EU referendum are you in or out

[Whiteball]

Well that's all nicely written and such, but that isn't the reason Brexit is going to be good or bad is it?
That's all likely to happen anyway?
Or are you saying staying in the Eu will stop all that happening?

[zip accident]

We can all surmise, we can all read/write reports and predictions, but until we start a 'brexit' then we don't know just who, what and how it's going to effect anything in the short or long term.

No, sorry, I still don't get your point here.

What you've given there is basically a summary of the Human Condition itself, as humans are not psychic beings (despite what Derek-fucking-Acorah might say to con a living out of harassing the recently bereaved).

"We can't know the future, until the future becomes the present".

Well, yes, a correct summary of how time works. But this is true for absolutely anything and I don't see why you're singling out Brexit as any more nor less different than any other political decision.

In truth, all political decisions - education reform, universal credit, NHS funding, etc. - carry their "unintended consequences" that'll fuck over someone somewhere. Even when it's the best decision possible.

So I'd say - based on all historical precedent and statistical logic - what we can be sure of is that, in some regards, the future will be shit because of our decisions and, in other regards, the future will be better because of our decisions. You won't ever get 100% good or 100% bad. You'll always get a mix of the two.

Personally, I believe that the underlying root cause of the world's current existential crisis is automation. The machines - not immigrants - are stealing our jobs.

The music industry was eviscerated by Napster. Retail stores are closing everywhere, in the face of Amazon and online shopping. Where you've still got retail stores, they've increasingly got self-service tills. ATMs are disappearing because contactless, not cash, now owns the majority of transaction - eventually, it'll be 100% and then the banks won't really have any reason to be on the high street.

And you might be rightly pissed off that, thanks to globalisation and the advancement of our communication technologies, nearly all customer service is farmed out to Indian call centres.

But, hey, have you seen that Google Assistant demo? The Indian call centres will also soon be out of a job too:



It's a subtle thing. Because, no, you don't show up to work on Monday morning to see "Robbie the robot" sitting in your chair and the boss says "you're fired".

It's that even the largest of corporations no longer need a "mail department" because it's all done by email now. It's businesses no longer needing a "print department" as much, because it's all "paperless office" now. With things like shared calendars and CRM systems - so folks can sort out their own diaries - you don't need personal assistants and secretaries as much.

With the assistance of the machines, a single person now "multi-tasks" what used to be 5 or 6 different jobs.

When automated vehicles take over the roads - they already exist, it's just the legalities and scale that's still coming - then taxi drivers and delivery drivers will disappear. Bus drivers? Train drivers? There'll even eventually be a tipping point - when most vehicles on the roads are autonomous, it would arguably make things safer for everyone to start banning human drivers. They're unpredictable, where the autonomous vehicles can directly speak to each other wirelessly to coordinate an insane dance between them that no human could reasonably follow.

Okay, this is a sci-fi movie. But when we become able to do this sort of thing for real, there's zero chance that they'll let a human driver join the flow of automated vehicles, as it'd just be too insanely dangerous to allow, as no human could keep up with the machines and remain safe:



And we have a serious problem here.

The grand advantage of the robots - besides their ability to just do everything better than us humans ever could - is that you don't have to pay them anything. Not a penny in wages or food. They don't sleep. They don't take fag breaks. 100% super-human productivity 24 / 7 / 365.

That's such an economic advantage, it's definitely going to happen. Soon you won't have to worry about the Indians or Chinese "stealing your jobs" because they'll do it for a pitiful wage, the machine will do it - far faster, without cease - for absolutely nothing whatsoever.

(Then there's the notion of technologies clashing. One thing you do need to provide for the machines is electricity to run them. But if we have renewables and storage batteries - massive factories where the entire roof is 100% solar panels, generating megawatts - then we're also on the cusp of an energy revolution, where electricity gets so cheap that, like water, we stop monitoring and charging for usage. The factory owns its own power station on the roof.)

If you're optimistically minded, then you might be wondering why I'm calling any of this "a problem".

But let's imagine a chain of robots. Automated drilling machines mine the materials. Automated vehicles deliver them to the factories. Robots at the factories create the products. The products are delivered to the Amazon warehouses by automated vehicles. You order the product online. A drone picks up the box and drops it outside your front door about 15 minutes later.

Let's go further. You no longer need the packaging it came in, so you put it outside and signal for collection with a phone app. An autonomous recycling van comes round and picks it up. The robots reprocess the materials and those also get delivered to the factories.

There is no human being coordinating any of this. The machines coordinate and cooperate perfectly. A human would, in fact, just make things inefficient and get in the way. The mine, the factory, the Amazon warehouse, etc. are all completely unmanned. A machine is even doing all the stock taking and accounts.

And, better yet, they've got solar panels on the factory / warehouse roofs. They've got a wind farm nearby and some tidal lagoon energy - and the tides run like clockwork, twice a day that can be exploited four times daily. For all this, there is no electricity bill. It's all clean and free energy from the Sun, wind and water.

Then you have the notion of exponential growth. Humans build the first factories. But, thereafter, the factories produce the builder robots for building future factories to build more robots to build more factories to build more robots. You power the first "solar panel factory" on fossil fuels - but then it produces all the solar panels for its own roof and you switch to solar. To produce more solar panels to switch more stuff to renewables.

Superficially, this might sound awesome. And, honestly, it genuinely is.

But here's the thing. You're paying none of these robots a wage. Through renewables, you're paying no energy bills. Having negligible costs - "approaching zero" costs - on everything sounds fucking amazing.

But how does any money get into this system? If no humans have a job - and, thus, no wage - then how do they afford to buy any of these products?

The real big grand problem here is that automation is going to - a la the Star Trek "moneyless" future - undermine the very concept of money itself.

Some folks - such as Elon Musk - have mentioned "universal income". But the problem there is that, at some point, you're going to have more humans in receipt of "universal income" than you've got humans remaining paying their taxes to pay for it all. At first, it'll make sense - but then it'll eventually stop working, as the maths doesn't add up.

And the thing is that this is inevitable.

From the moment man discovered fire and the wheel, this is basically what it's all been building up to. And, on the other side of this transition - this "Industrial Revolution 2.0" - then we could well find ourselves living in that Star Trek Utopia of abundance, where folks do stuff because they enjoy it and want to better themselves.

But I have no fucking clue how the Hades we can smoothly manage the transition. This current system works - some shape, anyway - and one can imagine that this future system could conceivably work too. But how on Earth do you logically get from one to the other, particularly in the haphazard random and irregular way that this is happening, with zero planning (or even public acknowledgement that this is even a thing) involved, when the numbers just don't make any sense?

I don't think that's it.

There are people making a lot of money. They intend to keep on making money. They have systems in place to make sure they keep on making money.

There are people who intend to make a lot of money out of the collapse of Brexit. If Brexit happens, the collapse and them making money from it is almost inevitable.

The money as money is almost irrelevant, it's whether the factories produce things that people want, if they do then the factories will be profitable, if they don't then they won't, and more factories worn't be built. It'll come down to food in the end. People will always need food.

The rich will always have room for one more pretty poor girl (or boy).

In the end, can the rich pay the poor enough to shoot the poor that they'll only shoot the poor? When 99.99% of people are "scum" which scum can the rich trust?

It hopefully won't go that particular way, but that's one of the possibilites, I don't know of a way to avoid that outcome from this point in time.

It is a little worrying that the mass of society everywhere is falling into two strongly opposed camps, and it's strange that it's different camps in different places.

[Rubisco]

If the robots turn out to be racist then we're really fucked.

[KlaxonCow]

Well that's all nicely written and such, but that isn't the reason Brexit is going to be good or bad is it?

No, it's the reason why Brexit is going to be completely irrelevant to redressing the grievances of those who voted for it.

There has been a fundamental misdiagnosis here.

Immigration and globalism are red herrings. Neither of these things are the underlying reason why the average man in the street is suffering.

So this global movement towards populism and nationalism - Brexit, Trump, the rise of the right across Europe, etc. - is all going to have exactly 0% effectiveness in redressing the grievances of those who're backing this complete and utter waste of everybody's time.

To quote the Bard: "I understand the fury in your words, but not the words".

We, the people, pulling a tantrum on the back of rich idiots - Trump, Farage, etc. - who have absolutely zero comprehension of their suffering, besides preying on it wins votes, and who will not suffer themselves, in order to destabilise a system that they feel has betrayed them, right at this moment of perhaps the largest revolutionary change that the human animal has ever yet experienced?

We're fiddling while Rome burns.

And, well, you tell me. If instead of addressing the real causes of your grievances, you occupy yourself with a total irrelevance to that situation, then what's the likely overall outcome? Regardless of whether Brexit does or doesn't turn out to be, unto itself, a good thing or not.

[gilesgoat]

.. one of my main concerns it's about things like "No you can not stay in UK any more, no you need some working VISA I am NOT going to give you ( because I can ), no I am not going to honor that thing of before because that was a thing May promised now fuck all with her we start all over, no you don't have any rights of any sort because we say so".

On the top of that more taxes, more shit with currency conversion, more shit with moving there and there because now you can't easily enter/exit UK border, more money loss in general ( when doing business with outside UK countries - so ALWAYS ) .

And I am still wondering "how they are going to sort" the Irish border thing ...

That some of the points of concern.

Plus civil unrest, xenophobia, overall sense of "not so nice as before".

[Cloudane]

The Irish border is an example of something that was absolutely provable to be a problem (via the GFA if nothing else) but blisfully ignored as an attempt by remoaners to scare us into staying, not believing hard enough etc. And then treated like some unexpected surprise when it turned out to be thus far an insurmountable barrier to exiting with any kind of deal.

[Harlequin]

The Irish border is an example of something that was absolutely provable to be a problem (via the GFA if nothing else) but blisfully ignored as an attempt by remoaners to scare us into staying, not believing hard enough etc. And then treated like some unexpected surprise when it turned out to be thus far an insurmountable barrier to exiting with any kind of deal.

And almost certainly a betrayal of our international treaty obligations if we exit even without a deal.

[gilesgoat]

The Irish border is an example of something that was absolutely provable to be a problem (via the GFA if nothing else) but blisfully ignored as an attempt by remoaners to scare us into staying, not believing hard enough etc. And then treated like some unexpected surprise when it turned out to be thus far an insurmountable barrier to exiting with any kind of deal.

And almost certainly a betrayal of our international treaty obligations if we exit even without a deal.

I really wonder how Trump would sort all that out ...

[KlaxonCow]

And almost certainly a betrayal of our international treaty obligations if we exit even without a deal.

Plus, the insanity of some Brexiteers seriously suggesting that we should not honour our current EU commitments by paying "the divorce bill".

This is an insanity because, after we've left, we then have to go around the world with a begging bowl, trying to re-establish trade deals with the rest of the world. Which is not going to go so well, when our last act, just before doing so, was to renege on our previous - legally mandated - agreements with the EU.

That would shatter any concept of "good faith" into a billion pieces. Because we'd be knowingly breaking our own promises - to a party, in the EU, that really isn't being remotely unreasonable to ask that we settle up our affairs before leaving, and has not been an arsehole about it at all, so to randomly tell them to "fuck off" for seemingly no justifiable reason will play atrociously badly in the eyes of those we then later want to start making deals and agreements with.

This is like going into a job interview with a CV that says "in my previous job, I poured petrol on my boss and tried to set him on fire and raided all the tills to steal cash". Can I have a job, please? Well, no, no fucking way. If that's how you behaved in your last job, then there's no fucking way I'm going to hire a mad man, who turns into a psycho having a tantrum, the second you don't personally like something.

So entitled, that it's literally criminal.

Of course, it's a good populist thing to say "we're going to keep all the money!" - because wouldn't we all like to be able to just walk into shops and take whatever the fuck we liked, without paying for any of it? - but if Bojo or Farage or whoever actually does do that, then it's an insanity too far - it'll fuck over every single negotiation, of all the many many negotiations we'll need to make to get back any trade deals at all, when - before you've even started - you've gone and publicly announced to the entire planet that you'll happily fuck off any deal, at the drop of a hat, and refuse to pay any debts.

Because of what's really just some kind of paranoid delusion. The EU isn't being remotely unreasonable to ask its members to contribute to its funding and its various projects, whilst we were members - because that's kind of the whole fucking point of having a Union in the first place!! - and then, when we're leaving, to simply say "okay, but you need to properly settle up your affairs before walking out the door".

All the Leaver scare-mongering and Murdoch tabloid bollocks might have forever played the EU as some sort of evil tyrannical monster, but it isn't. It's a club that, okay, a majority of people no longer want to be a part of. But that's all. Settle our debts, cancel the subscription and leave.

We willingly entered and now we want to willingly leave - which the EU is entirely 100% granting is our right to do so - so stop acting like this is some grand "War of Independence" against an evil tyrant of oppression. No, it's just leaving a club that we ourselves asked to join in the first place, and which the club isn't stopping us from leaving.

Calm the fuck down. Murdoch's just been lying to you, you blithering idiots.

And, wearing my historical hat, this is such a tragedy. The rule of law was our idea, in the Magna Carta. Our greatest export ever. And we're dropping it at the whims of a bunch of idiots, who have zero fucking clue what they're even talking about, as evidenced by this farcical inability to arrange a piss up in a brewery so far, regards actually Brexiting.

The lunatics now run the asylum, apparently.

[zip accident]

The Irish border is an example of something that was absolutely provable to be a problem (via the GFA if nothing else) but blisfully ignored as an attempt by remoaners to scare us into staying, not believing hard enough etc. And then treated like some unexpected surprise when it turned out to be thus far an insurmountable barrier to exiting with any kind of deal.

And almost certainly a betrayal of our international treaty obligations if we exit even without a deal.

I really wonder how Trump would sort all that out ...

Eh? he lost as much as he gained, he's at inherited wealth plus zero.

Which is a lot better than threw it all down the boozer, but not better than didn't mess about.

I see four tomorrows to fear.

1/ Islam take over the world. No theft. No women's rights. Honour killings allowed. FGM allowed, maybe. Science probably only allowed as a hobby.

2/ "White" racists take over the world. No brown or black people, or mongoloid people.

3/ Han racists take over the world. No Europeans, blacks, browns.

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

I don't say these are the only possibilities by any means, but they probably take at least 50% of the possibilities between them.

[zip accident]

The Irish border is an example of something that was absolutely provable to be a problem (via the GFA if nothing else) but blisfully ignored as an attempt by remoaners to scare us into staying, not believing hard enough etc. And then treated like some unexpected surprise when it turned out to be thus far an insurmountable barrier to exiting with any kind of deal.

And almost certainly a betrayal of our international treaty obligations if we exit even without a deal.

I really wonder how Trump would sort all that out ...

Eh? he lost as much as he gained, he's at inherited wealth plus zero.

Which is a lot better than threw it all down the boozer, but not better than didn't mess about.

I see five tomorrows to fear.

1/ Islam take over the world. No theft. No women's rights. Honour killings allowed. FGM allowed, maybe. Science probably only allowed as a hobby.

2/ "White" racists take over the world. No brown or black people, or mongoloid people.

3/ Han racists take over the world. No Europeans, blacks, browns.

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

5/ Radical christians rule the world. No blacks, no browns, no mongoloids. Did I mention racists?

I don't say these are the only possibilities by any means, but they probably take at least 50% of the possibilities between them.

[Harlequin]

…
I see five tomorrows to fear.
…
5/ Radical christians rule the world. No blacks, no browns, no mongoloids. Did I mention racists?

Are most radical Christians not black Africans?

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

Tomorrow?

I think the poor people are still needed until they can all be replaced by robots and AIs.

[zip accident]

…
I see five tomorrows to fear.
…
5/ Radical christians rule the world. No blacks, no browns, no mongoloids. Did I mention racists?

Are most radical Christians not black Africans?

I think Christians are a very long shot. I think the Christians that might would be the Creationists and the snake handlers, and I get the feeling most of those nutty folks are "white".

I think Africans in Africa have less to do with Christianity, though there are some.

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

Tomorrow?

Call them Futures if you prefer, I'm not setting timetables, I'm saying one of these or something else will be the next thing, the current thing might last another hundred years or more, or it might stop dead in five years, the change will be a noticable thing. Brexit if it happens will be part of the current thing though it might be the beginning of the end of it.

I think the poor people are still needed until they can all be replaced by robots and AIs.

I don't think self aware AIs are coming any time soon, but robots are already here and in use.

[Harlequin]

I think Africans in Africa have less to do with Christianity, though there are some.

There were around 380,000,000 Christians in Africa in 2000, estimated to grow to 633,000,000 by 2025. Blame the missionaries. Some of the more extremely bigoted views are held by at least some of the Anglican Communion provinces (related to the Church of England but still, throughout most of Africa, overwhelmingly non-white).

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

Tomorrow?

Call them Futures if you prefer, I'm not setting timetables, I'm saying one of these or something else will be the next thing, the current thing might last another hundred years or more, or it might stop dead in five years, the change will be a noticable thing. Brexit if it happens will be part of the current thing though it might be the beginning of the end of it.

I was expressing surprise at your apparent belief that the rich do not already control the world.

[KlaxonCow]

I see five tomorrows to fear.

1/ Islam take over the world. No theft. No women's rights. Honour killings allowed. FGM allowed, maybe. Science probably only allowed as a hobby.

No chance.

The entire reason why Islam has been playing up with terrorism and the like, is because Western culture, carrying scientific modernity and liberal values, was kicking its arse. The West was offering jeans and Coke and Hollywood movies. It's now offering the Internet and mobile phones.

Look up Sayd Kutb, who was the spiritual father of Al Qu'eda - by their own reckoning, as they labelled themselves Kutb's "vanguard" that he called for to defend the faith from "the distant enemy". He was an Egyptian school teacher and went on a trip to America, in the 1950s, as part of that. He saw, in his own eyes, "moral depravity" as boys and girls danced together at the school prom, and he was convinced that American lawn care was a symptom of their "Satanic" vanity.

Then he returned to his own Egypt and saw, at that time, everyone drinking Coke and wearing jeans and watching the latest Hollywood movies - as American exports were thoroughly "invading" Egyptian culture - and, thus, felt that this "Jahiliyyah" (an ignorance of Allah) would take over, unless Islam mounted its own armed resistance to these "Satanic forces" that were, let's be clear, easily winning the battle.

Because, to quote Richard Dawkins: "Science. It works, bitches".

Religion can give you a nice comfortable warm fuzzy feeling. A false hope in the face of bereavement.

But it doesn't physically extend your lifespan, as modern medicine does. It doesn't allow you to communicate with anyone on the planet instantly, as the Internet does. It doesn't, through computer graphics and advanced editing and filming equipment and the art of special effects, bring you the latest exciting Hollywood blockbuster. It doesn't give you a phone, it doesn't give refrigeration, it doesn't give you globalised food exports that everything's always "in season" all year round.

It can't give you an explanation for the diversity of life (no, "magic did it" does not count as a genuine explanation of anything). It can't tell you where the Moon came from, nor land any people to walk upon it. It will erroneously tell you so much bullshit, such as that women are inferior, gays are "an abomination", that kow-towing 5 times a day to your imaginary friend will actually do something, that you can't eat delicious bacon or have a laugh getting drunk with your mates, etc.

Religion is dying. These are the death throes. The whimpering fight back to its on-coming doom.

(The fastest growing "religion" in the world, when tallied up, is actually "irreligious" - atheists, agnostics, "spiritual but not religious", etc.)

Its tactics are those of utter desperation: suicide bombings and kamikaze pilots. By definition, these are measures of last resort.

It's playing up because it knows it's dead anyway. Like a cornered wolf jumping to attack those who're crowding it into that corner, because it knows it's dead anyway if it does nothing, so it might as well go out in a blaze of glory and take out as many of "the enemy" as possible - there's the slimmest of slim chances that maybe it can knock through a big enough hole to escape and run. But it knows that this is a vain hope, as it launches itself into what is otherwise a totally suicidal desperation tactic.

2/ "White" racists take over the world. No brown or black people, or mongoloid people.

No chance.

Melanin expression is a dominant gene.

White and white parents = white kid. White and black parents = black kid. Black and white parents = black kid. Black and black parents = black kid.

Do the fucking maths.

(And, given enough time - as the melanin genes exist within everyone, even if not expressed - then humans nearer the equator will be naturally selected for melanin expression, to counter UVB depleting folic acid, a vital requirement in pregnancy. Or, further from the equator, where your primary problem switches to too little vitamin D - required for bone growth, so a lack of sunlight for the skin to produce it, leading to bone growth issues like rickets.

Because the Earth is a ball and we have the "Cosine rule" to contend with on a curved surface. There was, after all, a reason why this stuff originally happened in the first place - and none of those factors have ceased being factors, so reality will eventually re-assert itself and you can never stop that from happening. Not while you live on a ball - and the universe just doesn't actually offer any places to live that aren't ball-shaped.)

I mean, you could keep trying to fight reality. Fight a dominant gene that'll always inevitably return.

But, well, you know the definition of insanity, right?

3/ Han racists take over the world. No Europeans, blacks, browns.

A similar reality-defying nonsense to the white supremacists. See above.

4/ The rich take over the world, no poor people left alive.

Of course, another interpretation of that is "everyone's abundantly rich, and poverty no longer exists". Which would be a good thing.

So it's a question of how it is obtained. The methodology that brings us to this ultimate good state of affairs, where there isn't any real poverty anywhere anymore.

Simply killing the poor cannot logically work. This undermines the very mechanism by which the rich become rich. So such ideology eats itself.

Whilst replacing all the poor - and then even the rich - with robots and AI will undermine the very concept of money itself. As I covered, I've no idea how you could manage the transition painlessly - but, once reached, money would no longer greatly matter, as we've undermined our own "Noble Lie" by this point.

"Poor" is not a nationality, race or religion. It's an injustice to be removed.

5/ Radical christians rule the world. No blacks, no browns, no mongoloids. Did I mention racists?

Same deal as Islam - but further ahead, as church attendances are increasingly pathetically non-existent. See above for more details.

I don't say these are the only possibilities by any means, but they probably take at least 50% of the possibilities between them.

All of these tribalisms, like tribalism in general, also all suffer from a logical circular "race to the bottom".

Any ideology based on the notion of "perfection" - true Muslims, true Christians, true Aryans, true Han, etc. - will ultimately eat itself.

Let's imagine we're a neo-Nazi. So we send all the Jews, the blacks and the gays to the gas chambers. What now? Well, Hitler doesn't actually fit the Aryan model either. He's not tall, blue eyes and blonde. Heck, he wasn't even born in Germany. Okay, let's send "Herr Fuehrer" to the gas chambers.

Okay, let's keep going. We'll get rid of all non-blondes. All short people.

But, now, in your tall blonde Utopia, you're looking at the remaining humans and, well, that guy's not quite as blonde as those others. And while everyone is tall, that girl over there is not as tall as everyone else. Oh, she's got freckles. Can't have that. Kill them all.

Right, where are we now? Okay, everyone's really blonde and really tall now. So, hmm, that guy who's just fractionally not as blonde as everyone else is now standing out like a sore thumb. "Short" used to mean less than 6 foot, but now that everyone's over 6 foot, then 6' 1" looks "short" now. Kill everyone who's less than 6' 1". Okay, now 6' 2" appears short in this land of the giants. Kill everyone who's less than 6' 2".

And so on and so forth. Fascism eats itself, because it's the ideology of nothing and no-one else ever being good enough.

(A relative measure, so when you absolutely kill off the competition, as it were, then you change the boundaries defining what's relatively "inferior".)

It'll turn on itself. Eat itself. There'll be "schisms" as the definition of what qualifies as a "true whatever" is debated - when, oh look, the "faith" has turned around and is now pointing its accusative finger at you.

(Radical Islam has been killing its own fellow Muslims - not "true" Muslims, you see - in vastly greater numbers than any other demographic.)

Eventually, the spotlight will spin around and stare at you:



(If he had his way, then he'd have the lot of you shot. But the point is, ultimately, he means all of them. Every last one. No-one is good enough. Not even, ultimately, himself. Murder everyone - and then stick a gun in your own mouth. It's nothing more than a frustrated, depressed suicidal rampage in extreme slow motion, is all. Pink's mentally ill, as the rest of the album, guiding you through the various stages of his insanity follows.)


None of these can stand. Because they logically will eat themselves.

But, yes, one must remain vigilant nonetheless. As there are still idiots amongst us, who don't remotely get why they're so obviously wrong and might well try to do it anyway.