National impact from New York marriage law: experts

[Grey Fox]

So Marti is taller & skinnier then I. I do not consider myself fat.

[Caliga]

They have Civil Unions which is better than most states.  Glad Christie at least plans on leaving them alone.

Christie ought to sign it, if for no other reason than as a courtesy to his predecessor Jim McGreevey.

[Iormlund]

... while automation makes human labor increasingly pointless and human intelligence increasingly worthless.

Automation not only frees humans to do more productive work but can only replace tasks where human intelligence is ALREADY worthless.

Automation frees humans qualified to do more productive work, to do more productive work.  99% of humanity is qualified to be a ditch-digger.  What fraction is qualified to be an automation engineer?

I think we have an assumption that any human intelligence is malleable enough that, with proper education and discipline, anyone is potentially qualified to participate in the economy, regardless of how advanced that economy is.  While it's based on the historical experience that the labor force has adapted to technological revolutions--hunter/gatherers become farmers, farmers become factory workers, factory workers retrain to become office workers--I don't believe the assumption that they always shall to be true.

I also sharply disagree that automation will only replace physical labor and routine tasks, and leave true, non-routine intellectual activity untouched.  But this is a separate issue, and depends on how you feel about strong AI.

Now, I am not a luddite, and I'm not attacking technological progress in itself.  All I'm attacking is the ideological notion that humans are obligatedto participate in the economy, or to participate to the extent they presently do, in order to survive, because I do not believe that this notion will be sustainable once only 75, 50, 25, or 10% of humanity is even biologically equipped to participate.  We are not a race of scientists and artists.

The goal should be (and implicitly has been for at least a hundred fifty years) to put an end to human labor.  You can only hold on to a capitalist worldview and embrace that goal at the same time if you accept the logical result of keeping to both: massive human dieback.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I didn't want to imply most humans can do creative work. I know for a fact they do not. And most of those who do are unwilling to do so. For some reason normal people try to use their brain as less as possible, which is something I always found puzzling.

[Faeelin]

They have Civil Unions which is better than most states.  Glad Christie at least plans on leaving them alone.

Doing anything against them would be impossible and politically suicidal.

[dps]

The fact is, in a purely capitalist economy, where you are not getting paid money "for sitting on your ass and collecting a welfare check" (an anathema to many), you end up creating an unemployable, poor underclass, which is a sure recipe for a revolution.

That's an interesting fact.

If you define "fact" as a statement that is completely contrary to observed conditions.

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

[Razgovory]

The fact is, in a purely capitalist economy, where you are not getting paid money "for sitting on your ass and collecting a welfare check" (an anathema to many), you end up creating an unemployable, poor underclass, which is a sure recipe for a revolution.

That's an interesting fact.

If you define "fact" as a statement that is completely contrary to observed conditions.

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

Do you really believe this bullshit?

[The Brain]

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

Slaves were middle-class? Even the South wasn't that bad.

[Jacob]

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

So wait... how about the slaves? You don't get much more underclass than being a slave. And while slavery ended, the consensus seems to be that the former slaves and their offspring didn't experience a massive jump in class status afterwards.

But perhaps you're speaking of a federal welfare system that predates slavery?

[Razgovory]

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

So wait... how about the slaves? You don't get much more underclass than being a slave. And while slavery ended, the consensus seems to be that the former slaves and their offspring didn't experience a massive jump in class status afterwards.

But perhaps you're speaking of a federal welfare system that predates slavery?

It would have to predate the US as well.

[dps]

We didn't have an underclass in this country before we had a federal welfare system.  Dirt poor people, yeah, but not a seeminly permanent underclass.

So wait... how about the slaves? You don't get much more underclass than being a slave. And while slavery ended, the consensus seems to be that the former slaves and their offspring didn't experience a massive jump in class status afterwards.

But perhaps you're speaking of a federal welfare system that predates slavery?

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

[Valmy]

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Blacks were the permanent underclass in the 1960s and they had been for centuries by design.

[Habbaku]

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Blacks were the permanent underclass in the 1960s and they had been for centuries by design.

Intelligent design?

[Valmy]

Intelligent design?

Some of them were pretty crafty.  The Grandfather clause was truly inspired.

[dps]

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Blacks were the permanent underclass in the 1960s and they had been for centuries by design.

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

Blacks were the permanent underclass in the 1960s and they had been for centuries by design.

They weren't unemployable though, as in Marty's post.  Unemployment was higher among blacks than among whites, and blacks in the main couldn't get the decent jobs, but they could usually find work.  And the situation was a direct result of racial segregation, not an inevitable result of capitalism.

[Jacob]

If you're bringing up slavery in this, you're about a century off.  We didn't really have a welfare state until Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.

But it seems you're implying that the descendants of the slaves, the poor Blacks in the Northern ghettos and rural South were not a permanent underclass before Lyndon Johnson.

Which seems preposterous, to put it mildly.