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Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by satysin on Friday February 03, 2017 @01:03PM (#13561762)
Good. Humans are wasted on such mundane tasks. I am sure many of those people, given the opportunity, could do far greater things for humanity than picking books and consumer electronics off shelves and put them in boxes.

However we need to make sure as such jobs are automated away that we give the people who would do those jobs the opportunities to become more with training and education.

Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by Clubber on Friday February 03, 2017 @01:23PM (#13561932)
Half the population has an IQ at or below 100. That sounds great on it's face, but what would you train and educate the bottom half to do?
Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by satysin on Friday February 03, 2017 @01:36PM (#13562034)
I am not saying they can all be doctors or other very high aptitude roles but I have no doubt they can learn new skills that will enable them to do more productive things with their minds than warehouse work for example.

I don't have an answer to be honest though and I am not sure [m]any people do right now. It is a difficult problem but one we need to discuss and work on a solution for. I don't feel a universal basic income is the answer like some have suggested. Not that I am against UBI as part of a bigger solution but it is my personal opinion that a mind wasted is a tragic thing.

Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by bsder on Friday February 03, 2017 @04:14PM (#13563379)
> I am not saying they can all be doctors or other very high aptitude roles but I have no doubt they can learn new skills that will enable them to do more productive things with their minds than warehouse work for example.

I have less faith than you that the market will value those new skills at the same level.

The Rust Belt in the US is the example I would point to. No job has appeared in those areas to absorb those people who would have been working in the mills or the mines.

I'm no romanticist. Those jobs sucked.

However, the market valued those jobs rather well at the time. Nothing has come along since that valued those people at the same level.

Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by sdfjkjasdfsd67 on Friday February 03, 2017 @01:56PM (#13562210)
Grow food, learn an instrument, how to paint, build something.

Not all "work" in life should be based around mercantilism.

Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by Clubber on Friday February 03, 2017 @05:04PM (#13563748)
Agreed, but the problem is that the economy can't support the citizenry. Learning an instrument is unlikely to change that for someone who doesn't have a job.
Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by metaphorm on Friday February 03, 2017 @06:00PM (#13564111)
there is no bottom half. there is only a group of people that don't perform well on IQ tests. what should they do? whatever they want. humans are free, inherently. maybe a lot of them would fuck up or become idle. or maybe not. they might find much better ways to use their time and talents (which are substantial, if not well represented by what is tested for on an IQ test) if they didn't have to pick books off of shelves to make rent money.
Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by mempko on Friday February 03, 2017 @02:29PM (#13562490)
Let me guess, you took a test and are in the upper half?
Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by HeyLaughingBoy on Friday February 03, 2017 @03:16PM (#13562918)
I prefer to not assume that I know what's better for people than they do themselves, so I'd rather they did far greater things for themselves before I worried about humanity's loss.

That said, there are many people who enjoy mindless jobs like that.

Re:Amazon soars to more than 341K employees, adding 110K peo... by ci5er on Friday February 03, 2017 @02:32PM (#13562524)
> I am sure many of those people, given the opportunity, could do far greater things for humanity than picking books and consumer electronics off shelves and put them in boxes.

If they could, they'd be doing them.

So, what's the plan?

1) Robot unemployment

2) Freedom!

3) ???something something training???

4) Utopia

?