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America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

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Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#191

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

yibg wrote: post #163
sampton wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has been methodically preparing for trade war and decoupling for the better part of the decade. US went in full throttle with zero preparation. This is not going to end well.

I wonder if this is a consequence of the political systems of China vs the US. China tends to think and plan longer term, where as the US seems much more transactional; what will win me the next election / midterm etc.

In other words: the lack of long term planning is US’s well-known strategic weakness.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#192

Post by fallingknife »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #93
tartuffe78 wrote: post #2

Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth year after year.

There is an interesting twist here. "Socialist" and "Communist" economic models where those who can't work are supported by spreading a portion of the GDP produced by an economy to support those (whether it is UBI or a 'free' living space, whatever) are more able to make the transition to a robotic workforce. In the US, if we transformed to a robotic manufacturing base today our oligarchs would horde all of the resul…

I still haven't seen an example of technical workers being replaced by AI

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#193

Post by alienthrowaway »

hnthrow90348765 wrote: post #175
dttze wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the optimistic take. The reality is they will find some way to cull the unwanted poor. These elites in power are stupid, cruel, spiteful, and have no sense of decency.

What I think will happen is the US tries to mimic China by creating an even lower class of our workers that form a new industrial/manufacturing base to compete with. This becomes less of a difficult pill to swallow if a) we're involved in a trade war, b) the economy has crashed and we must work our way out of it "for the country", c) the right people get enough money. They're too smart for mass murder because that wo…

> What I think will happen is the US tries to mimic China by creating an even lower class of our workers that form a new industrial/manufacturing base to compete with.

Still too optimistic on how long-term the American approach will be. There won't be a UBI, the oligarchy will be paid directly from government coffers. The deficit, bonds and other government instruments will paper over the collapse of tax-revenue and population for a while, before the whole house of cards collapses[1]. I think the billionaires hope to be in space habitats or dead by then, if not, there's always their bunkers in New Zealand - their cache of gold bars should still work there after they ravage the USD. Capital knows no borders.

1. See late 1990s Russia. Only simple, extractive industries will chug along.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#194

Post by Hikikomori »

dluan wrote: post #174

American tech workers need to start paying attention to Chinese national policy, the National People's Congress is happening right now and it's how China sets long term goals and targets. "Made in China 2025" was a massive national strategic plan that was 10 years in the making, and was designed in 2015. It laid out all of the key sectors for "value added manufacturing", and by most accounts, they've been delivering…

At this point all China needs to do is the gaben strategy, doing nothing while America keeps shooting itself in the foot. Trump seems to have unlimited bullet supply.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#195

Post by idiotsecant »

rtp4me wrote: post #130
sieabahlpark wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn, thanks for plainly stating why we need manufacturing back to the states.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people. [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

Talk is cheap, as they say. It's one thing to want something to happen, it's entirely another to actually make it so.

Generally disassembling the machinery of state and starting trade wars is not an effective way to achieve your policy objectives unless your policy objective is economic and social chaos.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#196

Post by dluan »

thenobsta wrote: post #178
dluan wrote: post #174

American tech workers need to start paying attention to Chinese national policy, the National People's Congress is happening right now and it's how China sets long term goals and targets. "Made in China 2025" was a massive national strategic plan that was 10 years in the making, and was designed in 2015. It laid out all of the key sectors for "value added manufacturing", and by most accounts, they've been delivering…

Are there particularly good news sources to follow? I'm not sure what to follow to get either the source material or good commentary.

Right now, I try to consume content directly from the dragon's mouth with official news and reports, but it requires a bit of experience knowing how to read between the lines and having a strong bullshit parser.

Similarly, most English language analysis from mainstream media is comically bad - CNN and American news outlets sent reporters to Beijing this week and bombarded attendees and delegates walking into the congressional hall with questions about Trump and tariffs, in English. Who does that??

Admittedly, I do like the stuff that comes out of Stanford's Digichina group, https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/?page=1&sort_order=desc&..., they seem dedicated to doing an actual analysis and not just spewing brainless propaganda (HBR, looking at you). But yeah, it's hard out here to find any real meaningful information, so I've been debating starting up a substack myself, but with an additional academic research focus.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#197

Post by themaninthedark »

netsharc wrote: post #165
themaninthedark wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there are definitely people who have been on welfare and used it to better themselves and there are people who thrive in the face of adversity, overcoming the worst situations. I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People are weird and different.

> I also think that there are a large number of people who ended up lost without direction or purpose. People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling dejected. With utopian UBI, one would be free to…

No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do when they have free time.

There are lots of older people who go back to work, not because they need the money but because the need the structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death due to retirement.

>Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes in health insurance and income can account for the increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further examine the plausibility of retirement leading to higher mortality, Moore examines which causes of death increase when men turn 62, and considers the connection between those and decreased labor force participation.

https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement.ph...

>With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.

People have need to feel like they are doing something. Usually something positive but they will settle for something negative, generally that ends poorly for society.

Also UBI would only, as my understanding is, take care of the basics. Food, shelter, medical care. So you would end up with a population that has enough to survive, hungry for more and no way to achieve it.....

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#198

Post by EMIRELADERO »

tzs wrote: post #157
dragonwriter wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My guess is that if UBI added $1,000/mo to everyone's income Aside from whether the prediction is realistic under this assumption, UBI under any realistic financing scheme doesn't do that . It replaces (and potentially increases the net benefit of) means-tested welfare at the bottom end of the income distribution and spreads the clawback from a set of relatively sharp cliffs that occur between working poor and midd…

Has anyone considered something like UBI but instead of income make it UBG--Universal Basic Goods. The idea would be that when automation advances to the point that something can be made with very little labor the government would build automated factories to produce that thing and make the output available for free. There would still be room for private companies to make those things too. They could make fancier or…

And who would purchase those, and with what?

The only scenario where UBI/UGI would make sense is one where AI can replace most/all humans at any job they could have. At that point it makes no sense for there to be a economic hierarchy at all.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#199

Post by idiotsecant »

torginus wrote: post #186
rtp4me wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of people. [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-shipbuilding-gr...

Well, no matter what he wants, there's a reason China has 5-10 year plans and not 2 week ones.

This is Chinas greatest strength and their greatest weakness. They can actually commit to policy positions when they're effective, but they also commit to policy positions when they're not effective.

Re: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

#200

Post by paganel »

megaman821 wrote: post #143
paganel wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are manufacturing jobs special? Because you need manufacturing to win wars, or to be seen by outside great powers that you're in a position of winning wars. You're not winning wars based on git commit messages, but based on the steel any one country is able to produce at a certain moment in time (and to transform it into tanks/armoured vehicles and artillery shells).

That is manufacturing capacity, not jobs. A factory of ten people and a few hundred robots is fine. Other types of manufacturing like chips, aerospace and medical equipment are high value and low workforce. Tariffs and industrial policy may increase the US' manufacturing capacity, but don't expect to see many manufacturing jobs from it.

> A factory of ten people and a few hundred robots is fine

Don't think that that is true when it comes to the steel industry when you include all the verticals, i.e. mineral extraction + transportation of said minerals + energy production + transportation of said energy. You need qualified people for that, lots of them. And I've yet to see the steel factory that can be run with only 10, 25 or even 100 people.

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