Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

mnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–67 of 67 posts

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#61

Post by mkl »

franzus wrote: post #34

> return manufacturing of smartphones, computers and TVs to U.S. shores The problem with all that manufacturing being moved overseas is that local jobs are "destroyed". Moving back production for production's sake with the help of robots won't solve this problem. It will only give you a warm cozy patriotic feeling whenever you read "made in $your_country". Now I think full automation is the future and in the remote f…

We will need an economic system that can cope with a mass of seemingly unemployed/unemployable people.

See the following for more thinking along these lines: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm

(This has been on HN before, Google [robotic nation site:ycombinator.com].)

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#62

Post by nosse »

adventureful wrote: post #37
pooriaazimi wrote: post #33

Just a minor problem: Chinese robots would cost less than yours, so you end up again building everything in China.

China hasn't demonstrated an ability to do widespread high quality manufacturing. Countries like Germany run circles around China on that front. It's just as likely that a nation like Sweden or Germany might dominate building the robots that go in the manufacturing plants, rather than China.

There was a time when everybody thought that Japanese could not do widespread high quality manufacturing. Now they are known for the high quality. There was quality considerations of Finnish ship building, that changed too.

It's very common trend to shift from cheap country into a quality country. The industry will be seeking the next cheap place in the mean time.

This might mean that manufacture is not going to shift to Africa as Chinese might not need that cheap labor because of robotics.

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#64

Post by SudarshanP »

danmaz74 wrote: post #21

Am I the only one surprised to see that this kind of research is financed by the Pentagon? What kind of military application does it have?

The Military Clothing industry is a 4 billion dollar industry. Source: http://prospect.org/article/sweatshop-army-0

No wonder they want their stuff cheaper.

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#65

Post by daliusd »

lispm wrote: post #31

How so? The article is poorly researched. As if the strategy of automation hasn't been tried in various areas to get back or keep jobs. In some areas this works, in others it hasn't. It also has been tried in this industry. China is also not even the cheapest place. Clothing now comes from Vietnam, Philippines and other asian countries. I'm also not sure making manual labor in that area obsolete is actually useful. S…

Science/Technology is not area where you try once, fail and never try again. Sooner or later it will be automated because there are lot of benefits: productivity, saving of nature and human resources and etc.

People in developing countries will figure out other ways to earn money. If people don't have food or money that usually because of stupid dictatorships (long-term) or not having protection against nature crisis (short-term, compare earthquake in Japan vs Haiti) but not because of lack of work.

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#66

Post by icegreentea »

shykes wrote: post #20
adventureful wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, but they have everything to lose from them and the US (and other nations) has everything to gain, because the US has already completely lost the garment industry. China already has a massive supply of human labor, which is primarily why their labor costs are so low. If you were to automate their labor, it would cause substantial unemployment and or reductions in pay. I'd argue their society couldn't withstan…

I wonder how deeply this could transform the transportation industry: if the production of certain goods no longer require cheap labor, wouldn't production centers naturally move closer to demand to reduce transportation overhead?

Or they will move closer to supply. It becomes a question of what is cheaper. Transporting raw/component materials near population centers, and then deal with all your waste near population centers, or building everything close to supply, far away from population centers, and polluting where "no one really cares".

I am cynical, so I'm going to guess the second. Even if we get mass robot manufacturing, we'll just let China continue to build all sorts of stuff, cause it's easier to pollute there.

Re: Robot sewing machines could make 'made in China' obsolete

#67

Post by krschultz »

gouranga wrote: post #58
MarkMc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Destroying mechanical looms is not a practical solution of course, but in theory yes: The benefit to so many poor people would be so great that it could be worth having an inefficient textile industry. There are probably less costly ways of helping the poor, but it would be better than the status quo.

I've thought this for years. Automation makes people redundant and you end up with people who consume but produce nothing. Those people are labelled as 'poor' as they are given minimal cash to survive on as they have no value to add to mainstream society. If you increase automation and drop the retirement age in most countries to shorten the workforce and allow people to exist comfortably after retirement, I reckon y…

It would probably be preferable to subsidize education than to subsidize retirement.
Post reply on HN