There are 650 of them and thousands of enablers

This story in Not Always Right (One of the sites in my sidebar) got me thinking about something that's bugged me for a long, long time

In a nutshell, the story is, young girl has a minimum wage job demonstrating Meta Glasses and other AI related tech. Man comes over and berates he for half an hour about how she's promoting AI, which is going to destroy the world

 

Now at the moment, I have no problems with AI. For me it's just a superior search engine, but I'm aware of a lot of other practical uses too. It may one day destroy the world, but I've not seen any evidence of it so far

 

What peaked my ears was the girls response. Quote:

"For roughly the next half hour, this man stands at my display explaining how I, personally, am contributing to the downfall of civilization. 
Not Meta.
Not Mark Zuckerberg.
Not the engineers who actually build the AI.
Not lawmakers, executives, investors, or anyone else with any meaningful control over how the technology is developed or used.
Me. 
A woman making twenty dollars an hour inside a Best Buy."

Ok, so I don't actually think she's doing anything wrong, and I think the guy berating her was a bit of a prat, and probably believes in chemtrails, but reading her response, she seems to think that AI is wrong, but it's not her fault and she's 'just doing her job'

 

There are many bad things that have happened in the past and are happening now, that wouldn't be possible without armies of drones doing their jobs

 

In my response to the post I mentioned Trump, because everyone on that heavily left leaning site hates Trump. If Trump wants a bad thing to happen, he's powerless to make it so, without a lot of other people doing it for him

 

Trump wants to kick out illegal immigrants, so he sends in ICE. 

 

ICE aren't just a bunch of enforcers who kick in doors and arrest people. That's just the bit you see in the news. There will also be a small army of back office staff, administrators, clerks, accountants, lawyers, cleaners, mechanics, and countless others I can't even think of. There is also the logistics involved in arresting a lot of people and transporting them to other countries, along with the legal framework that has to be followed

 

If Trump wants to deport illegal immigrants, it takes thousands of other people to actually make it work

 

Unfortunately for us in England, our Government wants to import illegal immigrants. Even that requires a lot of enablers. It's not just a case of doing nothing and letting it happen. The RNLI has to go rescue them from the small boats, the police have to turn up and arrest the protesters, the courts have to jail the protestors, the coach drivers have to turn up and pick up the illegals, the hotels and their staff and security have to look after them, the DWP has to find the benefit money and route it to them, the Home Office has to fast track their asylum claims, the police have to arrest them for rape, the courts have to give them bail so they can bugger off out the country and try again

 

Facilitating illegal immigration to England, and all the bad things that happen as a result, requires thousands of enablers

 

If your council tax goes up and you are annoyed because the council can't even empty the bins properly, there will always be someone available to deal with you if you refuse to pay. Even if you think your council tax is quite reasonable, just imagine the number of people required to collect council tax from every household in the UK, and distribute it to the correct places 

 

Even the BBC employs a lot of people to turn up at your door and bald faced lie to you about needing a TV licence 

 

None of this is new to you, and it's a very old saying: "There are 650 of them and 65 million of us"

 

But there aren't 650 of them. There are millions

 

If Mark Zuckerberg wants to sell Meta glasses that will rise up and enslave humanity, he can't do it by touring Best Buy stores and demonstrating them himself, he needs to pay people to do it for him

 

And people need jobs

 

Where I work, we do a lot of contracts for other companies. I've seen a Muslim refuse to work with alcohol and a vegan refuse to work with animal products. Both times it was no problem, as there were others to do the work, other things for them to do, and our company found the objections to be reasonable

I would like to think that if we took on a contract shipping rubber boats to France, I would refuse

But I'm old, and close to retirement, I'm not a young girl on minimum wage trying to afford her next Costa coffee

 

And how would it work out anyway, if people started to think more about the morality of the work they do? I think there will always be enough people who think even the worst things are perfectly fine and would be happy doing them. If thousands of people left their jobs on moral grounds, thousands of others would take them up on their own, different moral grounds. After all. most of Jesus's friends were tax collectors...

 

Yes, no matter how bad those at the top try to make things, they will always have their army of enablers to make it possible

 

Covid taught me that 

I agree with the Guardian

No, seriously 

Food allergies when flying are no joke. That’s why nuts should be banned on planes
Lucy Pasha-Robinson

Indeed. All the nuts with food allergies 

Government to the rescue

Solving problems of it's own creation 

 

According to Tim Worstall, this is a quote from Richard Murphy, the UK's comedy economist:

There is also only one known solution, as it is clear that the private sector will not create the number of jobs required to engage younger people in the UK in work, and that is for the government to take on that job instead.

I didn't bother to go to Murphs website and find out if this was an actual quote, because my time is worth more to me than that, but it certainly sounds like something he'd say. Why? Because it's totally economically illiterate

 

Firstly, the private sector can't create jobs for young people because it can't afford to do so. Young people with no skills and experience are not worth the cost of the minimum wage and employers national insurance

 

Of course, if young people can't get jobs now, they will eventually become middle aged people with no skills and experience. The government has created an impossible situation where it's too expensive to employ people, so the government must pay benefits, which come from money taken from the private sector in taxes (Simplistic overview, but correct)

 

So according to Murphy, the government must step in and create jobs itself. To correct the problem that it created itself

 

So what jobs will the government create? They don't produce anything, they don't sell anything. The only jobs they can create for young people will be pen pushing public sector trainee management types, who will add no value to society what-so-ever, but will need to be paid for by taxes taken from the private sector and its employees

 

If the private sector is unable to expand and create more jobs and value, but the government has to take more money to pay the valueless jobs it creates, we're in an ever decreasing circle; smaller private sector, bigger government, until something gives

 

To Richard Murphy though, this is of course, a feature, not complete balmpottery 

Eclipse

Conversation between me and Google AI last night

Me: So when is the eclipse starting?

Google AI: It's reaching it's peak right now 

Me: Oh Cool 

*Half hour later*

Me: Nowt happened. WTF dude?

Google AI: Yeah, it's only a partial eclipse, so nowt will look different. Why? You didn't go and sit outside to watch it, did you?

Me: Yeah, ya cunt

Google AI: LOL!

See you, wouldn't wanna be EU

 I've written previously (Can't be bothered to hunt for the link right now) about being in the huge passport queue leaving Corfu airport, where the woman behind us said 'Thanks Brexit'. I got my jollies by asking her if this was her first time in Corfu airport (it was), and telling her that it's a small, busy airport, that can't handle the traffic at busy times. Nothing to do with Brexit

 

Anyhoo, we were just back at Corfu airport, and this time the entry queue after getting off the plane. They put you in a tiny room with the staggered ropes, and there's about three to four guys checking passports, so that takes a while too.

 

They've got one more roped off lane for EU citizens, that basically just lets you jump the queue, but your passport is still checked by the same guys as everyone else

 

While waiting I found myself wondering if there were many people in this queue like that women, who were blaming the queue on Brexit

 

I then wondered if such people were wishing we were still in the EU so we would all be in the queue with no people in it

 

Then I asked myself, would such people make the link and realise that if there were no Brexit, everyone in this queue would be in the same queue, but with a different sign on it, and it would take exactly just as long to get through? 

 

I've said it before and I'll say it again, there were many reason why I voted for Brexit, and the length of passport queues was not among them 

 

But the main reason for this post is just to tell you that we're back in Corfu and loving it 

Owned

So some councillor decided to go on Facebook and whack on about the virtues of clean energy and why we should be switching to it to combat climate change

I decided to respond with a simple 'don't be daft' style comment

 

I did not expect him to respond, and even less did I expect him to correct my spelling

 

 I made a spelling error. It seems my arguement is invalid