[waps]

From the article

  A handset told him what to collect and put on his trolley. It allotted him a set
  number of seconds to find each product and counted down. If he made a mistake the
  scanner beeped."

  "We are machines, we are robots, we plug our scanner in, we're holding it, but we
  might as well be plugging it into ourselves", he said.

Really reminded me of this : http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Welcome to the future.

[Nursie]

Haven't read that one for a few years, but it always seems more and more spot-on.

The 'Australia Project' part is fanciful sci-fi, but the point is clear - the work that all humans have put in for generations is being co-opted by the few in the ownership classes. Ordinary people find themselves treated more and more as replaceable machines then are finally optimised out of the process and disenfranchised entirely.

OTOH when you look at much of the non-western world, thinking about problems with concentrated ownership in a post-scarcity society seems a million miles away from the people who still need a clean water supply and a reliable source of food.

[eli_gottlieb]

>OTOH when you look at much of the non-western world, thinking about problems with concentrated ownership in a post-scarcity society seems a million miles away from the people who still need a clean water supply and a reliable source of food.

It's really not. The pre-capitalist world had a much more egalitarian international wealth distribution, with India, for example, making up a double-digit percentage of the world GDP. These non-Western poor countries wouldn't be nearly so poor if not for the same capitalistic process that is steadily leaving the Western working classes out in the cold (and now even the Chinese working classes, as they get to be more expensive than robots or Africans).

[Nursie]

Fair enough, I guess it just strikes me as odd to talk about post-scarcity anything when we have poverty on such scales. I guess it can all be an outgrowth of the same phenomena.

[eli_gottlieb]

Well let's be clear: there are lots of Indian villages who would have plenty of drinking water if some Western firm wasn't bribing the government into letting them steal all of it. There are Mexican farmers who would have a good deal more food if NAFTA hadn't ruined them. There are Argentine workers who would have much better wages and easier access to, well, everything, if the IMF had not tried to liquify their entire nation into debt-service payments.

Global capitalism is a global problem.

[Nursie]

I'm not sure I'd blame 'capitalism' outright like that, but the actions of some of the so-called* free-market evangelist nations and organisations have been despicable and made a lot of places a lot worse off, yes. But I don't think you can blame the totality of world poverty on that, not honestly.

*(I say "so-called" because it's usually "free market for you, trade barriers for us")

[eli_gottlieb]

Goddamnit, why do the nasty predictions for the future have to arrive early while the nice ones are always late?

[coldtea]

Because everything powered by greed gets fast lane access.

[pirateking]

Salvation is always just around the corner, but we are walking around a rotating platform struggling to even just keep the corner in sight.

[moocowduckquack]

Alongside the platform is a railway tunnel. If you walk down it to the left you will find a bundle of disconnected wiring and a sign reading; "We are sorry to announce that due to unforseen circumstances and the state of the economy, the light at the end of the tunnel has now been switched off". If you were to walk in the other direction however there is brilliant illumination, but that is just the lights of an oncoming train.

[pirateking]

You take the left path.

Your inventory contains: flashlight with unknown amount of battery power, shovel, binoculars, old brass ring, matchbox, notebook, pencil.

1. Inspect the wiring.

2. Continue in the dark.

3. Turn back.

[eli_gottlieb]

Salvation is easy. All you have to do is decide that "good" > "bad". The perverse attraction to misery and toil I observe in people, in this fucking thread, that's what pisses me off. What's with this idolatry?