Posted on 05/03/2015 7:52:03 AM PDT by Enlightened1
Report: Robots replacing human workers at faster pace
Robots aren't just for corporate Goliaths -- now even the little guy on Main Street is adopting them. The goal: to boost sales and productivity. But at what cost?
Take Sam Kraus, a Hungarian immigrant who founded what became Skyline Windows in 1921. In the early days, the tinsmith traveled around with a small cart to do his roofing and waterproofing work by hand.
Fast-forward to today, and the fourth-generation business based in New York City's South Bronx has left the pushcart era far behind. Skyline, which has evolved into a custom window manufacturer and installer, now relies on robots to do some of its work. In the factory in Woodridge, New Jersey, where it makes its windows, Skyline uses a $150,000 computer-operated machine to automate tasks like cutting holes in the metal and two $20,000 robots to install its windows, which sometimes weigh 600 pounds.
"It allows us to be more efficient—and our plan is to buy more of these robots when we can," said senior vice president Matt Kraus, whose profitable firm brings in about $70 million in annual revenue and employs about 350 people.
The future of jobs
"Businesses will need to hire no people or fewer people," he said. "You can literally have one person start a manufacturing business."
A decline in traditional jobs could lead to shrinking markets for small businesses, said Ford. "We need consumers out there who will buy what is created by the economy," he said
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
The cost benefit will be short-lived. Widespread adoption will force many more out of the job market and force more massive increases in social spending, leading to taxation that will take the cost benefit of robotics and then some. It’s not going to be pretty, I don’t see how this can occur without major disruption and dislocation. I’m beginning to understand the Luddites, the bad outweighs the good.
“We need consumers out there who will buy what is created by the economy,” he said......
Can someone explain, who will have money to buy anything?
I’ve always heard that ‘money’ is what makes the world go round.
I don’t understand how business will think they will get ahead if there are no jobs no one can buy their products? Law of supply and demand right?
Well said. See post #4
And even if we wanted to, holding back technological development is like holding back the tide.
Probably because it is all relative, manufacturing/retail costs will go way down and there will always be consumers with some money.
As a robot repairman, the future is bright. Seriously, nothing has changed, those who worked hard in gaining skills can still sell those skills, while those who screw off and do drugs are unemployable. We used to let hunger be a teacher to the slothful, but now welfare is a high paying line of work. One that kills the very soul of a man...
Those who remember our emergence from the Carter malaise will remember the way the PC was the “big new thing” as the economy ramped up in late 1981 and into ‘82 and ‘83.
As we emerge from the Obama “great recession,” the “big new thing” will be robots. Everywhere. And more and more of them.
I’m only observing the likely outcome, it won’t be pretty. Don’t see how it can be.
What if wealth can be created?
The luddites were famous for a zero-sum game.
They were wrong.
/johnny
Artificial Intelligence may surpass people 10 to 15 years from now. So the bots will take most of those jobs too.
Check out the Quantum Chip from D-Wave.
What this comes down to is that (most) people will fairly soon be irrelevant to the production of good and services. This is the logical result of the productivity curve, in which more goods and services are constantly being produced with less and less human input.
Pretty obviously at some point a LOT of “stuff” will be produced with very little human effort.
IOW, the market economy, based on the efficient allocation of scarce resources, is in the process of eating itself by eliminating scarcity.
One consequence may very well be the expansion of the state to reallocate resources to those who quite simply have no economic demand for any services they’re incapable of providing.
I’m curious if anybody has alternative libertarian ideas for organizing an economy where a smaller and smaller percentage of the people actually contribute.
It’ll be deflationary because the pool of available buyers shrinks substantially due to the effects of robotics upon availability of gainful employment.
The difference is that past technology still needed a man’s hand to function. There has never been a time before when man can be removed just about completely from the entire process.
We are also just about getting to the point where the amount of necessary knowledge needed to stay ahead of the robots is impossible to acquire for most people.
If governments would quit trying to control the economy and quit trying to social engineer the people, things will work themselves out.
I suspect almost all the problems we face today are the result of the government trying to micro manage people.
Life is not fair, and the government can not change that.
If there is no human demand for products, there is no need for robots.
That said, there are millions of humans now who are unemployable in ANY position except drug dealing (think Baltimore and Ferguson).
We are at a really new point in our history, but I think perhaps each successive generation thought the same thing.
” I’m beginning to understand the Luddites, the bad outweighs the good.”
And the luddites were wrong. Something llike 90% of people used to be employed by farming just over 100 years ago - today it’s about 3-4%. And we eat better, live better and longer, thanks to what they feared.
Modern day Luddites like their predecessors lack the understanding and imagination to see beyond the immediate cause and effects.
If they were running the world we would still be in the stone age.
I do worry, however, about our educational system and our social systems. A lot of people -- a lot -- are really not employable. I worry that we might slip into a world where money "goes away" and everything is "free". You know: robot factories make stuff, people sit at home, EBT cards arrive, people go to stores and then they come home with things.
That would be a pretty pointless existence. It doesn't have to be that way -- but I think Liberal policies are taking us in that direction, and I don't see many Republicans creating a better path.
My two cents.
And I hope you are feeling as well as can be today. Praying for you!
Past performance does not guarantee future performance. Technology is a force multiplier, allowing us to get more done with less effort. Which gives us an increasing standard of living with less labor. And yes we continued to find new labor, but even then we’re just not working as hard. Eventually that force WILL be multiplied to the point where we just don’t need most people to be doing anything to maintain the standard of living. The big thing is how are we as a society going to adjust to a world where we simply only need 10% of the people to be in the work force.
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