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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (927413)	3/24/2016 1:39:26 PM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1588702

They were pie in the sky at the time. They haven't been in a long time, although there is pressure from the oligarchs to change that. And yes, those changes took time. But the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step and all that... Sure, revolutionary changes are prone to reversals. And corruption, just ask the French. But evolutionary changes are prone to be watered down and the "this just isn't the right time" stalling. The time for evolutionary changes was decades ago. They have been watered down, stalled and undermined ever since. The pressures have been building ever since and will only get worse. Look at the signs. The Tea Party, the Occupy movement, Black Lives Matter, Trump, Bernie and a whole host of other things are just a symptom of those pressures. In some cases, like with the Tea Party, they have been co-opted by the very forces that drove their creation. Most have been ignored. But the pressures remain. And grow. The problem with revolutionary changes is that they are unpredictable and very destructive. They are, by definition singularities and it is impossible to predict where they will go. And they ruin lives. So, while it is a rational thing to do to attempt to forestall them, it never works. It just makes them worse. The Roman Senators tried to forestall the needed changes to the Roman Republic. Look what they got. Granted, the Empire exceeded the heights of the Republic. But the seeds of its destruction were also sown... It might seem that talk of guillotines and tumbrels are just crazy talk. But, think of them as metaphor. There might not actual heads rolling in our future. But that might turn out to be quaint and mild in comparison... We are at a crossroads. We have the rise of the surveillance state hitting its stride. We have automation on the verge of changing our ideas of employment. Self-driving cars are imminent and that technology, along with drones, threatens all kinds of delivery jobs like the trucking industry. And that is just the start. The total realignment of the workplace that started in the 1970s is due for another round. Remember how personal computers totally upended the career track of middle management during the 1980s? Millions of people were uprooted from the middle class and thrust into low wage jobs just as they were approaching their peak earning potential or even retirement. The change from stakeholder capitalism to shareholder capitalism saw a large part of manufacturing get offshored. And the rise of vulture capitalism saw the pension system gutted and eventually junked. Me, I shouldn't complain. I managed to ride that wave from the lower quintile in income to the top decile. Computers have been very, very good to me. But for most Americans, downward mobility was their future. But even those lower wage boltholes are now threatened. Many of the oligarchs seem to be of the opinion that those people will just quietly take it like they have been. Even if it means starving to death in the streets. They won't. It is back to the wall time. It won't be pretty. In short, I understand your desire for evolutionary change. It is the best and most humane thing for the vast majority of people. But, by our own actions and the technological changes we are on the cusp of unleashing, that time has passed. We have allowed sociopaths to enrich themselves at the expense of society. Instead of examining the changes and having an adult discussion about how to ameliorate the negatives, we have been discussing "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" and "Survivor". Deciding not to decide is still a decision and still has consequences. And now, here we are.