[ExI] retrainability of plebeians

Lee Corbin lcorbin at rawbw.com
Wed Apr 22 11:38:01 UTC 2009


Dagon Gmail wrote:

> 2009/4/21 Rafal Smigrodzki <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com 
> <mailto:rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>>
> 
>     2009/4/21 Dagon Gmail <dagonweb at gmail.com <mailto:dagonweb at gmail.com>>:
>      >> ### Marshall Brain has no idea. Structural unemployment of the
>      >> able-bodied non-insane persons is a side-effect of government
>      >> regulation, and it has nothing to do with technology.

First, it's true what Rafal says about Marshal Idea.
He has no brain.

He based one of his pieces, for example, on the
hypothesis that a fast food joint could succumb
to complete automation first by having the
"superfluous" (Emlyn's term) job of manager
replaced by a computer.

Which totally demonstrated that he had no solid
foundation about what managers do in fast food
restaurants. They deal with the constant unexpected
events, directing the lower labor to "attend to this",
"attend to that". No---who'll be automated first are
the people who do the most predictable jobs. His
writings appear to be full of such misunderstanding.

> > ### But - in the real world technology will
 > > have unprecedented effects. We had mass
> > migrations of millions (in the US) based
 > > on cotton picking machines.
> 
> Amazing, you spasm back in faith based thinking.
> YES when millions of blacks became superfluous
 > in the US south they had to leave or face severe
 > consequences.

No. They were merely *attracted* by better working
conditions elsewhere.

> Many did die,

What? Look at the growth of the American black
population. All during the last two centuries,
there have been far more per-capita black births
than white births. IN colonial times, blacks
constituted about 1 in 4. Then thanks to huge
immigration of whites from Europe, they declined
to as little as 10% of the population.

But black people are now at 13 or 14 percent,
still despite a huge rise in the Hispanic and
Asian populations. They're approaching the same
1 in 4 ratio of Colonial times.

> but many more ended up in squallor in ghettoes
> and poverty. Many moved north, to find jobs and
 > found miserable factory jobs.

It beat what was available where they came from!

> You need only look at the state of blacks in US
 > society now that even after a century these people
> are still largely a loathed underclass, 

Oh, status among groups in *every* society arises
from a number of considerations. In many countries,
e.g. South America, merely having lighter skin
affords prestige. Blacks have lower status in almost
all countries, as do darker skin people in general.
Blame the Divine Bastard, I guess.

> especially when they still live in the projects.

The Projects were created by government bureaucrats
who took evolutionarily developed neighborhoods
and replaced them (forcefully) with monstrosities
that seem to have been *designed* to foster lack
of community among the residents. Most of the projects
have been torn down, thank goodness.

> But even if you can retrain the labor reserves,
 > the question is on how fast you can retrain,
> again a topic which you conveniently scurry
 > away from.  Do you really have the near-papal
> faith that markets can re-integrate, without
 > massive coercion, squallor, statism, trauma
> millions of people in under one or a few decade?

The Irish in American took about six generations
to develop from (statistically speaking) lazy,
drunk, and extremely combative types into
ordinary Americans. They're incomes are at par.

No, it's not easy for a group to change its ways.
How many generations is it taking the American
south to become fully productive? How long before
it takes black people to recover from the government
inflicted programs that rewarded destructive live
styles, e.g., paying out 20 billion dollars per
year (back when a billion was a lot of money) to
inner city women to have as many children out of
wedlock as they could.

Unemployment is really much higher than has been
reported. Quite a few people just stop looking.
One of the reasons is that their incentives have
been damaged very much by government largess.
Being on welfare has become an ESS, though our
western governments are evidently finally taking
steps the last decade or so to curtail this.

Lee




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