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Robots Ride To the Rescue Where Workers Can't Be Found (nytimes.com)
Fast-growing economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages, so companies are calling in the machines [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: In many major economies, companies are experimenting with replacing factory workers, truck drivers and even lawyers with artificial intelligence, raising the specter of a mass displacement of jobs. But in Eastern Europe, robots are being enlisted as the solution for a shortage of workers. Often they are helping to create new types of jobs as businesses in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland try to stay agile and competitive. Growth in these countries, which became low-cost manufacturing hubs for Europe after the fall of Communism, has averaged 5 percent in recent years, buoyed by the global recovery.
Few are riding higher than the Czech Republic, where plants roll out cars for the likes of Toyota and consumer electronics for Dell, while smaller companies produce specialty goods to sell around the world. A roaring economy has slashed the jobless rate to just 2.4 percent, the lowest in the European Union. The dearth of manpower, however, has limited the ability of Czech companies to expand. Nearly a third of them have started to turn away orders, according to the Czech Confederation of Industry, a trade group.
Few are riding higher than the Czech Republic, where plants roll out cars for the likes of Toyota and consumer electronics for Dell, while smaller companies produce specialty goods to sell around the world. A roaring economy has slashed the jobless rate to just 2.4 percent, the lowest in the European Union. The dearth of manpower, however, has limited the ability of Czech companies to expand. Nearly a third of them have started to turn away orders, according to the Czech Confederation of Industry, a trade group.
Is this is an article about workers who are lost? No. Is this an article about robots transporting people? No. Is this an article about search and rescue? No.
We are statistically due and perhaps over-due for a global recession based on the usual "business cycle" patterns. They usually keep the bots and fire the humans during slumps.
Table-ized A.I.
"economies in Eastern Europe have led to severe labor shortages"
Aren't these the same countries that are refusing to accept refugees? I'm missing the logic here. Or maybe they feel that keeping a 'pure' ethnic environment is more important than a good economy.
...omphaloskepsis often...
As in employers can't legally hire laborers at any price? (This is the definition of an economic shortage.)
Or as in employers just don't want to pay market rates for labor?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
That's why they go with robots.
They are smarter than the west.
Japan will also go with robots. Much better all around.
I suppose it would be highly rude to suggest they hire Syrian, Libyan, and other refugees... AC
Would you rather have a robot for a co-worker, or a Syrian? Personally, I would pick the Syrian so we could share falafels and tahini for lunch, but most Eastern Europeans feel differently. Non-white immigration is deeply unpopular there, even more so than in Western Europe where immigration has created a major political backlash.
like we do here in America? e.g. massively under report the number of unemployed and underemployed? America plays all sorts of games with unemployment statistics so we can make excuses to give out more "temporary" work visas. During Trump's campaign there were interviews with people who applied at his resorts for seasonal work and weren't hired because their jobs went to visa holders (who work longer hours for less pay).
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Just remember a big part of the attractiveness of those jobs-pensions-are gone forever.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I have nothing against their culture. However, I have something against them forcing it onto me.
Bullcrap. Nobody is being "forced" to adopt immigrant culture. I live in San Jose, California, one of the most diverse cities in the world. Never, not once in 20 years, has anyone "forced" their culture on me.
Within walking distance of my house, there is a mosque, a synagogue, a buddhist temple, and the largest gurdwara in North America. Number of times I have been "forced" to go to any of them: 0.
I didn't mention pensions because in the US those have been gone (except for government workers) for longer than most workers have been alive. But yes I agree, it just makes it worse. I again blame corporate actors for that, they didn't want the long-term liability of pensions. Making workers another "resource" was all they wanted, and they got that. All the signals then pointed down hill.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
Seriously, AI lawyers are best at their jobs.
You can tell by their success rate of 100 percent in 1 out of 1 cases they have won, and by all the threatening lawyer letters they send that say "We will replace your CPUs with peanut butter if you don't comply!"
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well it's better that we reach a sustainable demographic rather than depending on an ever increasing pyramid of young outnumbering the old because eventually you run out of expansion room as these people need land to grow food, sources of water, use non-renewable fuel and minerals, create trash and pollution and so on. And they grow old too, leading to an exponential need for more young. Sure, it could be nice for our generation if they kept building that bridge to nowhere until we're dead and buried, but it wouldn't get easier with twenty or thirty billion people instead of ten.
I mean the Chicken Littles are saying the sky is falling because the robots will take the jobs so there'll be no work. The other Chicken Littles are saying the sky is falling because the wave of elderly will overwhelm the working class. But there can't both be too much work and too little work at the same time. You could argue the economy wouldn't support it, but the 1%'er really got nothing to gain by setting off a re-surge of socialist ideas. With automated tractors, trucks, factories and stores the cost of keeping a couch potato fed and clothed is not that big a deal and in modern countries they only get 1.x kids.
On a global level most people are still better off, extreme poverty is on the way down, literacy is on the way up. Access to electricity, cell phones, the Internet etc. is on the way up. Both China and India are well past the hump where they'll modernize the rest of the country. It's mostly Africa and the Middle East that remain fucked up, but there's 5+ billion people not living there while the "first world" used to be half of Europe, the US, Canada and Australia so like a billion tops. The bulk of humanity has seen a huge improvement in their standard of living, even if that slows the world won't collapse.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I suppose it would be highly rude to suggest they hire Syrian, Libyan, and other refugees... AC
Would you rather have a robot for a co-worker, or a Syrian? Personally, I would pick the Syrian so we could share falafels and tahini for lunch, but most Eastern Europeans feel differently. Non-white immigration is deeply unpopular there, even more so than in Western Europe where immigration has created a major political backlash.
Since the robot would be less likely to abuse women and behead me, I'd choose the robot.
They can't assemble cars in Japan or Germany as they take up too much space and volume on the cargo ships which would dramatically increase the cost.
The parts can be stacked and boxed tight 10 fold or perhaps 100 fold per container.
http://saveie6.com/
Roll to the rescue!
Regards,
Heatwave
That's dumb. What does the place of assembly have to do with purchasing decisions?
Do you have some dataset on place of assembly and reliability that the rest of us don't?
Or are you a dual citizen of Germany and Japan, and just trying to support your countries?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
And yet there are regular car ferries from e.g. Japan to Europe for the models that aren't assembled over here. Japanese companies opened factories in Europe to get around import limits, not because it was cheaper.
The actual problem is that a large percentage of the skilled workers in these eastern european countries are now living and working in western europe. Perhaps if the respective governments had listened that said emigration was causing problems in the UK, and agreed to some limits then Brexit would not have happened.
That's because the American Melting Pot works a lot better than the European Immigrant Acceptance ideology or whatever the fuck it's called.
There's enormous differences between the two. Also, the number of uneducated Syrian, Afghan, Pakistani,etc. immigrants in the USA is orders of magnitude smaller then the European one. You can't compare the two either.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Reminds me of that scene in Gran Torino, where Clint Eastwood is initially unwelcoming of his foreign neighbours, until he tries the food.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Actually there was an investigation on NHK (Japanese national broadcaster) where they examined the "made in Japan" claims of several products. Many of them critical parts made overseas, e.g. a DVR with a Samsung hard drive or a TV with an LG LCD panel.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
yep, ofcourse they have shortage of workers, they all are off working in other EU countries, sometimes I even think I'm in Poland when I'm going shopping, even more PL licenseplates in the carpark than native NL..
Not only pensions, but wages. Many of these jobs not only pay less in adjusted dollars, they pay less in real dollars. I see companies hiring at the same pay rates I saw 20 years ago.
Cheap storage VM.