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Automation: The Exaggerated Threat of Robots (flassbeck-economics.com)
It will take quite a lot of time before robots become cheaper than workers in emerging markets such as Africa, argues Nico Beckert of Flassbeck Economics, a consortium of researchers who aim to provide economics insights with a more realistic basis. From the post: All industrialized countries used low-cost labour to build industries and manufacture mass-produced goods. Today, labour is relatively inexpensive in Africa, and a similar industrialization process might take off accordingly. Some worry that industrial robots will block this development path. The reason is that robots are most useful when doing routine tasks -- precisely the kind of work that is typical of labour-intensive mass production. At the moment, however, robots are much too expensive to replace thousands upon thousands of workers in labour-intensive industries, most of which are in the very early stages of the industrialization process. Robots are currently best used in technologically more demanding fields like the automobile or electronics industry.
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
It will take quite a lot of time before robots become cheaper than workers in emerging markets such as Africa,
So what? What does that straw man have to do with anything?
Today, labour is relatively inexpensive in Africa, and a similar industrialization process might take off accordingly. Some worry that industrial robots will block this development path.
I haven't seen one person worry about that. Not a single one. What people are worried about isn't whether Africans will get a job, they're worried whether outsourcing and automation will take jobs that people have now. Africans probably know that there is a good chance that most of the remaining human-based manufacturing jobs will end up in Africa, which is a situation all major corporations in a position to care are working towards.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
No one's claiming robots are going to put Africans out of work. No one gives a shit about Africans. Robots are going to put Americans and Europeans out of work.
a consortium of researchers who aim to provide economics insights with a more realistic basis
"More realistic" than what? What is the yardstick or basis of comparison here, and how do they evidence whether they are in fact hitting their mark?
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
To begin with, since African labor is currently cheaper than Chinese labor and has been for decades, why aren't all iPhones made in Africa?
Consider:
* it's not just cost of labor but also quality of output by labor (related to training and life experience)
* the need for surrounding physical infrastructure (like reliable electricity)
* the need for surrounding social infrastructure (like a hierarchical work ethic)
* the need for surrounding political infrastructure (like rule of law and low corruption)
* the cost of transportation (including local transportation to and from ports)
* the cost of language barriers
* the cost of cultural barriers
Ultimately, to understand why the premise is wrong of all labor being done in Africa instead of by robots, ask yourself, why do you have a local printer or local copier in your home and office when it would be much cheaper per page to have everything printed and copied in a central print shop ten miles away? The answer is that the cost per page is not as significant to you as other values like convenience, turnaround, transportation, privacy, and security.
Most humans in any location are less and less employable relative to robots and AI because human output is of more variable quality, humans take breaks, humans don't work 24X7, humans get sick, humans file lawsuits about working conditions, humans steal things, and humans require safer climate-controlled workplaces. Those are some of the same reasons almost everyone now drives horseless carriages instead of keeping several horses in a barn.
Humans still have some advantages relative to robots and AI in some situations -- e.g. why Telsa should have set up a human-powered assembly line first and then automated when most of the routine needs were clearer. Long term though AI and robots will outperform human labor in almost all situations. Thus the need for a basic income, a gift economy, improved subsistence production with 3D printers and gardening robots, and/or democratically-planned government projects.
See also: "Humans Need Not Apply"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
It goes the other way around:
We've banned child labour and established human rights because as a society as a whole we have decided that these are values worth investing in, especially since we easyly can. There is little point in having 12-year olds working in the mines, since it's way more benefitial to have a few grown men and huge machines do that. And send the children to school, to learn to build and maintain the machines when they grow up.
The benefits far outweight the costs. It will be the same with UBI. Only getting there can be painful.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Even a rapid drop in robot prices would not lead to the replacement of workers by robots in the short term in Africa where countries lag far behind in terms of fast internet and other information and communications technologies. They also lack well-trained IT experts. Other problems include an unreliable power supply, high energy costs and high financing costs for new technologies. For these reasons, it would be difficult and expensive to integrate robots and other digital technologies into African production lines.
The article describes the place as a location nobody sane would want to locate manufacturing. Low cost is important but only as it relates to high productivity. Capitalism depends on the ability of capital to increase production and profit.