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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Does Automation Take Jobs Away?
Organization: The Armory
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 22:22:11 GMT
Message-ID: <CtME51.E6E@armory.com>
References: <mwilson.775136657@ncratl> <3132ap$i2t@mailer.fsu.edu>
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In article <3132ap$i2t@mailer.fsu.edu>,
Edward Flaherty <eflahert@garnet.acns.fsu.edu> wrote:
>mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark O. Wilson) writes:
>> 
>> If robots did 100% of the work, everything would be free.
-----------------------------
If the people owned the robots, or they were a national resource, then
sure.
-Steve

>	Not so.  There is still this thing called scarcity we have to 
>deal with.  
----------------
I guess you never look UP! Between free thermonuclear power and orbital
conquest of the solar system's resources, I don't foresee a reasonable
problem for thousands of years. If we'd gotten up sooner, maybe a lot of
people wouldn't now have to die first of deprivation. In space, scarcity is
an unknown concept. And with robots mining the asteroids, and huge farms
and factories at L points or elsewhere, actually all we have to know is how
to fix things. We will all someday be part-time first-rate engineers. This
will be the natural heritage of the human race. There might be artists who
want to do that all the time. Maybe we'll be able to accomodate them, maybe
they will have to be taught engineering of production systems in grade
school before they are ALLOWED to branch out into such "hobbies". After
all, what if *I* want to take up art as well in my free time!!! I'm not
about to do all the engineering for some fart-headed artist with delusions
of exceptional importance. He can pull his two hours a day like the rest of
us!!!:)
-Steve

>> Mob rule isn't any prettier merely because the mob calls itself a government
>> It ain't charity if you are using someone else's money.
>> Wilson's theory of relativity: If you go back far enough, we're all related.
>> Mark.O.Wilson@AtlantaGA.NCR.com
>-- 
>What a wonderful bird is the pelican,
>His beak can hold more than his belly can,
>But I don't know how the hell he can.
------------------------------------
"He who dies with the most toys, still dies."
"Gravity sucks!"
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

