Posted on 08/19/2012 7:23:16 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
At the Philips Electronics factory on the coast of China, hundreds of workers use their hands and specialized tools to assemble electric shavers. That is the old way.
At a sister factory here in the Dutch countryside, 128 robot arms do the same work with yoga-like flexibility. Video cameras guide them through feats well beyond the capability of the most dexterous human.
One robot arm endlessly forms three perfect bends in two connector wires and slips them into holes almost too small for the eye to see. The arms work so fast that they must be enclosed in glass cages to prevent the people supervising them from being injured. And they do it all without a coffee break — three shifts a day, 365 days a year.
All told, the factory here has several dozen workers per shift, about a tenth as many as the plant in the Chinese city of Zhuhai.
This is the future. A new wave of robots, far more adept than those now commonly used by automakers and other heavy manufacturers, are replacing workers around the world in both manufacturing and distribution. Factories like the one here in the Netherlands are a striking counterpoint to those used by Apple and other consumer electronics giants, which employ hundreds of thousands of low-skilled workers.
“With these machines, we can make any consumer device in the world,” said Binne Visser, an electrical engineer who manages the Philips assembly line in Drachten.
Many industry executives and technology experts say Philips’s approach is gaining ground on Apple’s. Even as Foxconn, Apple’s iPhone manufacturer, continues to build new plants and hire thousands of additional workers to make smartphones, it plans to install more than a million robots within a few years to supplement its work force in China.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Your plan presumes that somebody qualified to be a bank teller has the smarts to be able to design or maintain ATM machines. We are headed to a point where the value of the production of people with IQ under 100 is not worth the cost of feeding them. (At least for guys with IQ under 100. Something might be done with the more attractive women).
——What do we do with the rest of the people?——
I tried to make the point in my original post but perhaps did not emphasize the fact that the CNC machines in question are making new products. The machines are employed by a small business created from thin air by an entrepreneur who developed his products from scratch and raised some money to open a brand new manufacturing facility.
That is, these are totally new jobs resulting from innovation. If the regulatory strangulation currently restricting the economy is lifted there will be other such operations started with new and currently unknown products.
Suddenly hit me what one of their games is. Claim we have free-market economy when we don’t, then when their fascist theories utterly fail, say it was the free market that failed. Voila, more fascist control.
We used to have a free market. Worked pretty well.
But the First Progressives, around 1900, came in and said that more government intervention would be a good thing.
Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, they introduced a lot of Social Welfare.
Then FDR gave us the New Deal with big time government takeover of the economy.
Then LBJ gave us the Great Society, which was a disaster.
At this point, we were very far from a Free Market economy. there was so much Socialism in our economy that they started praising it as a "Mixed Economy".
But things got worse and worse. Under Clinton, and under Bush, we got weaker and weaker. That Mixed Economy just was not humming along.
Then, when it all collapsed, and Obama came into office, the Pundits finally admitted the truth -- "The Mixed Economy has failed!"
And the conclusion was: Too much Capitalism. Not enough Socialism. Let's not mix 'em because the Capitalism will spoil everything. Let's just fix it all with pure Socialism!!!
Then you would be surprised at the difference in productivity the right attitude can produce. I often find people who are not "qualified" operating "beyond their pay grade" - eg software developers who were originally trained as social workers or english majors or painters (and I thought painters were unrecoverable cases, heheh). There is more to intelligence than "IQ", and I predict in this future machine utopia we will still prize critical thinkers, effective decision-makers, designers, interior decorators, and social butterflies, as always. It just may not be in a way that is familiar to YOU.
The essential truth is that to earn a living or become wealthy you have to do things that people value enough to trade for, however little or however much that is. But it's never been a constant in any dimension of skill or cost (though that relationship between a the price of a nice suit and and the price of an ounce of gold should set you to wondering).
For me the answer is clear - seek opportunity and exploit it. Leverage my skills and experience where applicable, learn new things to prepare for the time when what I know doesn't apply, work with others to gain collective effectiveness. Plenty of people never figure this out no matter how singularly intelligent they may be. What's new? Ultimately it boils down to evolution in action. Anyone can make a buggy whip now, but only the truly talented and determined can make a living at it.
In 1950 we led the world in manufacturing.
In 2011 ... we are now 15 trillion in debt, our factories are now all in China, and we are nearly overwhelmed by democrats now.
I’ll take 1950. Bigtime.
You are very misinformed.
We still manufacture 21% of the world’s goods.
http://www.shopfloor.org/2011/03/u-s-manufacturing-remains-worlds-largest/18756
It isn’t how much the USA manufactures, it is WHAT is still manufactured here. Whole sectors are gone i.e. consumer electronics for example.
There are any number of goods and services that are too small or specialized to afford the kind of capital investment required for robots.
Things go on pretty much as they always have.
People get so wrapped up with the size and influence of the Fords, Toshibas, and Walmarts that they forget most of the jobs are created by Joe the Plumber and Anonymous Printing....
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