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China Wants To Be a Top 10 Nation For Automation By Putting More Robots In Its Factories (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Reuters report: China is aiming for a top-10 ranking in automation for its industries by 2020 by putting more robots in its factories, the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) said. China's push to modernize its manufacturing with robotics is partly a response to labor shortages and fast-rising wages. But the world's second-largest economy still has far lower robot penetration than other big industrialized economies -- just 36 per 10,000 manufacturing workers in 2015, ranking it 28th among the world's most automated nations. By 2020, it aims to boost penetration to 150 per 10,000 workers, IFR said in a statement, citing Wang Ruixiang, President of the China Machinery Industry Federation. To help reach that goal, China aims for sales of 100,000 domestically produced industrial robots a year by 2020, up 49 percent compared with last year, the IFR said in a statement at an industry summit in Shanghai, where the Chinese federation's chief was speaking.
China has a plan. They know that automation is both inevitable and also desirable (consistent quality, low cost, high end) and rather than just let their citizens be screwed by it they plan on transitioning them to service jobs.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Who is going to buy all this stuff if they don't have jobs?
And there lies the heart of the problem: purchasing power is coupled to having a job.
As technology marches forward, that coupling has to be let go. Or at least loosened. The majority of the population needs to have some purchasing power even if there's no job for them. Think basic income.
The alternative: (almost) everything automated, production equipment (including robots) in the hands of a few corporations & the billionaires at their top, with the rest of the population jobless / out of money (and in the extreme case: out of housing or food). Great recipe for say, a nice little civil war. As it has been several times in history.
The automation itself isn't a bad thing, it increases productivity so we can have more nice things or do fun stuff more of the time. But the fruits of that increased productivity should be divided somewhat evenly over people. If it ends up in the hands of a few you have a recipe for disaster.