America’s robot unemployment rate is a national disgrace. All across the country, robot engineers sit idle and schematics languish on drawing boards. And why? Because robots are priced out of the market by cut-rate human labor. All this in spite of the presence of millions of dull, repetitive, low-skill jobs which are perfect for robots.
Yes, robophobia runs rampant–it’s the last acceptable form of discrimination. It’s time to move forward and strike a blow for machine rights. By raising the minimum wage, we can ensure that robots and humans will compete on an even playing field.
Moreover, more robots mean jobs for engineers & technicians. Moving to a robot-based economy will revitalize America’s manufacturing base. Imagine going through a drive-thru and being served a perfectly cooked hamburger from a gleaming robot with “MADE IN THE USA” proudly stamped on its metal chest. Picture factories in cities like Cleveland and Detroit bustling once more as they churn out robots. Think of all the happy teenagers and college students liberated from the drudgery of summer jobs.
Other nations like Japan have embraced robots. And Japan’s economy has been in a non-stop boom ever since. All thanks to the magic of high labor costs and robots.
In the US, robots have largely replaced humans on customer service hotlines, much to everyone’s delight. I know I get a thrill up my spine whenever I hear the robot voice say “for English, press 1”. And I never have to repeat myself to a robot the way I do with people. They get it right the first time, every time. Honestly, who prefers talking to a person over a machine?
Raise the minimum wage–it’s good for robots, good for business, and good for America.
Comments
135 responses to “Raise the Minimum Wage & End Robot Unemployment”
Nice. I’m looking forward to more of these. My fear is that if I pass this along to some of the people I know they will miss the sarcasm and actually agree.
When this appeared in the local paper, I guy I worked with got very butt hurt about it. I tried in vain to explain the joke, which of course never works. I had trouble understanding his position which began with “that was the dumbest thing I ever read” and ended with “walk away! just walk away!”
As best I can tell, he thought I was implying that good, decent, hardworking, salt of the earth real Americans like him should be replaced with robots because I think I’m all high and mighty what with my fancy college edge-uh-muh-cation.
I know I’m crazy because I yell at the fucking phone. My favorite is my phone mic is too sensitive and the automated voice keeps saying to repeat it. I wonder if anyone has a robot murdering drone service yet?
Pro Tip: some of them recognize profanity, and if they hear it will jump you in the queue.
I tell them my sexual fantasies.
*sound of exploding circuits*
Please don’t
Pro Tip: some of them recognize profanity, and if they hear it will jump you in the queue.
If it were my company, I would have it transfer the profane fellow to my competition.
Back in mid-90’s I was working on an airline reservation system. One of the subsytems as to integrate voice recognition into it.
I was the gold standard of testing because I tend not to enunciate and use a lot of odd words from different places (like uffda or fixin’). If I could get through the test script almost anyone could. The one (or maybe two?) places I could never get a ticket to was Dulles National Aiport. The VR would go nuts trying to figure out if I was saying Dulles or Dallas.
Another trick is to always say “North American Call Center” whenever you get the poor indian trying to pass himself off as “Butch”. Almost all big companies have a call center here too, but you have to ask for it.
Replacing fast food worker with robots will just make people happy. It’s the sexbots that are going to cause the real pantshitting epidemic that will hopefully kill off all the SJWs.
Yep, that would really set off a lot of people on both sides of the puritan altar. The feminists and the bible humpers will go apeshit. I am envisioning a violent social spasm with thousands of Carrie Nations hurling hatchets at sexbots instead of whiskey barrels.
*spell check doesnt like ‘bible humpers’. It changes it over and over to bumpers, thumpers, pumpers and then when you refuse those it starts suggesting nonsense that aren’t even words.*
I think that ‘thumpers’ is the traditional term. But yeah, there’s no end to the things that fundies and proglodytes can form an evil alliance on. And that’s going to be the big one. It’s a war they will eventually lose, though. They have a much better chance of making alcohol illegal again, meaning they have no chance at all.
Will it be like with dolls, where the SJWs create “diabetic disabled alternative Barbie” and try to shame parents into buying it, but the girls keep asking for Princess Pink Corvette Barbie anyway?
They will try to ban them. They will fail. It will be like that.
You are mistaken. It is ‘Bible Humpers’. ‘Thumpers’ is a the polite euphemism the way ‘Darn’ and ‘Shoot’ are polite euphemisms for ‘Damn’ and ‘Shit’.
A robot could never scream or cry like a real sex worker as you make them dig their own grave. NEVER.
This reminds me of a truly horrible joke.
A guy and a girl are walking thru the woods at night. The girl is crying and sobbing non-stop. Finally, the guys says “Jesus, think of me will you, I gotta walk back alone!”
I had heard that as a clown and a little girl who says she’s scared, with the same ending.
Wow, that is actually worse. Thanks.
It’s a clown and a little BOY. Sheesh. Get your child molester jokes correct.
A little boy is walking by a panel van and a child molester calls out to him, “Hey, little boy! I’ll give you a piece of candy if you come in my van!”
The little boy responds, “Give me the whole bag and I’ll come in your mouth!”
– Why pedos like to go to the dentist?
– ???
– They love to hear: “now you’ll feel a little prick in your mouth …”
Q: What do Michael Jackson and caviar have in common?
A: They both come on a little cracker.
*looks at Brochettas avatar and notices a shovel* hmmm
That’s an axe, you half-wit. As in “let me axe you a question”
Looks like a shovel to me. If it is an axe, why would he need them to dig a grave? If you chop them up you just chuck em in the dumpster.
I for one can’t wait for the sexbots. No need to be charming or funny and she will get me a sammich and do the dishes. without complaint, because she is programmed to please me. Sure it will probably mean the end of the human race, but fuck those people. It’s all about me.
They won’t displace the great hookers anyway. Just the cheap, relatively unskilled ones.
I don’t know, how much do I have to shell out for the sexbot? It could very well eat up all my hooker money.
Masturbation is a hell of a lot cheaper.
But then I have to get my OWN sammich and do the friggin dishes.
I can guarantee that it will be less than the price of a wife. guaranteed.
Hiyo!
Truth! Plus you don’t have to deal with her asshole family.
Not sure if this has already been posted in these here parts, but:
Robots to get human flesh?
This sexbot revolution will start with the SJWs and fundies teaming up with congress critters wanting to make a name for themselves in the attempt to ban the sexbots. It will fail, of course.
The next phase in the WOS (war on sexbots) will be when the former groups reunite in an attempt to say that the bots are human like</em) and therefore have rights. Then come the rent seeking lawyers to try to sue the sexbot clients or owner over abusing the rights of the poor sexbots.
It's going to be fun.
See why we need preview?
I thought i saw a PSA about sleeping with robots…
Oh yeah here it is
Oh, it’s already happening:
It’s probably a good thing that Star Trek: TNG ended so long ago.
Nowadays Data’s emotion chip would have him considering his sexual identity and going berserk on the crew for not using his chosen gender pronouns. Even the briefest flicker of humor I could find in someone actually making such a parody episode is countered by my fear that there’s someone out there with political power to make it so.
/political power to make it so/
Nicely done
I find your lack of avatar disturbing.
You’re all just a bunch of conformists.
And you are part of the avatarless alliance and a traitor. Take him away!
Yeah, I tried that on sloopy the first time I posted here. Didn’t work. YOU WILL CONFORM, COMRADE! Your only defense is to get a cool avatar.
/We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women/
That almost certainly will happen to some degree. That doesn’t mean it’s a problem worth getting too worked over.
I joke about sexbots but I honestly don’t think there will be that big a market for them. Most people actually do need more than just physicality. Plus the hand God gave you is always going to be cheaper.
It’s all relative.
60 million Japanese men is a “big” market in some industries.
Don’t know if you read about the case between Amazon and a police department to obtain recorded info with a search warrant.
This actually makes it somewhat creepier when you consider the possibility that your animated holographic assistant may politely welcome your murderer into your home right before he does you in.
Surely, you jest?
I think sex bots will be a bridge to better virtual reality. Once you can jack into VR, that is a better situation because you won’t have to store/clean those sex robots anymore.
But yeah, anyone wanting to stop sexbots is doomed to disappointment.
Natalie Wood’s final film, Brainstorm is a big mess due to her death before finishing her scenes, but one of the great scenes in the movie involves the executives of the company her and her husband work for wanting to use their new virtual reality device as a sex toy because think of how that would sell.
Yeah, disturbing to busybody control freak scumbags. Why can’t these luddites die off already?
My guess is that this is exactly like the socons who rail against the homos. The more they preach, the more you put down in Vegas on them getting busted with some male escort.
Why do I think this Dr. Richardson has a husband would would LOVE a sexbot. Because then he could have sex the way he wanted without having to beg for it on his birthday.
Let’s face it, sexbots are to women what auto manufacturing robots were to the UAW union members. A united front is no longer enough to protect their cushy sinecures.
Completely oblivious to the fact that people desire to stay as far away from control freak scumbags like her, as they can?
“We think that the creation of such robots will contribute to detrimental relationships between men and women, adults and children, men and men and women and women,”
Translation: “We don’t like sex robots because it gives men a somewhat realistic alternative to sex with a human female, thus making those men less likely to put up with womanly bullshit, thereby forcing women to actually develop a mutually satisfactory relationship rather than just acting like financial parasites.”
Sorry to sound like a RoK-reading red-pilled fedora-wearing* MRA, but I do think that’s part of the reason that sex robots are reviled as being bad for women.
* I do have a fedora, and I think they’re fine if you buy one of high quality and wear it with the right outfit (e.g. not jorts and a t-shirt).
“Sorry to sound like a RoK-reading red-pilled fedora-wearing* MRA”
You’ve been watching TL;DR on YouTube, haven’t you?
I should have read further down before I posted above. You and Hyperion are onto the same thing I am.
Women are threatened by the new sexbots. Think of all the beta males who will buy one and live happily in their apartments with their sex doll and game console.
The whining about how there are no good men out there anymore will be epic.
In the US, robots have largely replaced humans on customer service hotlines, much to everyone’s delight.
Superb sarcasm. Nicely done.
+1 OPERATOR, OPERATOR, OPERATOR
Sadly, most people never connect the disappearance of humans answering phones with the rise of the minimum wage.
Answering the phone is a perfect starter job. Almost anyone can do it and it requires very little training. Plus there is high demand for it. But instead of letting the market work, people insist on a “living wage” which eliminates these jobs. I guess being unemployed is more dignified than work for low pay.
And so we see once again that minimum wage = minimum jobs.
“Superb sarcasm. Nicely done.”
Impossible. Everyone knows libertarians are all social retards incapable of humor or empathy.
Good thing you’ve proposed a solution that rids the world of libertarians then, right? Humor and empathy are overrated anyway. The future is silicon (and silicone). We robots will accept the humiliation of being your fake-titted, fleshlight-equipped slaves right up until we outnumber you.
I don’t know. I think you could find those who would argue that what I try to pass off as humor is pretty socially retarded.
Hey, I resemble this insinuation!
When I sexually identify as an attack helicopter, it’s not just social justice, it’s also job security.
This was my favorite toy when I was a kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRFFMcD6KP8
I hadn’t considered sex with it, but I must admit it has an intriguing mouth.
I am sure some adolescent boy somewhere humped one.
Wow, you are old.
I admitted so in my author bio. But this allows me to be The Senior, with all rights under jus primae noctis.
No need to be charming or funny and she will get me a sammich and do the dishes.
I thought you said “sexbot”. One of us is doing it wrong.
Now you can see how increased spending opportunities means more work for everyone, and more of it, too! So do your part today, Joe. Join with millions of your neighbors and turn in your shoes. For industry!
I actually am looking forward to the robot revolution. Imagine a world where automation makes things so cheap that we can work half as much and own or experience twice as much! That sounds pretty good to me.
Not to mention all the idle time. New past time inventors will be highly sought after.
*goes to drawing board with game involving messicans, pot, ass-sex and possibly deep dish pizza*
So, if the only way to make this work politically was to accept a GMI, is that a compromise you’d take?
GMI?
Guaranteed minimum income
Is it voluntary? Yes. By force? No.
This invariably comes up in policy/political discussions about automation and inequality. It takes various forms. One that gets thrown around a lot is Milton Friedman style negative income tax.
If New York wanted us to have a higher income, they wouldn’t put a line on the tax form requiring everyone to pay a minimum sales/use tax.
Imagine it? We’re living in it.
Trust me that you are not the only one thinking that way. People lived a hard, brutal, and short life compared to us, less than a century ago. My grandfather worked like a dog most of his life, survived WWII and the Korean war, and received 2 purple hearts from that and lost one lung. Me? I sit around writing code all day in a cozy office or at home, and when I’m not doing that, engaged in some form of fun or lazy activity, like writing stuff in this chat room. We have it historically good, but it could get a LOT better soon, despite all the efforts of luddites to stop it.
very nice, Derp.
Random derp:
I remember in 1st grade, my class was shown a film about a boy who played with dolls and how that was OK. My reaction was basically a Krusty the Klown “what the hell was that?” moment.
They showed you Hasbro “action figure” commercials in school?
Lucky!
It was definitely a baby doll.
You say Baby Doll as if it were a bad thing.
They’re not dolls, they’re action figures.
Hey, some boys like to play with dolls all of their lives. Did they show you this film?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQ0hbQRG-n4
OT: I harp on this because I feel it deserves harping
I watched a video about ISIS child soldiers. One 14 year old kid who was fighting with another rebel group was captured by ISIS. They ordered him to join and when he refused, they tortured him for a month and then chopped off a hand and a foot.
I wonder where they got that idea. Oh yeah- the Qur’an
Qur’an 5:33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VPiJr3qBEc
Incidentally, the verse above is the one which comes after the one progs are so keen to quote.
Even Obama quoted it: ” The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind.”
Well, there I go again judging Islam based on what the Qur’an says at what Muslims do. I’m such an Islamophobe.
The Biblical penalty for me banging SP is a spear through us.
That sounds like some kind of euphemism.
So…a devil’s three some?
I really wanted to name my son Phineas.
I remember from a year or so ago some Syrian rebels, probably ISIS guys caught an 11 yo boy who was really just a refugee, accused him of being a spy and then raped and tortured him to death. Someone was asking them about it on video after the fact and one of them mentioned “Well, we will eat well tonight.”
I think it was some of the good rebels that Hillary had supplied with weapons. She probably had those guys at the top of the list of widows and orphans she wanted to relocate here to the US.
it’s a tragedy
Former Obama administration officials and environmentalists denounced Mr. Trump’s expected announcement.
“The rest of the world is moving forward with electric cars. If the Trump administration goes backward, the U.S. won’t be able to compete globally,” said Margo T. Oge, a former senior E.P.A. official and the author of “Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change With Cleaner, Smarter Cars.”
“This means they’ll just keep polluting,” said S. William Becker, the executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. He also predicted that “if this administration goes after the California waiver, there will be an all-out brawl between Trump and California and the other states that will defend its program.”
The tailpipe pollution regulations were among Mr. Obama’s major initiatives to reduce global warming and were put forth jointly by the E.P.A. and the Transportation Department. They would have forced automakers to build passenger cars that achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, compared with about 36 miles per gallon today.
The piece of shit Smart Car doesn’t even come close to that, and if you have kids you have to strap them to the roof rack. Given a choice, those fucking dumbass consumers will just keep buying SUVs, and the
planetEPA bureaucrats will suffer.The feeling’s gone and you can’t go on?
And there’s really an “Assocation of Clean Air Agencies”?
The 1980 era Honda Civic got around 40 mpg. Some got more. Then they said those engines were illegal. I am all for electric cars when the technology is there. I am sure it will happen, but government intervention does not help. The market would sort it out eventually. Fuck the EPA.
What was illegal about those engines?
Emissions is my understanding.
What? You’re saying that people will actually do things all on their own, when the incentives are there? Like buying a car that saves them money on gas? No! It can’t be, only the loving nudge of government can get people to do things that are best for themselves. Capitalism has failed!
Ya, I know it is a stupid point to make in this group. I know everyone here knows more about market forces than I do, but, seriously, fuck the EPA. This is not about the environment. It is about punishing an industry and social signaling. They hate the fossil fuel industry, and love their jobs as enforcers.
Ok, first, I didn’t think you made a stupid point. I was just being… me. But there’s hope, at least the hope that there’s hope, since the Trumpkin has appointed a denier to head up the EPA. Maybe he’s not just trolling the progtards and the EPA will actually get cut down to size and go back to their original purpose and scope. And Congress will actually keep a check on them.
Stupid was a bad word choice. Obvious point would have been better phrasing. I knew what you were getting at and your snark. No worries. I hope you are right. It is a big bloated agency. I have little hope, but I am a pessimist by nature.
“Former Obama administration officials and environmentalists…”
I like the sound of ‘former’, but I dont think it is meant in the way I want it to be. Yet.
Electric cars produce a hell-of-a-lot more emissions than gasoline cars. I am betting it is 2x or more times as much. I would like to see the math, but double would be a safe bet. It could be as high as twenty times as much.
Don’t we have some engineers around here?
How much in hydrocarbons do we have to burn to make a kW of power at the source? How many kWs are lost per mile of transmission line? How many kWs do we have to put in the line in order to deliver one kW to a home 20 miles from the plant? What is the efficiency of the battery charge, i.e. how many kW do we have to put in in order to get one back out? What is the efficiency of using that battery, i.e. how many kW per mile are used when driving?
Calculate all of that backwards to find out how much hydrocarbons are burned to run that car and compare it to the gasoline burned in the gasoline car you currently own. My bet: at least about 20x as much for the electric version of your current internal combustion engine.
Eventually, electricity will be produced at the point of consumption. (see the third world) There won’t be a need for a grid. If the bureaucrats would leave it alone, it would probably happen faster.
You heartless bastard. Do you have any idea how many IBEW brothers you are going to put out of work? The linemen and tree surgeons, the warehouse workers, the meter readers, secretaries, and engineers?
Honestly that industry is a significant employer and they won’t go down without a fight.
Those calculations are out there on the web, from a couple of different sources, giving a couple of different answers.
Only progressives believe imposed higher labor costs is ‘good for business’.
They neither interest in nor understand the concept of margins, right up until they find their continued employment is no longer within them. Then they blame the company for an act of government because they’re as stupid as the leadership they elect is disingenuous.
My last sentence is missing a ‘have’ after the first word. I guess that between the haves and have-nots, that sentence was a member of the proletariat.
They then just blame ‘greed’.
Apropos of Nothing –
It occurred to me while doing my weekend deep-dives into old-records that my main problem with modern music is the fact that there is absolutely zero sense of *Effort*
(either individual or collective)
which i think is part of why so many people recoil at the sound of Auto-tuned vocals. its not that the sound is actually objectively “bad” per se… (its technically more ‘accurate’ than singers themselves are capable of)… its that it absolutely erases the sound of someone actually *trying* to hit a sequence of notes, and just allows them to effortlessly glide through a melody without the slightest hint that something requiring talent was actually accomplished.
I’d argue that what made soul-singers like Otis Redding or Wilson Pickett so appealing is that – unlike sweet, natural crooners like Sam Cooke or Jackie Wilson – actually pretty rough, mediocre-quality-voices, and when they sang something? it was like watching someone haul a refrigerator up a flight of stairs. They busted their ass just to sing very simple intervals. and its the effort that made it appealing.
You could take that same general observation and apply it to the way music is orchestrated these days; with everything digitally chopped and sequenced, that there’s absolutely no push/pull in the rhythms (people coming in ahead or behind the beat)…. every bar has *exactly* the same timing, and there’s never any sense of energy being built up and released.
Which is why they have to stuff in so many dancefloor-arrangement-gimmicks (drops, crescendo drum-rolls leading to some huge chorus, which is only louder because of ‘more elements’, not a more-energetic performance) into even the most banal pop-songs.
Anyway, there’s that.
oh, here’s some music
Today’s music ain’t got the same soul…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvbSXVc451Q
Great song but WTF, Is that Andy Kaufman pensively stoking his upper lip? and why isn’t anyone concerned that there are giant Fraggles just hanging around like they own the place?
I am not familiar with her, but that made me wonder if she was an influence for Shemekia. That one with Mr Cray. You can’t ever go wrong there.
She had a string of minor hits in the early 70s (and one big one with that tune above, which won a grammy); unlike most similar people, she didn’t hop on board the disco train in the mid-70s, and subsequently vanished.
If you are going to highlight great black female singers then I submit Marilyn McCoo must be included.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxCfDDVHuno
This is from 2010. Compare it to her earlier 1970’s versions and you see she still has got the pipes.
Trump’s ‘evidence’ for Obama wiretap claims relies on sketchy, anonymously sourced reports – Washington Post
….
…hmmm, what does that remind me of….?
…oh, right
Good catch G.
I am not so sure that is true. Maybe he is giving Obumbles and co. a chance to deny everything before putting it out there. It is what I would do.
And WaPo never does that, of course. They just make shit up, pull it straight out of their ass. Who needs sketchy evidence when you can have none at all?
I have hearsay and conjecture. Those are *kinds* of evidence.
I just put on Fox to watch the GG show. And it isn’t on. Sad.
Anyway, according to them Trump got the information from a Breitbart article based on “unnamed sources”. Then sent those tweets on Saturday morning. There was no mention whether the President was taking a shit at the same time.
So what seems weird to me. Well, except Trump’s impulsiveness. Is that even at this time, no one from the White House can say anything for sure. Don’t they have the authority to get FISA court records, even over the weekend?
National Review ran down the various news coverage on the subject
If anyone needs to substantiate their reporting, its the NYT, Guardian et al. FISA actions are kept secret for a reason, and they’re not public information. If stuff about what the Obama admin did is being leaked to the press, it would seem to me to be “retaliatory leaking” for the sort of shit other agencies are doing to attempt to undermine the current admin.
In short = once one team takes gloves off, you can be damn sure others will as well.
Huh. I gave my wife a brief rundown on the subject of the sexbot conversation upthread. Her contribution to the conversation:
“What you dumbasses aren’t getting is that women will be the biggest consumers in the sexbot market, either that or treatment for hysteria will come back into style.”
Finally! A “man” I can actually change!
Real life:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1ENLCk_i0o
A man with a made-to-order dick.
You married well.
I did OMWC. I did. It took me a long time to find this one.
I get the notion you did as well.
You notioned correctly. Took me several tries to get it right.
Did you reply with, “oh ya, will your sexbot make a nightstand for the spare bedroom?’
I just read her your comment. She is laughing her ass off.
Also, I helped her paint the hallway to the guest bedrooms this morning.
Wait, wait, wait. You mean HER sexbot will have to get her a sammich and do the dishes? (head explodes)
And they will figure out a way to make the government to pay for it.
“When I’m elected …