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Comment by fnordfnordfnord | Hacker News Reader

Yes, to be provocative about it, here are some options for what to do:

1. Support them comfortably for the rest of their lives, retrain the ones who wish to be retrained. (too crazy?)

2. Euthanize them in a kindly fashion, ie with laughing gas. (obviously ridiculous)

3. Euthanize them in a cruel way, ie humiliate them by making them beg their families for care and resources, starve the ones with no family. Let them die of exposure if they haven't saved a fortune and can't cope gracefully with rapid technological progress. (the way we've been doing it)

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Optional number 4: Turn them into resources in the for-profit criminal justice system when they eventually turn to using and selling addictive drugs.

And this is why I often put the concept of basic income in terms of what we could be paying for people to be in jail instead when explaining why I support it to my more economically conservative acquaintances.

#1 won't happen - there's too many people who want to toss unproductive people aside like so much dead wood. Unproductive people cost money and there's a whole school of thought in the US that really, really (and I do mean really) resents that.

#3 is already being done and it's working as intended (not that it is a good thing by any means), although it seems to be inefficient as far as that first group of thinkers is concerned.

You did a very good job of making it sound as though it is someone else's fault, even intention, when someone fails.

Of course, calling failure "euthanization" is ridiculous fallacious bullshit.

We're all just 1 technological improvement away from failure.

1. The post was intentionally provocative. I said so in the post. I don't really care about the blame as much as the solution.

2. It is a serious dilemma for me. I've worked in, and now I teach industrial automation. I have probably automated thousands of peoples' jobs away. While I don't believe it is my fault, or my client companies' faults that there are box packers and fruit sorters who are unemployed. I do feel enough responsibility that I should at least advocate for the people's sake. I also don't think it is the fault of the workers. One thing I do know is that wide-scale automation of labor is a potential social disaster if we don't figure out how to handle the transition gracefully.

3. I'll double down and tell you my opinion that "euthanasia" is really too kind a word for what happens to the sick who are also poor in this country. Do I think it is deliberate? Maybe, judging by the priority policymakers have placed on alleviating the problem.

Personally, I love your #3. When you put it that way, it is insane that we think it's cruel to kill someone swiftly and painlessly by giving them drugs, but perfectly reasonable to kill someone slowly and painfully over a period of years by gradually denying them the necessities of life.

It boils down to diffusion of responsibility. If you kill someone directly, someone is directly responsible. But if you just let them go out into the world without the means to make a living, everybody is sort of responsible together, meaning no individual is strongly responsible at all.

`euthanazia` implies that somebody is doing something to another, in this case that we actively make them suffer a cruel sort with the intention of killing them.

It's obviously not my intention, nor do I think it is the intention of most. I believe it is more correct to simply state that human life can be tough walk. If you don't manage to keep your head up, you'll suffer the wrath of some evolutionary conspiration.

We as societies can try to alleviate that minimum suffering by choosing to provide basic needs. Some societies decide to do it, some don't. I believe societies who don't are of this opinion because they are blind to the benefits, not because they are evil.

>I believe societies who don't [provide for basic needs] are of this opinion because they are blind to the benefits, not because they are evil.

It's likely also a side effect of the current structure, which dictates that we must all work. Of course, this mantra is required to encourage people (especially low wage workers) to continue working.

That's a big problem I see, too. In the past, the productivity increase caused by automatisation was either used for export (driven by economic growth in other countries) or domestic growth. At least in Germany baseline unemplyment increased all the time, so.

Now, that increased productivity isn't eaten up by external parties the basic options are

1. Stoping right here and wait (won't happen in our world)

2. Find a way to provide a living for the people no longer needed in any given economy (it's not their fault after all, and it seems to me that there's enough wealth for everybody)

3. Or continue with your option 3. Sadly enough I think it will be option 3 for quite a while.

Looking at the situation in some european contries right now (like Spain or Greece, maybe even Italy and France) which have somewhere around 50 % unemployment at the under 25 year olds this situation is already creeping up on us, slowly but non the less.

It is a simple fact than many people (especially those aged 50+) are basically not re-educable. It is pointless of you to try to start an argument over blame or whether they should be called failures, because such a discussion does nothing to solve the problem, and does not even effectively address the question of whether the problem should be solved.

those aged 50+) are basically not re-educable

The word for that is ageism, it's a growing problem in the IT industry.

Well the ancient COBOL programmers got their revenge when they were begged to come out of retirement. I suppose that 20 years from now people will scramble to find someone that understands how exactly this 50K lines xml moves the enterprise java mission critical system that haven't been updated since the great crash of 2015.

Ageism is when you don't hire or promote someone on the assumption that an older person can't do the job or won't be as good at it because of their age. What I was referring to are the people who don't even apply for the new job because they don't believe themselves capable of changing careers.

> It is a simple fact than many people (especially those aged 50+) are basically not re-educable.

This is nonsense. It greatly exaggerates a small age-related difference in the acquisition of new skills.

I have five Android apps on Google Play, I picked up Android programming over the past two years in my spare time with no great difficulty, and ... wait for it ... I'm 68.

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=paul%20lutus&hl=en

So much for your appeal to simple facts.

I'm glad you're not one of the "many people". Neither are my parents - they're also very enthusiastic about adopting new technology. But my parents are also constantly bitching to me how many of their same-aged friends refuse to learn anything new. My parents want to share photos of their travels using tools like Flickr and Facebook to their friends, but their friends just refuse to learn anything new past the year 1999, so e-mail it is.

If you believe most 68-year-olds are gung-ho about learning Android programming, I think you'll find you're a bit mistaken.

> If you believe most 68-year-olds are gung-ho about learning Android programming, I think you'll find you're a bit mistaken.

I think you're right. I was only objecting to the absolute character of the original pronouncement, as thought it were always true, not that there isn't evidence for it in many cases.

Read my comment again, and point out where it was being absolute and implied that something was always true. You've been arguing against something quite different than what I wrote. Perhaps you're overly sensitive to potential age-related discrimination, since the age factor wasn't even the main point of my comment.

You picked up Android programming in your spare time, after having been a programmer for decades. That's not a counterexample, and even if it was, I certainly didn't say that all older people are unable to learn a new career, I said that many people are, especially older ones.

> You picked up Android programming in your spare time, after having been a programmer for decades.

True, but the thesis being tested is whether I am re-educable. Android programming is certainly not 6502 processor assembly-language programming.

> I said that many people are, especially older ones.

Fair enough, I may have overreacted to what seemed to be an overbroad generalization.

"You did a very good job of making it sound as though it is someone else's fault, even intention, when someone fails."

Do you think it is always the fault of the person for failure?

Odd that for those who hold a certain worldview, people are always responsible for their own failure or success, yet never responsible for the impact their actions have on others.

This is why the idea of a basic income has taken off within the futurology crowd (including myself).

We have to do something about these folks and fairly quickly because it will be upon us soon I think.

How many people died of starvation caused by the inability to acquire sufficient calories (i.e. excluding anorexics) last year in the USA? How many people are living on the streets who simply can't find anywhere to spend the night (as opposed to simply too mentally ill to look)?

Being first-world poor is certainly miserable and can have deadly consequences but this type of bs exaggeration just hurts the point you seem to be trying to make.

Not many starve, but many are homeless. And no, not all homeless people are lunatics off of their meds.

Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally.

Being poor is often miserable, and misery brings on all sorts of bad behaviors. People need to feel some threshold measure of security and control. You can be poor and fulfilled, but modern urban living makes that difficult for many.

I find this entire article a little ironic. You have some smug CEO of a company (that offers a glorified messageboard intended to allow companies to provide mediocre customer support) lashing out like a child about a labor dispute and jobs he knows nothing about. I wonder how he'll feel when his business gets blown away by some open source project.

> Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally.

Homeless under the HUD definition[1], sure. Homeless in the sense the original post in this discussion used it (i.e. at danger of death from exposure) no, that's quite usual in the circumstances you've outlined. Almost always in those cases there's a couch to sleep on or at least a car to stay in.

[1] https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessD...

Ok, so by your definition, it's essentially impossible to be homeless in a place like South Carolina or California, because folks are unlikely to die of exposure?

It was fnord that brought up our alledged status-quo policy euthanasia of the unemployed via starvation and exposure.

However, you are right that may last comment may have over-stretched the point. Sleeping under the stars in SC is just as homeless as sleeping under the stars in NY. Still, I don't think there's much of it going on among the non-mentally-ill in any state.

Maybe I'm just optimistic but she must be able to do something productive. Even if it's sewing toys together for children or making sure the elderly don't fall over. To me that's one of the benefits of a basic income, to help people find their niche, as humble as it may be for some

I like how you construct your 123 answers to support your own opinion. You would make a good politician.

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