Why don't we have a communist society yet? I mean we could.

Yeah. And I'm working at least 45 hours a week to get the job done, and there's very little automation can do because lots of it is creative work or work necessary to tell the automation what to do. It's not a job you can reduce the amount of work in. So my kind will not benefit too much from any of this utopian stuff in terms of work time because if we work less we all get less, too.
Instead, we just get to pay more taxes so everyone else can have free shit.
There's no free lunch. Someone has to pay for it. And it's not going to be the machines who'll do that.
 
Yeah, engineers working part time is completely unheard off.

What is your company doing when you're on vacation or sick? Do they just stand up, waving their arms, like their house is on fire?
 
Well, luckily enough, not EVERYONE is sick or in vacation at the same time, and they only get so many vacation days per year (and we can prepare for Christmas time). Usually, the work still gets done, and believe me, going in and out of longer bouts of vacation is stressful because you need to make sure shit gets done.
If everyone would just work less it would mean that we'd have to employ more people to get the same work done.
 
Squadcar said:
Why would the guy who flips burgers get everything he needs while the guy who does construction get nothing more? People are going to compare themselves to their peers and see if they're doing more work, they want more benefits.
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Usually, the hardest jobs have the shittiest pay. Equality would be an improvement.
 
Hassknecht said:
Well, luckily enough, not EVERYONE is sick or in vacation at the same time, and they only get so many vacation days per year (and we can prepare for Christmas time). Usually, the work still gets done, and believe me, going in and out of longer bouts of vacation is stressful because you need to make sure shit gets done.
If everyone would just work less it would mean that we'd have to employ more people to get the same work done.
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And why wouldn't that be a solution?

Again, there are engineers working part time and flextime. It's doable. Believe it or not, but there are people out there, which want to spend some of their time with their family and loved ones, particularly children. Having a 50 hour week, might get you a nice salary, but it might mean that you end up alone on christmas eve once you're in your 60s, if you catch my drift.
 
Yeah great, but if you all only work part time and get paid accordingly, how are you gonna afford a family to spend time with? I mean, yeah, it's possible, but some people also would like to buy a house for their family at some point. Basically, what you're proposing is that it's not wealth being redistributed, it's just that everybody is just becoming equally poor. Not to mention that we're already having an alleged lack of engineers and skilled workers.
Also, due to the nature of some jobs it's kinda hard to distribute their workload over several people. Just saying "Alright, everyone works half time and we get twice as many people instead" will create more problems with the logistics so that it's not that simple.
It would work, but productivity wouldn't rise, we would just take longer to get our work done and have less money.
I know it's impossible for a communist to do, but you need to try and understand that what works with and for SOME, does not necessarily scale to EVERYONE.
 
Hass,

you're in the 'laser business' so you think, say, Russians should start building lasers? And maybe mounting them on satellites, and stuff?
 
What do you mean "start building lasers"? They're already building as many lasers as everyone else. As for putting them on satellites, why? Space-based lasers have a lot of problems (mainly cooling and power supply) and at the moment you can't really use them to shoot down to Earth and make any reasonable amount of damage. Shooting down other satellites might work, but then you'd have to have a mobile satellite that generates a LOT of power and is also capable of dispersing a lot of waste heat. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
 
Hassknecht said:
What do you mean "start building lasers"? They're already building as many lasers as everyone else. As for putting them on satellites, why? Space-based lasers have a lot of problems (mainly cooling and power supply) and at the moment you can't really use them to shoot down to Earth and make any reasonable amount of damage. Shooting down other satellites might work, but then you'd have to have a mobile satellite that generates a LOT of power and is also capable of dispersing a lot of waste heat. Not gonna happen anytime soon.
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Ok so you wouldn't have any regulations on the type of industries any nation, including Russia, Iran, etc, could practice. Remember, regulations = communism.
 
MutantScalper said:
Ok so you wouldn't have any regulations on the type of industries any nation, including Russia, Iran, etc, could practice. Remember, regulations = communism.
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wat
The industry using the most lasers is automotive manufacturing and semiconductor fabrication. Lasers aren't some uberdeadly destructive devices that will kill from space. I mean, CIWS laser systems exist, but they're still kinda useless. Why would you want to restrict basic manufacturing capabilities of countries?
 
Hassknecht said:
wat
The industry using the most lasers is automotive manufacturing and semiconductor fabrication. Lasers aren't some uberdeadly destructive devices that will kill from space. I mean, CIWS laser systems exist, but they're still kinda useless. Why would you want to restrict basic manufacturing capabilities of countries?
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Lasers, the next nuclear bombs!
 
MutantScalper said:
Yes, it's not as if lasers would have been used in military technology at all. Like, in bomb guidance and stuff like that. No, lasers are strictly for peaceful stuff. Hippie-lazers, whoa dude.

Also,
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a23875112/us-army-first-weapon-lasers/
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Uuuuh bomb guidances. If you're going by that, you'd have to control every single industry. Computer chips? Can be used for smart missiles. Jet fuel? Can't melt steel beams, but can power military aircraft. Textiles? Nice for not freezing and hiding your tiny dick, but the russkies could make uniforms out of them! The LIDAR sensors in my car are nice, but you know who also uses LIDAR? THE RUSSIANS, and you don't want the russians to know how far away you are, right?


And yeah, military lasers for CIWS applications are becoming a thing, slowly. Ever since high power CW fiber lasers appeared, laser weapons started to make sense. Well, somewhat. They still suck, to be honest. CW lasers are kinda useless due to shielding effects and instabilities in the optics over such large distances, so you have to ramp up the power massively (hence the 50 kW requirements). Pretty sure a kW-class picosecond laser would be more suitable for quickly drilling holes into incoming missiles, but CW fiber lasers are robust and can take a beating, while high power ps-lasers are super sensitive and crap out if you look at them funny.
I don't see military lasers becoming a widespread thing anytime soon. They might have a niche application, but honestly, a CIWS with a nice 20 mm gatling gun and some missiles will do the job more efficiently, albeit with some costly ammunition.
 
MutantScalper said:
Yes, it's not as if lasers would have been used in military technology at all. Like, in bomb guidance and stuff like that. No, lasers are strictly for peaceful stuff. Hippie-lazers, whoa dude.
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Pfft. Why put a "not really functional", "power hungry" laser in a satellite, when you can already put nuclear missiles in a satellite for decades now?

Cheaper, more efficient, and can be done right now.
 
TBH, I don't think we will ever have lasers used on people. From everything I have seen, you are essentially slow cooking/burning a hole through people alive with lasers while you are slowly melting them with plasma. PPC type weapons essentially cause death by electrocution so maybe that might fly. Microwave weapons, I doubt it, at least in regards to power levels needed to actually kill people.

And yea, lasers over large distances lose power due to diffraction and a whole host of other factors.
 
Using lasers on people would also have the problem of potentially violating the UN Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons which bans laser weapons used for blinding people. But at the power levels required to kill people quickly, even scattered radiation can blind bystanders.
 
In regards to automation, it won't solve things completely but it gets pretty fucking close. The price of mass produced goods should drop dramatically with a robotic workforce to where we all should have enough money from the above savings to direct it to other things that a robot cannot do. Those jobs in turn, will require higher salaries but doable as people with money can afford to pay those higher prices.
 
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