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African Manufacturing Jobs Could be Threatened by US Based Robots, Report Says (bbc.com)
Within less than two decades it will be cheaper to operate robots in US factories than hire workers in Africa, a new report warns. From the report: Falling automation costs are predicted to cause job losses as manufacturers return to richer economies. Some analysts say poorer countries could be less impacted by this trend, however the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) suggests otherwise. But its report adds African nations have time to prepare for the change. "African countries must not shy away from manufacturing, but instead prepare by increasing access to internet, investing in technical skills and promoting technological innovation," said Karishma Banga a senior research officer at ODI. "If done well, automation can present important opportunities for African countries by improving labour productivity in manufacturing," she said. It has been suggested that poorer countries will not as be affected by automation because they have less money to invest in it.
Africa needs to get its shit straight and cook up an economy to support themselves. They do not need to be the world's latest source of cheapest available labour to be exploited for trinkets. No, "the internet" and other gimmicks are not even key here: The key is to get organised. This needs infrastructure, of which information tech is but one part. Africa doesn't need the rest of the world exploiting it, supporting its upper crust in the name of "development aid", patronising it, or anything else. Africa needs to get its own shit straight.
. . . African robots are cheaper than US robots.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Within less than two decades it will be cheaper to operate robots in US factories than hire workers in Africa
Speaking as someone who runs a manufacturing plant and who has bought robots, this is complete bullshit. Anyone who actually believes this has no idea of the costs involved or the capabilities of robots or manufacturing automation. There is PLENTY of headroom in labor intensive industries for people to be employed in manufacturing including in Africa. Robots simply are not that cheap or capable and are in no danger of becoming so any time soon for most tasks.
Robots are economically viable for high volume and/or dangerous work. They are not nearly as flexible or capable as many people imagine them to be and they certainly aren't cheap. There are some industries and products where they make a lot of sense and many more (especially low volume production) where they are not economically viable. Most automation actually doesn't come in robot form either for that matter.
The problem Africa has in getting into manufacturing comes in several parts. 1) A lot of corruption, 2) extremely bad infrastructure, 3) An inexperienced talent pool for workers. All these are solvable problems but aren't easy ones either. Automation is far down the list of obstacles to manufacturing in Africa.
When I saw the words "robots" and "threaten" in the title, I was thinking the US was using armed drones to take out African workers.
Slave labor has built many societies. /cough Pyramids?
Slave labor indeed built the infrastructure of many societies. Strangely enough, though, not the pyramids (despite the persistent myth).
The pyramids were, basically, a work project to keep people employed during the non-planting months.
https://harvardmagazine.com/2003/07/who-built-the-pyramids-html
https://www.usnews.com/science/articles/2010/01/12/egypt-new-find-shows-slaves-didnt-build-pyramids
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Some regions could be stuck in a cycle of permanent poverty. That is, if you give them only fish, and no fishing nets, then they're dependent on you for fish. Now, replace a simple net with modern robots connected to modern computers, and it's obvious they can never build such a thing from scratch, starting with zero relevant knowledge or infrastructure. Worse, if somehow you happen upon a textbook that explains how to engineer or program computers or robots, chances are you won't try to make a robot manufacturing plant in your fish handout village... you'll go to where the robot and computer jobs are, somewhere that already has computers and robots.
Either they'll be dependent on handouts from robot-owning regions, or robots are brought in locally to do the work locally. Either way they'll be unemployed. I guess what it all comes down to is: who owns the robots, and how are the fruits of their labor going to be distributed? We still don't have a good answer for that.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
In other news 99% of the population unemployed because of tractors.
99% of the oxen and draft horse population: yes.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Not if you take into account shipping to the US. If you want to sell in Africa, you'll produce in Africa, but if you want to sell in the US, you'll produce in the US.
Sorry but it's not remotely that simple. US labor is among the most expensive in the world so labor intensive goods tend to be produced elsewhere, even for items consumed by the US. But even that doesn't capture it all. Supply chain location matters too. East Asia dominates electronics manufacturing in large part because that is where the supply chain is located. It's FAR cheaper to make the products there and then ship them to the US in most cases and that isn't really a function of labor rates for the most part. Japanese labor isn't much cheaper than US labor but Japan exports a huge amount of stuff to the US. Conversely the US has a HUGE export sector too even though the US is a net consumer.
you frequently need to ship the raw materials from somewhere, but producing at either the material source or the selling destination is cheaper than involving a third intermediary location for production.
The calculation isn't that simple. It depends on relative labor rates, tariffs, exchange rates, local supply chains, infrastructure, lead times, communication costs, administrative costs, and a host of other considerations. All other things being equal you would be right but things are rarely equal like that.
Robots will lead to on-shoring. This isn't really news. Both Afrika and Asia will be selling way less finished goods to the first world.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
They seem to be doing pretty well with robots despite wages and working conditions we here in America find deplorable.
Yeah, good infrastructure, skilled employees and a lack of (the wrong kind of) corruption is good. But those things are also expensive. You need schools and roads. And with schools and roads comes taxes and (worse) an educated and mobile workforce. If you're gonna pay that much you might as well build in American (or whatever country your selling in) and not pay the tariffs.
The point of the article is that automation is going to hit the developing country (e.g. the ones without the stuff you're citing) hard. This is the thing that always drives me nuts about people. They want all the good stuff (skilled, hard working talent) and they _never_ want to pay for it. I get it. I don't want to pay for nice thing either. But sometimes you either do or you don't get it.
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In other news 99% of the population unemployed because of tractors.
99% of the oxen and draft horse population: yes.
A single modern combine, operated by one driver, can do as much work as 100 horse pulled reapers driven by 100 men.
Only in a state that doesn't charge a business property tax.
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Slave labor has built many societies. /cough Pyramids?
except evidence shows that the pyramids were not built by slaves the worker's villages in their shadow the worker's tombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A robot is gonna take your job away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
And now the jobs are lost in Africa
Gonna take a miracle to keep the things we had
Containerization replaced dockworkers. Digital printing replaced print shop workers. Automated telephone exchanges replaced telephone operators. It's getting to the point where they can eliminate editors and allow anyone to automatically create a local newspaper anywhere simply by filtering for keywords, events and categories. Automated weaving looms replaced the need for four artisans to make one garment in several months to making hundreds of uniform garments in a week.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Indeed. And add to that, that every job has a minimal level of talent it needs directly and indirectly (via the talents needed to benefit from education), and hence the better job quality gets, the fewer can do them. We seem to be now at a point where the part of the population that can newly created jobs is beginning to be a minority. That is a unique point in human history, because before most people could do most jobs and that is one reason why before there always were replacement jobs.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Nonsense. Actually competent measurements show this effect does not exist. Of course, if you have an African person fill out an IQ test in English, targeted at somebody with a western background and average western education, you get such results, but they are bogus.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The test used are not all in English and can be provided to not need English.
The tests keep returning the same low results decade after decade.
Take some effort to educate a population and the results for some get better.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The US mil finally accepted the 83 IQ number after a lot of testing. Thats the very lowest number the US mill would accept that still has a person able to function without needing constant help all day. That a person could still take in new information and function alone with a new task.
Thats the US mil emergency draft IQ number when the entire useful population has to be called up for war.
The US mil set that IQ number so very low as to ensure they got the entire productive US population in for a war draft.
Imagine what the IQ bell curve in nations with an average of 85 is like.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
One nation if Africa was able to design and produce their own deployed nuclear weapons. Ready for use and with an advanced delivery system.
The government was replaced with a Communist government and the only policy is now forced land redistribution.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And your last line very clearly indicates these test are bogus. IQ is not influenced by education. But the result if inadequate IQ tests are.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Maybe not all manufacturing is the same? I'd imagine the clothing industry is going to be very prone to robot manufacturing
Clothing manufacturing is among the hardest industries to automate. Clothing manufacturing is among the most labor intensive industries in the world. This is why you almost invariably find clothing manufacturers to be clustered in places with extremely low labor rates. This includes making the cloth for the clothing too. Even the most automated looms require quite a lot of labor to operate.
I don't think your experience translates to the entire manufacturing industry.
The calculations for labor vs automation don't depend on what you are making. To oversimplify, you have material costs, labor hoursXrate required, and overhead / volume. Automation introduces some capital costs and reduces the labor hours. Whether or not automation makes sense depends on the size of the reduction in labor costs and how much volume you can amortize the fixed costs over. None of this depends explicitly on what sort of widget you are making.
Something about this article must be getting away from me. I would think that wealthier places than Africa where wages and benefits are high would be targeted sooner than low wage companies. If a $25.00 per hour employee is eliminated the savings is obvious but if you remove a worker who earns one dollar a day or whatever the economics are unclear to me. The new issue is whether my automation can do better and cheaper than the competitors automation. That leaves poor nations and businesses in a very bad position as the funds to automate a production facility are a huge barrier.
I don't know about that figure. There are a lot of Amish or Mennonite farmers using draft horses, and there are as many horses, today in the USA, as there were in 1900. A lot of non-Anabaptist farmers with draft horses for sport, as well, at least in PA.
Oxen are SOL, though. The only oxen used, other than in historical parks, are steers being fattened for the table. Tasty for us, at least.
Of course, 5% or more of the US populace is still employed in agriculture, so tractors didn't end 99% of the jobs.