Foxconn's Robot Workforce Now 20,000 Strong

itwbennett writes "Slashdot readers will recall Foxconn's plans to staff its factories with an army of 1 million robot workers to offset rising labor costs. Well, now we have an update on those plans. Speaking at the company's shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Foxconn CEO Terry Gou said that there are 20,000 robotic machines currently at work in Foxconn factories. Ultimately, these robots will replace human assembly workers and 'our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers,' Gou said."

Comments

Technicians and engineers, really?

[RealTime]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll have to find other jobs, perhaps go back to school, etc. Foxconn may be obligated by the government to help them with that, etc.... but why should Foxconn worry that they will be unemployed?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[ShanghaiBill]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different. China is transitioning to a service economy much faster than western nations did, and due to the one child policy, China's labor force has already peaked, and it will be more and more difficult for companies to find enough workers.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[TheLink]

Think of the Chinese factory workers as robots doing repetitive tasks. How well has that worked out for the workers in the USA?

Wonderful?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Dutchmaan]

" but why should Foxconn worry that they will be unemployed?" ...because it shows Foxconn for what it is, a completely apathetic company who only views it's workforce as meat robots, and because those meat robots have real human traits like the need dignity and hope for a semi-decent life, we're going to throw them on the scrap heap. I mean lets face it, when you're working conditions are so bad that a percentage of your workers view death as a plausible means of escape and you're putting up nets to stop them from killing themselves, then maybe it's time to reflect on how your business is treating it's workers. Personally speaking I'd like to see Foxconn execs live for one year; hell, one month under the conditions they force everyone else to endure... but strip away their fortunes first so they can't escape to that magical place of "I'll have my old life of ease to go back to once this hell is done."

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[rmstar]

but why should Foxconn worry that they will be unemployed?

Because these workers are human beings.

Please explain to me why you think that this doesn't matter. It seems many people think like that around here and that the rationale for it is somehow obvious, but I just don't get it.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[theedgeofoblivious]

Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past,

You're kidding, right?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[rtb61]

Not really. China had a ruthlessly exploited work force not seen since the early industrial age. Basically people doing the most unimaginably routine monotonous work, with extended hours, little time off up to the point of failure and then replaced. Things like sticking keys on a keyboard by hand, packing playing cards in boxes manually etc. the sort of work that was automated in the early 20th century in the west.

Gou and Foxcon might be using the word robot but in the majority of instances it is not what most people would consider a robot. Simply an electro-mechanical device design to complete a pre-defined task, rather than be multitasking to complete a range of variable actions.

Honestly and realistically the work was unfit for human beings, soulless demeaning, requiring no craftsmanship, something only psychopaths could have invented in the industrial age, something someone else does or we starve them and their family.

Catch with automation and robotics it places the whole world upon an equal playing field, with the difference being land and building cost and most important of all, distance and cost to get it to the end user point of delivery. We are now pushing to the age of micro-manufacturing plants, small flexible plants capable of producing a broad range of products very close to the point of demand, minimising transport, warehousing and handling costs. 3D printing is just the start, along with already introduced generic parts and components. Think ceramics vs metals.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[xelah]

He didn't actually say it doesn't matter, just that Foxconn won't worry. Of course, being a purely mental concept, Foxconn doesn't have the neurons to worry, but its management might feel uncomfortable depending on their level of psychopathy. Not that that stops anyone. But Chinese politicians will worry if it threatens to cause mass unemployment, because they're already worried that poorer economic conditions will lead to unrest and dissatisfaction with the whole one-party thing. And when the Chinese government is worrying, they have a tendency to pass it on.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

Don't you mean "no longer be slaves"? Oh how fast the of the Apple haters claims change.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[wienerschnizzel]

Do you also care as much about all the people that lost their work when agricultural automation became wide spread? Do you cry for the thousands of workers that might have been tilling the land manually instead of just one guy riding a tractor - when you eat your morning cereals/bread/whatever? And don't tell me you only eat stuff from your local farmer's market, because those people use automation too. How is factory automation any different?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[TheSync]

China had a ruthlessly exploited work force not seen since the early industrial age.

That is because China never had an industrial age due to a mixture of foreign imperialism, warlord battles, and Communist Party control. Instead tens of millions to people starved to death during the Great Leap Forward, and most people in China were barely eeking out an existence in communal farming until the 1980's. Rather than live on the edge with no hope in the countryside, rural Chinese quickly moved to the cities to work in the factories. The early factories were very capital-poor and had low productivity, thus the only way they could compete for world trade was to have low labor costs. Now Chinese factory capital investment is rising, productivity is rising, along with wages.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They are EXTRA humans who didn't need to be born. As such, they not entitled to any sort of rights whatsoever.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[clarkkent09]

Foxconn has no choice. If another company's cost of manufacturing a gadget are lower, then that's where the production will go. Anyway, increasing production efficiency is always a good thing. That's where all human progress comes from. The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called capitalism baby, when no one cares about anybody, and most certainly not expected to, as it goes against profit.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Mashiki]

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different.

Really? Well it's one of those things that is really hard to figure out. Though if we take queues from the auto industry here in North America where they went from manual labor to automation, and if we say don't count those who maintained their jobs by internal shifting, and instead count them as people who would have been unemployed. It's probably around 10-14%, give or take a bit. Though, that people are moved around inside companies to fill other positions heavily off-sets this, usually it means that 1-3% from said companies only end up losing their jobs due to either a lack of jobs, attrition/buyouts, retirement and so on.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two reasons they think that way.

1) its not them. If their job was replaced by a robot they would care a great deal.
2) As long as it means their iDevice is 5 cents cheaper then go for it.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

So this sort of "capitalism" has been good for the US with its stubbornly high unemployment numbers?

Was around 5%, shot up to 10% and started trending downwards but currently at 7.6%. This is probably inaccurate as US numbers don't include those who simply gave up.

People need jobs, not necessarily the mindless backbreaking kind but some form of employment.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Daemonik]

Is increasing production efficiency always a good thing? We are quickly reaching the point where the only way to increase efficiency is to remove humans completely. So where do those humans go then?

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs to replace all of the inefficient human labor they're replacing? How about 10 million, once all of Foxconn's partners and competitors have done the same robot transition to compete? Look at the US, we can't create enough jobs here to meet demands, and there are only so many STEM jobs available folks.

Are we prepared for a day when 50% of the world or more has to be on welfare simply because there are no jobs available to humans anymore?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well _I'm_ prepared for that day. But sure, most people aren't, they insist that although they have no useful skills they ought to be provided with "gainful employment" and then they'll whine about how that employment is too difficult and wastes too much of their time. Can't help it that people are idiots.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Daemonik]

When we started automating our farms, there was the side benefit that industry was booming and needed those very same offset farmers to fill the factory floors. In that instance the transition was beneficial all around.

Now though, those factories have their doors welded shut and even management is getting the pink slip. There is no empty job market just waiting to absorb all those extra workers. Our governments can only make the jobless numbers go down anymore by removing the long term jobless from the reports, as though it's a personal failing and not a systemic problem.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[StripedCow]

That's the general problem with capitalism.
People at the bottom of the hierarchy get the smallest compensation and the worst working conditions. As you go higher in the hierarchy, the reward is bigger and the conditions are better.

If you could give 1 dollar extra to be given to the person who actually made your iPhone, then that would be a huge reward for this person. However, under the capitalist framework, with a simple increase in price that money could never reach that person. It would get stuck in the intermediate levels.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[wienerschnizzel]

True. But Foxconn is no more evil than the farms for making its production more efficient. If somebody would like to force Foxconn to stop making its factories more efficient, they might as well force farmers to dump their tractors and combines.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Dogtanian]

China had a ruthlessly exploited work force not seen since the early industrial age. Basically people doing the most unimaginably routine monotonous work, with extended hours, little time off up to the point of failure and then replaced. Things like sticking keys on a keyboard by hand, packing playing cards in boxes manually etc. the sort of work that was automated in the early 20th century in the west.

Thirty years ago or so, robots and computerised automation were supposed to be the future, and people from back then might have been quite surprised that a generation down the line *people* are still doing work like this.

It could be argued that the ultra-cheap labour brought about by the delayed industrialisation of China distorted this otherwise likely path, with dirt-cheap, no-investment and very flexible humans working out cheaper than expensive machinery- at least in the short term. It looks, however, like we're now returning to the predicted path...?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Daemonik]

I never claimed Foxconn was evil. I'm not even claiming they shouldn't automate. Society, however, does need to take a long hard look at ways to create opportunities for the offset workers of the future to find new liveable working conditions though. We're getting to a point where the costs of factory robots have decreased enough and their abilities risen enough that they can replace a significant portion of the work force.

Without some thought being put into what happens to those people after that, there will be some serious repercussions and telling ourselves "oh it worked out in the past" or "jobs will appear" as if by magic is foolishness.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs to replace all of the inefficient human labor they're replacing?

I don't know, but it happened throughout the Industrial Age. It's worth noting here that probably all of those jobs that are being replaced, didn't exist one or two decades ago.

Look at the US, we can't create enough jobs here to meet demands, and there are only so many STEM jobs available folks.

Bad example. The US (as also in much of the developed world) is punishing businesses for hiring people. There are substantial costs associated with employing people (especially when an additional employee would push the business over a bureaucratic threshold, like 50 full time employees). And it's worth noting that minimum wage prevents a lot of people from being employed simply because their labor is worth less than minimum wage at present.

Look at the US, we can't create enough jobs here to meet demands, and there are only so many STEM jobs available folks.

My approach is to get rid of the "demands". Less demands on job creators, more jobs get created.

Are we prepared for a day when 50% of the world or more has to be on welfare simply because there are no jobs available to humans anymore?

Change labor policy before that happens. I already mentioned minimum wage as an example of a policy that creates unemployment. A second one is usual welfare policy where you get less, if you work more.

Consider an alternate welfare policy to those two. Pay everyone a fixed stipend (if you still want to avoid paying rich people, just set the income cut off at a rather high level) and completely do away with minimum wage. I'd also get rid of most health care mandates (the US style ones are particularly bad), regulatory burdens, and pensions. Someone can choose to get by on that stipend, or they can work, even a little, and get more without issue.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

I'll observe here that it is the responsibility of the workers to have "dignity" and that "semi-decent life" not Foxconn.

Personally speaking I'd like to see Foxconn execs live for one year; hell, one month under the conditions they force everyone else to endure... but strip away their fortunes first so they can't escape to that magical place of "I'll have my old life of ease to go back to once this hell is done."

How about we don't do that and instead let Foxconn continue to gainfully employ people? They're doing all the stuff you pretend to care about such as providing jobs with more dignity and decency than the workers would get without Foxconn.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Society, however, does need to take a long hard look at ways to create opportunities for the offset workers of the future to find new liveable working conditions though.

I'll tell you right now. Those policies will be business-friendly. The problem throughout the developed world (which is incidentally where the the vast majority of complaints about the current state of things come from) is the huge overhead on employing people. Get rid of that, remove the obstacles to creating new businesses, and you've just encouraged businesses to employ you.

Without some thought being put into what happens to those people after that, there will be some serious repercussions and telling ourselves "oh it worked out in the past" or "jobs will appear" as if by magic is foolishness.

I don't think so. It's quite relevant to note that this problem has been worried about for the past few centuries and has naturally resolved itself throughout that period.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Kagato]

I would think about it another way. 1) They have incredibly high turn over. There don't have old line workers. 2) The part suppliers don't have the means to automate to that extent. 3) They are Taiwanese not Chinese. They have no allegiance to China and don't consider employment in China to be their problem.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with your viewpoint is that when businesses do not deal with things like pensions, healthcare and "regulatory burdens," those responsibilities fall to the government and businesses complain that their taxes are too high. The response is to hide profits which prevents government from doing these tasks.

The other option is to pay your workers enough so that they can pay for their own heatlthcare and pensions. Again, that's not what businesses want to to do.

It will be painful moving from a human based workforce to a robot based workforce. What businesses won't realize is that they're heading for a complete collapse because without employed humans, they have no choice but to get their prices lower to the point of being free (that's where the collapse occurs).

In the future, when labor is no longer a "significant" cost, the real power will be in those who own the natural resources; kind of coming full circle. After all, what business owners are really good at is coordinating labor. With robots, that's not as important. Business owners (managers, if you will) will be marginalized much like the working class is today.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That has nothing to do with being a specific problem with capitalism. I could have a huge socialist empire manufacturing cheap gadgets in several different layers and you wouldn't be able to send dollars to specific people either.

That's actually a problem with full transparency. (Open source / open business.) We have this problem even with our produce and meats. What specific fertilizer was used on that produce you're eating? Nobody knows. Its not printed on the label anywhere. Similarly, there is no open record of who assembled what part of your phone. The company knows, they have databases for that sort of thing. They just are not open. Why? There's no additional profit, no motivation for them to do so.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Skapare]

Eventually, this world will be one with 100% robotic automation, owned by the financial elite, and billions of people with no hope for work and ... not part of that ever shrinking consumer market. What if everything can be made for a penny, but nobody has any pennies to buy the stuff?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Grishnakh]

I'm liking the "basic income" idea more and more. Instead of employing an army of people to run the welfare systems and look for "cheaters", just give everyone a stipend without any checks at all (except maybe for a high threshold as you said). I can see a lot of people choosing to pursue their own business, as long as this stipend is enough to keep them from starving; it makes the risk of starting a new business much lower. It'd also fix the idiotic problem where people on welfare don't want to work because they'd then lose their benefits, in effect, spending their time working for the same income they get for doing nothing, and now not having free time to do other things like be with family or go to school.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. It is ALWAYS a good thing.

The goal is that no humans need to work.

"Are we prepared for a day when 50% of the world or more has to be on welfare simply because there are no jobs available to humans anymore?"

Obviously, when we're at that stage, there is more than enough wealth available to put these people on welfare, since production capacity will be even higher than when these people were employed, but now they're not paid a salary anymore. What we have to do, is basically just starting to pay a salary to all the people whose jobs have now been automated. At some point, this will reach 100% of the human population. We can still do work, but only if we want to, there will be no difference between hobby and work anymore.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Grishnakh]

Gou and Foxcon might be using the word robot but in the majority of instances it is not what most people would consider a robot.

What "most people" (or at least, most ignorant Americans) consider a "robot" is something that doesn't exist, except maybe Honda's Asimo robot (which doesn't even do anything really useful). The Roomba wouldn't be considered a "robot" by these people either, but it certainly is.

In the industrial sector, a "robot" is a machine that completes tasks automatically. A CNC machine is a robot, for instance, even though it's just a fancy milling machine that operates according to a program. A pick-and-place machine (which places electronic components on circuit boards) is a commonly-used robot in the electronics industry. If you look at the manufacturer's plate on many of these machines, they say "industrial robot".

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[operagost]

Unemployed? It's state-planned China. They have to get them jobs. They'll probably move them all back to the farms they kidnapped them from, now.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

and how does this differ from your average American corporation ?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad example. The US (as also in much of the developed world) is punishing businesses for hiring people. There are substantial costs associated with employing people (especially when an additional employee would push the business over a bureaucratic threshold, like 50 full time employees). And it's worth noting that minimum wage prevents a lot of people from being employed simply because their labor is worth less than minimum wage at present.

My approach is to get rid of the "demands". Less demands on job creators, more jobs get created.

Well said, Mr. Romney.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're talking about phd students and postdocs in biology/medicine. Most of the work is still repetitive labor consisting of pipetting, weighing, putting tubes in a centrifuge, scanning thousands and thousands of slides etc

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[operagost]

They're just doing what the State tells them to do. As long as their products don't kill customers or poison their pets, they're in the clear.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Hadlock]

Gou and Foxcon might be using the word robot but in the majority of instances it is not what most people would consider a robot. Simply an electro-mechanical device design to complete a pre-defined task, rather than be multitasking to complete a range of variable actions.

I think you're confusing Android with Robot. C-3P0 would not be the ideal device to assemble iPods and iPads; you need specialized grip tools for the glass, frame, wires and everything else. They're also not moving from the assembly line, except to rotate and swap out tool bits, grip tools etc as products coming down the line change. Welding robots in car factories are larger versions of what will be assembling your motherboard or flat panel display in the future, and there's hundreds of models available and more in development with anywhere from one to four arms.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[operagost]

That's the general problem with capitalism.
People at the bottom of the hierarchy get the smallest compensation and the worst working conditions. As you go higher in the hierarchy, the reward is bigger and the conditions are better.

I don't understand. That's the definition of a hierarchy. Do you think that the entry-level people should have the best compensation, and as they gain responsibility their compensation should go down?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Rockoon]

When we started automating our farms, there was the side benefit that industry was booming and needed those very same offset farmers to fill the factory floors.

Industry boomed because of the large available labor force. It wasn't a coincidence.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[StripedCow]

I don't understand. That's the definition of a hierarchy.

This only shows how deeply ingrained this distorted worldview is.

Do you think that the entry-level people should have the best compensation, and as they gain responsibility their compensation should go down?

If the people at the top had any sense of responsibility, they would not let people at the bottom suffer like this.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[phorm]

"Things like sticking keys on a keyboard by hand, packing playing cards in boxes manually etc. the sort of work that was automated in the early 20th century in the west."

Also, things like loading airport baggage.

It's not just an issue of pay and monotony, some of the jobs involved chemicals that were damaging to humans, such as the neurotoxin n-hexane. Yes, you could employ a dozen people to do the dangerous, life-threatening, health-destroying job that 1 robot can do, but there is a line.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[tburkhol]

Consider an alternate welfare policy to those two. Pay everyone a fixed stipend (if you still want to avoid paying rich people, just set the income cut off at a rather high level) and completely do away with minimum wage. I'd also get rid of most health care mandates (the US style ones are particularly bad), regulatory burdens, and pensions. Someone can choose to get by on that stipend, or they can work, even a little, and get more without issue.

Interestingly, a very similar policy was implemented in Great Britain in the 19th century. Turns out to be a disaster. If workers can apply to the state for a "livable wage," then they will take ever poorer paying jobs. Actual wages collapse because employers can find willing workers at any wage, and make greater profits by not paying workers. The burden of wages ends up transferred to the state and only indirectly back to the profitable companies through taxes, but the disconnect between wages and productivity is the opposite of a healthy labor market.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Andtalath]

Market speech...

Less resources and less work being a bad thing.

The main issue with a planned economy is that as long as there aren't enough basic resources to go around you need to divide them somehow.

If we reach a level of sufficient resources for everyone, the free market will be inherently redundant.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Andtalath]

Why would you care if rich people got a monthly stipend wish is a VERY small part of the taxes they pay?
The beauty of just giving it to every citizen is that it is virtually immune to problems.

As soon as you start with exceptions, things go towards trouble.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Andtalath]

Also, since wages can be lowered overall since you don't need as much money, the power to compete with other countries increases.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Andtalath]

If society can produce enough without jobs, it's just a matter of dealing resources.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would that be a problem?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they are not 'owned' by Foxconn.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[evilRhino]

There's good and bad in most situations. Sure, these people were employed, but many didn't actually earn living wages and were more indentured servants that were forced to live in company dormitories, eat company provided food, and work so many hours that it was illegal even under Chinese standards. They also are forced into repetitive actions that caused carpal tunnel and exposed to chemicals that caused other effects. I will provide just one article citing the poor working conditions, but there are many others. http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/foxconn-worker-riot-closes-factory/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+(Ars+Technica+-+All+content)

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, we could change our attitudes that everyone needs a job or be shut out of society completely. Maybe provide a basic, livable income, and those who wanted more could choose to work, instead of being forced to work.

Or we could ban the robots and ban technological progress, because we have to prop up an economic system based on a tiny sliver feeling good about itself by starving the rest.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[gl4ss]

hmm.. you seem to be forgetting that china had an industrial age of sorts already ages ago and that ruthlessly exploiting workforce was a time honored tradition that only had a brief downturn in first half of 1900's.

the use of the word is laughable though - machine = robot for them. so here in finland our milk is milked by robots, our butter is churned by robots, we are carried up the stairs by robots, robots wash my clothes... yay for future of the last century!

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Hadlock]

The downside to this is that it creates a permanent underclass of welfare recipients. Britain is a prime example of this emerging trend.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[roman_mir]

Bravo, if you hadn't have written that comment I would have.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Grishnakh]

Not necessarily: that stipend has to come from somewhere, and that means increasing taxes for everyone who is working. Of course, if we make drastic cuts elsewhere, a good chunk of it would be paid for without any tax increases: the military budget, the "war on drugs", etc. can all be cut way, way back and those funds diverted. Plus of course our current welfare systems (at state and federal levels both) can be eliminated entirely, moving all the funds to the stipend program (and eliminating a ton of administrative overhead). I suppose Social Security could be phased out too, since there's not much point in having that if you're going to have a guaranteed stipend for everyone regardless of age. But even after all those changes, if you do the math, I don't think there's enough money to pay for a liveable stipend, for, say, everyone making less than $300k, or even $200k.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Grishnakh]

We already have a permanent underclass of welfare recipients. At least with a stipend, they wouldn't have to constantly look for ways to make more money (under the table) without losing their benefits, and could go get normal jobs to increase their income. And everyone else would have a stipend to fall back on too: students, people who lose their jobs, etc., not just people who've become really skilled at getting government benefits.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called capitalism.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[evilRhino]

Bad example. The US (as also in much of the developed world) is punishing businesses for hiring people. There are substantial costs associated with employing people (especially when an additional employee would push the business over a bureaucratic threshold, like 50 full time employees). And it's worth noting that minimum wage prevents a lot of people from being employed simply because their labor is worth less than minimum wage at present.

Businesses in the US (as also in much of the developed world) currently pay lower taxes than at any other time since the industrial age. It's also worth noting that most minimum wage workers are working at international corporations such as Wal-Mart, which move most of their income to holding companies in tax havens. Whatever costs there are to hiring people to run their stores isn't punishment, it's needed to build an environment where their business is possible. It builds roads to bring in customers, supplies, and workers. It hires police to protect them from bandits and thieves. It provides a stable currency, without which they could not buy or sell anything.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The goal is that no humans need to work."

No, that is not the goal in any way shape or form. Unless youre a lazy fuck.

The goal is for people to do work they enjoy and can still support themselves doing.

Every organism on this planet expends energy and effort to support itself. We, being biological organisms like all the rest, have to as well. There is no getting around this. Deal with it.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[couchslug]

"Are we prepared for a day when 50% of the world or more has to be on welfare simply because there are no jobs available to humans anymore?"

Technology will eventually make "Communism" necessary and that's because there will be the choice between "welfare" and the masses killing their masters. That doesn't mean "Communism" is good any more than "Capitalism" is good. Both are tools appropriate to some situations and not others.

There is no reason not to kill someone if it will benefit you more than NOT killing them. There is no reason not to pay people not to kill you if it maintains your wealth and power.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[SoldierII]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

I am sure it was lost in translation... :)

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[scamper_22]

Yes, increasing efficiency is almost always a good thing.

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs?

Some will find work in new industries.
Some will find work in current industries, probably sharing the time with the other works.

All this automation was supposed to free us up to have more free time.

Now, by no means do I suggest this transition is going to be easy.
How do we cope with our dependence on economic growth/stock market?
How do we cope with entrenched special interest like public sector unions and bankers who will not let others share in their privilege?

But the problem is not a 'lack of jobs'.
The problem is the 'distribution of jobs' and the 'position of privilege' that many are used to.

If the day should come that the government is sending people 'welfare' money and we can all live a decent life off that money... many of us would call that utopia.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Probably the biggest problem humanity faces os that your political narrative still carries weight. Actual measured results dictate otherwisr, that your concerns are not just unfounded, but that political activity based on them is counterproductive.

All measurements show quality and length of life increasing as this process occurs. It is bumpy with minimum granularity of 10 years, but it is inexorable and demonstrated, predictively, over and over again.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

When we started automating our farms, there was the side benefit that industry was booming and needed those very same offset farmers to fill the factory floors.

Industry boomed because of the large available labor force. It wasn't a coincidence.

There's no single cause-and-effect. Automated farming became possible because industry made the equipment. Industry needed the extra workers to provide the increasing demand for automated farm equipment. It's a feedback loop.

Just to further complicate things, many factories replied to saturation of their farm-products markets with branching out into other product lines. Many of which had no market until the people who'd been in the fields all day wanted products to make their new non-farm lives more comfortable.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[RabidReindeer]

'our [human] workers will then become unemployed ,' Gou said.

FTFY

Unlikely. Automation has not lead to mass unemployment in the past, and there is little reason to think this time will be any different.

As they say on Wall Street, "Past Performance is not guarantee of future results".

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[LordLimecat]

The Luddites were right all along. We never should have allowed power looms, the cotton gin, or the mechanical adding machine to take off. Think of all the lost jobs!

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wellfare is only needed because we humans suck and have this thing called money to enslave us all. In a world where 50% of the population cannot find stupid/dumb jobs, we should be thinking about stop wasting our time with money and the exchange of material things and think about actually becoming better beings.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[vakuona]

I think with appropriate incentives, increasing efficiency can always be a good thing.

We just need policies (tax and others) that change the payoffs to the employer of employing people as opposed to machines. Or just shorten the working week and prevent employers from requiring that their workers do 50 hour weeks with 50% unemployment when everyone could do 25 hour weeks, enjoy the same quality of life, have a more equitable society (not equal, but equitable) and let people relax more.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[cartel1982]

I've said it before. The only thing worse than being exploited by capitalism is NOT being exploited by capitalism.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Maxo-Texas]

go to the singularity hub and look at the robots out there today like the baxter.

Human level replacements for non-thinking jobs for under $25,000 and it 'll work 3 shifts.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're doing all the stuff you pretend to care about such as providing jobs with more dignity and decency than the workers would get without Foxconn.

Except when they are committing suicide... (perhaps when you install suicide-prevention netting and force workers to sign legally binding documents guaranteeing that they and their decendants won't sue the company, that's considered a sign of a caring employer)...

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Maxo-Texas]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/05/europes-record-youth-unemployment-the-scariest-graph-in-the-world-just-got-scarier/276423/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/youth-unemployment-rate

http://now.msn.com/youth-unemployment-rate-twice-that-of-any-other-age-group

Perhaps you are not looking in the right place.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI. Foxconn is basically a Taiwanese company, not a Chinese company. The primary worry that they have is likely to be how much money it will take to bribe the Chinese politicians... If there ever was a textbook example of a company "too-big-to-fail", Foxconn in China is probably it.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Grishnakh]

Interesting, but this isn't all that different from your typical automotive assembly line robot which has been around for a few decades now. It's just a lot smaller and cheaper, which means it's suitable for far more applications (by virtue of its cost and size). It'd be great for handling small products on an assembly line, putting things into packages, etc. There's not much intelligence there, which is really what your typical nontechnical American thinks of when the word "robot" is used: something that looks something like a human and has some intelligence in reacting to situations.

Thanks for the reference, though: this gives me some ideas.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll tell you right now. Those policies will be business-friendly.

So more corporate welfare it is. That's what business-friendly means: government giving favors to a certain group of people. The "business" people ... who are they? Oh right, those who funded the politicians' campaign, those who sold their votes for bread and circuses, those who are on the government's teet.

The problem throughout the developed world (which is incidentally where the the vast majority of complaints about the current state of things come from) is the huge overhead on employing people.

It's not by coincidence that's the case. The complaints are what is called first world problems, so of course you'll see most of it coming from the developed world. The not so developed world have more pressing matters, like "disease" and "hunger" and "warlords and bandits (sometimes also called government)" and "I'm part of a persecuted minority, and the lynch mob is here"

I don't think so. It's quite relevant to note that this problem has been worried about for the past few centuries and has naturally resolved itself throughout that period.

The past few centuries also had some of the bloodiest wars, some of the worse rise of socialism, repeated expansions of government power, untold amounts of inflation and economic malaise, and an overall loss of individual freedom. I think it is quite naive to think that if we repeat the same thing we did before, that only the good parts of history would be repeated, and not the bad.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[holmstar]

It will end with everyone (other than the wealthy/powerful) receiving just enough money, probably from the government, whether they work or not. What is "just enough"? Enough to prevent revolution, and not much more. It would be funded by the wealthy and powerful, because they know that they need to keep the population placated in order to retain wealth and power.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's worth noting that minimum wage prevents a lot of people from being employed simply because their labor is worth less than minimum wage at present.

A job that 's not worth minimum wage is a job that's not worth doing. Those folks behind the counter at McDonalds? They all earn more than minimum wage and they're all recieving food stamps, because you can't live on minimum wage. Those food stamps are welfare for Walmart and McDonalds; without food stamps people could not afford to work for those low wages, and McDonalds would have to raise wages, raise prices, and settle for fewer profits.

I already mentioned minimum wage as an example of a policy that creates unemployment.

That tea party myth has been thoroughly discredited numerous times.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Andtalath]

The taxes aren't exactly fixed.

And, salaries for low-wage people is fundamentally more important for competition on an international scale than high-wage people.

So, higher taxes on higher income to give everyone a basic stipend would lower wages and create a more stable market.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree completely! I mean, look at how horrible it is that all those people picking up horse manure lost their jobs with the invention of the automobile! Now they're forced to be computer programmers instead and spend most of their time shoveling virtual manure on Slashdot at 20 times the wage.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the general problem with capitalism.
People at the bottom of the hierarchy get the smallest compensation and the worst working conditions. As you go higher in the hierarchy, the reward is bigger and the conditions are better.

I don't understand. That's the definition of a hierarchy. Do you think that the entry-level people should have the best compensation, and as they gain responsibility their compensation should go down?

I type words and symbol into a computer for a living, with air conditioning available at all times in the office. I do it pretty well and make a reasonable amount. The guy who cleans the sewers in town makes less than I do, and non-union private septic system workers make much less. As much as I may dislike VB, I prefer it to actual turds. Those guy, in a fair world, should make more than I do. I would do 90% of my job for free if I had a true social safety net and equality. That guy wouldn't. He should be compensated more.

You tried to equate power with responsibility. The CEO of a fortune 500 doesn't work harder than the new grunts on the loading dock in Shanghai, but he gets better conditions and massively higher pay. Why? What empirical data supports him being worth 100 times as much, much less 10,000 times as much? It's not for greater responsibility, as they get millions even if they tank a company and get fired. They get more simply because they can. A 90% incremental tax rate would alleviate that problem a lot and reduce inequity in the country. Equality of opportunity is good. Sewer guy might not be able to do my computer job, but neither could the CEO. Why should one get vastly more than the other?

Check out http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

Lastly, if the price of everything but food goes down, that's the same as an apparent increase in wages for encouraging automation. Automation is not a zero sum game for the people still left in the game, but it is a terrible loss to those who are automated right out of it. You can kill those people (which will eventually include both of us as automation improves), or you can subsidize them somehow. I propose we do it across the board to all citizens of voting age. Want to play xbox and drink cheap beer in a studio apartment, go right ahead Consumer#8675309 - $1k/month (or whatever) is fine and that's cheaper than mass police forces and prisons. Let's suppose we have 300M "consumers", at $1k/month, that's $3.6 trillion a year for "welfare". The US economy is ~$16 Trillion so that "huge" "Wasteful" spending is about 20% of our current economy. We could put 90% of the population on that level of welfare right now without a major hit, even if there was no improvement in the economy from the resulting reallocation of resources and jobs. 90% of criminals are non-violent, so there goes most prison and police costs, and all related expenses can be diverted to Art and museums, or tanks and missles - let's compromise and spend it on military history for a win-win...

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[AK Marc]

Isn't that what happened in the US? Are we supposed to hate China for following our lead? What would you have them do?

I mean lets face it, when you're working conditions are so bad that a percentage of your workers view death as a plausible means of escape and you're putting up nets to stop them from killing themselves, then maybe it's time to reflect on how your business is treating it's workers.

The US high schools have a higher suicide rate than Foxconn. What's that say about the US and US education?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

When we started automating our farms, there was the side benefit that industry was booming and needed those very same offset farmers to fill the factory floors.

Wrong. Farms started being automated during the Great Depression, when we already had historically record high unemployment. The booming industries of the 1920s (folks who were in their twenties then have told me that the roaring twenties only roared for the rich) had already gone bankrupt and shuttered their doors.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[perceptual.cyclotron]

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs to replace all of the inefficient human labor they're replacing?

That's what prison is for. Capitalism requires increasing use of force as the capital gradient (i.e., income disparity) steepens. The real 'invisible hand' where potential differences are concerned is always a rectifying force. The rich exploit workers to become richer so they can afford robots to replace the workers. Displaced workers, at a sufficient volume and level of desperation will eventually act to redistribute those ill-gotten gains – unless they are either put down or locked away first. The legal system is very well constructed and elaborated for this purpose. For example, in many places you can be fined for being homeless – and if you can't pay the fine, they'll put you in jail. It doesn't matter that jails are expensive. Even if those costs weren't defrayed by the public, the elites will always find the capital (or other incentives) to maintain the structural violence necessary to protect their treasure.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[ogdenk]

" but why should Foxconn worry that they will be unemployed?" ...because it shows Foxconn for what it is, a completely apathetic company who only views it's workforce as meat robots

You mean like most large companies that exist today? Companies can and will do anything to increase shareholder value and keep labor costs down, up to and including breaking the law.

People kill themselves in the US from job-related stress from apathetic companies all the time.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

those responsibilities fall to the government

Those responsibilities have always remained with us. It simply doesn't make sense to push that over uncritically to organizations such as governments or businesses that have substantial conflicts of interest with the people who actually use the services in question.

The other option is to pay your workers enough so that they can pay for their own heatlthcare and pensions.

That already happens. Everyone wants to pay less than they have to. But they don't because they otherwise wouldn't get it.

It will be painful moving from a human based workforce to a robot based workforce. What businesses won't realize is that they're heading for a complete collapse because without employed humans, they have no choice but to get their prices lower to the point of being free (that's where the collapse occurs).

Why hasn't the human-based workforce collapsed? A robot-based workforce still needs stuff done.

In the future, when labor is no longer a "significant" cost

Note, that the reverse has happened. As we've replaced all those workers, the actual cost of labor has gone up. That's because new needs for labor opened up.

Business owners (managers, if you will) will be marginalized much like the working class is today.

Managers aren't owners. And you're basically outlining a scenario where capital becomes extremely valuable. That means owners won't be marginalized.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Except when they are committing suicide...

Given that's an extremely infrequent occurance and Foxconn isn't any worse than Chinese society in general at handling suicide, I'll just have to rest my case.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

So more corporate welfare it is. That's what business-friendly means: government giving favors to a certain group of people. The "business" people ... who are they? Oh right, those who funded the politicians' campaign, those who sold their votes for bread and circuses, those who are on the government's teet.

Let's not be stupid here. Look into the process of starting a business and hiring people. I guarantee that no matter where you live, it's going to be difficult. Some places are worse than others. Supposedly, Greece is worse than Germany, for example (both in time it takes and the size of the bribes and fees that need to be paid).

The past few centuries also had some of the bloodiest wars, some of the worse rise of socialism, repeated expansions of government power, untold amounts of inflation and economic malaise, and an overall loss of individual freedom. I think it is quite naive to think that if we repeat the same thing we did before, that only the good parts of history would be repeated, and not the bad.

What "bad parts" of technology development led to massive and permanent unemployment? Nothing. You can talk about how "naive" it is to observe history and apply those lessons to today, but it works.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Well, I did vote for Romney. I don't think much of him and he probably got the Republican nomination by vote tabulation fraud, but he would have been better than Obama.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Actual wages collapse because employers can find willing workers at any wage, and make greater profits by not paying workers.

[...]

The burden of wages ends up transferred to the state and only indirectly back to the profitable companies through taxes, but the disconnect between wages and productivity is the opposite of a healthy labor market.

It's interesting how people choose to interpret history in a way that enforces their biases. I don't believe your claim that there was a disconnect between wages and productivity for the simple reason that it wouldn't have made any sense. Do you really believe, for example, that such a business would keep employed people who were for whatever reason well below the norm for productivity?

Second, when wages are too high, a "collapse" (in other words, a modest decline) is what is needed. Not merely trying to keep wages high without providing a reason for employing people at those wages.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

Why would you care if rich people got a monthly stipend wish is a VERY small part of the taxes they pay?

It helps undermine "fairness" arguments against the plan. I'm willing to extend modestly socialist policies in order to get most of what I want.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

I notice you only mention "international corporations". Not every business is or should be such.

Whatever costs there are to hiring people to run their stores isn't punishment, it's needed to build an environment where their business is possible. It builds roads to bring in customers, supplies, and workers. It hires police to protect them from bandits and thieves. It provides a stable currency, without which they could not buy or sell anything.

Who sets the prices for these services? These aren't services that are valuable at any price.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[khallow]

A job that 's not worth minimum wage is a job that's not worth doing.

Remember the actual minimum wage is always $0 per hour. I'd rather have people doing productive jobs that are "not worth doing" rather than doing nothing at all. And those people can learn something, build an employment record, and in general do something useful that can be parleyed into bigger opportunities.

That tea party myth has been thoroughly discredited numerous times.

It has considerable explanatory power. For example, in the US it explains why unemployment is so large among the poor.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[operagost]

Your statement had two facets: the idea of poor working conditions (which is subjective; for the sake of argument we'll agree that Foxconn working conditions are unacceptable) and the idea of inferior compensation. I don't ever agree with poor working conditions (unless they're unavoidable and thus compensated). I do agree with greater compensation for greater responsibility. Don't you?

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[tragedy]

And it's worth noting that minimum wage prevents a lot of people from being employed simply because their labor is worth less than minimum wage at present.

The obvious issue there is that it's virtually impossible to live on minimum wage as it is. So, all these people who you seem to think would be able to get jobs if there were no minimum wage would be getting jobs where they earn starvation wages. Well, ok, they'll have plenty to eat as long as they don't waste their money on frivolous things like somewhere to live and clothes to wear.

I agree with you on the basic living wage idea. Not so much on getting rid of healthcare mandates, although I do agree that the US style ones are terrible.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Maxo-Texas]

I don't think of robots as having intelligence but as simple expert systems implementing at most 50 rules.

Over half of human jobs do not require more intelligence and the people working those jobs won't be qualified to work jobs requiring intelligence and creativity.

I expect systemic unemployment over 35% once the boomer retirement is absorbed and probably sooner than that (after 2024)..

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[mjwx]

Do you also care as much about all the people that lost their work when agricultural automation became wide spread? Do you cry for the thousands of workers that might have been tilling the land manually instead of just one guy riding a tractor - when you eat your morning cereals/bread/whatever?

I'm sure if he was alive in those times he would have had a right royal cry about it. Those evil factories, taking away a mans work, why do we need all those fancy metal things anyway or some other bollocks like that.

Some people cant see past the present. Manufacturing in the west as a method of mass employment is gone, we've been service oriented economies for over a decade now. Bringing back manufacturing as automation wont employ many people and bringing it back as a labour market will ensure the creation of a poor underclass. We need to focus on industries that cant be copied so easily, biotech and nanotech immediately spring to mind. Commercial Aircraft manufacturing has remained primarily in Europe and North America because it is so complex and requires such a high standard that it cant be done in China. Even with the new Comac regional jet, it uses GE engines, Honeywell avionics, essentially it's a US plane assembled in China. The same is true for a lot of "domestic" heavy industries, their locally made high speed trains are made from Korean and German parts. China simply dont have the knowledge or experience to compete so they buy it from other nations, stamp "made in China" on the side and pretend they did it themselves.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's not be stupid here.

I'm waiting for you.

Look into the process of starting a business and hiring people. I guarantee that no matter where you live, it's going to be difficult

So? I didn't say otherwise. I'm saying when people say they'll make thing more "business-friendly", what they'll do isn't going to make things easier, but shuffle around the difficulty, so only some privileged people have it easier, while the rest have it tougher.

What "bad parts" of technology development led to massive and permanent unemployment? Nothing.

My "bad parts" is talking about the bad parts of history, not technology development.

But for argument, there are plenty of bad parts to technology development: the parts where government use those technologies to kill and oppress (and thus create a lot of unemployment)

You can talk about how "naive" it is to observe history and apply those lessons to today, but it works.

Bro, that's my point. I'm saying you are NOT observing history and applying the lessons. You're merely trying to repeat it.

Re:Technicians and engineers, really?

[cavebison]

The biggest improvements in population, lifespan, quality of life and human condition in general, the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, were both based on the ability to have fewer people do the work that used to take many.

Sure, while population was relatively low, that was a logical progression. It's like saying hey, pulling natural resources from the ground has been the basis of modern society, it can't be a bad thing! A growing population plus "fewer people doing the work" ultimately leads where? They can't all be middle class, and work in office buildings.

The rationale which took us from the I.R. to the 90's no longer applies.

At Foxconn Republic

[vencs]

Who assembles the Robots?

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

Other robots.

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[lxs]

Far less people than those who assemble the iPhones. On the bright side, robots don't hurl themselves off the roof of your factory.

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[Narcocide]

On the bright side, robots don't hurl themselves off the roof of your factory.

... yet.

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[K. S. Kyosuke]

On the bright side, robots don't hurl themselves off the roof of your factory.

Which is good; being much sturdier, they'd trash the blacktop.

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[dingen]

You know your working conditions are bad when the robots are committing suicide.

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[MickLinux]

Robo-Rally gamers unite!

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[Anonymous Coward]

Good old AWC 10011010000110000001111100000000001!

Re:At Foxconn Republic

[MickLinux]

1001001 0100000 1000001 1000111 1010010 1000101 1000101
 

social meltdown

[Anonymous Coward]

...and so the march to inevitable social meltdown in China continues.

Just a matter of time.

Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than 60

[Kartu]

Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than 60 years ago in his novel "Player Piano".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Player_Piano_(novel)

Out of all imaginable scenarios of going robotic, Foxconn doing it is the worst I could come up with. Even North Korea doing it would be less evil in my humble opinion.

First India, now China...

[cold fjord]

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

Re:First India, now China...

[AHuxley]

The US computer importers are just rethinking ideas like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CKD_kits for their products to get in 'new' classified edu and mil projects.
All the paperwork now looks clean and the long cheap supply chains stay intact.
The world is not strange, just using old creativity to apply for massive ongoing US gov contracts that have security fine print no direct outside firm can get around.

Re:First India, now China...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure it's at all surprising or strange that the US is now the source of outsourced labor. Have you seen the wages offered to college-educated twenty-somethings in this country? If you're not in the top 1%, you're in the bottom third, and that's the god's honest truth, awful as it is.

Re:First India, now China...

[Your.Master]

If you're not in the top 1%, you're in the bottom third

You are hurting math.

Re:First India, now China...

[sociocapitalist]

The world is becoming a strange place.

As Indian companies grow in the U.S., outsourcing comes home

India’s outsourcing giants — faced with rising wages at home — have looked for growth opportunities in the United States. But with Washington crimping visas for visiting Indian workers, some companies such as Aegis are slowly hiring workers in North America, where their largest corporate customers are based. In this evolution, outsourcing has come home.

Foxconn to speed up 'robot army' deployment; 20,000 robots already in its factories

In addition, Foxconn's CEO said the company is prepared to expand its manufacturing in the U.S., but the move will depend on "economic factors." The company already has factories in Indianapolis and Houston, and employs thousands of workers in the country, according to Gou. -- more

Thousands is a drop in the pond.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/20/foxconn_tenth_biggest_employer/

Good move

[formfeed]

Robots are far less likely to jump of buildings if you treat them like crap.

(On the other hand, a robot revolt could get ugly.)

Re:Good move

[RabidReindeer]

Robots are far less likely to jump of buildings if you treat them like crap.

(On the other hand, a robot revolt could get ugly.)

Just ask Rossum!

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[gtirloni]

Why?

Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

If the number on man hours per year needed to produce the products I use decreases, then I should get to work less right? Less work for everyone, more free time and the same amount of Chinese electronics! A higher percent of the money then goes to research and development, where most of the people can be employed, but work less hours. I'm looking forward to working 10 hours a week!

More free time for everyone means more cool projects, more web comics, more opens source software, more political involvement, more educated people, and even time to really think! More time to make you own food, raise your own kids, and other things that add even more efficiency and thus further reductions in hours to work!

How I wish that were true. I'd gladly work 1/2 time for 1/3 pay as it is (I'd love to share my job with the unemployed, but I can't). If stuff gets more affordable, working 40 hours a week is going to be even more overkill. If it didn't suck so much to be unemployed in the US (say we provided at least what we give the prisoners: food, shelter, and healthcare), I'd be happy to take time off work without fear I'd get stuck jobless. Our economy is kinda messed up.

Re:Good!

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who is about to make that exact jump - 12 hours a week for around 1/3 the pay as before, I can say that I'm really looking forward to it. Will give me time to get back in shape, work on some of my own projects, and fix up my house a bit. Will also open up another job for someone else if they want it/can do it.

And full benefits at work. Pension accumulates at 1/2 speed, but not worried about that. Medical coverage will be there, on top of what we already get up here in Canada.

Can't wait.

Re:Good!

[SuricouRaven]

What actually happens:
- The cost of living goes down by a third.
- People are thus able to support themselves on a third lower wages.
- Your employer either cuts your pay by a third, or fires you and hires someone willing to work for less in your place.

Re:Good!

[sociocapitalist]

If the number on man hours per year needed to produce the products I use decreases, then I should get to work less right? Less work for everyone, more free time and the same amount of Chinese electronics! A higher percent of the money then goes to research and development, where most of the people can be employed, but work less hours. I'm looking forward to working 10 hours a week!

More free time for everyone means more cool projects, more web comics, more opens source software, more political involvement, more educated people, and even time to really think! More time to make you own food, raise your own kids, and other things that add even more efficiency and thus further reductions in hours to work!

How I wish that were true. I'd gladly work 1/2 time for 1/3 pay as it is (I'd love to share my job with the unemployed, but I can't). If stuff gets more affordable, working 40 hours a week is going to be even more overkill. If it didn't suck so much to be unemployed in the US (say we provided at least what we give the prisoners: food, shelter, and healthcare), I'd be happy to take time off work without fear I'd get stuck jobless. Our economy is kinda messed up.

lol

Try working in China, India or any developing or under-developed country for awhile and then we'll see if you complain about working in the USA.

With regard to the idea of working less and having more free time...the French tried that. It's possible, but against international competition where there are no labor laws it doesn't work very well.

Also, it would be socialism to have a shorter work week and we all know how evil socialism is.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a slightly updated version of Marxist/socialist economics, and about as true and relevant to the real world.

Stretching the Term

[some old guy]

I've never been in a Foxconn plant, but I wonder how many of these so-called robots are just dumb 2- or 3-axis pick-and-place gadgets. "Robot" sounds more impressive to journalists and investors, but among industrial automation professionals the term has specific meanings. Of course, to the layperson a self-basting turkey could be called "robotic" by colloquial usage.

Re:Stretching the Term

[Anonymous Coward]

Coo, my Roburkey has been rumbled! TO THE PATENT OFFICE!

Re:Stretching the Term

[RabidReindeer]

I've never been in a Foxconn plant, but I wonder how many of these so-called robots are just dumb 2- or 3-axis pick-and-place gadgets. "Robot" sounds more impressive to journalists and investors, but among industrial automation professionals the term has specific meanings. Of course, to the layperson a self-basting turkey could be called "robotic" by colloquial usage.

You do what's cost-effective. Automated assembly lines have even less freedom of movement than that, but they handle a lot of the labor at bakeries and breweries. If you can get by with conveyor-belt stations and 2/3-axis dumb machines in most of the plant, it just frees up capital to buy a handful of Da Vinci-style smart robots for the really touchy stuff.

Time to Support Google

[tuppe666]

I am in shock and awe. Apple apologists have been arguing that Chinese workers(Foxconn) are cheaper than robots for forever, while Apple have smugly told the president that iphone manufacture will not return to America(They only argue to the Tax Man they are Irish...not the Irish tax Man obviously), because their workforce is does anything for biscuits. They have promised with must gusto to move the the less complicated parts of (one of its products) for PC manufacture(seriously) to the states to great fanfair...and failed to deliver.

Apples instance and investment in what accounts to slave labour (ironically now simply redundant) has cost the company its cutting edge products to long refresh cycles, and heavy dependences on its rivals technology, which actually manufacture products, and have thousands of patents on touch-screen technology and update there phones every three months. Its profits dropping now its devices are considered Mid-range at best...At least they proudly pay no profits on those ever shrinking profit margins. At least it to Collect a Billion for its few design patents...Sorry 400Million...Less.

I notice Google is getting Motorola to manufacture the cool named Xphone in the United States. I think its a good strategy. It would have been a better one for Apple...they chose to give the money back to shareholders instead...while avoiding paying tax again with ibonds.

Apples Apologists continued defence of Android is only winning because of cheap Chinese Phones ignoring its where the cheap (with high margin) iPhone is made, is coming true only they unlike the iPhone are "Great Value" Look at the Neo N003;iOcean;X7;UMi X2;JiaYu G4 http://www.gizchina.com/2013/03/05/poll-neo-n003-vs-iocean-x7-vs-umi-x2-vs-jiayu-g4/ all phones that destroy the iPhone a a fraction of cost, sporting (1.5ghz now)Quad cores and 2GB of Memory and 13 Mega-Pixel cameras and full-hd 1080P (and Multiple Simslots ;) They are incredibly tempting.

I think the bottom line is you can have buildings full of robots *anywhere*.

Re:Time to Support Google

[citizenr]

Yes Google. Remember how google announced that weird ball shaped TV thingamajiggy? They said it was "made in usa". Turned out to be assembled in USA from prefabricated Chinese modules (not parts, whole modules snapped together in US just to be able to slap made in usa sticker).

Re:Time to Support Google

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh here's Tuppe666. Here for his daily Apple attacking. Your poorly put together shilling doesn't even make sense today.

You must be ignoring all of the Mac production moving to the states. Call me when Google/Motorola actually produce said product.

Re:Time to Support Google

[Anonymous Coward]

tuppe! I was wondering when you'd get your pro-Google/anti-Apple schtick on in this thread. kudos for making slashdot feel like The Verge.

This will be very interesting

[Virtucon]

LOL, man Foxconn sounds like the US Auto Makers in the 1970s. It's because as others have pointed out. Bolted Down robotic workers don't complain and don't jump out of the nearest window. They depreciate, require routine maintenance but day after day they do what they're instructed within extremely precise tolerances. That means a better quality product for their customers without all of those "soft problems" that complicates business.

With China pushing people out of rural areas and into ever larger cities, it will be very interesting over the next few years to see how all of those people will earn a living. While the jobs at Foxconn are drudgery by any modern standard, they do allow people to earn money and contribute to the economy. Turning them ultimately into those nice wage slaves that all companies love that buy products and need services. Workers in China are already pushing for higher wages and better working conditions, something that the beneficent Foxconn would be very reluctant to go along with given their recent labor relations gaffs and breakup with Apple. Unfortunately the stories about labor shortages in China seem a bit disingenuous and reminds me of how there's a presumed "tech shortage" in this country. It seems even in China getting labor for the absolute cheapest price may be pushing this 12 year urbanization plan. These are all problems for China which are magnitudes of order more complex when you're talking about the scale in terms of a population of over one billion. I don't think China can make enough of anything, electronics, knock-off watches, handbags et al to keep up with the population demanding a better quality of life, which means better wages, better working conditions and all those consumer goodies the rest of us take so much for granted.

As a father with three kids in college and another one one just about there already, I wonder where they're going to make their niche in this world economy where your education and your experience can all be cooped out to some fraud ridden outsourcing firm who brings in a person or outsources your position elsewhere. I've told all of my kids not to follow me into Software and Engineering fields because people employed in those fields are now considered a commodity and subject to too much educational push from an ever increasing wave of immigrants from diploma mills overseas. What people don't really realize is that we've shifted out way of thinking from "value and quality" to "good enough at a low price" because the products and services we use have varying degrees based on those expectations. Entire markets the world over have been shifting in that direction and it's eroding the economic and social landscape of countries everywhere with companies seeking the lowest cost labor they can find that has just enough technical competency to get what they need done.

Re:This will be very interesting

[jmhobrien]

College is increasingly becoming a waste of time and money. This is increasingly the case in our global economy, where everyone is racing each other to the bottom and everything you need to know, can be learned online as required. This is especially true for technical fields. If you can afford to go to college, the chances are you don't need the money as much as your future competition.

Re:This will be very interesting

[xelah]

With China pushing people out of rural areas and into ever larger cities [nytimes.com], it will be very interesting over the next few years to see how all of those people will earn a living.

There's no shortage of things worth doing in the world, and especially not in a middle income country with a huge population still in poverty. It's a shorter-term problem, though - economies can't jump from one state to another, nor can people jump in to jobs needing different skills. And in a country like China, the state can always use those people to build a new high speed railway in the wrong place or a new ghost city nobody lives in. They could even do something shocking, like use them to make their food supply safe or clean their environment. A recession like that in the west is a pure economic problem - a problem in the control system, not the physical reality - and the Chinese government is a lot more able to meddle in it.

Re:This will be very interesting

[khallow]

A recession like that in the west is a pure economic problem - a problem in the control system, not the physical reality - and the Chinese government is a lot more able to meddle in it.

I disagree. A recession is not a problem. It is a consequence of a problem, here, that whatever society is doing is simply out of whack with reality to the point that when the illusion falls apart and society attempts to return to a more reasonable approach, it results in considerable economic harm in the form of a recession. Such a problem can be as simple as a mistaken perception of what is valuable.

I suppose you can view the avoiding of recession as a control problem, though the usual means of control (such as altering the money supply) aren't particularly powerful unless one is capable of deeply interfering with peoples' choices. But even with that power, attempting to avoid recession is poor strategy.

The difficulty is that recessions are natural corrections of problems, not the actual problems themselves. And trying to prevent for decades on end, societies from fixing inherent problems just ends up with really large recessions in the end when your control systems are overwhelmed.

For example, a lot of people have noted that businesses have collectively grown very short-sighted in how they operate. This wasn't always the case. I believe it to be a direct result of the various attempts to evade recessions and such. When you remove a vast amount of future risk, you also remove the need to plan against that risk.

Re:This will be very interesting

[microTodd]

I've told all of my kids not to follow me into Software and Engineering fields because people employed in those fields are now considered a commodity and subject to too much educational push from an ever increasing wave of immigrants from diploma mills overseas

An honest question...where are you pushing them instead? Healthcare maybe? Finance? Or something like plumbing or electrical, something pragmatic and non-outsourceable but still able to make a decent living?

I have two kids, not college age yet, so I wrestle with this thought problem all the time.

Re:This will be very interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

College is increasingly becoming a waste of time and money...

I tihnk that is a bit of an oversimplification. It is becoming a waste of time and money for a lot of cases where having just any old degree, MBA, PHD, what-have-you just so you can say you have a qualification, versus a qualifiation (and I would say generally in Science/Engineering where you cannot just really 'learn on the job') that is required for the job in hand. That can only be a good thing.

We will see the more 'frivilous' examples of University Courses that really have no specific aim being dropped and those that are left will really force those prospective students to have to know their stuff to get those places rather than it just be a ant trail through the system with the Universities having to have additional tests and qualfiications to justify that their degree is actually meaningful.

Re:This will be very interesting

[foniksonik]

Teach the kids leadership and/or coordination skills. There will always be good jobs at the top. It's not important where you start as long as you rise quickly into a strategic role.

If they don't have an aptitude for those then go with research in any field. It's not long before technicians (doctors, engineers, programmers, etc) will be automated or trained cheaply / imported.

If you combine leadership, coordination and research you have all the skills to start your own company or elevate an existing one. The other necessary roles can be contracted.

Re:This will be very interesting

[roman_mir]

Are you kidding me? Government?

The world is not filled with enough cheap and plentiful products that everybody can enjoy, even if some people think that it is. Even once everybody can enjoy the most basic things, it's not like everybody has his or her own yacht or submarine or spaceship and it would be nice eventually to achieve that as well and that will require almost immeasurably more than what we can offer today with our current levels of productivity.

Basically jobs are not limited to anything at all, there are limitless possibilities for doing things that haven't been done yet and whenever you think "we have invented and done everything that there is" you will be proven wrong every single time.

Re:This will be very interesting

[xelah]

I disagree. A recession is not a problem.

In a recession like the recent one (or any economic conditions with high unemployment) we have a bunch of things worth doing and a bunch of people who could do them but are not. This is a problem in which the economy's control system (by which I mean the markets, currencies, contracts, regulations an all the other social mechanisms which case the economy to produce this physical outcome rather than that physical outcome) doesn't make the best decisions. The chain of causation may go back further, but it doesn't cease to be a problem just because it was caused by something else.

It is a consequence of a problem, here, that whatever society is doing is simply out of whack with reality to the point that when the illusion falls apart and society attempts to return to a more reasonable approach, it results in considerable economic harm in the form of a recession.

Indeed it can be. Take Spain, for example. The Spanish consumed more than they produced for years, and the only reason all the Euros didn't drain out of Spain and thus make this impossible was because they were borrowing from abroad (to finance mortgages, in Spain's case there was almost no government debt involved). The crunch came, and foreigners stopped sending goods to Spain in exchange for promises of goods going the other way in the future (ie, debt). The response of the Spanish economy has been to reduce output and leave 25% of potential employees doing nothing. This response IS a problem. A much better response would be to produce more and start sending a lot of it abroad, in settlement of debts (or at least produce stuff for themselves). The actual response is not just a physically inevitable outcome of earlier poor decisions, it's problematic in itself. It's a wrong decision for the mechanism to make.

The difficulty is that recessions are natural corrections of problems, not the actual problems themselves.

Producing less and leaving resources idle is not an effective means to correct previous excessive borrowing. It may be a failure mode commonly triggered by previous bad decision making, but it's still a failure to make the correct decisions.

Re:This will be very interesting

[marcosdumay]

Producing less and leaving resources idle is not an effective means to correct previous excessive borrowing. It may be a failure mode commonly triggered by previous bad decision making, but it's still a failure to make the correct decisions.

And that's typical lame-economist thinking where everything is fungible. The world does not work that way, we need to make the resources idle before somebody else can allocate them for any other use. As a consequence, if we have a giant missalocation of resources, the only way to fix it is by making those resources idle, creating a price signal that people can recognize and take advantage of.

And, that's still idealized in several ways. For example, notice that we have a huge amount of resources allocated at the task of fighting productive allocations of resources.

Re:This will be very interesting

[KGIII]

I have been sitting, staring at your post, and thinking for the better part of an hour now. Drawn, perhaps, like a moth to a bug zapper.

I am not sure that Science and Engineering (and I'm an EE) can not, in practice, be learned on the job. With a decent level of high school educational background, the fundamentals understood, and the availability of information that we have today, it seems like this could be done. If we stop and think about it, really, these things have been pretty much learned on the job before - it is how they were created. If we think about it, and they're not doing the same thing over and over again (which, too could be), they're constantly learning on the job all the time.

So, I'm stuck... I don't really know or anything but I've given it more thought than it deserves. It seems to me that the practical application can be learned on the job and the developed skills and sufficient motivation can move someone up the educational ladder. I am envisioning an apprentice-type of program and I don't think it is impossible but I believe it is legally prevented in most cases.

I don't want to turn this into a novella so I won't but I do feel compelled to chime in that I don't think that it would be impossible to accomplish OTJ training for the fields at, at least, the practical levels. I think advancement from there may also be possible without the traditional academia setting.

Re:This will be very interesting

[rhodium_mir]

Every time a post by me or roman gets modded down it needlessly delays the future when everyone owns their own spaceship.

Re:This will be very interesting

[xelah]

An ideal physical outcome (as produced by an ideal but non-existent alternative to our markets, etc.) wouldn't leave resources idle before using them for something. People would go immediately in to training or education, or to some other job which their skills can meet. In any case, there's no shortage of stuff where there are plenty of skilled people who can do it, or which almost anyone can do, or learn to do in much less time than many people have been unemployed. There are lots of unemployed construction workers. Are there really no homes, schools, hospitals or offices which could be improved so as to make someone's life better? No infrastructure which needs replacing, repairing or which could be usefully built? Even the unskilled can do or learn to do plenty of things which people would love to have done for them - everything from planting municipal flower beds to cooking their food. But the economy isn't able to make these things happen, not because it's not a physical possibility, but because the system isn't an ideal one and makes incorrect decisions. And that's my point: mass unemployment is the result of the economy making poor decisions now, not a physically inevitable result of poor decisions in the past.

Re:This will be very interesting

[marcosdumay]

Well if your comment was at the theory level, I missundertood you.

I completely agree that recessions are temporary suboptimal allocation of resources; if we could just make the optimum allocation, we wouldn't have them. But in practice it would be the same if it was mandated by physics, we simply don't have the tech to solve the allocation problem, and any missalocation will cause a recession while it's correcting.

Knowing that, the only things we can do are minimising the misalocation (by minimising the government, for example) and letting the corrections happen as soon as it's natural.

Progress

[jmhobrien]

Despite what many may believe, this could be good for humans for many reasons. 1) It should free up human labour to work on things that humans can do better than robots. 2) It will force people to become smarter. Some may not like this, but it is survival of the fittest. 3) Ideally, prices will drop. In reality, profits increase.

Re:Progress

[Daemonik]

Usually the people who spout things like "but it is survival of the fittest" are the ones willing to step over the dead homeless unemployed people laying in the streets while they clutch their copies of Atlas Shrugged tightly to their chests and tell themselves if all those parasites would just quit being lazy and get a job they would be better off. And then they order another round of layoffs so their stocks go up another 2%.

Re:Progress

[KGIII]

That's funny. I don't know anybody like that. Not one.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[gl4ss]

why? they're just machines that they're calling robots.

it's no different from the industrial revolution at all. it's totally the same as replacing people who made fabrics with machines. what the machines are like is irrelevant, point of those machines has always been to reduce labor needed for output - because then we can do more.

or do you think it would be a good idea to get rid out of pick'n'place machines in electronics production? to get rid of chainsaws? notice that this is a "problem" we have been facing for many centuries now. ideally nobody would need to work on needed output and could just work on arts, science, drinking etc...

who's going to

[Anonymous Coward]

maintain the robots? I guess that will employ some people back?

Re:who's going to

[SuricouRaven]

But not as many as the robots replace. That's the idea. Fewer workers means lower labor costs.

Productivity is a good thing, jobs are not...

[KonoWatakushi]

The ultimate goal of our endeavors should be to produce wealth for human beings, not mindless jobs, nor backbreaking labor. If tedious and burdensome tasks like agriculture, manufacturing, and mining can be done by machines, all the better. That should free up people to do other things, including not slaving away for 40-60 hours a week. Increases in productivity are always a good thing--the problem is in the distribution of wealth, or rather the utter lack thereof nowadays. As jobs inevitably evaporate, we need to find new and better ways of doing this.

One particular area of productivity deserves special mention. Virtually all of wealth is derived from energy, yet energy has no intrinsic value. It is purely an input, so energy generation should be done as cheaply and efficiently as possible, as it compounds the cost of everything else. It is asinine to make it into a jobs program, yet that is exactly what Obama has done with his recent proposal.

Re:Productivity is a good thing, jobs are not...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't wait until they outsource jobs to automation in this country for things like fast food workers. Then my order would never be messed up! (As long as the voice recognition gets it correctly. But I've always wondered why its voice anyway. Why not just a mobile phone selection that's delivered to the restaurant?)

Re:Productivity is a good thing, jobs are not...

[moeinvt]

You might be interested in a book called "Progress and Poverty".

The fact that we've had such gains in productivity, especially from the Industrial Revolution to the present, but have also had a perpetual underclass of poor and homeless is rather perplexing.

The book is a theory attempting to explain the conundrum and some suggested public policy measures to address it. In brief, the author suggests that resource monopoly is the fundamental cause of unequal wealth distribution and therefore resources should be the focus of tax policy.

Re:Productivity is a good thing, jobs are not...

[phorm]

"The ultimate goal of our endeavours should be to produce wealth for human being"

Oh it does, just a select few human beings and generally not the species as a whole.

Hope you're proud of yourselves...

[MikeRT]

Even though the Foxconn suicide rate was about the same as the rest of the country, the media and various agitators saw fit to demonize Foxconn as though it were in the same vein of blood-for-profit as the African diamond trade. Now lo and behold, Foxconn has said "fuck this, robots are cheaper" and a million Chinese are going to lose their jobs because of your histrionics over a few deaths by mentally unstable people.

And yeah, Foxconn's jobs may suck by American standards. However they were pure gold if you came from rural China where you probably had the same hours, even more back-breaking work and probably a worse place to sleep at night than a Foxconn dormitory.

Re:Hope you're proud of yourselves...

[Anonymous Coward]

Even though the Foxconn suicide rate was about the same as the rest of the country, the media and various agitators saw fit to demonize Foxconn as though it were in the same vein of blood-for-profit as the African diamond trade. Now lo and behold, Foxconn has said "fuck this, robots are cheaper" and a million Chinese are going to lose their jobs because of your histrionics over a few deaths by mentally unstable people.

And yeah, Foxconn's jobs may suck by American standards. However they were pure gold if you came from rural China where you probably had the same hours, even more back-breaking work and probably a worse place to sleep at night than a Foxconn dormitory.

Do you really think that the decision to invest in cheaper automated manufacturing technologies was because of the bad press they caught about working conditions in their factories?

Guess what, they did it because it's cheaper and they are interested in the bottom line. The "histronics" in the west has had little to no effect on their sales or practices. And no, those jobs are not "pure gold" to anyone, nobody WANTS those jobs they take them because they need them or as a transition as evidenced by their extremely high turnover rate and occasional riot/strike at their factories; try talking to someone who's worked there. If anything it's the actions taken by the workers themselves that has led to the bosses coughing up higher wages and looking to find ways to reduce those costs in a way that won't cause hundreds of workers to take managers hostage or burn down a factory.

Re:Hope you're proud of yourselves...

[drinkypoo]

Even though the Foxconn suicide rate was about the same as the rest of the country,

And you're basing this on what? Figures from the Chinese government?

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[Daemonik]

ideally nobody would need to work on needed output and could just work on arts, science, drinking etc...

Yes, because everyone is suited to be an artist of some sort and artists have always had a tradition of making a liveable wage.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[SuricouRaven]

"ideally nobody would need to work on needed output"

A good idea, but one that requires a revolution in economics - even if the industrial capacity exists for one-tenth of the population to work and support the rest, right now that tenth would have no reason to work because the non-workers would have no money to buy goods. Your 'ideally' just can't work in any form of market-based economy - it'd require full-blown communism, and that economic structure has a very poor historical record.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[khallow]

It's worth noting that we haven't actually run out of things to do for money. For example, in the US, a bit less than a tenth of the population does manufacture. The rest have found something else to do.

Automation means millions out of poverty

[sjbe]

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs to replace all of the inefficient human labor they're replacing?

I don't mean to be trite but the answer is, with other companies doing other things. Believe it or not seeing China beginning to automate production is a very positive sign for Chinese workers because it means that pay rates are increasing. If you have unlimited low cost labor there is no point in automating many tasks. But wages in China have been steadily rising to the point where China is now sometimes not competitive with other places. That means they will have to begin to automate some work to remain competitive. Automation being installed is an indicator of rising wages. I'm not even slightly exaggerating when I say it means that millions of people are being pulled out of poverty.

I see this logical fallacy again and again that replacing labor with automation is a zero sum game. It demonstrably is not. The computer you are reading this on has replaced millions of clerical workers who now do other things. Automation replaces some labor but frees it to do more than it could before. Washing clothes used to be a hugely time consuming task but we developed tools (automation) to wash for us and we spend our time on other things. Is it better that we spend our time having people type things repeatedly on typewriters or should we use a word processor and print it once? It isn't that there is suddenly no work, it's that now people have time to accomplish tasks that there wasn't time to accomplish before.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Automation also means we can bring it back to the USA. After all, if we're not manufacturing in China because of cheap labor anymore, why don't they have their automated factory in the USA again?

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

Automation doesn't always mean that there are new jobs to do; at least not right away. When people think of the industrial revolution, they think about how much better people are now, not the sausage factories that ground children into meat for the poor.

The new technologies favor those with capital, not labor:
http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-on-technology-and-inequality-2013-2

And its possible that we could be looking a few decades where technology doesn't benefit us as a whole. The 1900s were a bit of an anomole in the history of the world.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[sociocapitalist]

Where do you find 1 million gainful jobs to replace all of the inefficient human labor they're replacing?

I don't mean to be trite but the answer is, with other companies doing other things. Believe it or not seeing China beginning to automate production is a very positive sign for Chinese workers because it means that pay rates are increasing. If you have unlimited low cost labor there is no point in automating many tasks. But wages in China have been steadily rising to the point where China is now sometimes not competitive with other places. That means they will have to begin to automate some work to remain competitive. Automation being installed is an indicator of rising wages. I'm not even slightly exaggerating when I say it means that millions of people are being pulled out of poverty.

I see this logical fallacy again and again that replacing labor with automation is a zero sum game. It demonstrably is not. The computer you are reading this on has replaced millions of clerical workers who now do other things. Automation replaces some labor but frees it to do more than it could before. Washing clothes used to be a hugely time consuming task but we developed tools (automation) to wash for us and we spend our time on other things. Is it better that we spend our time having people type things repeatedly on typewriters or should we use a word processor and print it once? It isn't that there is suddenly no work, it's that now people have time to accomplish tasks that there wasn't time to accomplish before.

It is not a zero sum game...today. At some point computers / robotics will be able to do almost any job that humans can do. It's only a question of time.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[ideonexus]

I don't think anyone is saying automation is a zero-sum game, and I don't think anyone is arguing that organizations shouldn't be automating, but what I, Lanier, and many other are arguing is that we can't just pretend that it's some sort of economic law that automation always creates more jobs.

Automation is great and I'm all for it, but the problem I have is that we have to be socially aware of the people, most of them highly-skilled, who are losing their jobs because of it. I'm talking about the professional bank tellers replaced by ATM machines, the professional photographers replaced by digital cameras, the paralegals replaced by search engines, and the doctors who will soon lose their jobs to Watsons.

I personally welcome the replacement of all these professions with more efficient and precise algorithms and machines, but I also think society has to be mindful of the people being put out of work. So many pundits and politicians in America are arguing that the unemployed are responsible for their plight, but if you factor in the rapid acceleration of automation, it's obvious that jobs are being eliminated faster than Capitalism can generate new ones, and Capitalism doesn't care about humans losing their jobs anymore than it cared about horses being replaced with cars. Society has to adjust it's paradigms to account for the fact that high rates of unemployment might be here to stay thanks to the automation revolution.

Strangely enough, it's a Conservative friend of mine who I think came up with the best possible solution to this new social reality: have the government pay everyone a "survival" wage, the bare minimum required to afford a low-rent apartment and food. If you want more, you have to compete in the workplace to afford the luxuries. There are incredible problems with this solution, but at least it's something, and dialog on this issue is better than one side saying "no" to automation and the other asserting that the magical invisible hand will take care of everyone.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[tompaulco]

Well, the labor for building and maintaining robots to force humans out of jobs in China is still cheaper than the labor for building and maintaining robots to force humans out of jobs in the United States.
However, it might be more cost effective to build robots and China and maintain them here, just to avoid the shipping cost of the final product that the robots build.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[gtall]

" At some point computers / robotics will be able to do almost any job that humans can do." Plumber, electrician, mathematician, sociologist, interior designer, exterior designer, artist, policeman, fireman, physicist, chemist, biologist, bridge builder, ship builder, welder, house builder, farmer, politician, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, civil engineer, drilling rig worker, conservation officer, park ranger, house painter, auto mechanic (even electric vehicles need repairs), MBA (okay, we get the monkeys to do this), Ballmer (would a dancing Monkey-bot be nearly as entertaining even with the artificial sweat glands and synthesized voice), Autistic Gates in a courtroom, Larry Ellison (what bot could exhibit this sort of ego), doctor, nurse, window replacement contractor, tree removal guy, landscaper, supermarket manager, teacher, botanist, rock star, music composer, TV show director, movie director, priest, nun, monk, The Pope, Islamo-Facsist nutjob, Imam, Rabbi, Mullah, goat herder, fish farm operator, tuna boat captain, cat breeder, cat, Nicko McBrain, insulation installer, heavy appliance installer, logician, sports star, baseball manager, sex symbol, airheaded heiress, script writer, rocket scientist, weapons designer, FBI or CIA agent, cabinet secretary, coffee taster, wine taster, comedian, sewer worker, garbage man, carpet installer, philosopher, tax fraud investigator.

I'm sure I'm missing a few.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[gtirloni]

The overhead of maintaining those robots is minimum compared to the overall operation. A company in the US will not be spending a lot more than one in China.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[gtirloni]

"at least not right away"... but for sure in the long run.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose that ultimately depends. Feudalism was around for a very long time, and relatively stable. Its what happens when wealth congregates at the top in a few hands. And, yes being a servant is technically a job; but, I couldn't say that'd be a better life. I think it is incorrect to take the view point that things always get better.

Things didn't get better for the dinosaurs. Why should they indefinitely for us?

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[AK Marc]

Labor was never the constraint, it was the excuse. The anti-union bosses would never miss a chance to lie about how bad the workers and unions are, even when the problem wasn't labor. The real costs in the US are regulatory. You don't get to dump your untreated hazardous chemicals in the nearest river, as you can do elsewhere. As long as we claim the right to poison free water and air, we'll have a larger barrier to entry.

Some highly automated processes, like smelting, were shipped overseas. We send raw iron to China to be processed to steel and then shipped back to the US. Labor has nothing to do with it, unless you are a lying CEO who wants to take a jab at the unions while moving a factory where you can pollute with impunity.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[sociocapitalist]

" At some point computers / robotics will be able to do almost any job that humans can do." Plumber, electrician, mathematician, sociologist, interior designer, exterior designer, artist, policeman, fireman, physicist, chemist, biologist, bridge builder, ship builder, welder, house builder, farmer, politician, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, civil engineer, drilling rig worker, conservation officer, park ranger, house painter, auto mechanic (even electric vehicles need repairs), MBA (okay, we get the monkeys to do this), Ballmer (would a dancing Monkey-bot be nearly as entertaining even with the artificial sweat glands and synthesized voice), Autistic Gates in a courtroom, Larry Ellison (what bot could exhibit this sort of ego), doctor, nurse, window replacement contractor, tree removal guy, landscaper, supermarket manager, teacher, botanist, rock star, music composer, TV show director, movie director, priest, nun, monk, The Pope, Islamo-Facsist nutjob, Imam, Rabbi, Mullah, goat herder, fish farm operator, tuna boat captain, cat breeder, cat, Nicko McBrain, insulation installer, heavy appliance installer, logician, sports star, baseball manager, sex symbol, airheaded heiress, script writer, rocket scientist, weapons designer, FBI or CIA agent, cabinet secretary, coffee taster, wine taster, comedian, sewer worker, garbage man, carpet installer, philosopher, tax fraud investigator.

I'm sure I'm missing a few.

Cat :-) Doesn't pay well but sure :-)

Goat herder doesn't pay much better.

Religion - agreed. Entertainment (including sports), agreed. Arts also probably not (though not sure as we're already seeing 100% computer generated 'models' being used in clothing ads). Science - for now, yes - in the future, not sure. Depends on whether the singularity happens or not.

A lot of the jobs you list are actually already being done by AI to some degree. It will only get more so over time.
  - teacher (ie online education programs already happening)
  - farmer...how many people work in agriculture now compared to before?
  - doctor - lots of work going into automating this. Overseen by doctors now but in the future...maybe, maybe not.
  - supermarket manager - only required so long as supermarkets aren't completely automated; even if they're only almost automated (for now we see electronic checkouts but why not eventually automated stocking, cleaning, etc?) the number of jobs available will drop)
  - wine taster...there's actually a project going on this right now to build a taster to identify counterfeit wines

Lots of the jobs you mention can't be done today but I do believe will be able to be done in the future.
  - house painter
  - construction of any type
  - mechanics of any type
  - sewer worker...why not?

So yes - I think that at some point the number of jobs available will fall to the point where a large percentage of the population either cannot find work or cannot find enough work to pay the bills.

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[sociocapitalist]

I say AI - I should have said automation which may or may not involve AI

Re:Automation means millions out of poverty

[volmtech]

Funny you should mention farmers. How many jobs where there in China fifty years ago? Where did a billion Chinese come from if no one had a job? Subsistence farming. Same thing in India and Africa. Modern medicine, mostly antibiotics, have allowed human populations to boom. Modern farming methods, machines, and fertilizers greatly increased food supplies and now most of theses farmers are unemployed. Get rid of the machines, fertilizers, and pesticides and food production will drop then most of those people can go back to the land. I put in my forty years farming and I'm NOT going back, but everyone else can.

Humans are the best tool there is

[sjbe]

Because these workers are human being

Which is their greatest asset. Humans are the most flexible, trainable and adaptable tool we know of. I run a factory which does a lot of manual assembly and we employ people to do things that tools either cannot or cost too much for. I can teach even a relatively uneducated person in about 30 minutes how to assemble one of our products. A machine to assemble the same product would easily cost over a million dollars and take over a year to develop. With enough volume automation makes sense but human's flexibility ensures there is plenty of work that cannot reasonably be automated. Do you really want to waste your best and most flexible asset on boring repetitive jobs that automation can do more cheaply?

I think you greatly underestimate how adaptable people really are. I think that companies who need remove someone from the payroll (for reasons other than firing for-cause) have an obligation to do what they can to make the transition gentle if they can. But there is a limit to that obligation. Ultimately it is up to the person to find their path in life, not the company to find it for them. I'm hugely optimistic about people and frankly am mystified by those who seem to think that people need to be treated like children. We don't owe them a specific job or a paycheck, we owe them opportunities to show what they can do.

Furthermore automation is a sign that wages in China are rising. If you have an endless supply of cheap labor there is no point in automating. The fact that companies are finding it financially sensible to do so is an unambiguous indicator that millions of people are being lifted out of poverty.

Re:Humans are the best tool there is

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, that automation is now cheaper than almost-slave human labor.

Automation = Rising wages

[sjbe]

Think of the Chinese factory workers as robots doing repetitive tasks. How well has that worked out for the workers in the USA?

Considering that workers in the US enjoy among the highest wages in the world I'd say pretty good. The US has a manufacturing sector that brings in about $4 TRILLION per year. The percent of jobs in manufacturing has declined (like in agriculture earlier) but those that remain in the sector are generally doing quite well and should continue to do so.

In any case you are looking at the situation backwards. Companies only automate for two reasons. The first is if there is a task that cannot be done manually - either requiring precision or due to the job being dangerous. The second and relevant one here is if labor costs are high. The fact that Chinese firms are finding it viable to automate means that millions of people are being pulled from poverty. Wages in China are rising and rising fast. If you have an endless supply of cheap labor there is no point in automating a great many tasks. Increasing automation means that labor costs are rising which is a very good thing unless your perspective is that Chinese workers should always be dirt poor. Personally I'm cheered to see lots of people able to enjoy a better standard of living.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Anonymous Coward]

Now can you relate this to the real world, say automotive manufacturing.

At one point the us OWNED auto manufacturing, no one could touch them as they made them better, faster and cheaper then anyone.

Now how'd Detroit working out?

Automation wasn't the sole factor in the decimation but it was decimated none the less. What are those people doing for work now?

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[sjbe]

At one point the us OWNED auto manufacturing, no one could touch them as they made them better, faster and cheaper then anyone.

And as a result they got fat, lazy and bloated and started making inferior products that cost more. Other companies came in and took advantage of the arrogance and sloth.

Now how'd Detroit working out?

Pretty good actually. Ford made a profit of about $1.6 billion last quarter. GM made about $1.1 billion last quarter and Chrysler reportedly made about $1.7 billion in 2012.

Automation wasn't the sole factor in the decimation but it was decimated none the less.

Automation doesn't occur unless labor costs are high. And without automation just how competitive do you think US automakers would be? The US automakers managed to keep ridiculously overpaid assembly line workers going for decades in spite of competition from much lower paid overseas labor.

What are those people doing for work now?

Many still work in auto manufacturing. It remains a huge employer. Others are working other places doing other things. Until the last few years unemployment was below 5% which is clear evidence that those people found other work.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Anonymous Coward]

First, I somewhat anti-union for the reasons you list. While they start off great (protecting worker rights) they have a tendency to become lazy/bloated/costly.

I know Ford/GM/Chrysler are all back in black (after bankruptcy,bailout, restructuring due to other issues outside this discussion).

My question wasn't "How are the big three doing?" it was "how is Detroit doing?"

Detroit use to be the automotive manufacturing powerhouse prior to its implosion.

On one had you have labor costs going up (unions, standard of living, etc) and automation as well as ruthless outsourcing (great for Mexico/Canada back in the day), not necessarily great for the US when those people become unemployed and unable to find suitable work.

This is what will eventually happen to China. People are already looking for a new "third world" to exploit and as you list, profits are good so why the need to find the absolute cheapest lowest labor costs?

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Kjella]

In any case you are looking at the situation backwards. Companies only automate for two reasons. The first is if there is a task that cannot be done manually - either requiring precision or due to the job being dangerous. The second and relevant one here is if labor costs are high.

The third reason is if the automation costs are declining, companies won't mind replacing a low wage job if a robot still undercuts it by half. And the labor market can't really adjust because humans have a living wage floor while robots don't. If rising labor costs were the prime driver we'd see more companies leaving China for poorer countries by now.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Shajenko42]

Automation doesn't occur unless labor costs are higher than the cost of automating away that job

FTFY. Lots of things can be automated that would pay a human only minimum wage, but it's even cheaper for a machine to do it.
Just because automation is happening doesn't mean people are paid well. Cost of automation goes down all the time.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[sjbe]

The third reason is if the automation costs are declining, companies won't mind replacing a low wage job if a robot still undercuts it by half.

Not really a third reason but that does occur. Labor wages and automation prices are not fixed. Both can go up and down with some limitations. You use automation because labor costs are relatively high compared with automation costs for the volume you produce. You're still missing the point however. Companies will replace a high wage job if a robot undercuts it by half. And if you look at it macroeconomically that person who was replaced has the opportunity now to do something else and experience tells us that is what usually happens in the long run. Replacing people with robots is NOT and never has been a zero sum game. We make tools and those tools make us more effective at doing things. It's what makes our species unique. Farms in the US are highly automated now where they used to employ over half the work force. And yet unemployment is still in single digits. That meant that people found other productive things to do. Same thing is happening with manufacturing now. The work force for the manufacturing sector is and will continue to be a smaller percent of the overall economy but overall unemployment is still in single digits across the economy. That means those people are finding other things to do. People are smart, are pretty easy to retrain, and are very flexible compared with machines.

And the labor market can't really adjust because humans have a living wage floor while robots don't.

You greatly underestimate human adaptability. Humans are easy to retrain to new tasks and do not have high up front costs. Machines (even robots) are quite inflexible and expensive up front. Human labor costs scale something close to linearly. Automation costs are high up front but relatively flat afterwards. There is (almost) always a significant amount of production volume before automation begins to make economic sense. The amount of work in that gap is enormous and there is no technology that is available or being developed presently that is going to eliminate that gap in the lifetime of anyone reading this. Furthermore there is vast amounts of work that we have no meaningful way to automate or for which automation does not provide a big productivity multiplier.

If rising labor costs were the prime driver we'd see more companies leaving China for poorer countries by now.

Companies ARE leaving China for other locations with cheaper labor. I've been to China and throughout southeast asia sourcing parts. I run a manufacturing company that competes with companies in China. There is often cheaper labor available in Vietnam, Malaysia, India and other countries. I have spoken directly with business owners and economists in both countries personally that will verify that many companies find it more economical to get labor outside of China. Labor costs in China have been rising fast and you can see it in the pricing of products out of China. Don't get me wrong, labor is still relatively cheap but labor costs in China are much higher than they were even just 10 years ago and they are showing no signs of even slowing down much less falling.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Rockoon]

You dont seem to answer the question of why is there a floor to living wage but instead just try to throw the idea around like a weapon.

If automation makes nearly all things cheaper to manufacture, then why is the cost of living always rising instead of always falling?

Part of it is that the standard of living has always been rising (in spite of the non-stop claims that the poor get poorer) for everyone. The effect this has on what we consider the cost of living is certainly a meaningful amount.

Another part of it is minimum wage. Minimum wage seems fine as long as you have jobs for everybody that wants one but as people become and remain unemployed then they are no longer part of the market, and someone with no money cannot effect market prices because no price is low enough to get them to buy. The effect this has is also certainly a meaningful amount because you simply cannot argue with the fundamentals of economics: supply and demand.

A third part is restrictions to basic liberty. You cannot even catch a fish in this day and age without a license to do so, and if your chickens have laid more eggs than you need you still cannot just go ahead and trade them for milk with your neighbor with the cow because thats considered dangerous in an unregulated manner in both cases and thus illegal for both of you.

And even though people now work well past the prime of their life, they expect their income to keep rising, which is an absurd expectation but somehow people no longer second-guess the entire idea. So in non-unionized places the older folks get a layoff to make room for younger, cheaper, more productive folks; while in unionized places the older, more expensive, less productive folks remain on while the company grows increasingly less efficient. In other words, wages seem to now have little to do with the value of the employee until the breaking point in both cases, where the employee becomes the unemployed.

None of this matters when everyone that wants a job can get one. It matters a lot when the jobs are no longer there, and in fact these things and more are the reasons why there arent enough jobs.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Maxo-Texas]

Automation and robotics have been cheaper than even chinese workers for several years now.

Yes, some humans get better jobs. Way under 20%. The other 80% are screwed.

When one company automates, it makes a huge profit.
When every company automates, it's a collapse of the market as we know it.

People don't see that this time really is different. There wont' be work for a quarter or more of the population. It's being covered by boomers going on social security on the top end but unemployment among young workers is very high (25 to 50%). This is new.

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[Culture20]

Now how'd Detroit working out?

Pretty good actually. Ford made a profit of about $1.6 billion last quarter. GM made about $1.1 billion last quarter and Chrysler reportedly made about $1.7 billion in 2012

Yeah, but how is Detroit doing?

Re:Automation = Rising wages

[TheLink]

Considering that workers in the US enjoy among the highest wages in the world I'd say pretty good

You'd have to compare "purchasing power" and/or inflation adjusted wages over time before and after the Chinese "robots" aka workers started being used.

High and going up = things getting better for the workers.
High but going down = things getting worse for the workers.

See the median and mean incomes: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/historical/household/2011/H06AR_2011.xls
When did the Chinese workers start to really come "on line" (and outsourcing begin)? Maybe it's not a marked downward trend but it sure doesn't look as bright as you suggest.

The second and relevant one here is if labor costs are high. The fact that Chinese firms are finding it viable to automate means that millions of people are being pulled from poverty.

High relative to alternatives. Are the Chinese "robots"/workers causing millions of Americans being pulled to become richer than they were before?

If the answer is no (and it seems to be no from the census figures), then why would cheaper and cheaper robots cause more and more Chinese people to be richer in the future?

Maybe it's because of the trade deficit (starting at about 1998?): http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/historical/
But that might be related - it could mean in future the people that own the robots would become richer as the rest become poorer and have a "trade deficit" with the robot owners. And even if the robots and robot owners are in the US doesn't mean that most US people would own the robots: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57578162/robots-are-going-to-take-your-job/

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[gl4ss]

social security isn't full blown communism.

90% of jobs are already jobs which are serving for lack of better word "having more fun". barbers, game coders, game system manufacturers, sailing, sports fishing, all hobby providers...

what's more you can not fight it. you can not fight it anymore than you could fight it in 1800's. what you can do is either find work making things more efficient for the producers or something inefficient people want to pay for because it's "fun"(art, music, hobbies). there's some service jobs of course, but in the end those are paid by the production folk and social security.

of course to get on top you need more specialisation, more education for yourself - but you're having more time for that as well since you're not making thread by hand.

and the scribes and the elevator operators, weaver

[raymorris]

I imagine they'll do the same thing as all the scribes, elevator operators, and weavers who have been replaced by machines.
Some of them will be like my buddy and get paid better money to maintain and operate the new machines, he is an engineer taking care of weaving machines.
The rest will become datacenter techs, web designers, whatever new jobs are required.

As I typed this post my phone auto corrected "elevator operator" to "website operator".
My phone knows elevator operators are replaced by website operators. It is seemingly smarter than the person I'm replying to.

On-shoring already happening

[sjbe]

Automation also means we can bring it back to the USA.

Already happening. My company is able to compete on some products that were made in China but as labor costs have gone up so have the prices. The so called China price isn't as low as it used to be.

After all, if we're not manufacturing in China because of cheap labor anymore, why don't they have their automated factory in the USA again?

Production didn't move to China overnight and it won't move back to the US overnight either. We're talking about millions and billions of dollars of capital investment and that sort of thing doesn't relocate instantly.

What Will They Do

[Greyfox]

When the robots start committing suicide?

Re:What Will They Do

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a car engine do that to me. It decided to take one of its piston rods and poke it through the side of the engine. It was a 22R. Kudos if you can tell me the manufacturer. A trip to the junk yard and $250 got me a replacement engine with half the miles of the one that I had.

They will do the same with the robots that take on that attitude.

Nathan

beach time

[beefoot]

Cool. These unemployed workers could spend their days at the beach enjoying life. We know that our civilization is in decline when this sort of things are happening.

This is a good and humane development

[elucido]

Robots should replace the human workforce until a day where there is no work left for human beings to do.
At that point human beings can play for a living.

Re:This is a good and humane development

[RobinH]

Under the current system, if you don't have a job, you can't buy any of the things that the robots produce. The system will have to change. I'm wondering what that change will be. Guaranteed minimum income? A separate economy of people who aren't qualified enough to maintain the robots, but who just form their own economy to do work for each other, similar to what we're doing now? Co-operatives that scrape enough cash together to buy automation to run themselves?

Re:and the scribes and the elevator operators, wea

[Grishnakh]

I imagine they'll do the same thing as all the scribes, elevator operators, and weavers who have been replaced by machines.
Some of them will be like my buddy and get paid better money to maintain and operate the new machines, he is an engineer taking care of weaving machines.
The rest will become datacenter techs, web designers, whatever new jobs are required.

Yes, but what about the Kardashian and Honey Boo Boo fans? People like that aren't capable of being datacenter techs or web designers. And America is absolutely full of people like that. There's only so many barista and janitor jobs out there.

Look out below

[operagost]

They had better close up all the windows in the building. It will be really hazardous with all the shiny metal ROBOTS committing suicide now.

the alternative:

[froth-bite]

what about using robots to round up your human workforce, and make sure they don't leave the building ?

Re:the alternative:

[ebno-10db]

RoboOverseer instead of RoboCop? Doesn't sound all that interesting to me, but Hollywood does all kinds of crazy remakes.

Honey Boo Boo fans with jobs? That's what the nann

[raymorris]

That's what the nanny state is for, to coddle those who'd rather eat Cheetos and watch honey boo boo than do something productive.

Car industry

[Anonymous Coward]

In the car industry, a large proportion of the traditional handwork has been robotised in the last half century. This has led to much better build quality, more affordable cars with more luxury features and it has allowed high-wage countries to remain competitive with lower wage countries. The number of people that work in the car industry hasn't decreased significantly as a result; instead more people are now involved in development and production of features and accessories that would not have been feasible in an average price car without robotisation.

I strongly suspect that most manufacturing industries would benefit from more robotisation. Overall, it is just more efficient and it allows skilled workers to do other useful things.

Re:Car industry

[ebno-10db]

-1 for PP? At least one mod has gone completely off the deep end. Forget disagreeing w/ the mod down, I can't even imaging why it would be modded down. Full text is:

In the car industry, a large proportion of the traditional handwork has been robotised in the last half century. This has led to much better build quality, more affordable cars with more luxury features and it has allowed high-wage countries to remain competitive with lower wage countries. The number of people that work in the car industry hasn't decreased significantly as a result; instead more people are now involved in development and production of features and accessories that would not have been feasible in an average price car without robotisation.

I strongly suspect that most manufacturing industries would benefit from more robotisation. Overall, it is just more efficient and it allows skilled workers to do other useful things.

Rising labor costs really means

[chemosh6969]

not being able to pay slave wages anymore

More proof that "free trade" is a crock

[ebno-10db]

Instead of possibly slowly moving production of electronics back to the US, we'd already have a large cost-efficient automated electronic production industry if we hadn't embraced the ideology and political agenda of so-called free trade. People talk as though robotic assembly were the hot new thing, but it's 1980's tech! In the 80's and early-mid 90's automating electronic assembly and designing things so they could easily be assembled by robots were the hot things. Then we threw that know-how and that industry in the trash by moving everything offshore. Now China is automating assembly - like we were doing 20-30 years ago - and we're left with a decimated industry and no advantage from so-called free trade.

That this would happen was obvious to anybody back in the day that wasn't brainwashed by free trade ideology. Looking at trade in terms of comparative advantage makes sense if you're looking at factors that can't quickly change. Notice that early examples of how free trade could be beneficial, like Smith's talk about growing bananas in Scotland or Ricardo's classic wine and wool example, are about agricultural products that depend on unchanging factors like soil and climate. Manufacturing, and all the engineering work that inevitably follows it, can be done anywhere in the world. What matters is know-how and experience, and having clusters where sub-contractors feed manufacturers. These can be replicated anywhere, but there is friction. Hence it's easier to move it to (what was) a very low cost place like China (especially with the help of government subsidies and currency manipulation), but much harder to move it back to the US even when US costs reach parity with Chinese costs. Contrary to the fantasies of economists, whole industries do not magically appear and disappear in a country overnight, and certainly not without friction.

Re:Kurt Vonnegut considered this problem more than

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth noting that we haven't actually run out of things to do for money. For example, in the US, a bit less than a tenth of the population does manufacture. The rest have found something else to do.

Like hunt for jobs after the latest layoffs in their industry.

Twust Us

[poofmeisterp]

Ultimately, these robots will replace human assembly workers and 'our [human] workers will then become technicians and engineers,'

Oh, no, nothing bad will happen to any working. Jobs that do not exist for all of the assembly workers will assemble themselves magically. 'No job' will become 'well-employed'.

Trust us.

Re:Twust Us

[iggymanz]

the worst thing is for unnecessary jobs to be continued. all those buggy whip makers and horseshoe blacksmiths and lamp lighters of my grandfather's era could have been given fake busywork too.

Re:Twust Us

[volmtech]

No comparison, where are the thousands of sq miles of virgin prairie to plow? Or billions of board feet of lumber to build new homes. Not to mention the EPA, OSHA or DNR. How many millions of Mexicans have marched across the southern border? Most new jobs require above average intelligence. Half of the population is effectively unemployable.

Did their competitors have instant world wide communications, wire transfer of funds, high speed container ships that could land thousands of tons of merchandise on the docks from China in two weeks?

Training their replacements?

[Dareth]

Do they have to train the robots that will replace them?