> Do we then stop that progress now and keep people manually collecting garbage when a replacement tech is around the corner?
No we take the tech and socialize its control
No we take the tech and socialize its control
If you “socialized” Edison’s electricity and gave the control to the lamplighters, we’d all be living under gas lamps now. There is zero reason for the lamplighters to negotiate any progress whatsoever.
Not all change is progress. Just because you can mass-remove populations of people from the economy does not mean that doing so is "progress".
We can't even have a conversation about extended unemployment benefits, retraining credits or lamplighters transitioning to utility workers, which is what happened with the "basket of jobs"?
That's all we've been doing while labelling it "progress".
I am pointing out that not all changes are progress. I am not claiming that all changes are not progress.
Right but my point was who gets to decide? If you make it a council of elders and people whose jobs might be affected the answer is always going to be All change is bad progress. End of story.
Who gets veto powers?
I dunno; I never addressed that.
I'm saying that, in any discussion, I am not willing to accept it as established fact that some $NEWTHING is progress just because its a new thing.
The conversations and arguments I am seeing in favour of AI is along those lines - "it is change, therefore it is progress". I am saying that I dispute the argument even if the conclusion is unclear at this moment in time.
I think this is a caricature of the argument. Even my original comment said progress is happening, but not just because some arbitrary change was happening.
Productivity improvements are measurable and they have an outsized impact on the standard of living. Progress is happening.
That would be different from giving lamplighters control over conversion to electric, who would claim that electricity is too dangerous to use and just kill it. Case in point [1]
[1]: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2026/10/26/rally-against-waymo-...
I’m happy to socialize the automation companies once the conversion and takeover of automation increase the standard of living of everybody cannot be blocked.
Socializing and then having committee meetings about “how much automation is appropriate” is the situation I’d want to avoid.
None that threatened jobs. "Switching to solar" didn't require people to transition to different jobs.
That's the crux of my point, ignore it, is obfuscation.