Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

How many aircraft accidents were there in the same period involving pilots who were not hired with an eye to DEI policies? And what were the criteria used to hire the pilots of flight 3591? Were they unqualified and hired only because they were black and/or female?

[Sy Borg]

No one thrived during COVID (except maybe me because I like peace and quiet, very little traffic and no crowds). Point is, that the US working class were doing okay until then. It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

The more people brought into the country, the more downward pressure on wages, the higher housing prices and rents, so that's a more immediate issue than automation.

As for the rich, you can always tax them to the hilt. Then they would leave the country and take their know-how and businesses with them. Look at what happened in Zimbabwe when the govt took away the farms from rich white farmers. They underestimated the value of knowledge and skill and, as a result, there were food shortages, widespread hunger and economic decline.

[LuckyR]

Don't you understand? A Black person is probably a criminal also.

A black person is a criminal.?
WTF does that mean?

Sorry, sarcasm is difficult to convey sometimes.

I'll allow that you were being ironic, that MAGA types assume that skin colour is essentailly criminal. IS that what you meant?

Yup, not high humour, I concede.

[LuckyR]

I agree that DEI is doublespeak. The fact that an unqualified person is hired based on any attribute (race, gender, religious, etc) instead of a qualified person that doesn't fit in the category is why we, in the United States at least, have so many things that are in lawsuits for negligence. I would much rather hire Bill the straight white guy who knows what he is doing instead of Muhammad from the Middle East that doesn't have a clue about what he is working on. (These are generalizations, so please don't consider this as being negative towards any one group).
In the book Caudacity, the author, John Falcone, states "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is Affirmative Action on steroids. DEI doesn’t elevate minorities with teaching or training to meet employment qualifications; no, DEI either reduces the employment qualifications until minorities qualify or prioritize their race over qualifications."

I'm not certain in what context "unqualified" candidates are selected, it would be enlightening if an example could be provided. In the cases I'm familiar with, there is an overabundance of candidates who meet the selection criteria, ie they're all "qualified". That's the standard scenario in high demand situations such as entry into medical school, law school, Ivy league universities, tenure track professorships etc. Say Blacks are 10% of the population but are 5% of qualified medical school applicants. No matter what anyone does 75% of all of these qualified applicants won't be selected. In the distant past 1% of the class was Black, later 5%, it never reached 10%. Would it be OK if it was 10%?

Unqualified: Flight 3591, Boeing 767-375BCF, N1217A, Trinity Bay, Texas, February 23, 2019. Aircraft Accident.
Both pilots were hired to fit DEI policies.
There is also the issue with FEMA recently

Really? Well the captain Ricky Blakely was a white male, who was criticized by the NTSB for contributing to the crash. True the first officer was a black male, though I'm unaware of any citation that he was hired due to DEI, especially since he was hired in 2017 and DEI (as opposed to Affirmative Action) didn't really take off until 2019. Regardless, the first officer lied to his employers about his difficulties in passing certain tests during his training so these difficulties cannot be blamed on the company knowingly overlooking them at hiring. More importantly, even though he required several tries to pass various tests in his training, he did eventually pass them. That's how he got his pilot's license and got signed off to fly the plane he crashed (duh), so while he wasn't an excellent pilot, he was definitely "qualified" under the legal definition of the word. He was, after all hired by a cargo company, so didn't (and perhaps couldn't) get a job at a passenger airline. Thus it wouldn't suprise me if the bottom of the class at pilot school ends up in those situations routinely, regardless of their race.

[chewybrian]

No one thrived during COVID

Billionaires doubled their wealth in just two years. They were able to vastly increase their real estate holdings and drastically increase rents and prices without increasing wages. It was the biggest pizza party in history. They 'saved' us with a couple thousand dollars in stimulus money while they ratcheted up their control of our lives for the future.

[Sculptor1]

No one thrived during COVID

Billionaires doubled their wealth in just two years. They were able to vastly increase their real estate holdings and drastically increase rents and prices without increasing wages. It was the biggest pizza party in history. They 'saved' us with a couple thousand dollars in stimulus money while they ratcheted up their control of our lives for the future.

If you think that is bad come back after the next four years of this **** that is US politics.

[Pattern-chaser]

No one thrived during COVID (except maybe me because I like peace and quiet, very little traffic and no crowds).

And me, and many others in the ND community.

It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

[Sy Borg]

It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

I thought you were one of those here who claims that AI is not be capable of taking over most human jobs, that we overestimate the capabilities of tech?

[Mo_reese]

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

Americans are most likely the greatest consumers in the world. When they are out of work they won't be able to buy the products produced by the AI. Unregulated capitalism is not sustainable.

[Sy Borg]

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

Americans are most likely the greatest consumers in the world. When they are out of work they won't be able to buy the products produced by the AI. Unregulated capitalism is not sustainable.

There always must be regulation. People differ as to the amount of regulation they prefer. Some want almost total government control of everything, some want almost no government, and most are in between.

Trouble is, the public conversation on these issues is shallow, and is easily thrown off course by tangential issues and straw men.

[Pattern-chaser]

It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

I thought you were one of those here who claims that AI is not be capable of taking over most human jobs, that we overestimate the capabilities of tech?

I commented regarding "automation", the introduction of which reduces job opportunities. That is *why* automation is introduced, yes? To reduce wage bills, thereby maximising profit?

[Sy Borg]

It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

I thought you were one of those here who claims that AI is not be capable of taking over most human jobs, that we overestimate the capabilities of tech?

I commented regarding "automation", the introduction of which reduces job opportunities. That is *why* automation is introduced, yes? To reduce wage bills, thereby maximising profit?

You have a very one-sided way of looking at things. You completely disregard productivity and technology's role as a deflationary force. That's why lower middle class people today live better than kings of the past.

Do you consider that new factories will need fewer employees than in the past, but they still need many employees, not to mention workers involved in transport, wholesale and retail. Mostly, the jobs that will be made available will be probably decent jobs, a far cry from dull and dangerous assembly line work in old labour-intensive factories.

[Pattern-chaser]

It seems the US will do more manufacturing. While the new factories will be more automated than older ones, they will still offer work.

Yes, and greater automation means less work, fewer workers, and therefore fewer wages to subtract from profit. Let's not forget the priorities of US businesses. Shareholders and profit. Nothing else.

I thought you were one of those here who claims that AI is not be capable of taking over most human jobs, that we overestimate the capabilities of tech?

I commented regarding "automation", the introduction of which reduces job opportunities. That is *why* automation is introduced, yes? To reduce wage bills, thereby maximising profit?

You have a very one-sided way of looking at things. You completely disregard productivity and technology's role as a deflationary force.

I think we can agree, along with most philosophers, that context is essential to any discussion, even if it is not explicitly mentioned. And it may be the case that the introduction of automated contraptions has several purposes. But, in our Capitalist World, I think it is reasonable to assert that no machinery has ever been deployed without at least the expectation of lowered manufacturing costs. And this reduction is achieved, if it is achieved, because the machines can do the job more cheaply than paying humans to do it.

I'm not disregarding anything, but only failing to mention explicilty every aspect of the context of the discussion. As I must, if only because my life isn't long enough always to do this...

[Mo_reese]

I am for the former. Treat people equally, based on merit and need. As for past discrimination, if everyone is treated equally, gradually things will even out. Why rush progress based on ideology rather than simply treating people as individuals and letting nature take its course, rather than making policy based on demographics? Societies can simply allow the progress that automatically happens from industrialisation and digitalisation to happen organically. Tinkering creates the risk of unforeseen problems, eg. the welfare cycle, transitioning young children.

I can agree with treating people equally based on race. I cannot agree with treating them equally based on wealth and income. The wealthy are holding the spoils of past discrimination and the poor are suffering the lingering effects of past injustices. We should have more empathy than it takes to tell millions of people to wait a few generations for things to even out a little bit.

More important even than justice is the lost opportunity of getting the full potential out of all those folks who are stuck on the bottom, whether as a result of discrimination or the poor efforts or bad choices of their parents or grandparents. With each generation, we lose out because people with great potential are put in situations where that potential is inevitably wasted as they get a poor education in a dangerous and unhealthy environment with few resources available for them to use to break the cycle. I truly believe that society would get a good return on the money invested in helping the poor to advance. The fact that it also speeds up the advance of justice makes it a no-brainer. I don't see any valid 'reverse discrimination' argument against this approach.

I agree. There is no validity to the elite theory myth that rich people are rich because they are smarter or work harder. A lot of rich people got rich from inheritance and could be complete idiots. A lot of rich people got rich from greater opportunities because their families were rich and got them into the best schools and jobs. And a lot of people are rich because of corruption. Can one get rich from hard work? Sure but the odds are about the same as winning the big lotto.
Some would tell you that wages should be regulated by the “free market” but deny that the same should happen with CEO salaries. How do we rationalize that in the ratio of CEO pay to employee pay in the US is greatly higher than other modern countries, for example the US ratio is 7 times higher than Germany.

[Lagayascienza]

The only way we will know for sure what will happen to working people under a second Trump presidency is to wait and see. However, real wages for working people have been falling for about 50 years while the rich have become enormously richer. I don’t expect that trend to be reversed by Trump. I expect the poor will continue get poorer and the rich will continue to get richer. Wealth will increasingly be sucked upwards to the few.

This process is pretty much inevitable under laissez-fair capitalism. Capitalism is necessary, but it needs regulation to soften its sharp edges so that the poor and weak are not forever squeezed and then thrown on the scrap heap. But only if we care about that stuff. If not, then we’ll let laissez-fair capitalism rip. The point is that it does not have to be that way.