The Economy and Robotics

Robots seem to be used in increasing numbers in all walks of life, particularly in industry. Now just imagine the following (not so hypothetical scenario) wherein the CEO of an industrial company making, shall we say motor-cycles, decides, because of stakeholder pressure, that the best option to maximise profits would be to invest in a fully automated process – using robotics.

The obvious advantages of using robots are that they work without a break all day if required (apart from any general maintenance), don’t get sick, don’t agitate for higher (or any) pay, always do what they are told, don’t get married, have babies or go on leave and don’t get bored with repetitive actions. In fact they are the ideal “employees”.

This means higher profits and greater returns for investors – even after taking into account, possibly, any increased debt, depreciation and maintenance costs.

Following this through to a logical conclusion the company – with robotics - would now operate at a higher level of productivity, leading to greater profits. The stakeholders would be happy with increased dividends and the motor-cycles (or any other items) produced are likely to be more reliable because the “human factor” has been eliminated leading to more accurate manufacturing and assembly.

This move to robotics would be noted by competitors who would in all probability follow suit. This may possibly lead to more companies, and not just in the motor-cycle industry, converting their operations to embrace robotics and so increasing their profits and productivity thereby.

Another logical outcome from this move to robotics is that the general workforce is reduced.  

The question now needs to be asked, “If the workforce, generally, is reduced because of robotics, who would be able to earn enough to afford the motor cycles (or any other items) produced in this hypothetical factory?”

This is a modern phenomenon which applies across all sectors of the economy.

Interesting.

Reverse Engineering?

There is something ironic in the latest moves by the Australian Government.

Consider this: The “Colony” of  Australia was founded, by the British, as a good place (far enough from Britain) to exile unwanted convicts.

Now the descendants of those “unwanted” convicts (in the guise of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service) have apparently sent “hundreds of criminals” back to their country of origin – presumably including Britain. However no information on such details is publicly available.

How ironic is that?

This is a perfect example of “reverse” engineering taken to extremes.

Can anyone insult God?

Remember my one loyal reader, Archie? Well he has asked me real questions about two very important matters:-

1.      Can anyone insult God?

2.      The blight cast by the so called Islamic State or Daesh?

The question is, can anyone or anything insult God? Certainly one can insult someone’s belief in God and they may be rightfully offended. We can offend each other. But insult the Creator of all things? I doubt that He would consider the scribbling of, say, someone like myself as anything but a childish prank – that is if what I write sufficiently interested such an August Being. We are his children after all.

How could anything I say or write insult the Almighty? The very idea that the Great Artificer, the maker of all things; The Progenitor of Mankind; The Source of All; The Origin of all that shall happen, that is all things –Time, and the Eternal Present, Fame, Fortune, Speech, Memory, Intellect, Constancy and Forgiveness; the very idea that puny me may be guilty of insulting such an August Power and that such a One should be at all concerned is beyond, certainly, my comprehension. That is if such a Supreme Power is bothered with it at all. But insulted? Never!

As I say I may be guilty (if that is the correct word to use) of possibly insulting someone’s idea or belief in God. This has apparently happened to some poor sod in Saudi Arabia, one Raef Badawi who is to receive 1000 lashes for insulting Islam! Not God but Islam! He apparently wrote a Blog criticising the Saudi Religious Police.

Now in relation to this barbaric concept of flogging – how, in the name of the Creator, how will flogging this poor man to death (which is what 1000 lashes will do) make him a better Muslim and how would such punishment please the Creator of all things??

Certainly such action insults MY idea of God and offends me!!

Regarding the Saudi Religious Police (Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) – what Charter or Law do they claim to uphold and enforce? Sharia Law is the answer. What are their qualifications? And who are they anyway? Is this “Police Force”  being staffed by "ex-convicts whose only job qualification was that they had memorized the Qur'an in order to reduce their sentences" as has been claimed?

And who checks the checkers? Who oversees the activities of such a “virtuous” Committee?

They are merely officers of the State – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – no more and no less.

I wonder what the Creator of All Things would think of that? Such activities just diminish the perpetrators and diminish Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, diminish Islam in the eyes of many “non-believers”. Who is now insulting and offending whom?

More than anything else – one needs to reflect on whether the World is a better place because of the activities of the “Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice”?

The next question related to the obscene and profane assemblage of people calling themselves the Islamic State or as they are pejoratively known, Daesh.   

When will the Saudi’s or in fact any “strict” Muslim realise that there has to be a division between religion, the law and the legislator? I am not questioning what Mohammad said or did – he never wrote anything down. In fact it has been suggested that he was illiterate - as, probably, was Jesus. Not that I set much store by this. Many great and wonderful people are not well educated and Islam is one of the great religions.

My concerns are about what we (non-Muslims) are supposed to think about this profanity calling itself a Caliphate? My concerns are about what they want us (non-Muslims) to agree to – under intense coercion?

I cannot conceive that anything the Daesh do, or believe in, is spiritual in nature. It is profane, pure and simple. As I understand it, according to their avowed intention, every non-Muslim must convert to Islam or be killed or enslaved. Would not God, the Creator of all things – and all people - be insulted and offended by this?

They (the Daesh) want us, non-Muslims, to tolerate them and allow them to exist, but they do not tolerate us.

It is worth recalling that whenever social conditions – as promoted by Daesh – develop on a large scale the road to tyranny is wide open and the freedom of the individual turns into physical slavery – individual choices or decisions are met with the harshest punishments. Since tyranny, by its very nature, is immoral and ruthless, it has the freedom to indulge in any method of oppression it chooses. 

The real problem arises when such a tyrannous assemblage is in conflict with those people and those States which still recognise the rights of the individual. In such situations the rights of individuals is eroded by the State to counteract the amoral conduct of tyranny which it cannot defeat without availing itself of the same methods used by its opponents.

The inherent danger in this course of action lies in the strong possibility of the States which recognise individual rights being “infected” in this manner. This is compounded when decisive importance is attached to large numbers and statistical values.  Thus the individual is “seduced” by the policies of the State –“are you with us or against us?” Free opinion is stifled and moral decisions ruthlessly suppressed on the (false) plea that the end justifies the means – “whatever it takes” – no matter how dishonourable or illegal the tactics.

Tyranny begets tyranny. God, if thoughts of God where ever in the minds of such people, is now banished. Power; control; money now consume them and a steep inclined plane is in place under the feet of the tyrannous which propel all involved lower and lower into ever more profane and despicable acts.

Thus am I insulted and my idea and belief in God is insulted and I am offended – deeply offended.

And what about God?

Germanwings flight 4U9525 disaster.

Shocking and senseless! A few general facts are necessary, however, to stop the various notions about why the unfortunate, and relatively inexperienced pilot, Andreas Lubitz committed  such a horrendous and apparently entirely selfish, mass murder/suicide – as is so far alleged to be the theory - before the actual facts (and suppostions) are presented in a sober and reasoned manner.

First up, no test (or tests) is (are) available which will confirm any “mental illness” (Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases excepted). Mental issues are not (repeat not) similar to any physical illness such as the much quoted phrase “diabetes or heart disease”. Any person presenting with a mental issue is “diagnosed” by observed behaviour and by the presenting person’s self-reported mental state – and then subjectively judged, by a Mental Health professional, using an “approved” check list of “depression indicators”.

The operative word is “presenting”. Anyone with any intelligence and who has been psychologically tested many times before will “know the ropes” and be able to circumvent questions which may be “compromising” or which may impact unfavourably on that person’s future.

It was therefore not possible for any mental health professional to have determined, with any degree of absolute certainty, that Lubitz was “mentally ill”- whether he was depressed or a closet sociopath or had psychopathic tendencies. Possibly he was just someone who was trying to fulfil a dream and was found wanting – something he may have had difficulty in accepting.

We will never know.

My second point is that, as I understand it, anyone working for an airline must attend that particular airline’s approved doctor or doctors. It is that doctor who has the responsibility to inform the airline of any misgivings he (or she) may have about a particular employee’s health – mental or physical. I am sure that an airline with Lufthansa’s standing would have had such a medical regime in place.

It would appear, therefore, that either the doctor involved did not pass on the medical details (regarding prescriptions or any other concerns) to Lufthansa. Or, and I would find this very difficult to comprehend or believe, Lufthansa ignored the doctor’s concerns and/or advice regarding Lubitz.

Either way – if there is blame to be apportioned (and believe me there will be) it should lie somewhere in the orbit of the medical doctor and/or the pilot administration of Lufthansa.

Lubitz’s life, family, friends and career will be eviscerated by the investigators and the media trying to find any possible reason or reasons for such a horrendous and callous act. This is to be expected because the airline industry survives on trust and its fiercely protected safety record. Anything which impacts on this will be examined as never before.

And so it should be.

However research into suicide is notoriously difficult. It is always referring to an historic act – something that has already happened. Police, coronial, autopsy, psychiatric and psychological and counselling reports are analysed and carefully combed to try and establish some reason or motive for the suicide. This is fraught as it is impossible to know what was actually going through the person’s mind at the precise moment in time when they took their own life and (particularly, as in this case) when this includes the lives of so many other innocent people. At some moment – sometime earlier that fateful day - Lubitz made a choice.

Why? We will never know.

Strange economics

I was listening to an old Roger Whittaker song the other day – one called “From the people to the people”, and the ideas and emotions engendered by the lyrics struck home:

“You take it from the people, you give it to the people.

Its people who reap and people who sow.

You work with the people or you gotta go.”

These words express very well my philosophy and what I have been trying to say in these posts, for many years. It is PEOPLE who are of paramount importance. Not MONEY. Not the ECONOMY. It is people – without people there is no money and therefor no economy.

The IMF seem to have come to their senses and have realised that what they promoted after the 2008 financial crisis – domestic financial austerity and repaying the loans provided  from internal resources and so “balancing the budget” – doesn’t work and leads, inevitably, to economic and social crisis. 

Just look at Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Cut wages and increase taxes and what do you end up with? People with less income and without the ability to purchase anything other than essentials - this is no way to “stimulate the economy” and promote the growth that is so necessary. And certainly no way to balance anything!

Superficially, and very simplistically, a country’s budget and economy may seem the same as an individual’s budget, potential income and wellbeing (their “economy”). But it is not. An individual can do nothing to stimulate his wellbeing if his wage is reduced – it is illegal for an individual to print money. All any individual can do is to try and get another job – very difficult if the general economy is depressed – look at Greece, and not good for their wellbeing.

All that cutting wages does is to, temporarily, boost profits and thus benefit shareholders. But there is an old saying, “you can’t get blood from a stone”. Now I understand this to mean that when something is “dry” no matter how hard you squeeze nothing will come out of it.  Sooner, rather than later “squeezed” individuals “dry up” and the governing authorities (and shareholders) are left with nothing except a society that is poor, desperate, frustrated and angry.

This is not good for anybody’s wellbeing!

The words of the song that opened this post are very appropriate – 7Eleven, McDonalds, Walmart and any other organization (market gardeners?) or government, anywhere, that promotes low wages take careful note!!