Are the American people obsolete?

#1

Post by zoowar » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

Are the American people obsolete?
salon.com

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#2

Post by zdw » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 4:53 PM UTC

Wow, what a dream world... "Hi, all you 'little people' who don't have jobs? Go to China and compete there, so I can enjoy this empty country and my immigrant labor"

Time to get cracking on methods to replace that class of people with small shell scripts...

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#3

Post by grav1tas » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 4:59 PM UTC

I may be wrong, but hasn't this article already come up on HN before? Maybe I've just seen it before, it's not new.

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#4

Post by redacted » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#5

Post by bhousel » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:20 PM UTC

I think it can be said, more generally, that nationalism is obsolete..

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#6

Post by oofoe » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

Perhaps the poor could also furnish infants for the rich man's table?

I see that the spirit of Swift is alive and well...

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#7

Post by DrJokepu » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:27 PM UTC

redacted wrote: post #4

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

news.arc seems to trim apostrophes from URLs, so your link correctly is

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#8

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:28 PM UTC

redacted wrote: post #4

"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines

[deleted]

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#9

Post by clp16 » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:35 PM UTC

I mean people aren't going to take a cut in the standard of living, and has that been to social contract all this time? That sounds like some plebeian system. I thought it was trying to equalize tax "burden", not some creepy subsidization program.

Re: Are the American people obsolete?

#10

Post by DanI-S » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:38 PM UTC

It reminds me of the sci-fi concept of creating hyper-intelligent, benevolent AIs to run human life as optimally as possible. That's basically what capitalism attempts to do, except with hyper-wealth in place of hyper-intelligence.

As anyone who reads sci-fi knows, it's never long before the AIs figure out they can get along most 'optimally' without the humans there at all.