Conversations with Eric Hoffer; 9; Automation

because of the conversation between paul for it's b eric offers the soul inhabitant of the unique category american thought and literature a longshoreman on the san francisco waterfront a former migratory farm labor and a man with no formal schooling he is considered to be among the more a rental and powerful contemporary social thinkers and writers and yet in spite of the critical success of history books for the true believer the packet state of mind and the ordeal of change mr hopper prefer to think of themselves as a working man free to dog his thoughts as he unloads ships free to pursue a hunger for books in his off hours it would be difficult is said to

find another occupation was so suitable a combination of freedom exercise leisure an end he has no taste for property a distrust of car a liking for people and a confidence in the end made good sense and skill of the american masters mr harford one of our earlier conversations we are talking about work and the part it plays in the search for self esteem and you touched very lightly on automation as i recall you so i could speak a whole day on automation will not have a whole day i'm really curious to know how you feel about this is a working man so i think we have a real turning point and a real crisis and the one of a doom around the corner was the worry about the atomic bomb by having thwarted about these six a population explosion but i think

that we got something for you a real crisis in a waiting for us and in that we have to face a clear path to people and we have to fix it and if we face of all this fall but before i go into are commissions today i would like the stage briefly you know the the year the machine you know what the mission was intended to be no interest was first created it as you know as they have been that interested in the origins of the modern orchestra and i read quite a lot of about the fear and what impressed me most was what surprised me most was that the scientists and get the commissions who were active at the birth of the opposite where that quote extremely that are surprisingly high and the clinic that scientists without scientists are sort of business a some other interests of water until corporations what you mean by god conscious

well if these people that really truly be leave and to help you but that would mean he's a mathematician a master mathematician the question survey if you don't want to know just what picture these people have all got i think if you if you bit and have a look at the head of the tunnel but this time i process they could for the head capital both get there on one of the panels that he's got the fire and you get a surprise if you lie these are what's it's like to be you with the way we think about that he has to face that says the face off a signed peace and then i use and helpless he said the patients and the scientists felt close to a god when wirth critique of the world and second story is formerly the stewing or

feel that they felt that if they waste and says of the wealthy school to the scientists that nature was got fixed they are written up in the letters of out of it but there's a valley up with it in that triangle squad rebels spheres search cause your lips and they ask as they saw it was to decipher that's its effects in other words the art research was actually ever losing their leaders sick and it's it's really fascinating when when when kepler and spelled out the laws which govern the movement or the heavenly bodies he boasted in actual patients that got the author hector weights six thousand years to friday's first read kepler was the first prison guard as the masters i think that's right as commissions they sold the world as god's workshop in and lover is

cluttered with wondrous machines and ingenious can try this one provinces and they believed that by watching and tinkering with god's machines there might be a blow themselves you know to build machines and it gets its debts is overpowering him forces loyal to the beach and i was interested in a lot of years scores and scores of of wonderful drawings on the comical droids aids for me to get these interesting or not the meat et arrows for movies say it it worked as an actress but once these interest became a passionate preoccupation and he buries himself in political studies of the dissection hall of corpses and cut hours you could see that he was driven by the interest of at the commission of a scientist at the cliche we are living creatures what wonders machines

and you were rather than she was they can apply to see how they were made and how the war the white and eventually he believed you that you can built at a hearing mccain isn't as seeing mechanism at talking machine a flying machine in short survey the making of machines was an indication of what it was to be this second three men's weight off infusing new and thought into that what actually have no evidence that the second tradition didn't quite all the machines were actually half measures to see you today that's where that although they've made all these decorations all these scientists could not create the filaments and big ears off fox see that would make that perfect self sufficient machine and they could make the ev machines were

only by giving them with human material by finishing their you know with human materials that they can read it with men's a lot of the recently somebody called operation expression in many just said the ball of the day when he spoke as a bit that their work and have to be a stopgap for human inventiveness what went right heard that expression when i whistle these expression see at a picture for us before my and the picture was of the boom of our lives and to be i wonder what you heard at the story's it's a tremendous story in ancient times and kathy and the iraqis need a brazen boring for the king gulf allies reading what's a

life actress was seized with a sudden desirable to do make the blue come to life to see it stop of course letting that and then it occurred to me that you can use human beings as a substitute for human inventiveness so he thinks the drop off the headboard so that if you put a human being inside the belly of the boom and use set a fire underneath then that grows and the stripes off the victim would come out as they are you know public and the song for it just what happens see even so i said to myself boy because the machine was not complete because the real machine was not read the entity or millions of peasants helpful from religious they're going to go show it to the belly or

belgian factories folded the removal from audience general you know for the elitist these awesome at modern art student there was a vision of what a completely automated machine would be we back in the thirties in terms that they make this was the complete much about julian with that that's why the men wanted the grape you know he wanted the great communities are ready when that the great something to see we've been in effect insider roger bate saw in his mind's eye boats machines which would navigate on the rivers and oceans would help and would only one man on board something that they're highly efficient maps and companies just beginning to create

they have this ad by just you know huge bodies flying between how it and some francisco would only one man on board the early in the eighteenth century the head suisse economist says monkey and very perceptive listener very unproductive deceptive person when he saw they acted to be involved in the solution you write we saw a time will come when a cable thing run by won by pressing just one letter we produce all the wealth ought to rearm and old the subject was spun around doing nothing with these didn't happen as we said that to me if it's that they stirred up differently i remember when i saw the first steps of automation on the san francisco waterfront us tremendously accelerate you know i was fooling the north that what i read about the beginnings of an m on an auction and i said to myself or daisy skirmish with

god way back in the fifth century has now moved all the way to the gates of you got amazing deals with are evolving of things are gobbled up living in the eden fortress and we the blasphemous what did you do with our machines are cutting of the gate and right there inside the little ones angels when i knew all the uk sumo that's not a new case that would they swept all these romance really this debate here it is a dream come true but what is actually happening seems to happen is that the ending is being turned into an we should have it's the end of our energy but we find out i'm going to give you a few figures and the figures do not come for me day laborer and people are from radical social work all the fears of the horse's mouth out of the league mark a

businessman government figures that sold for according to hit and mr schneider one of the foremost manufacturers' of ultimatum machinery have the united states openly is already eliminates forty thousand jobs a weak forty thousand thousand jobs or weeks this season as the flight then time magazine and then the defeat and he says i'll commission has already eliminated fifty thousand jobs and that means the twitter with two and a half million jobs have been eliminated and the same bands that they it is estimated that about two and a half million new york people are trying to enter the labor market every year in other words our economy has to create between four and five million new jobs a year in order for us to keep spending where we are with our pool of unemployed all fortified port a convoy i think that fingers off of their labor department

alive i really don't know how they figured out what i suspect that the way they figure out that authorities anybody that good i'm going as yours is an envoy the moment you have exhausted other commissioners you on the call an unemployed anymore their sleep i know what i've lived through repression you can see the whopper much of other parts of my liver or anywhere else you can see he's warned we'll be faced with in the morning that always two or three well dressed people you know to me you know for it as do the with the awful for breakfast if you worn on the un force or if there is even see on one pass by that i finished this this and you'll see a red line you know live at the summit for the first time ever seen one topic so we are having when they get it's that important here see

what was the line people talking say that would increase production c when grey whistle now i can see how a growing economy they care that on a fetus right out of the same sorts of things i read it needs right now the the aba gross national product has increased by thirty thousand dollars to create one job now the processing part about the sixty the nobody expect our economy to grow more than five percent a year five percent that started the next one million jobs that's all weekend was great one million jobs see that far i don't think the song the ash then but a report card says and things with a lot of eleven when i say that is benefiting is now one of twenty million any sensible person within says that the moment that any any economy any social i'm

going to see that that that has ten percent unemployed just think there's something wrong with it you have to treat like to do something about it this debate i talked about unemployment than about the misery over the songs afforded this afternoon actually alarm your muscle building and what did not or region a funeral in the misery in the visualization of the misery of the unemployed let jesus you see of course right moment in in sympathy with virginia said that you've read about in revenue for that seat you know what happened to something awful and i don't think it'll be repeated with the rest of the country gets it because that will be honored but look what happened to you in the day probably swear where the headlines were out to make us

something good for passage that he's an automated machine three stories high he did big rapids he digs out who were thousand feet underneath there it would help and then underneath and he's fun that's the legendary machines assaulted by billing crowd of the cave they generating population living on relief and you have a few of those letters made up of relief officials school superintendents and now nothing and he's one of what happened in california recently that doesn't happen but was then that we have twenty million unemployed air with enough money to live on and they're supposed to western don't believe when they'll have enough money to buy things they need to go fishing see this debate and the biden was what a cat means that american worker what the role of

workplace you in the life of them in the presence of twin kenyan family young americans leaving off the fact of the matter would out a sense of work and you know as well as its catastrophic it's the most exposed a situation that it would have a tv misery that starts extremism it isn't visit it's the sense of a lack of the sense of things was a lot of sense of when you were going to have an expose the situation that you have in front of me all kinds of extremism that all be all kinds of ink choruses of the racial hatred of the show isn't your have an explosive situation and a voyager this debate isn't overworked and underpaid when we joined a virtual and will need to join that way the white house was in the south's only go into the ocean when all that this it's it's people that we had ms byford well it is sensible

or wrongly the bridge will see when you do you'll see what happens you know if you take a skilled man of action and some of the cutting off of action you cut them off from the chance to exercise his skin you have an explosive first look every ten centimeters that the british approach will seek and retired executives of many corporations are the main state and literally a retired generals and i think that they and an american one the forest to to a deprived off off that is given in your kid's self respect to the the year if they use confidence that all of life is going to be a tremendously it's true now its best to make sure that these exactly the situation which would have such apocalyptic consequences is also a situation is ideal for something that

was not an ornament a situation where you have the population leaving having enough to live on but with our essence of his recent ones his idea for the growth and the reallocation of the suicide finding that that that would be you know i would be always interested in the hugely is civilizations that you need these incentives and you know they're writing was invented for practical or she looks so long they described it was a meeting to begin with at a crafts and for two thousand years after of a bunch of it all that has been written was just in morris is this certain but the letters also for because i was always interested in the study to find out in these batteries soon as if it's what they described begin to write a touch of it at what would be the right thing at as i can be employed to

produce and c i want to do it and what conditions that first appeared in in the day e n h c at an inn in china in india and another the story and this year probably you're my conversations on the pop ups but ultimately i mean i know i got my finger on something in all of these civilizations invite you see this upright begins to write when he becomes a lot of the civilization but stanford's <unk> invasion mohsen was the end of the fifth ancient egypt forces was towards the end of the family and everything went upside down they're describing was an important person was managing things finally as suddenly but finds itself a quick bite here is six with his hairbrush and his income and what he's an amazing purity and barbarity and your sense of

loss and so forth so he begins to wail and he has a wry see and you want to read the first the air for about robert's interview with the head of a law meant he wears he describes it's a terrible situation will be off all off all of the concrete areas where all the offices have been ransacked with all the managers he's the most crimes doubting chase up and down the land there were only important people are out of class out see and another one the nfl wrong is says the mcdonnell describes duke cunningham and he cited the right and he laments to look for instance the for the big unexplained different passed eat at a curse of images of the prophet and you in in the past all of a sudden the middle of the first century bce but it lets it about eight hundred you see a lot of these is tremendously with the company

now if you look closely you'll see that the profits came right after they can they did that was so you know at that time the phoenicians perfect that before they could get from these clumsy the early fifties and these new easier it was penetrated also in the bass and especially brought solomon had been air that centralized bureaucracy need of lots of products so he thinks the people of all sorts of english literature from the court and they will succeed in making describe yemen where all in writing a running things and then someone dies the bureaucracy your job it was a sheepherder has that were lifted the kilometer machinery getting a memorable sons of twitter became a profit there's a unit began the process it happened on the land you walk in china you want to know what about sixty six hundred bc you have confucius come up with all this all these the

virtual with always a multi year old autistic you see again it should be a julius the men is is the composer is falling apart as they described become unemployed again stop walking on the land but they are even more recent examples a survey you know forty and you see the most surprising thing that happened before the first time in history and i can see that just the crazy the french still pretty big and so you have the rents hamilton city morgue marshall vocal beautiful writers from lenders are no other researchers in britain that didn't mean it that he had been in germany and in the white house it was a sign of whatever status absolutely that's exactly what happens in a lending although the court receiver running the king or three fourteen

these are subjects often an overwhelming amount castles of downstate broke into were sides with apple particular bit more today at nothing to do and so mr hoffman last conversation that's a widow is now usable for their last conversation so that the ordinary man is is lumpy with delicate tells their genius or is there just wasted so you've got to do this this talent like intel that's right and that was really to put a dent in the creative know exactly how it's going to be done but i'm holding myself and built up and then i fear that lebanon of action all i have is a tremendous faith in the black colorless and it comes off off of an american city we not only with the three women were the rabbit really knows it will be me the tragedy of the twentieth century's the fact that to create a new society had to be undertaken by but

reporters like russia and china there and that the news as it had to be too broad small rich macdowell from the cesspool was of russian history and chinese history this we are a practical people will have to solve them as my solution so far is so farfetched that something right betsy i would like i would like to form a new state and bigger slice of northern california as lifeless and i would form a new state the state of the unemployed a need to be run by the university of california are unemployed or anybody else thinks the moment you cross the border bop bah bah bah baby you all the constants said it was the purpose of that steak there would be to have been watching the us oppose didn't finish god's work this is the real purpose and light purple uniforms there is that the women were on all online

flock to waste our time but we're being brought out to waste our lives and the making of a million dollars is quite a way off within your life as i said i think that our real partners right now is to become a really efficient society a society you know that knows how to realize its human resources although all their resources must serve just one that i don't think any society is officially the world's top of mind today or efficiently or help with sportsmen but efficiently and only is society that is efficient he's the one that realizes its human resources he eats human book and charlatans and the seizing good job even for religious people who are going to finish god's word was today see that's what we are born or c and whether these societies this is the right solution i don't know but we got to develop from the two dozen means avoiding the problem with the job on the waterfront he would welcome steel and they still comes out anybody runs away from that part of the subject of a big steel

you know you got it if it does drop or next time i'm going to pursue with you this idea of the mysterious accident because you made reference to the absolute a quite different kind of place nice little about that next day and thank you you just have a conversation between erik offer and james day general manager of kqed sentences this is an eighty national educational television