Posted on 02/05/2017 1:37:59 AM PST by TigerClaws
After a factory in Dongguan, China, replaced most of its workers with robots, it witnessed a spectacular rise in productivity.
While some of the world’s leaders are obsessed with keeping people out of their country, an unspoken entity is slowly but certainly taking our jobs: robots. It’s been long discussed that robots and computers will start taking our jobs “in the near future” — well that near future is upon us and we’re not really prepared to deal with it. Of course, some jobs are more at risk than others, are few are as threatened as factory jobs. Advertisement
According to Monetary Watch, the Changying Precision Technology Company focuses on the production of mobile phones and uses automated production lines. The factory used to be run by 650 employees, but now just 60 people get the entire job done, while robots take care of the rest. Luo Weiqiang, the general manager, says the number of required employees will drop to 20 at one point. Despite this reduction in staff, not only is the factory producing more equipment (a 250% increase), but it’s also ensuring better quality.
Without a doubt, this is something we’ll be hearing more and more of in the future. Adidas is one of the companies which has already announced a shift towards robot-only factories, and it’s not just factories that will eliminate workers for robots. According to a report created by Dr Carl Benedikt Frey and Associate Professor Michael Osborne from the University of Oxford, there’s an over 90% chance that robots will take over the jobs of (long list ahead): masons, budget analysts, tax examiners and collectors, butchers and meat cutters, retail salespersons, geological and petroleum technicians, hand sewers, abstract searchers, watch repairers, new account clerks, tax preparers, order clerks, loan officers, legal secretaries, radio operators, tellers, hotel and restaurant hostesses, cashiers, real estate brokers, polishing workers, dental technicians, pesticide sprayers, telephone operators, cooks (not chefs), rock splitters, gaming dealers, and many, many more. Yeah, that’s a long list, and it goes on for much longer. Whether we admit it or not, we’re stepping well into the bounds of “robots taking over our jobs” and I’m not sure any economy is able to handle this at the moment.
I’ve got some very mixed feelings about this. Firstly, this is indeed exciting. We’re entering a new age of automation, and technology is truly reaching impressive peaks. The process is better and it’s also more resource efficient, which is also good. I’m also happy that humans don’t have to work repetitive, unchallenging jobs and can instead focus on other things. The problem is … there might not be other things. In fact there most definitely aren’t. Those people are out of a job, and there’s a good chance they’ll have a very difficult time finding new jobs. Simply put, our society isn’t prepared to integrate these people in different jobs and naturally this will cause huge problems.
Perhaps down the road I will get a job protesting the factory full of robots. I will make signs deploring the Social Injustice, the environmental degradation, and any other Soros type protest. I hear it pays well.
It's something of a Star Trek future. The earth will be in the stewardship of a small population of highly-educated technicians, clocking in to labor periodically only to ensure the machines stay running. All their basic needs met, they enjoy mostly a life of leisure and scholarly pursuit.
The ever-increasing number of illiterate, unskilled peasants mired in poverty and fueled by religious fundamentalism, there will be no use for. They will have nothing to contribute except for mouths that need to be fed. They will be seen as an obstacle to progress and dealt with as such.
The Star Trek future may be nice but getting their isn't going to be pretty.
Sure you will. First they came for......
Manufacturing jobs will largely be replaced by robots and machines. People will have to find other jobs if they can.
This IS the technological utopia my grade school teachers were clamoring about !! We will all have so much free leisure time on our hands, lying around eating grapes and petting unicorns and planning vacations and such. I just have one question.
WHERE THE HELL IS MY FLYING CAR ??!!?
When I said education I did not intend to limit my comment to academic pursuits. Our country should look at the German model where decisions is to paths students will follows at a relatively early stage. Then there are personal preferences in which testing cannot easily detect. I went to engineering school from which a handful of my classmates after graduating entered fields very remote from engineering.
I have thought about the same thing. If one assumes such an outcome then what follows IMO is communism and then one world communism. A “1984” type deal. There will be a remnant of rebellious souls like us around clashing with the “machine”.
Don’t forget doing impromptu poetry & performance art!
If you think that “art” produced now is pointless, intellectually stupid, tacky and sleazy wait until you see this “utopian” art.
NOT buy the stuff made by robots? Robotic manufacturing is already here and will increase to where almost everything is made by machines. Like in the industrial revolution... people will have to adapt. Lesson here is to make sure your children go into the right fields of endeavor and are prepared for such a future.
“There will be a lot of jobs available as police officers, though!”
And what could possibly go wrong with that?
This factory isn’t impressive, we have been doing this in the US and have robotic lines that can literally turn out a different vehicle on the same line without changing the line out.
The problem is taxes and the huge capital investment required.
Also there is a problem with the incredible speed of technology itself, these aren’t like milling machines that can see 80 years of service.
I think a UBI, if done properly, along with other social works could be enough to head off communism and just has a quasi socialist state where private ownership provides a basic level of living. It will be a long, long time before the world could afford a UBI - if ever - so I think you’ll see nations eventually be forced to close their borders.
Thomas Paine argued for a ubi around two hundred years ago.
Friedman argued for a negative income tax. These are not new ideas.
At the turn of last century over 80% of the workforce were in farming. Today it’s about 3%. Agricultural machinery was an even bigger disrupt or than anything today and new. Today there are untold number of jobs that people never dreamed about back then.
This scare mongering about robots is nothing more than the usual tactic by the left for more income redistribution - this time to push for a guaranteed income.
That’s true. Our educational system is sadly deficient in all areas. There are no decent paths for trades and academic credentials have devolved to little more than certification for political correctness. The colleges that still require academic rigor are filled with foreign students while American youth languish in a state of institutionalized ignorance.
Given the state of technology, there is little reason for most traditional colleges. Most courses should be online with serious technical lab components. Apprenticeships and trade schools would better serve the larger population.
Due to my military career, I have attended college courses around the country over a span of decades. I have seen the quality of education decline dramatically—only exceeded by the lack of preparedness of the students. Few colleges are anything beyond leftist indoctrination camps.
The current system is not only broken; it’s irreparable. The vast majority of student loans amount to noting more than indentured servitude for a gullible audience.
Give us all a welfare check just because we are alive and we will just sit around, pick out noses or have sex. The offspring will be worse specimens generation after generation.
It would be great if the robo factories were in the USA. If the Free Traitors™ hadn’t off shored everything we would be the premier manufacturing country. I hate all Free Traitors#153, GTH all of them.
You are an idiot. Does it occur to you that the factories are in China? Does that even matter to you globalist simpletons?
Once China corners the market in manufacturing the world is their oyster and we are their bitch. A globalist wet dream.
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