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In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

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Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even tho you added an edit. You’re still wrong. Garbage collection is typically a high paying job because no one wants to do it. But people still consider it “below” them and don’t want to do it even when there’s a high unemployment rate.

For manual labor I thought the guys I know who do garbage pickup have a great job - their hours are shifted so they work from 4am to noon so they have plenty of time for hobbies and family outside of that. All the time sitting and driving the truck is hard though they rarely have to handle anything manually with standardized bins and hydraulic lifts.

How goes 4-12 give any more time for hobbies than 8-4 or 10-6?

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#212
post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

yes. this is correct. but that is not how the market works unfortunately or else we would have 0% unemployment. market works in a way that if no one in the country wants to do the job for this wage then you import people from poorer countries that will be able to send money to their family even on a shitty wage.

Robots are the other solution and a much easier one for a society. you don't need to build the structure to welcome mass immigration from poorer countries and all the things you'd need to solve when bringing people from different - often less tolerant / more restrictive - cultures.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said that all immigrants are intrinsically a source of problems, and saying that any filtering inevitably leads to never-endingly stronger filters is a slippery slope fallacy. You absolutely can measure the likely degree of problems an immigrant would bring. To an absurd, extreme, example: you have 1 spot open for immigration. Do you offer it to a semiconductor EE with a clean criminal record in his early 30s…

It's not as if Japan (or any other country, for that matter) doesn't already have immigration restrictions. Japan uses a points-based merit system for permanent residence [1], not unlike the criteria you suggested. Just to give an example, having a PhD and speaking Japanese at an N1 level (~equivalent to B2 CEFR) is barely sufficient to qualify (unless you're older than 30, in which case it won't be). The more intere…

This is misleading at best, straight up false at worst.

The points-based system is used to allow you to apply for a PR _on an accelerated timeline_; not apply at all.

Having 70/80 points lets you apply for a PR after being a resident for 1/3 years respectively; you can apply without any points after living here for 10 years.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#214
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens, but it's not representative. Interesting belief, it seems like it should be self-extinguishing, the cultures that don't believe this kind of thing will tend to take over over time.

Most women have watched someone go through a difficult pregnancy in their lives before they hit 20. It's not a "belief" for the people who live through it. People used to die – frequently – from this "belief." And women still do.

the women most afraid of child rearing live in countries with the best maternal healthcare.

something irrational is happening wether you want to admit it or not.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#215
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that nihilistic sentiment arises only when you are materially satisfied, maybe in the 90s and 00s (like office workers in Fight Club or Office Space). Many of us are in survival mode now. We just need money to keep up with inflation. We don't have time to think about the deep meaning of life.

"Survival mode" is quite an overstatement of current conditions for most people in most of the West. Prices have risen, but people aren't in as rough of a position as 2008, 1970's stagflation, or certainly the great depression.

Yes, if anything we are over fed and awash in consumer goods.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. In a society with an aging population and a low birth rate, people who would prefer to be full-time parents staying home and raising their kids ought to instead be doing undesirable, monotonous, easily-automatable jobs that robots can do. Or at least two families could agree to pay each other to raise the other's children, so that it counts as employment, rather than raising their own. Yes, maximizing labor forc…

That's how you ensure the birth rate stays low.

I think you are missing the sarcasm.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said that all immigrants are intrinsically a source of problems, and saying that any filtering inevitably leads to never-endingly stronger filters is a slippery slope fallacy. You absolutely can measure the likely degree of problems an immigrant would bring. To an absurd, extreme, example: you have 1 spot open for immigration. Do you offer it to a semiconductor EE with a clean criminal record in his early 30s…

It's not as if Japan (or any other country, for that matter) doesn't already have immigration restrictions. Japan uses a points-based merit system for permanent residence [1], not unlike the criteria you suggested. Just to give an example, having a PhD and speaking Japanese at an N1 level (~equivalent to B2 CEFR) is barely sufficient to qualify (unless you're older than 30, in which case it won't be). The more intere…

My example is ridiculous, but it was the easiest way to point out the fallacy that "you can never measure which [immigrants bring value or cause problems]. You clearly can.

And no, that 68 year old alcoholic is free to pass into America under Democrat administrations and tens of thousands have. They technically are illegal, but if you selectively enforce immigration laws and offer things like asylum/refugee status without any checks or balances, the net effect is still the same.

Returning to Japan, as the other commenter pointed out, your PhD example is someone that qualifies for expedited permanent residency, a particular subset of migration that Japan has (correctly) decided to encourage.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#219
post #19

It’s amazing to use technology to save humans from toil. The question is, who owns the robot? Who benefits from the labor it produces? The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure. But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation. Labor expenditures and taxe…

>All our needs are taken care of >while the rest of us die in poverty. These can't be simultaneously true. If all of our needs are taken care of, that is the same thing as unlimited luxury. Someone hoarding wealth is not that important when everyone has everything they want. Society is already being helped by all of the needs they are fulfilling. We don't need to also take their wealth too.

> These can't be simultaneously true.

Nobody said that they can.

>The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure.

All our needs are taken care of in an imagined techno utopia.

> But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation.

That utopia can not come if there is private ownership of those automated systems.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#220
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Huh. You used to be concerned with declining birth rates. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11000823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38735888

Not if it costs something.
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