier there have been technology shifts and the general consensus is that each time the workforce and economy shifted and adapted around it and overall was better for the whole.

While not a technology shift lets look at a recent example most are familiar with.

In manufacturing a few decades ago as shipping became cheaper and the world became more connected it became cheaper to relocate simple manufacturing to other countries. As of about a decade or so ago I would venture to say the majority of non technological and military related manufacturing was relocated outside the us both simple and complex. Many thousands upon thousands lost their jobs or the jobs were phased out and not replaced when the current occupant retired.

While that is horrifying, it is no different than what has happened previously and the market shifted to compensate. While these jobs no longer existed new ones opened up in various areas to compensate.

So why are we even bothering to talk about this then? How is this related to the economical issues outlined in the previous post? Won't things will just continue to keep shifting like they have since human history began? Unfortunately not it seems by many predictions.

Within the last half century we have seen major advances in automation thanks to computers and the technologies they make possible. It was even predicted by many that at this point we would not be working or would have a very small workload at this point and devote most of our time to leisure. This has not happened for better or worse thanks to a huge increase in new fields. We however have seen several interesting things happen that have never happened before and while interesting they may not exactly be good.

Next we shall look at modern services and manufacturing.

Who needs oil?

So spring boarding from my last post. Makes me wonder how free energy will affect things.

Right now we get power from solar, gas, coal, oil, and so on. This is in turn turned into power and by products. The process employs hundreds of thousands if not millions of people directly and indirectly.

Fusion pretty much runs off of elements easily harvested from the ocean and other places and is pretty much unlimited as far as humans are concerned. It should be as far as we are aware completely environmentally clean and friendly unlike every single one of our current power sources besides solar and maybe geothermal or theoretical heat differential stuff. This is of course ignoring the creation of the devices in which case all devices become environmentally unfriendly. So after the initial investment and upkeep costs fusion is effectively free energy compared to all other sources and perhaps most importantly to people one of the safest.

Another facet of this proposed reactor is it is very small compared to a traditional power source of its magnitude. Instead of having central power plants we will only need to replace the distribution sub stations that already exist in cities with minimal overhaul of the grid. Whereas current alternatives will require a massive grid overhaul and what some consider intrusive smart meters.

So now at this point we have put several industries out of business or drastically reduced their scope. But there’s still oil right? Batteries are not getting drastically better in the foreseeable future. Vehicles, planes, boats, and other devices have pretty long cycles too. Also many by products are created from oil such as plastics. Well maybe not, remember in the last post where the navel figured out how to turn sea water into jet fuel? It would be conceivable that within a decade that technology will be refined and made public. So conceivably in your garage you could have a device you dump a cup of water into and get gas out of and well there goes a fair amount of the oil industry.

So now we have to deal with untold millions now unemployed, micro fusion plants spread throughout the city, and water while important becoming a good deal more so.

The Begining

So I have outlines and ideas and things written down but starting is always difficult. So lets go with this.

The posts here will be mostly about technology and how it interacts with social issues when its relevant.

For example something I ran across a few days ago that looks rather amazing is the promise of commercial fusion in about a decade from Lockheed.

People have been working on this for decades and the projects currently in existence barely break even on energy in and out. All the claimants so far stating positive output have never been able to prove anything. While Lockheed is also scant on details they have never once made a release they haven't backed. Actually to quote someone else "I think them and DARPA about the only two groups who could release a press release announcing "We invented Warp Drive." and I 'd be inclined to believe it.". Another interesting thing I think might support it is the Koch brothers are pulling money out of oil and reinvesting it elsewhere.

Alone this will be absolutely world changing.  Combined with other technologies, such as the Navy's new ability to produce jet fuel and other hydrocarbons from water using electricity, it will be very interesting to see what we move onto since we essentially will have free energy in whatever form we care to use.

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