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Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

english.hani.co.kr

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Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#141

Post by ruined »

svara wrote: post #24
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy as a system for making widgets. Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. Being a valued member of a community is a rather basic human need. As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that ag…

the economy is a mode of organizing aggregated needs and desires, but it has never been total, and it is only capable of accounting for needs and desires that can be expressed financially.

the past couple centuries have seen a great advancement in application of the economic mode to greater areas of life. there are both clear and nominal benefits and downsides. its advance doesn't necessarily mean it's satisfying equivalent needs and desires, nor that it is more effective or objectively preferable.

it's well-documented that often it has advanced by threats, dispossession, and violence. and it's certainly possible that could continue, or that it might lose ground on some externality, or sustain hegemony by those same tools.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#143

Post by geraneum »

ryandrake wrote: post #13
abdullahkhalids wrote: post #7

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. W…

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

> harvesting money every quarter

How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. Sometimes people forget that the workers are also consumers. You may displace some, but to replace all, blue and white? Not that easy.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#144

Post by dotancohen »

Blackthorn wrote: post #73
kybernetikos wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True but police are people too with their own expectations and morality and the number of police required to suppress a population is relatively large. There's still enormous room for abuse, but automating suppression drops even the imperfect checks that we have on the power of the few to oppress the many

It's a historical fact that the police (or police-adjacent things before they were called the police) have always been quite willing to crack the skulls of workers.

  > police-adjacent things before they were called the police
It seems that you have some history you could share, I would love to hear it.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#145

Post by p1esk »

amelius wrote: post #77
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

That's not the end game because ultimately voters determine the rules of the economic system. And if voting doesn't work, there's the possibility of a revolution. So the capital owners will probably make it so that they please a majority of people just enough to stay in power.

Or they simply kill everyone who complains.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#147

Post by shiroiushi »

geraneum wrote: post #143
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

> harvesting money every quarter How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. Sometimes people forget that the workers are also consumers. You may displace some, but to replace all, blue and white? Not that easy.

>How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work.

The idea is that you sell your stuff to people who are employed in other industries/companies that haven't been so successful at automating all their employees out of a job.

At Samsung, for instance, the workers are not the main consumers: Samsung is a huge exporter, and most of their customers are outside of Korea. Even if all their current and former employees suddenly decided to stop buying Samsung products, it wouldn't even be noticeable in their balance sheet.

What you're describing is a situation where all the companies have managed to eliminate most of their workforces, which has never happened. If it comes even remotely close to that point, societies will be forced to change their economies somehow, perhaps with UBI.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#148

Post by Joeri »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #7

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. W…

But the article mentions the 8 inch production line is always shorthanded on staff. You would think workers on a line that has shortages of employees would have negotiating power. The article also mentions better circumstances on other lines. The workers on strike also say they’re not even really asking for better circumstances, just to not be treated like parts in a machine.

I think this is a typical case of a bad manager at the top of the 8 inch line, and not of some larger theme of automation leading to worker abuse.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#149

Post by shiroiushi »

immibis wrote: post #54
Aperocky wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is purely focused on the supply side and neglecting demand and its role in the economy. The world economy today isn't driven by lack of supply (for the vast majority categories of products), rather it is by lack of demand. Whoever owns the demand owns the power in this dynamic. One can have all the factories in the world when consumer stop buying it's in for a rough time, like China is finding out.

Demand can be easily manufactured, it seems. Just look at all the bullshit people buy, from fidget spinners to timeshares to ready-made chocolate cake.

I don't think anyone with half a brain is buying a timeshare these days. Those things have been going down for many years now I think. They were a stupid fad, and the fad's over. Of course, some new bullshit fad will come along for people to waste their money on.

What's wrong with ready-made chocolate cake? Freshly-baked might be better, but there is value in convenience. It's the same reason people buy pizza: if you're a master pizza chef and have a proper pizza oven at home, you could probably make a better pizza, and of course have it a bit fresher, but most people simply can't make a pizza that comes close to those made in real pizza ovens by people who make them every day. Some people don't even have an oven in the first place.

Re: Women who make Samsung semiconductors are striking

#150

Post by alexey-salmin »

geraneum wrote: post #143
ryandrake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that mainta…

> harvesting money every quarter How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. Sometimes people forget that the workers are also consumers. You may displace some, but to replace all, blue and white? Not that easy.

This is the theme of the "Twenty-fourth Voyage of Ijon Tichy" by Stanisław Lem. Goods are mass-produced but no one has income to buy them. In the end they asked AI to find the way out of this deadlock. The AI found the solution of crushing them all and arranging their remains in visually aesthetic patterns. Funniest part is that they voluntarily went along with this plan because they could see no other.

The whole "Star Diaries" series is such a gem. Many stories are exploring this question of "what is the endgame for societal trajectory X" in a form of some remote planet that Tichy visits on his trip.

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