President Obama's warning about automation.

[JCanete]

17. there is a vast difference between expecting other countries to be as finicky? as us*

and improving their lives by getting them into the game of destroying the planet and furthering this supply-side race to the bottom. Without that industrialization to give us the crap we want to consume, yes, we would need a different model to lift nations out of poverty. It's not like we don't have the resources though. The issue is that we are entirely committed to this model, in no small part because the people who benefit most from it keep telling us why it's so damn great.

* of course as individuals in America, we have the single highest carbon footprint on the planet--actually china might have surpassed us finally, but so much of their footprint also belongs to us. It is ours to own through our massive consumption and waste.

While we're talking about things like BIG, we should be expanding that out not just as a national program, but as part of a social safety net that in whatever appropriate iteration should be done globally.