
Mining 24 Hours a Day with Robots - happy-go-lucky
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603170/mining-24-hours-a-day-with-robots/
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cmurf
Questions journalists should ask the new commerce secretary is: are coal jobs
coming back? will these robots be used or made illegal to use in favor of
human workers? what percentage of automation is legal or illegal? if the free
market dictates 100% automation, will you support human worker protection
laws?

A huge part of the rhetoric in the election was that coal workers were going
to get their jobs back. Now, any thinking person knows that was a big fat lie.
But I don't expect coal workers to be thinking people, I expect them to be
wishful thinkers, because that's all they've ever known. But they voted on the
basis of getting their jobs back, so I'm curious how everyone involved
evaluates this in the context of what was not at all brought up in any
meaningful way in the election: these mining robots.

~~~
codeddesign
Besides West Virginia, what rhetoric was there? A large portion of middle and
rural America didn't vote republican because they thought coal would come
back, it's because a large majority didn't like the Washington status-quo in
which Clinton represented. However, Donald Trump was a wild card and not part
of the "establishment".

If Sanders or a different republican was in the race it would be an entirely
different story.

Now...if you are referring to West Virginia, then the issue revolved around
bill Clinton initially making a lot of promises there and never following
through, and as a result you had so much bent up friction from it that Hillary
barely even campaigned there.

With your comment, it makes it sound like you are saying "look how trump
hasn't helped you at all, I bet you wish you voted for Clinton now".

Ultimately the president was elected based upon how middle America felt they
have been treated by the government over the last roughly 20 years. In other
words, trump won because he gave people hope and was willing to speak against
established parties (even his own).

On the flip side, Hillary is a conservative democrat (I would personally
consider her more republic than democrat in terms of today's views). Along
with this she would have had a republican house and congress. The out come by
either would likely be the same no matter who won. The only difference is that
since many news outlets are liberal leaning that the headlines would be
friendlier.

~~~
cmurf
All jobs exported to other countries, e.g. China, where those same jobs are
increasingly subject to automation.

Republicans historically don't support labor movements, they've supported
breaking up unions. Democrats created a vacuum by supporting the environment
over the worker.

It is way too soon to know whether Trump voters will experience buyer's
remorse. The real question is hardly even Trump, it's whether Republicans will
sign on to this new idea of defending the worker, defending their job,
protectionism, and even a trade war in the form of tariffs as promised by the
leader of the party. If it's true Trump represents non-establishment, and
threatens its existence, we can expect at some point Democrats and Republicans
will figure out a way to throw him under the bus. That he spends more time
feeding his narcissism by punching down, and sending his press secretary to
lie on TV on the level of 2+2 does not equal 4, he will squander any ability
to form the political barriers he will need to survive 4 years let alone 8.

The 200 year history of parties getting the presidency 3 terms in a row shows
how rare it is. I think that's a bigger factor in the election, that people
were sufficiently less enthusiastic about Hillary rather than enthusiastic
about Trump, and in fact the raw numbers support that. Likewise that 200 year
history shows it's even more rare for a president who loses the popular vote,
but wins the electoral college, to win a 2nd term.

Does Trump stop his TV show inspired pissing matches? Those are appealing to
some degree by angry voters during a campaign, but broadly very distasteful
and unbecoming of a president. To be a successful president he's going to have
to stop getting hung up in minutiae of his own creation.

Do Republicans or Democrats (or both) have some sort of transformative
realignment, necessarily demoting previous priorities in doing so, or do they
collude together to make an outsider president, already acting like a nut case
as he keeps stepping on his own dick, an unwitting scape goat and destroy him
in favor of Pence, a stable predictable known quantity?

