Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Long Train to Nowhere

No doubt you have seen one of those long trains, the ones with two or three engines in front and one in back (no caboose these days). You look down the track, and the train rumbles on, hundreds of cars, out of sight. You might ask yourself how many workers are on board.

The correct answer is: one.

Everyone else has been replaced by automation. If that one engineer falls off the train, no one will be on board. Or if the engineer takes out a bottle of whiskey and drinks straight shots, a drunk will be aboard. Or if the engineer grows lonely for a human voice and calls his wife, one inattentive dreamer will be on board. Automation will take care of safety, except when it doesn't.

We're headed for a time when there will be one person working at the General Motors plant, flipping an on/off switch. Meanwhile the unemployment rate for Blacks is about 20%.

Maybe we should start to talk about this.

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