Some points about my personal experience with Uber in my city:
1. Drivers listening to evangelical stations very loudly, spewing hate between musics. Most get angry if you tell to lower the sound. God forbid you ask to change the station;
2. Many drivers trying to rig the system, which in turn costs me money. Uber gives me credit for most complaints, but I can only use it with Uber, so my lost money is good for them either way;
3. I've rated many drivers negatively. Whatever happened to them? Who can tell?
Also, having your health care, retirement and general well-being tied to a particular job reduces employee "freedom", which in his point of view is not efficient.
That's why I said politically its not true. The political left is for the most part not against war. If you want to call all those people not of the 'true' left then whatever.
The reality is both right and the left have a strong anti-war movment and neither has political power.
The US has 800 military bases spread across the globe and is currently involved in many "destabilization" efforts (not to mention actual armed conflicts), all funded by billions and billions of dollars.
And the media is demonizing Russia. Talk about a PR campaign.
It is not a matter of whatabaoutism, it's a direct attempt to divert attention from wrongdoings, building a narrative that justifies imperialist actions by the USA.
The media has been very critical about U.S. policy regarding Saudi Arabia and Yemen. It's been very critical about both Obama's and Trump's decisions regarding Syria. It's been split, largely along partisan lines, about the Iran nuclear deal.
Yes, in far too many circumstances the media seemingly toes the line. But the U.S. media has manifestly shown significant independence. Independence isn't synonymous with being contrary or critical, and it certainly doesn't mean agreeing with your personal perspective. U.S. foreign policy isn't invented out of thin air; it emerges from the same political and cultural dynamics that shape the news and popular opinion, so it's entirely unsurprising that the popular media would agree more often than not.
> Second, the people who lose their jobs will move on to different and hopefully better jobs.
They do move to different jobs, but most likely not better ones. An observable consequence of automation is to put pressure on the 'labor market', leaving fewer and fewer opportunities with increasing requirements for job seekers.
With competition it is a red queen's race unfortunately. It is natural in an emergent sense even though the circumstances are synthetic. If they don't someone else will and even if they held existing jobs sancrosanct they will be displaced by a new party who doesn't have existing jobs to protect.
We don't get to choose whether we're in the race or not, but we do get to choose how we run it. I get the "these are forces at work, not humans" argument, but I think it underestimates the solution space available to the humans in the scenario (to be fair, they probably do too).
Nature is pretty damn cruel and selfish at times. Just because it utterly sucks doesn't mean it isn't natural - similarly healthy has the question of healthy for who and when?
Illness in herd animals is healthy for wolves by making them easier to kill without injury.
The industrial revolution saw major growing pains and destitution but raised standards of living greatly.
Your somewhat patronizing analogy misses the point. If our ultimate goal as a species is to survive and live well, then cutting hundreds of thousands (millions, actually, if you think about the implications of automation in other areas) is in conflict with that goal, thus 'unnatural'.
If the goal is to live well, that has nothing to do with doing jobs that a machine can do. Automation is not in conflict with the goal of people living well. If anything, it's the best tool we have to achieve the goal.
The conflict with the goal of people living well is that we don't want to take wealth from those that have it and give it to those that don't, without making the ones that don't have wealth "earn it".
Otherwise, there is nothing stopping societies from gathering up all the extra profits from automation, and using it to invest in education, healthcare, reducing number of work hours, increasing vacation time, i.e. living well. But we would rather not have that.
I agree that automation should be (and many times do) helping people perform their jobs (and daily tasks). However, those who are 'in charge' financially are actively seeking ways to replace humans in a blind race for maximizing short term results.
In a 'healthy' society, automation should be employed to make humans work less hours and with less risks. Somehow many people think this statement is absurd.
The solution to this are labor laws that result in less work hours for everyone, that apply to all employers. A universal basic income would also help accomplish this. The problem then, however, becomes how do you compete with another country that does offer cheaper labor.
The purpose of work is to do something useful as well. Makework is even more unnatural which is what automatable jobs being kept for the sake of employment only are. That level of waste mounting isn't good for living well as it calls for what is essentially wasted resources and lifetimes.
The true issue is adaptability or lack of it in an economy. The replaced should be doing something actually useful but that process is less than straightforward.
> I imagine it also helps the platform hide and demote content that is ideological unfavourable or competitive to the platform.
I'd say it also helps the platform hide a potential fake users problem. For instance, you can no longer see the low engagement on users' posts who paid for followers.
That's exactly what I mean. It would allow for a more organic looking promotion of paid content.
If you were able to see all engagement metrics, you may wonder why your favorite off-beat content, with much higher engagement is de-prioritized in favor of content with much lower levels of engagement.
