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In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

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Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#41

Post by cco »

chaostheory wrote: post #8
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

1. There is only so much you can pay the people doing the kind of work like cleaning the Shinkansens or manning the 7-11's because it affects customer costs. i.e. There's a point where you increase the salary of 7-11 workers that it causes a $2 fried chicken snack to inflate to $10 that customers will refuse to buy 2. Even if there was magically enough money and time to retrain people, they would still be short of wo…

Out of curiosity, what percentage of a fried chicken snack's final cost do you think is labor from that 7-11 worker?

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#42

Post by Ancalagon »

genxy wrote: post #38
Apreche wrote: post #19

It’s amazing to use technology to save humans from toil. The question is, who owns the robot? Who benefits from the labor it produces? The techno utopia we imagine is a world where nobody has to work. All our needs are taken care of and we live a life of leisure. But as long as there is ownership of the automated systems, those owners will hoard all the wealth generated by that automation. Labor expenditures and taxe…

I believe that is the plan.

Viva La revolution

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#43

Post by [deleted] »

alephnerd wrote: post #24
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different from the USA, 7-11 in Japan and China are mainly self checkout at least, so they can technically run a store with less people since they don’t have to man cash registers to get people checked out.

This. Also there is a social backlash against Vietnamese, Chinese, and Thai service workers in Japan now (the people who tend to be working the counter at a kombini, but apparently Asians all look the same to Western HNers), as well as Western tourists. Edit: can't reply > I doubt many Chinese youths want to work for minimum wage in Japan Chinese are the 2nd largest nationality of foreign agricultural and food worker…

[deleted]

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#44

Post by jjmarr »

alephnerd wrote: post #17
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

No one wants to clean s#it, especially in a country with as broad a social welfare net as Japan. Instead, in Japan you can get someone from Vietnam, China, or Thailand to do that for a couple dollars a day with Gulf style guestworker rules. Additionally, Asian societies don't have the same Luddite aversion to automation [0] that seems to have taken over Western mindshare as can be seen on HN. They don't want Westerne…

There's a subreddit for the NYC sanitation dept because it's so competitive to get into.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DSNY/comments/1rwayil/what_was_the_...

People will clean garbage and shit for a DB pension, stability, not sitting at a desk, and avoiding corporate politics.

All of these things are easier to give to sanitation workers because human waste is a recession-proof good and it's less affected by boom-bust. Many people want these jobs.

If you're a tech worker that likes a clean office and new technology this is boring.

But I'm sure there's a sanitation worker going on a similar rant about how terrible the tech industry is.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#45

Post by slimebot80 »

moostee wrote: post #31
slimebot80 wrote: post #30

[flagged]

Sarcasm right? It's difficult to tell these days. I'll pretend it's not sarcasm despite assuming it is. Immigration changes the cultural profile of a region and increases cost of living, particular cost of housing.

Yeah. I'm more concerned about the welfare needed to support millions of low-skill people in high living cost areas, in the age of AI. Those people are being sold dead dreams for the benefit of a handful of billionaires.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#46

Post by senordevnyc »

epolanski wrote: post #13
maerF0x0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still 10s of millions of people who could be given a job (and some hope and purpose too btw) Edit: btw I agree there's more to life than work. But when you're unemployed and hoping for work, competing against robots and LLMs is quite crushing.

Japan has one of the lowest unemployments on the planet, 2.5%. Virtually all that don't work don't want to and don't need to or simply can't. As the article we're commenting points out Japan has a labor shortage.

But this guy googled it and apparently there are 18% of Japanese people not working, so obviously their entire society pivoting towards automation is wrong.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#47

Post by ryandrake »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
maerF0x0 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still 10s of millions of people who could be given a job (and some hope and purpose too btw) Edit: btw I agree there's more to life than work. But when you're unemployed and hoping for work, competing against robots and LLMs is quite crushing.

Why would the retirees want to be put back to work? Why would the students want to have to do two full-time tasks at once? Why would the homemakers want to add another full-time task? Why would the people with cancer want to have to work from their hospital bed? There's more to life than work. Get a hobby! Hope and purpose doesn't have to come from menial labor.

Money, money, money, and money. We need it to survive. Until people's basic needs are taken care of for them, they need to do what they can to live.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#48

Post by jmalicki »

wilg wrote: post #34
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

In case you think 18% is Japan's unemployment rate: it's not. Japan's unemployment rate is 2.5%. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location... This is basically the best in the world. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2... Not sure what rate OP is citing, but it's not the one I'd use to draw OP's conclusion. You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calcula…

> You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calculated.

You're way better off YOLO'ing reading the documentation about how they are calculated than listening to the myriad pundits deliberately trying to mislead people and drive conspiracy theories.

This is all documented on the websites of the various statistical agencies, and you can just read their docs.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#49

Post by ceejayoz »

ryandrake wrote: post #47
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the retirees want to be put back to work? Why would the students want to have to do two full-time tasks at once? Why would the homemakers want to add another full-time task? Why would the people with cancer want to have to work from their hospital bed? There's more to life than work. Get a hobby! Hope and purpose doesn't have to come from menial labor.

Money, money, money, and money. We need it to survive. Until people's basic needs are taken care of for them, they need to do what they can to live.

Again, we're talking about retirees, homemakers, college students, disabled, etc. here.

Re: In Japan, the robot isn't coming for your job; it's filling the one nobody wants

#50

Post by maerF0x0 »

wilg wrote: post #34
maerF0x0 wrote: post #5

"No one wants" usually includes an insufficient wage, sometimes also an issue of insufficient investment in training for skilled folks. eg if you need a doctor in 12 years you have to start more or less today. A quick google suggests ~18% of their working age people do not have jobs, which naturally could be shifted by incentives like money or training. (Edit, because people are confused, I'm not talking about unempl…

In case you think 18% is Japan's unemployment rate: it's not. Japan's unemployment rate is 2.5%. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?location... This is basically the best in the world. https://www.oecd.org/en/data/insights/statistical-releases/2... Not sure what rate OP is citing, but it's not the one I'd use to draw OP's conclusion. You don't wanna YOLO understanding how employment rates are calcula…

Correct. I was using labor participation rates. As a society gets depressed and has a hard time people stop trying (ie they no longer count as unemployed, which doesnt count the people who are no longer trying to get a job).

Similar to how as police systems fail, people stop reporting things assuming nothing meaningful will happen anyways. And then there's less reports of crime, so magically "crime is down" -- high fives to the police system... (/s)

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