Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
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Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#2yet
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#3but that would be a trivial instruction set to upload.
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#4So where will the low wage jobs run to? Perhaps African nations will pick up the slack. What happens to the unemployed chinese laborers then? Marx is still relevant after all these years....
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#5If Foxconn is the "Apple" of chinese manufacturing - high value customers, largest workforce etc, I wonder if they will be trendsetting in their move to robotics.
Many other companies in China will be watching very closely on how it works for them, and may do the same if it succeeds.
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#6So where will the low wage jobs run to? Perhaps African nations will pick up the slack. What happens to the unemployed chinese laborers then? Marx is still relevant after all these years....
Automation.
Does NOT.
Destroy.
Jobs.
Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case. Automation may eliminate A job in the near-term but in the long-term it creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from one person to another person.
Robots don't have bank accounts.
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#7Automation is bad for the economy. Think of the tens of millions of phone operators put out of work by rotary pulse dialling exchanges. Where are they now? Those 100 or 200 million phones worldwide won't connect themselves!
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#8So where will the low wage jobs run to? Perhaps African nations will pick up the slack. What happens to the unemployed chinese laborers then? Marx is still relevant after all these years....
Automation. Does NOT. Destroy. Jobs. Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case. Automation may eliminate A job in the near-term but in the long-term it creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from one person to another person. Robots don't have bank accounts.
Can you imagine a future where most of the menial and factory tasks that are now jobs are performed by robots? In this case it certainly does eliminate jobs, with no guarantee that others will be created.
The wealth created goes to the company that made the robot, and the one that utilizes the robot. The people who used to have jobs get left out of the wealth transfer.
I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, just that it will happen and maybe we need a new economic model to deal with this future.
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#9If Foxconn is the "Apple" of chinese manufacturing - high value customers, largest workforce etc, I wonder if they will be trendsetting in their move to robotics. Many other companies in China will be watching very closely on how it works for them, and may do the same if it succeeds.
I think people are looking at this the wrong way. Look at the history of manufacturing in any country, at any company. They may start off by taking advantage of lots and lots of inexpensive low-skill labor (even Ford did), but as they grow over time and become more successful they start taking in more and more revenue. And that revenue allows them to accelerate their capital investment, making increasing use of automation for example. It happened with manufacturers in America, and Japan, and Korea, and Taiwan, and it's happening again in China. I don't think it's necessary to invoke any other motivations.
Re: Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automation. Does NOT. Destroy. Jobs. Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case. Automation may eliminate A job in the near-term but in the long-term it creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from one person to another person. Robots don't have bank accounts.
Can you imagine a future where most of the menial and factory tasks that are now jobs are performed by robots? In this case it certainly does eliminate jobs, with no guarantee that others will be created. The wealth created goes to the company that made the robot, and the one that utilizes the robot. The people who used to have jobs get left out of the wealth transfer. I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, just tha…
Companies become more dependent on automation in order to increase efficiency. In the near-term this leads to higher profits. However, because automation reduces overhead, competition will result in lower prices. The end result is that increased profits are only temporary, ultimately the main result is merely cheaper goods. And cheaper goods mean increased amounts of discretionary income. That money ultimately goes elsewhere, creating new jobs that didn't exist before or causing growth for old jobs that used to be niche.
Yes, I can imagine a future where most of the menial and factory jobs are performed by robots. Just as I can imagine a present where the majority of the population isn't farmers, or where "computers" are devices rather than people, or a present without elevator operators, switchboard operators, lamp lighters, or milkmen.