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Noodle Robots Replacing Workers In Chinese Restaurants
kkleiner writes "Recently developed noodle-making robots have now been put into operation in over 3,000 restaurants in China. Invented by a noodle restaurant owner, each unibrow-sporting robot currently costs 10,000 yuan ($1,600), which is only three months wages for an equivalent human noodle cook. As the cost of the robot continues to drop, more noodle shops are bound to displace human workers for the tirelessly working cheaper robots."
FYI China isn't the last big pool of cheap human labor. All the really low-skilled jobs, like textile manufacture, have already moved out of China into southeast asia, etc. Africa and Latin America are waiting in line as well, if they ever become stable enough. The Philippines and India are other potential sources of labor.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
We need to first let go of the perverse idea that work is itself virtuous. Especially in the US, the more productive people get, the more they're working (and the less they're making on a real-inflation-adjusted basis). For a decent chunk of time, as people became more productive, their workload decreased and their leisure increased, but that trend stopped in the early 70's.
But, heck, according to the video somebody else posted here, the property taxes I have to pay are alone more money than a noodle chef makes in a year in China and they keep going up, so the total picture isn't just as simple as "so then just work less".
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
We should work for our keep, for most of our lives. We're wired to need to - we value what we have if we work for it; otherwise we delight in destroying it.
Studies of hunter-gatherer societies, typical of the evolutionary conditions for which humans might be "wired," indicate rather low typical work loads. Actual "work" time is typically 2-4 hours per day; interspersed with a lot of lollygagging about, chatting, telling stories, playing games, singing songs, sitting about pondering. Of course, there are sometimes brief periods of highly strenuous work and intense need. But the idea that humans are "wired" to need 40+ hour weeks of toil, instead of spending most of their time in leisure and "artsy" pursuits, is an artifact of the development of labor-intensive agricultural societies during the latest tiny fraction of human evolutionary history.