this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
569 points (97.5% liked)

Mildly Interesting

17334 readers
6 users here now

This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.

This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?

Just post some stuff and don't spam.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

We thought the rider fell off or something and it was going to crash. Then it turned and kept mowing. Park Roomba!

Another picture:

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 43 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Very true, but let's also keep in mind that automation doesn't have to be a social evil. If our economic and political systems were better oriented toward lifting up society's disadvantaged and keeping extreme individual/family wealth in check, automation could benefit all. With better social safety nets (or a UBI), government-sponsored job training (perhaps paid for by taxes on automation), and incentives for starting small businesses, automation could mean less human drudgery in the workforce, and more efficient economic outcomes for all.

I'm not optimistic about that given our track record as a species, but it's possible.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 6 months ago (1 children)

TL;DR: automated production is good if and only if the people own the means.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

If we can fight the owners to keep our shitty back breaking jobs and win, we should have fought the owners to rebuild our economy for automation profits to largely benefit the people from the bottom up.

If we the peasant masses even can win against the tiny owner class oligarchs, lets fight for the right thing. And if we can't win, well then it's all masturbation anyway and they'll do what they want.

It's irrational to fight for "we demand to continue to break our backs making your shit instead of robots so we can continue to subsist on menial laborer wages with broken backs!" in any event. That's some coal miner excuse for logic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately the system has laid the framework for it to destroy itself when automation becomes ubiquitous. Imagine if y2k was inevitable but the engineers who's jobs it was to fix it hands were tied by the software company's forcing them to install more and more bugged software.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I wish you were wrong, but unfortunately I think I agree with you.