From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Sun Mar 26 2000 - 22:52:23 MST
john grigg wrote:
>
> Hal wrote:
> I would not be too smug about being irreplaceable just because we think we
> are "above average". Picture a future where smart AIs do all the
> intellectual work far less expensively than people could, while humans are
> the drones doing the physical labor, flesh and blood being too cheap to be
> worth replacing with metal.
> (end)
>
> This is a scary future scenario! And to help 'salve' human egos would the
> federal government adopt a welfare-state system to an extent we have never
> seen?
>
> XLLB wrote:
> The "have's" will make up only a little over 10% of the population, and the
> 2040s' version of today's high school educated, store clerk, single parent,
> living in a slumlord's hovel, without medical insurance, will be one of the
> "haves".
> (end)
>
> Very disturbing! I would hope with the wave of technological progress
> coming we will be able to see much more then 10% of the global population
> live a comfortable life. And by 2040 won't the singularity wave or spike
> have hit and transformed the global society (adequate shelter, food and
> medicine) with nanotech and AI?
Yes, I don't buy into all of the class warfare crap the socialists
always bring up. Contrary to claims, using the measurement of the
same standard of living and/or poverty levels used in 1950, there
are fewer people in poverty than ever in human history. The reason
you see claims that there are MORE people 'in poverty' is that they
keep upping the bar of what a person living in 'povery' should be able
to have as a standard of living. I don't consider someone who has a
car, a VCR, a TV w/ digital cable, a stereo, cellular phone, pager,
and can afford a couple cartons of smokes and/or several cases of
beer each week, along with some recreational drugs, living quarters
of over 500 square feet per person, and an average diet of over 3000
calories a day to be living in poverty.
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