Posts by Rivergang

228

The point of existence and how it refutes the Trinity

by slimboyfat in

rowan williams, the former archbishop of canterbury gave an interesting answer to the somewhat stark question, what’s the point of us existing?

as a christian, my starting point is that we exist because the most fundamental form of activity, energy, call it what you like, that is there, is love.

that is, it’s a willingness that the other should be.

Rivergang

There is no end to this 1500-year-old argument!

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

The only person who can remove human-led tyrannical governments altogether is God.
He's removing them.
Thank God.

Good luck to you with that one!

Generations of Jehovahs Witnesses have been disappointed (and continue to be disappointed), whilst expecting that event to happen.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

TD

The days of standing at a machine all day are gone,

That was the point, namely, that those expecting the return of manufacturing to bring with it a return of the same number of jobs as previously are going to be disappointed. Furthermore, whatever the rights and wrongs of this situation, attempts to reverse it (Ref. AnnaNana) are going to be no more successful than those of the Luddites.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

The first thing that popped into my head was manufacturing, but production can include a lot of things

It also includes primary industries - such as mining, farming and forestry. These, too, have in many ways been transformed by automation.

For example:

As far back as 2013, the mining industry began using driverless haul trucks, and this is now quite commonplace.
Go into any commercial forest these days, and you will hardly see a person in sight whilst logging operations are taking place. A single hydraulic excavator fitted with a harvester head has six times the output of a chainsaw equipped eight-man bush crew.
Farmers, too, hardly need to employ anybody anymore. Even milking cows has become a highly mechanised process, with most dairy farms now utilising such plant as rotary cowsheds. (These enable an astonishing number of cows to be milked in a 24-hour period; very important in this part of the world, where farmers do not receive a single cent in the way of subsidies).

If everybody just worked their own land without kings or rulers, there'd be no need for taxes or tariffs.

The trouble with that idea is that it only takes one bad season, and you would have famine. This was very much the case during 16th Century Europe. On average in those times, one summer out of three was a poor one, the harvest failed, and people then starved.

The same thing still happens today, in those places where people still rely on subsistence farming. (Sorry - but I myself have observed this firsthand). Then, if famine relief measures do reach the people so affected, it is often provided by governments of developed countries.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

The word "progress" is a relative term,

I have always understood that term to mean technological advancement - and that is what I was referring to.

The Luddites of the 18th Century failed in their time to halt the advance of technology, as likewise would any attempts to do the same in this third decade of the 21st Century.

Things weren't exactly utopian before the industrial revolution, either. While the living conditions of the early Victorian era would appear to us as grim (certainly when viewed from a 21st Century developed nation's perspective), these actually represented a marked improvement over the living conditions of just a few decades earlier.

People working their own land might sound like a wonderful idea - until one has actually seen the reality. I have lived in a Third World country (Papua New Guinea) where 85% of the population exists by subsistence farming (i.e. "working their own land") and that, also, is far from utopian! For those poor wretches, famine is always a very real threat, and never far away. All it takes is a natural disaster - such as drought, flood, cyclone, fire or some agricultural pest (which can be as simple as the pigs getting through the fence and destroying the food garden!) - and people starve. Furthermore, their primitive methods of agriculture are in no way sustainable. Usually described as the "slash and burn" approach, it is extremely destructive to the environment.

It seems to be human nature to keep hankering after "the good old days"; while ignoring the fact that those "old days" were often not as good as people imagine them to have been.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

He has a better way, and it is coming.

Well that, of course, takes the discussion off in an entirely different direction - and is a dialogue which I would prefer not to engage in! (Not right now, anyway).

Certainly, mechanisation of industry has always brought with it certain social dislocations. However, in the past, these have been more than offset by its benefits.

For example, when mechanisation of the textile industry began in the 18th century, traditional crafts such as hand-weaving became obsolete. Persons who previously worked in those now obsolete hand crafts, though, could quickly be retrained as factory workers. The result was a much greater output of textiles, which made clothing much more affordable.

Another case is the mechanisation of civil engineering activities, which took place between the two world wars. The question was back then raised "You have introduced one bulldozer, which does the work of at least 100 men. What now happens to the other 99 workers?" The answer was "We obtain another 99 bulldozers". Most former labourers could easily be retrained to operate such earthmoving plant as a bulldozer, and the result was a spectacular increase in output. This made possible such activities as the open cut mining of very low-grade mineral deposits. (One example of that being some of the world's largest gold mines, where the ore yields just 0.3 grams of gold per ton. To recover just one ounce of gold, they have to process some 16 tons of ore. A person using hand tools would be there a long, long time trying to win their single ounce of gold!)

It would have to be admitted, though, that the social problems resulting from the present level of industrial automation are a much harder nut to crack. Not every redundant factory hand has the makings of an IT specialist!

That being said, you will never, ever stem the tide of progress:

In 18th Century England, saboteurs ("Luddites", they were known as) attempted to do that by destroying the new weaving machines.
At the start of the railway era, a race was organised between a train and a horse. The horse came out the winner, but the result changed nothing.
Similarly, when the first chainsaws were introduced into the timber industry, another race was organised; this time between a chainsaw and a handsaw. The result was an even draw. Set against a log of four feet in diameter, the two-man team with the newfangled chainsaw took just as long as the two men on the end of the handsaw. Again, that result changed nothing in the longer term. The clumsy IEL chainsaw of 1953 was by 1960 superseded by the single-handed McCullough - and crosscut saws disappeared from the shelves of hardware stores.
In the district where I grew up, coal mining was once the principal employer. However, that industry was killed off almost entirely because the all-powerful mining union refused to countenance any form of mechanisation. Even by the early 1970s, those mines were still being worked by hand labour. Hardly surprising, then, that they have long since gone the way of the dinosaur!

Progress will never be halted, but the present unresolved social issues that have resulted could easily leave a person hoping for that man on a white horse to step in and rescue us all!

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

AnnaNana,

Someone with "boots on the ground" may not agree with you.

Despite what you are there insinuating, I, too, speak from first-hand experience (or "boots on the ground", as you put it).

During the 47 years I was involved with electrical power generation, I saw firsthand how automation transformed that industry by an astonishing degree. When I first entered it back in 1978, power station control rooms had to be manned continuously. This required three 8-hour shifts, each with at least three operating personnel, just to get through a single 24-hour period. In fact, becoming a power station operator was an attractive career choice for electricians, fitters or instrument technicians who wanted to progress "off the tools".

However, well before the year 2000, these same power stations had become totally deserted for 16 hours of the day; and with only maintenance staff being present during the remainder of the time. Almost all the production operator jobs had been eliminated by "Tech" (in the form of PLCs, Distributed Control Systems and SCADA).

Tech is limited and becoming overly reliant on it is unwise. The human component of life and work is integral to success of the earth

Not so, it gets rid of the most unreliable part of the entire process - the error prone human operator.

This "blossom" of tech will not last. It is not sustainable

Back in the day, there was plenty of that sort of talk going on, too! None of it, though, proved to be correct.

95

Trump Tariffs started today, Some Countries Caved in early morning.

by liam in

usa politicians in charge of the economy for the past 50 years were too stupid to understand how the economy works.

this just proves my theory, that an education on the top tier universities just sucks and means nothing in the real world, unless its in the stem education.

for 50 years usa had zero tariffs on other countries.

Rivergang

What many people don’t understand is that the “good” jobs aren’t coming back.

Very good point, and one which seems to be entirely missed during this entire exchange. The process actually began some 60 years ago with the introduction of the Programmable Logic Controller (or PLC), and has only intensified ever since.

As Hoser points out, it has now got to the stage where even the service industries are affected.

Any production facility that is not now fully automated is as good as dead in the water, and automation has even progressed into the stores and transport side of operations. (Gone are the days of having to "wake up the storeman" every time your needed to requisition parts or materials!)

Driverless haul trucks have been a reality in the mining industry for over ten years now, thus eliminating what used to be a small army of highly paid heavy equipment operators. And the list goes on!

12

Diligence and Enthusiasm - LDS vs JWs

by Rivergang in

on a scale of 1 to 100, i would put the lds in the high 90s, and the witnesses at about minus 10.. these days (well, around here at least) one encounters the mormon missionaries all over the place.

if they are not knocking at your door, they are approaching you out in the street.

of late, this has been happening all the bloody time!.

Rivergang

many other developed countries

I thought we were here talking about the situation in "developed countries" - not the overall world growth in the respective religions?

12

Diligence and Enthusiasm - LDS vs JWs

by Rivergang in

on a scale of 1 to 100, i would put the lds in the high 90s, and the witnesses at about minus 10.. these days (well, around here at least) one encounters the mormon missionaries all over the place.

if they are not knocking at your door, they are approaching you out in the street.

of late, this has been happening all the bloody time!.

Rivergang

Oh l don't know where you live but here in Tamworth l haven't seen any Mormons for ages.

It sounds like they must have all moved into my neighbourhood, then!

Seriously, here in the south-western part of the Brisbane metropolitan area, (Queensland, Australia) the LDS is very active.

Never mind that "only a small fraction of the Mormons preach". This same pair of young men are at it constantly - all day and every day. None of this meeting "for service", knocking on a few doors, then sloping off to Starbucks to complete the morning's "service". Those two are still to be seen working the streets very late in the afternoon. Unlike the JWs, too, the LDS guys will go out of their way to approach people out in the street; whereas I have so often seen the JWs walk right past you in the street, only to go up to your door house, where nobody is at home.

I have lost count of the number of times over the last three months that I have encountered this same pair of Mormon missionaries - either at my door or out in the street.

JWs have steady numbers or are increasingly slightly, in particular among immigrant communities.

But at no greater rate than that of the population in general. Hardly a great achievement! As Raymond Franz in Crisis of Conscience noted, the so-called "Preaching Work" of the Jehovahs Witnesses is hardly an effective one.

Eight million JWs claim to be preaching, yet are outshone by only 100 000 Mormons.

This does not say much for the Jehovahs Witnesses. In fact, the term "Blunt Instrument" appears to be a most accurate description of their much vaunted "Preaching of the Good News".