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Wednesday, March 15, 2017 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
O
P
I
N I
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Rachel
Marsden
American Voices
Letters to the Editor…
The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let-
ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor.
The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be
no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday.
To the Editor:
Since the election of President Trump
it’s been exciting to see democracy in action
throughout the nation; even here in Sisters
expressed in our Nugget Newspaper.
Understandably disappointed in the loss
of their candidate, people spoke out through
words and actions and that is their right. It is
disappointing however to see one term in par-
ticular used indiscriminately to express per-
sonal feelings: “Nazi.”
Okay, how many Democrats/liberals, gays,
immigrants, women, transsexuals, Jews, or
Muslims has Trump slaughtered, gassed, or
tortured since being elected? ZERO? How
many unborn babies have been slaughtered
since Roe vs. Wade? 55 million-plus.
While I support the millions of women that
marched, I believe expressing their need for
dignity would have been much better served
had they not worn the vaginas, some really
huge, on their heads. I don’t even want to
envision a similarly orchestrated men’s march
for dignity!
When President Trump sought to imple-
ment tighter vetting for immigrants from seven
countries designed as high risk for ISIS infil-
trators by President Obama, the extent of rage
instigated by the liberal press and Democrats
in Congress in my opinion was over the top.
Seems logical that we’d want to prevent those
that wish to kill us from sneaking into our
country. Approximately 109 individuals were
inconvenienced in the initial rollout. As a vet-
eran all that rage, to me, appears someone
misplaced given 425,000 vets are unemployed
and 39,400 of those homeless. Where is the
rage for that “inconvenience”?
See LETTERS on page 27
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PARIS — It’s often by
listening for the vibrations in
the muck that one can pick
up on the big moral con-
flicts looming ahead. And
this one’s a doozy, involv-
ing nothing less than the next
industrial revolution.
Speaking at the World
Government Summit in
Dubai last month, SpaceX
and Tesla CEO Elon Musk
suggested that humans and
machines are likely to merge
in the future.
“Over time I think we will
probably see a closer merger
of biological intelligence and
digital intelligence,” Musk
said.
He noted that such a
merger between man and
machine would enable
humans to maintain control
over artificial intelligence.
Musk cited the example
of driverless cars, which
threaten the livelihoods of
taxi drivers.
Much has been made of
the “sharing economy” and
the digital entrepreneurs who
are disrupting the status quo
in various industries, but an
even more significant revolu-
tion lies ahead as technology
improves and an increasing
number of workers can be
replaced by robot labor.
In recent years, attack
drones have often substituted
for U.S. Special Forces in
military operations. While
combat deaths have decreased
as a result, the increased reli-
ance on technology has often
left these warriors on the
sidelines. Robots are now
performing surgeries in place
of trained surgeons. And
Japan has been developing
“carebots” for elderly care.
French presidential can-
didate Benoit Hamon of the
Socialist Party has proposed a
universal basic income of 750
euros a month, partly under
the guise of protecting work-
ers as they are increasingly
displaced by robots. True to
socialist form, Hamon has
also proposed a robot tax to
pay for it: Revenue generated
by robots and automated sys-
tems would be taxed. Hamon
has cited the example of auto-
mated checkouts in super-
markets, which in many cases
have replaced cashiers.
Just thinking of the check-
out example makes it difficult
not to take the robots’ side in
this showdown. Supermar-
kets in Paris that don’t have
automated checkouts are
almost always understaffed,
resulting in lines so long that
I’ve more than once aban-
doned my basket to try my
luck elsewhere. This is the
sort of thing that happens
when the state forces employ-
ers to pay exceedingly high
taxes on employee salaries.
Hiring becomes a burden that
one seeks to minimize.
Hamon’s plan to pay
everyone a monthly salary for
doing nothing raises signifi-
cant moral issues. Granted,
the relationship between
work value and earnings isn’t
always logical. The fact that
entertainers and pro athletes
earn more money than sur-
geons is a classic example.
However, the current system
is better than the communist
alternative in which there is
no correlation between effort
and reward.
The two extremes cap-
tured in a snapshot: capital-
ist Musk’s idea of merging
man and machine to achieve
superhuman capacity vs.
socialist Hamon’s idea of
letting man spend the day
watching television while
machine does all the work.
B e twe e n the s e two
extremes lies the human
being who exists today, who
wants to continue to strive to
fulfill human potential with-
out either robotic modifica-
tions or government hand-
outs. How can modern man
ensure his own survival?
It may come down to the
choices made by different
countries. Western nations
can’t continue to insist on
burdening employers with
absurdly high taxes to pay
for government waste and
mismanagement.
Last month, the European
Parliament voted in favor of
developing EU-wide rules
for artificial intelligence and
robots. Nevertheless, a con-
servative coalition within
European Parliament rejected
a proposal for a robot tax and
made it clear that it doesn’t
view robots as a potential
threat to human labor.
While a purely moral
stand is admirable, reforming
socialist economic policies
by reducing the tax burden
on businesses and workers is
just as critical if humans are
to have any hope of surviving
this new industrial revolution.
© 2017 Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and
are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.