>>> "Wall-E" Type of Society (FALC)

After reading the article Fully Automated Luxury Communism, it is clearly apparent that a major controversial topic is covered. The controversy covered is: Should society shift the way it has functioned for so long, mainly human beings performing jobs, to all robots and machines taking over our jobs instead? The absolute first thought that popped into my brain after reading, was the animated Disney movie WALL-E. In case you have not seen this movie, basically machines and robots take over the whole entire world. Humans no longer have to lift a single finger for anything. Humans sit in a motorized chair and don’t even walk anymore! Needless to say the humans in this movie are jumbo big cause they don’t have to walk or exercise. How unhealthy is that! On the one hand, I agree with the (FALC). It would be pretty cool to eliminate people having to do any manual labor at their jobs, thus creating a more utopian society. But on the other hand, I still insist that if people no longer have jobs because robots have taken over, how on earth will they make an income to support themselves or their family? No job means there is no income.  I can only imagine that this would create an increase in the unemployment rate and poverty rate. It is obvious that machines are already making a mark on society. As mentioned in the article, there are self-checkouts at stores, meaning no longer a need for cashiers; there are also machines that are making products instead of physical people needing to, like in the old days. Nevertheless, both followers and critics of Fully Automated Luxury Communism will probably suggest otherwise and argue that there will still be plenty of jobs, so there is no need to worry. Some followers of (FALC) might claim that robots and machines are not taking over our society, of course as time goes on, technology advances so there is no doubt we have robots and machines assisting. All I can think about still is the movie Wall-E. If our world turned out to be anything like how it is in that movie, so help me and everybody else. I am pretty sure humans would become extinct, as wild as that sounds. This article has definitely got me a little nervous for the future. Fully automated luxury communism needs to be put to a stop, for the sake of our human race!

FALC

Overall, I think that this article was interesting and brings up a point of view and a topic not really talked about. The main point of their argument is that Fully Automated Luxury Communism (FALC) is important and that it can possibly happen, one day. They say that FALC, will do most of the heavy and dirty work that humans used to do, while humans get to enjoy the benefits of its labor. The thing I want to ask, is this possible and is this already happening? In the article MIT professor Erik Brynjolfsson says that the idea is certainly possible, while Aaron Bastani of Novara Media says that we’ve already reached this point in video and audio content with things like Wikipedia and Spotify to name a few. Throughout the article there are references made about the United Kingdom and how FALC can affect it. I think some Americans like myself would ask, how would FALC affect things here across the pond? We have to consider that there are some cultural differences between the US and the UK and notably there is also a big difference when it comes to population. This leads me to ask that since the UK has a lower population than the US and they think they’ll lose around 35% of jobs to automation, is that 35% the same here in America as well? I think that the 35% would be diluted to a smaller percentage here in America because of the greater population. When they talk about British Luxury Communism they mostly refer to works of literature and popular culture that deal with utopian societies with automation. One such example is the Novel, Looking Back and talking about the year 2000 and the “future” (the novel was written in the late 1800’s) and the utopian society it has become with technological advancements. Despite the fact that many representations of future societies are wrong and sometimes crazy, when we look at it, just like Aaron Bastani points out in the article that this is possible and we currently have gadgets that make our lives easier. Overall, I think the points that were brought were interesting and I do agree that we are somewhat heading towards automation, but I still think that this article needed to show how this would affect America, and how we can all share the luxury as well.

Starting from the Bottom

                This weeks reading was pretty interesting to me I actually enjoyed reading it. It was about a lady who was new to a maid service, and trying to make ends meet. This story sound so much like the ones my parents have told me about themselves when they were growing up and trying to make it. I can respect the fact of someone working hard to make a simple living for themselves even if its not something they would prefer to do. I remember my mother telling me stories of how my grandma had to go to various peoples home and clean up the many messes they made. She would tell me how she had to get on her hands and knees, just as the women in the story did, to scrub the floors, to ensure they were absolutely spotless. A job like that is not something everyone can do, or is even equipped to do, for that my hat goes off to anyone who actually does such a job every day. In my opinion when someone is able to do such a job like that, or working at a fast food restaurant or anything where its looked down upon, that’s respectable to me. Both of my parents had jobs like that where they literally had to start from the bottom, by earning their own living to get themselves through school. They worked hard every day nonstop to get to where they are now. Hearing how my parents had to do that just to make it through life is really inspiring to me. When I hear of such stories of anyone coming from the bottom of the barrel to becoming the cream of the crop, I aspire after that, those are the stories I yearn to see and hear. So whenever I hear of anyone like the one in the story I don’t look down on anyone but instead I applaud her for striving and working hard even if that’s not something she ever really wanted to do.

Success and Opportunity

Oh man it’s been a while since we have had to blog or comment.

 Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is a first person account of her time working for a maid service. She uses the article to show how these workers undergoing this physical labor are working hard through the sweat and fatigue but are not paid enough for their services. Now although she doesn’t outright come out and say how she feel about the crappy pay they make for labor she uses subtlety such as referencing how they couldn’t scrape together 2 dollars for the work amongst 4 of them. I think this article shows a good point in society, many people that still believe in the American dream believe that hard work and constant effort can help you achieve success (at least financially), but the author uses first hand experiences to disprove this idea. She shows how nearly none of the maids had homes or enough pay to truly enjoy themselves, despite the hours and hours of sweat they put into work. The American dream does not exist anymore for everyone but rather it is only a dream based on opportunity, for any of these maids the American dream no matter as hard as they scrub or as quick as they run will not move very farther up the ladder of success. They can all put in overtime and try as they might but she points out how its hard to apply for a better job when all you want to do after work is take what time you have to relax. Many conservatives that do not believe in welfare programs or in the income tax often claim their viewpoints to be right because they themselves have “achieved success” but I guarantee that, although I do not know the exact statistic, the number of successful people that come out of communities and families with better opportunity and circumstance is much higher than those not exposed to the same opportunity. It is a sad but very prominent thing in society that we as Americans crave success and the big house and fancy car and nice objects but the truth is many will never achieve that, and because that is what the American dream is portrayed as in movies, many will never achieve the true American dream. My father has always told me its not what you know, its who you know, and I only see it to be more true as I see society for what it truly is.  

Evaluations

  “Why The Rich are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer” does not seem to show any signs of bias. Robert Reich seems to be more academic and about they society. Their really is not any personal experiences in this reading. This is more of an academic article because I noticed while I was previewing this article That Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. His personal background information makes him seem very reliable and trustworthy. He served as a secretary of labor in the first Clinton administration , was a professor at Harvard, and wrote multiple books on economics. Since this article is about economy and the rich and poor it makes sense to trust someone who has studied about economics.
 In “Blue collar Brilliance”, Mike Rose talked about his personal life. He talks about his mother working in a restaurant and his uncle working in a paint and body shop. He explains how they learned a lot through these jobs and didn't have much of an educational background. Rose states, “a significant amount of teaching, often informal and indirect, takes place at work.” The previewing of this article helped me discover he was also a professor at the UCLA graduate school of education and information studies, he is also known for his writing. He takes a different route the. Reich does because his examples are people he knew his whole life and Reich focuses on academic sources.
Although “Why the Rich are getting Richer and the Poor,Poorer” seems to be less bias and show good reliable sources, I I found “Blue Collar Brilliance” to make a better argument. Maybe is was the personal experience that made it easy to relate to, or how easy it was to read. They were both pretty long articles but it was easier to understand “Blue Collar Briliance.” Reich’s article had too much of a variety of words, which is good but not everyone is able to comprehend them as easily as others. I found his article to be a bit boring but that's just my opinion.

The Value of Physical Work

After reading the two articles, I personally believe that Blue Collar Brilliance by Mike Rose presents the better argument out of the two. In this article, Mike argues that blue collar jobs are a good source of learning about the world and the people living in it. He begins the article by describing what work was like for his mother when he was a child. He says that she was a waitress in Los Angeles who worked in a variety of coffee shops and restaurants. He talks about her work defining to him what work was like for most adults at the time, and uses his personal experience to support the argument that physical work and competence went hand in hand, and that physical work requires intelligence just as much as it requires strength.  He describes how his mom gained knowledge in order to do her work as well as possible, and uses her creation of memory strategies in order to remember all of her tasks while on the job to support the argument. This was important for not only completing her work, but also for dealing with the customers who came to the restaurants. As Mike puts it, the customers would come to the restaurants for a wide variety of needs, and his mom’s tip depended on her understanding what those needs were and being able to address them appropriately. He says that this understand of the thought processes of the customers was what made her so interested in human psychology,  and that she learned many things about the way people thought while working as a waitress. To support his main argument that he is making, he reveals that his mother never went beyond the seventh grade while in school, and that his father did not go much farther academically. In fact, Mike was the only one to go to college. He reveals this in order to show that formal education is not, despite popular belief, required in order for a person to be intelligent, and that physical work could actually do a really good job at serving somebody’s intelligence. What makes Mike’s argument the better one out of the two arguments is the fact that he uses personal experiences in order to support what he says in his article.  

Two Evaluations

Evaluation for “Why the Ritch Are Getting Richer and the Poor, Poorer”: This  writing is by Robert Reich who is a professor at the University of California in Berkeley teaching Public Polocy. The context of Reich’s writing pertains to the gap between pays in our society, or the uneven level of pay for social classes. While previewing this before I began to read it, I noticed that it was published in a “Business and Economics” book, which makes his writing seem more credible and scholarly from the get-go.  As far as I can tell, I have found no signs of bias within his work. Reich’s central claim / Thesis is that the line separating economic classes is rapidly growing more widespread, thus defining lower class workers as sinking boats to show that there isn’t an even ground separating classes any longer. He supports these claims with valid citations and references which also adds to the scholar of his work. His intended audience is most likely individuals suffering from “getting poorer” or simply people curious and interested in the economy.

Evaluation for “Blue-Collar Brilliance”: This is written by Mike Rose, who is also a professor, but is instead teaching at UCLA Graduate School of Education and information studies. There is no harmful bias, only the fact that he did in fact suffer hardships and judgment, thus his writing is from a specific point of view on the issue of Judgment on food workers. This work is scholarly, for it is posted in the “They Say, I Say” book that is marketed towards college leveled learning. Rose’s Central Claim / Thesis is that Intelligence should not be based on the level or amount of schooling that one has received. He supports these claims with personal experiences that are not only empathetic towards the readers, but claims that cannot be brushed off.

From these two readings, I found “Blue-Collar Brilliance” to be most effective, because not only was it scholarly, but it hit home for me due to the personal experiences he tied in, the way the subject of pay separation/judgment was approached, and the empathy he draws from his readers. This reading also hit home for me, for both of my parents never attended college and would be considered “uneducated” to the general public, but honestly, they are the most intelligent individuals I know despite how long they attended school. I agree that education should not be the determining factor of someone’s level of intelligence. 

Blue Collars.

Out of the two article. I think the article that makes the more effective argument is “Blue Collar Brilliance” by Mike Rose. But first I think you have to understand and know what blue collar even means; it is defined as of or relating to manual work or workers, particularly in industry. Blue collar is labeled brilliant in the title alone and Rose makes the argument that the view of intelligence cant be measured by the amount of schooling that someone has completed. It doesn’t matter how long you went to school for or even if you finished. She gives examples of her mother dropping out of school but being very intelligent and also her mother’s brother had dropped out of school. Rose suggests that the blue collar jobs actually require more intelligence then meets the eye and people assumed blue collar jobs are for uneducated people. He explains how he observed different types of blue- collar and service workers in action (mom and brother) and came to the conclusion that each of them have several skills that takes a lot of mind power to master. And those skills aren’t taught in a classroom. I personally agree with Rose when he says that the amount of school someone has completed does not matter, it doesn’t measure their true intelligence level. Especially in our economy today. Many people cannot afford to pursue higher education, and that does not mean that they wouldn’t make excellent doctors or lawyers if they could afford the schooling. So many smart people but since they don’t have the money they aren’t given the opportunity.