EP's core book and sunward are describing a significant poor martian working class nicknamed "the clanking masses" - this beeing a fertile ground for social struggle drama.
This raised a question in my mind : what are the jobs of the clanking masses ?
I have trouble picturing them doing unqualified jobs in sweatshops employing thousands of them, since technological advancement has been reducing the necessity of human labour since the begining of the twentieth century. I think we can even generalize this to pretty much any unqualified work : it's cheaper to do it with a robot.
So maybe the clanking masses are more qualified workers than their XXe century counterpart ?
Or maybe the hypercorps owning the means of production know very well that producing goods is only one part of the equation - you also need a population willing and able to buy these goods - thus the necessity maintaining jobs sometimes artificially to make the cash flow ?
Okay, I'm thinking out loud here, but I'd really like to have your input on this ...
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Jobs for the clanking masses
Sun, 2013-11-24 09:07
#1
jiyunatori
Jobs for the clanking masses
Sun, 2013-11-24 09:22
#2
Leodiensian
The unqualified people still
The unqualified people still stay in cold storage - houswives, children, that sort of thing. Infugees that were able to get indenture contracts had some kind of useful talents, especially immediately after the fall. The corps could pick and choose who they wanted to put in bodies, so the clanking masses actually do have quite a high percentage of them working in technical professions such as engineers - or at least something else that the corps want. In the Titanian Commonwealth or outer system, though, almost every infugee is given a body regardless of ability.
Mining is a common trade for indentured infugees, especially around Venus. Theoretically they could do anything they're qualified for but in general the idea is that the riskier the job they sign up for the shorter the indenture contract - Venus surface miners in hellish conditions and quartz bodies have far more lucrative and shorter-term contracts that the ones who take the cushier jobs in orbit for a longer contract.
Yes, a lot of stuff is automated but public opinion has strongly been pushed against artificial intelligence due to the Fall, especially in Luna. This has a lot of consequences, such as a preference for 'real people' in service industries. Yes, your waiter or whore could have a fairly simple AI do that exact same job but most post-Fall humans would feel more at ease knowing it's a 'real person'.
Sun, 2013-11-24 21:57
#3
thezombiekat
Another point is that robots
Another point is that robots can’t be all that skilled.
The skill cap of 40 for AIs equates to a collage diploma. The AI will never get more efficient and more reliable due to experience.
A lot of the clanking masses (a term which applies throughout the inner system, Luna has an large population) where employed in construction or mining associated with habitat construction. I got the impression that many are now unemployed having served there indenture and finding that they cannot compete with cheaper indentured labour, also there is less habitat construction currently under way than there was immediately post fall.
I believe in sunward there was a section on unemployable ex indentures working on terraforming. The hyper corps prefer to get new indentures to paying a wage to the previous indentures and the only current skill set these people have is terraforming work.