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Politics : View from the Center and Left

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To: cnyndwllr who wrote (216539)	2/10/2013 2:28:24 AM
From: Maurice Winn	Read Replies (3) of 542136

No jest, seriously. Even the unemployed and unemployable enjoy fantastic lives compared with what was possible for comparable people only 50 years ago let alone 100 years. A polio vaccine costs next to nothing and the unemployed can easily get them. The vast panoply of our amazing world is available at lower and lower prices. Many countries even pay a dole these days, which is heaps to live on. There's no famine, even in Africa, India and China. Which is not to say that due to political instability there won't be. Egypt could turn into a catastrophe for example. A third of a century ago I had a similar conversation with a woman at a ski club [snobby one]. She was saying how awful the unemployment was. I pointed out that the only thing wrong with it was the pay rate. If paid enough, they could be there with us skiing. Amusingly, she had asked "What would the unemployed do". I pointed out that they could come skiing like us. She seemed to think they were a different subhuman species. Despite another third of a century of burgeoning technology and population, unemployment hasn't grown particularly and everyone is vastly better off. Nobody punches computer cards any more, or uses slide rules. They can afford cars. Cellphones. Mobile Cyberspace. Medical treatment which didn't exist. A huge array of advantages. The Luddite worries go back centuries and they have always been false. "Oh woe is us, somebody has invented the cart wheel. Now we won't need dozens of serfs to push the carts and carry the rollers around to the front. OMG now we have a horse to pull it with a harness. This is terrible. What? A steam engine? No way. You are NOT going to put that in my cart. Imagine the unemployed blacksmiths and harness makers. A self-driving Google car? Not on your life - millions of taxi drivers and chauffeurs out of a job." Ted Kaczynski could see the problem with modernity clearly. But he was not allowed to "save the world". He's in gaol. Here is his Mein Kampf: cyber.eserver.org Mqurice

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