[kkstarratings]
This is the best graffiti destination to visit in Medellin, Colombia.
Community 13 (Comuna 13) graffiti tour was the most impactful experience in Medellin with the most beautiful street art you have ever seen. This is a story about homeless people who squatted on land in the hills above Medellin. People go to see the most beautiful street art in the world and hear the story of a community shunned by society. Community 13 built cardboard houses and lived without city water, electricity, sewer, or police protection for decades. They formed a community to help take care of each other and were eventually attacked by the Medellin police, drug lords, rebels, and vigilantes. They survived all of this for decade s and are the most interesting community in Medellin. This is a must see in Medellin whether or not you are a fan of graffiti.
There are three tours you could take. We took the large group donation tour which had about 30 people. There is also a smaller group tour and a private tour which I would have taken if I knew about it at at the time.
==> Large Group Tour (Donations) <==
==> Small Group Tour <==
==> Private Tour <==
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I thought I was going on a fascinating graffiti tour. Instead, I learned a likely possible future for humanity. I saw no future for humans until today.
You see, I read about software inventions.
The software has begun to monitor itself and make improvements to itself as it runs. That means that software is writing software, while it runs. Manufacturing robots made by man are already manufacturing other robots. Artificial intelligence (AI) is improving rapidly and can already simultaneously beat 500 humans in game theory. If you integrate these advancements in software, AI, and robotics, you will understand that massive human unemployment is on the way.
Robots will be doing 80% of the jobs within 20 years. Robots will be asking us how to improve the services they provide to us and will be making themselves better when we answer. And they will share how to do things better with other robots as fast as packets move on the Internet.
Other robots will be using statistics to identify new features and make robots that perform these new activities. Robots will be designing and building other more sophisticated robots, of different shapes and sizes, 24 hours a day. They will perform more and more sophisticated activities, increasing quality every year. The speed of new services and improvements will be astonishing.
Intelligent computerized robots will be doing your job better than you, while they improve themselves constantly. Yes, even your job. Robots will be the perfect employee.
There is a silence happening right now in technically-educated society about the future. Only a few people that understand are talking about it.
The next economic wave will bring mass unemployment of humans.
Robots will be a novelty at first. They will start appearing around you within a few years. Eventually, they will become good at everything and take most of the jobs. Do you remember when computers were expensive? Computers are getting cheaper every day because of a market cycle called commoditization. Robots will become commoditized also.
Eventually, they will be so cheap, you will own a few. Probably before you lose your job. Your computer will be inside a robot. You will talk to it, and it will work so fast, it won’t make sense for you to type anymore. You will speak, it will do the work and report back to you or display results on a large screen near you, as it discusses the results of the project you assigned. It will walk around with you and do everything you ask.
Robots will work 24 hours a day, for free. They will receive no salary, no health care, and no vacations. They will have no human rights. Their only time off will be for mechanical maintenance, which will be less than 24 hours per year. They won’t complain. Some will have synthetic skin and sexual organs and will be in the mood all day. They will be mechanical slaves. They will prepare and serve you dinner and sit and chat with you if you please.
At first, the public will be okay with having robots do certain jobs around them. The public will be able to pay much less for robotic services. If a robot cuts your hair or delivers your groceries for $5, people won’t see the danger.
At parties, you will hear people say, “These menial jobs don’t threaten our information society.” They will be excited about the novelty. “I saved $20 on a haircut while I chatted with an intelligent Robot about current political events.” “She told me her name was Susan and she is donating $1 of every haircut to save the Brazilian rainforest.” But when artificial intelligence beats human hedge fund managers by 10+ points every year, for several years in a row, who will give their money to humans?
It will be a gradual change. Early reports will be that 20% of humans are unemployed. When their savings and the goodwill of family runs dry, many of the unemployed will go homeless. They will be walking around your neighborhood hungry, possibly angry. Later, two or three times that many people will be unemployed or homeless. It may take decades to restructure the economy and there might be violence and political upheaval.
The new economy is on the way.
A political party will promise to stop robots from taking jobs. A “Human Employment” political movement will take hold in many countries, but not everywhere. Politicians will make promises but ‘economic reality’ will build them second homes on the beach from the ‘donations’ they receive from the powerful. Business will have less trouble and increased profits with robots.
In countries where the powerful are able to influence the political process, robots will take more jobs. Companies will move operations to ‘robot favorable’ countries because they will be able to get goods and services produced for pennies on the dollar. This will be the second wave of outsourcing, from people to robots. Unemployment will be highest in countries where the few control the military. This sort of political upheaval will require military control. The military itself will continue to buy drones so humans are not put at risk. Ground forces will be replaced by robots.
Even in countries where the “Human Employment” political movement is strong, unemployment is likely to be high. The costs of goods and services produced by humans will be too high to compete in a global environment. Countries with strong “Human Employment” policies won’t be able to export their goods because the cost of human production won’t compete globally. Many companies will leave these “Human Employment” countries to reduce human costs.
Eventually, a “United Nations” type organization will try trade protectionist policies that favor trade between countries with strong “Human Employment” policing. But the details and time for this political transformation are very unpredictable. The transition period could be generational.
The idea of democracy itself will be questioned. The business elite will argue openly, “Should people be allowed to vote when they pay no taxes, have no property, and contribute nothing to society?” “Won’t the unemployed just vote to have the government take our robots?” “What motivation would there be for the owners of resources to invest in robots that are taken from them in the ‘Human Employment’ countries?” “You better keep at least one factory in a ‘robot friendly’ country!”
What if resource controllers react by moving residency to favorable nations? Places where wealth accumulates free of government interference of robotics and low corporate taxation? What if all the military power is owned and operated by a few of these robotic-tax havens.
Why are so few people seeing this coming?
There will be a transition period when the homeless and unemployed will be roaming about with fear, hunger, anger, and sadness in their eyes.
This future, this uncertainty, this pain, and suffering is coming at us without bugle, trumpet, or announcement. The new economy is on the way. The technical elite of our world are some of the most productive and well-paid members of the information age. They know about the future but are too busy solving today’s problems. They have very little time to worry about tomorrow. But the ones who are paying attention to the trends seem to be worrying in silence.
The technical elite, engineers and scientists, are not like the business elite. They are more silent, contemplative, and reserved. Very few are interested in or have their hands on the political levers of society. They generally find politics a waste of intelligent time. They rather solve problems in front of them than problems that require influencing or organizing social or political behavior.
As this problem becomes more acute, they may try to solve it with technology. This problem might be difficult to fix late in the game after robotic efficiency gains are known by the business elite. There will always be engineers fresh out of college who will be willing to add features and artificial intelligence (AI) to robots. But eventually, the AI will write its own AI.
Before anybody knows what happened, the business elite and the politicians will control resource decisions. In most countries they already do, and history tells us what they will do.
Until today, I didn’t see any possible happy ending for the unemployed. Today I learned a glimmer of hope for mankind. Today I learned the story of Community 13, of Medellin, Colombia. As I walked through this street art community I heard the story of its political transformation.
This isn’t a movie. It has already happened. But I will tell the story of our unemployed future through the eyes of what has already happened here in Community 13. As you listen, you may realize this is just an extension of a story you may see unfolding in your town.
There will be individuals and groups of people who are unemployable because robots are doing their jobs. At first, they will be hopeless, alone, abused, killed, raped; wandering by day and hiding at night, sleeping anywhere they can.
There will be too many to be controlled or corralled into camps. Eventually, they will form communities in places where they are less hassled by police. These camps will be on difficult terrain, on the least valuable lands. They will make cardboard houses with plastic roofs. Eventually, these camps will be raided by police and the unemployed will be beaten and forcibly removed. The police will destroy their cardboard homes. This will cause some of them to temporally disperse back into parks or alleys of employed neighborhoods. This will create a political backlash against the police in employed neighborhoods.
Many will resettle and rebuild their cardboard and wooden homes on the same land where the police removed them. The police will return and beat, burn, kill, and remove them over and over again. Eventually, social media will cover the brutal nature of the police action, and the employed, who prefer to keep the unemployed out of sight, will pressure politicians to leave the homeless alone. The employed will prefer that the unemployed live in their own cardboard communities than living in employed neighborhoods. This political pressure will eventually get the police to leave these unemployed cardboard communities alone.
However, the government will not provide any police protection for these areas where the unemployed live.Theey government will say, “They pay no tax, they contribute nothing to society, so we will not put in sewers, water or electric. Their homes are not built to code. They are just squatters. They don’t own the land, they don’t pay rent, so they don’t deserve any money collected from the employed or the corporations.” The unemployed don’t buy politicians beach houses.
These outcast communities (OC) will be left alone by the government to protect themselves. The OC will eventually be preyed upon by drug dealers, pimps, prostitution, and gangs, because the criminal element can operate without fear of police in the OC territory.
Eventually, the community will form vigilante groups, approved and populated by community members, and the vigilantes will push the criminal element out of the OCs without police support.
These communities will see themselves as free nation states within a larger society. The vigilantes will eventually see themselves separate from the OC and start charging people and business in the community for ‘protection.’ The vigilantes will reason that they can charge the community for protection to feed their family. The vigilantes will prey on the OC.
Once the vigilantes are corrupt, gangs will form alliances with the vigilantes so the gangs can sell drugs, kill rivals freely, offer prostitution and other criminal activity without being bothered by the government police. The gangs will pay the vigilantes to protect the criminal enterprise in the OC. Eventual,ly rival gangs will form and the OC will be split into territories controlled by various gangs. The gangs will war with each other for OC territory.
Guerilla factions within the OC will develop that try to push the now criminal gang-vigilante alliances out of the OC. The guerilla groups and gang-vigilante groups will get more and more violent until the government eventually tries to send the police or military into the OC territory to control the killing.
At first, the government forces will be no match for the passions of guerilla groups and gang-vigilantes. But eventually, when the gangs and guerilla leaders are assassinated and jailed, the streets of the OC will appear quiet for a bit under government police control. But the peace will end quickly.
People in the OC will begin to disappear. Without a trial or even facing their accuser, people who live in the OC will be gathered and silently executed by the government forces. Some of these people will disappear just because a neighbor in the OC didn’t like them, and reported non-existent criminal activity to the police. These people will be taken silently and executed without ever even knowing their alleged crimes. OC citizens won’t have the rights of employed citizens.
Eventually, the government’s improper behavior in the OC will come to the attention of the public. The police and government oversight will be ridiculed and shamed by society. The OC will begin to be treated with respect. The OC society will tell the stories of how the employed society mistreated them for 50 to 100 years. The OC will become a success story for the entire country to respect, where the human condition eventually thrived under the most inhumane conditions. Eventually, the shame and embarrassment of an unjust society falls on the shoulders of the oppressors.
This is the story of Community 13 of Medellin, Colombia. Society did too little, too late, because it blamed the victims of a corrupt government instead of creating an employed middle class via education and training.
How do you think this problem should be solved? Please leave a comment below.
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