Machines and Communism

In reading both "Fully Automated Luxury Communism" and "What About Other Perspectives" I would have to say that I disagree with the essay. I don't think that communism sounds like a good idea in the essay. Firstly, I disagree with where it says, "There may be some work that will still need to be done by humans, like quality control, but it would be minimal." Taking humans out of the equation and saying that human input will be minimal I disagree with.Humans will always be needed to do things that robots cannot do. People need jobs to survive and if robots are taking away jobs the only people who would have jobs are the people incharge or thoses who run the robots everyone else would be left out on the streets without a job. Other people may agree that having robots do most of the jobs that no one wants to do isn't a big deal but that means more unemployment for people who needed that job and more money for theh people who run the place. The technology today seperates people from each other we would rather look at our phones then see what is happening in the world around us. I know that with the advance in technology it has been able to bring people together from all over the world but still people are so glued to their phones that they won't see things coming until it's too late. The notion that having robots take over jobs makes things easier may be true for the person who owns the business but this is not necessarily true for the people who had their job taken by a robot. Sure some people might have the luxury of not having to work but that is because they are the ones who are getting the money. The communism described in this essay is not one that I am in favor for. The jobs that these robots can do are the same jobs that people have been doing for years. Taking people out of the equation is a stupid idea that I'm sure people will come to regret if we ever do reach the point where robots are doing the work that some people don't want to do and were in favor of replacing people with robots who got the job done a little bit faster. When we let technology enter our lives we become desensitized to our surroundings. Having machines replace things such as pets leads us to look at things like dogs and cats differently. We use the robot dog because it doesn't make a mess like a real dog would do. We do things because they are easier not because they are better for us. This is what I think the communism described in the essay is like it makes things easier but for people it doesn't make it any better.

March 29th

The article “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” argues that with work being done by machinery, the society would be able to function closer to a communist economy because essentially there would be a more collective control regarding work load and division of labor. I think this idea is not only unrealistic in practice but also potentially socially damaging. The article even uses the phrase “utopian demand” before proposing their FCLA idea; giving the sense that their proposal would only flourish in a perfect world, which we do not have. Also, creating a society that relies solely on the function and productive work of machines would ultimately lead to the decrease of human productivity/work ethic, fundamental factors that we as a society originally attributed to obtaining the American Dream. Bastani, a FALC scientist mentioned in the article, even states “There may be some work that will still need to be done by humans, like quality control, but it would be minimal”. The decrease of work required will also lead to a decrease in the average person’s desire to fill these position due to the feel of a reliance on the machines to complete the work; an occurrence we have seen in the past with the uprising of “smart” technology. So though in a utopian society Fully Automated Luxury Communism would be very much a possibility, in reality there is very little possibility in it prospering.

March 20: Poor Life

After reading the two articles, “The Money” by Junot Diaz and “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” by Tressie Cottom, I can agree that they are both talking about the way poor people spend money. They are different by their financial stability, Junot wasn’t as fortunate as Tressie. In “The Money” article, the author main talks about his experience of growing up poor. He did have as much money as he could be cause his grandparents needed the money a little more than they did. His family struggles became even harder when after a trip his house was broken into. Even though it wasn’t long before he “stole” the money back, the family was faced with the potential starvation of the grandparents, maybe even themselves. It wouldn’t make sense to disagree with his life story because it happened and it has the potential on repeating history, I’ve never been in his shoes but being raised in a middle-class family has it similarities.

In “The Logic of Stupid Poor People” article, she didn’t go to into her financial stability but she went into how poor people spend their money, to seem richer then they are. She gives examples of her mother helping others who are less fortunate then they are, and how she dressed different and “talks like white folks”. I agree with her as well because I’ve witnessed this myself. I like how she doesn’t put emphases on stereotypes too much, as they are a part of why poor people aim to show wealth. As a kid, I used to ask my parent why she talked different when during a professional conversation, she never answered but later I noticed that “talking like white folks” as she says in the article, can be the deciding factor of getting what you need or not.

Post 3/20

I agree with how both of these authors portray their opinions on what being poor is like. It is indeed like that in society today. Whether we want to admit it or not, materialistic things are important and people always look at what you have and judge you based on that before they even know who you really are. In "The logic of stupid poor people", this is a perfect example of how materialistic things are important. She got the better paying jobs most of the time because of the way she was dressed and what she was wearing. While this is not a bad thing for her, it goes to show how people look at what you wear and what you have and judge you based on that. The people hiring her had no clue that she was poor but they assumed that she was well off because of how she was dressed. It is sad how society relies so much on appearances. I am guilty of this too. I think a lot about what I have and how I dress and I catch it and tell myself its not as important as I think. I have a friend who is what people would consider poor but she always tells me that she tries so hard to buy nice things even if she doesn't have the money for it so that people dont think that she is poor. She wants to come off as someone that has money to everyone and I didn't even think twice about it before I agreed with her ad said yeah I understand what you mean and why you do that. In my opinion this mindset needs to change.

March 20 Blog

In the articles entitled "The Logic of Stupid Poor People" by Tressie McMillan Cottom and "The Money" by Junot Diaz, the authors explain personal anecdotes about their own life and about growing up poor. However, their views on material goods differ. Coming from a Dominican neighborhood in New Jersey, author Junot Diaz explains that his family living in America was very poor, but they always sent money to their family in the Dominican Republic. The author's family needed their American revenue to scrape by a decent living with food and electricity. Consequently, the author never has any nice food, snacks, soda or any material goods growing up, and he too survives on just enough to let him live. When Diaz's friends break into his family's apartment and steal cash and the author's Dungeons and Dragons hardcovers, the author recovers the stolen items and is met with little compensation from his mother. The author understands he did the right thing, as his foreign relatives rely heavily on his family's money to survive. This puts poverty in perspective for the author: even though Diaz was poor in America, he understands that he has it better than many other individuals. In Tressie McMillan Cottom's article, the author explains how material goods, or flashy and expensive items that are not necessary, in fact, can help poor people at least appear to be wealthy. Cottom explains that poor people buy stupid, expensive things for the same reason rich people do- to belong and "fit in" (EAA 1013). She also elaborates by stating presentability is only a small factor in something like a job interview, The author believes that poor people want to buy expensive clothes or objects to make them more confident in life situations, just like wealthy people Poverty is something that has affected my life as well. When I was born, my family living in a small trailer and stayed there until I reached grade school. Luckily my parents got better jobs, and we lived a more comfortable life. We, like Junot Diaz's family, also send money to my father's family in Guatemala. But we still struggled with money and I could not afford to have the nice things my wealthier friends could afford. I agree with both authors points; sometimes life is difficult and we should not have unnecessary items. However, "faking it till you make it" and purchasing items to make someone feel better about oneself can be a motivating factor in moving up the world.

Poor people in America often spend their money unwisely. I grew up poor until I was about 10. My father opened his own business and became financially stable, but we weren't well off enough to relocate, so I grew up in a low income area. I grew up around a lot of violence, drugs, and crime. I went to school with the children of poor families, but no one wanted to look poor. In high school, most people wore designer sneakers worth hundreds of dollars, designer belts, and gold chains but were dropped off and picked up from school in old rusty cars. There were also a lot of trouble makers in school, kids that were disrespectful to teachers and school staff, kids that were constantly getting into fights. I noticed poor people always had something to prove. I also noticed that these same people didn't know much outside of the area we grew up in. My peers didn't know how to act in formal settings, they didn't have good manners, many had never set foot outside of Texas, and some even had never stepped foot outside of our home city of Houston. "The Logic of Stupid Poor People", and "The Money" focus on different aspects of the behavior of poor people. "The Logic of Stupid Poor People" focused on the lack of presentability and knowledge that restricts poor people from upward movement, and how the authors mother invested in certain garments that gave off an aura of intelligence and respectability that put their family in a better position. "The Money" explained how the authors mother would send a lot of their own money to his grandparents and resulted in their own family struggling. His house was robbed and the money stash for the grandparents was stolen, and after a series of events, he got the money back. The author had a hard time returning the money to his mother, but finally did and he was surprised that he was not praised for it. In the end, both stories focus on the fact that poor people often put their money into things that have no return. Instead of investing in themselves in order to later reap the benefits, they put their money to no use.

Differing opinions about poverty in America

Both the "Logic of Stupid Poor People" and "The Money", had their own ways of dealing with being poor. Both Junot Diaz and Tressie Mcmillan Cottom discuss an event from there past describing the way they grew up and how being poor affected their lives. In "The Money", Junot Diaz talked about the spare money his mother would keep saved up in order to send to his grandparents, and that this would make his family that much more poor. "Took me two days to return the money to my mother. Truth was I was seriously considering keeping it." In this passage the family is very poor little to no income and most of it is being sent away not being put to good use for the family. On the other hand in the case of Tressie Mcmillan Cottom's, "Logic of Stupid Poor People", She talked about being black and female in this country made it harder to be successful then if you were a white male. She talked about how her family was the poor family that spent the extra money for the designer clothes. " I do not know what my mother spent on her camel colored cape or knee high boots but I know that whatever she paid it returned in hard to measure dividends." So regardless of the high price the mother paid for her designer clothes it just helped her out that much more. The clothes gave them an appearance of not being dirt poor and that might've been the difference in getting the job or anything else that required a bit of class.