SMASH THE LOOMS!
Posted on 04/03/2017 5:53:03 AM PDT by C19fan
Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots.
The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University. It appears to be the first study to quantify large, direct, negative effects of robots.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
There used to be licensed elevator operators. That was when, 50’s? I think that’s what inspired Vonnegut to write Player Piano, where robots do ALL of the work.
Automated manufacturing plants still have hundreds or thousands of employees. It takes a lot of people to keep those automated plants going. So getting them to remain in the US, or relocate back to the US, is just as important as it ever was.
More so. Since the issue isn’t just payrolls, but technology transfer. Americans traditionally know how to get things done because Americans traditionally did things. Take that away and in a generation you’ve erased that part of the American character.
At one time there will small manufacturing plants in almost every town in America making some kind of widget or bottle or whatnot. That’s mostly all gone. The machines are automated, but that’s not the problem. The automated machines are in Malaysia, and your kid gets out of high school and hopes to get a job pouring coffee at Starbucks, that’s a problem.
SMASH THE LOOMS!
In the early 1800s a drill as sharp shaft operated by a bow and string
A few years later a hand crank automated the bow and string and this hand. Was in common use until the 1970s (some areas of the US still had not yet been electrified )
As the electrical power net expanded, the electric drill motor took over for the manual crank hand drill.
The time and effort required to drill a hole dropped dramatically and productivity skyrocketed
In the early 1800s it took two highly skilled men weeks to build a musket, now modern manufacturing methods crank out an AR15 in a matter of hours
Automation gives people more free time and allows them to purchase things that at one time were so expensive they were only available to the very wealthy or to thevgovernment
If politicians are worried about automation they need to stop passing laws that punish companies for using human labor because government regulations are driving the trend to automation. If you were an employer making paint what would you rather have - a robot mixing paint, or a young woman of child bearing age with health care, employment taxes, workers comp insurance, liabilty insurance, 8 paid weeks vacation, 26weeks paid maternity leave , low priductivity abd absence, concerns. over getting sued for bogus injury or exposure to paint chemicals law suits, work stoppages due to strikes, expensive controls to prevent exposure to chemicals our EPA and other regulatory may determine are hazardous or toxic, < p>
Government interference in the market with mandates like a $15 minimum wage will only hasten the day when machines will take over many jobs. Many who are demonstrating for a $15 minimum wage maybe very surprised if the get their way as their type of labor is not productive enough to be worth $15 an hour and employers find automation to now be a cost effective alternative. In the near future a visit to a fast food joint might be devoid of almost all human workers.
The concern is if they become self aware....
“they’ve declared a different winner: the robots. “.......
Who will be the ones to engineer, design, build and maintain those robots? I do not see robots with such skills. Certainly there will be a degree of automation in our future (much already exists) but it will be limited as to how far it will progress.
In the near term this may be correct, but in the long term, ironically, it may just put fast for out of business.
If the automated food production system is inexpensive, just put one in your kitchen and place your order. Members of the family can select from recipe offering from McDonalds, and Jack in The Box for burgers, chipotle for burritos, Various pizza types, fried chicken , ect.
Each family member can place and order for whatever type, brand or style of food that want individually.
I'm actually more interested in the dish washing, laundry, house cleaning, gardening and lawn mowing robots.
I'm warming up to the idea of a self driving, automobile chauffeur (until now the perks of billionaires, high level government officials and big time CEOs) to allow me to catch up on paperwork on the way to and from work - as long as I have sports car to drive in spare time.
Automation doom and gloom is way overstated and most of the gloom and doomers are actually politically oriented Marxists and would be authoritarians who are trying use the automation trends to impose a centrally planned, authoritarian Marxist government that they can use to rule over the people, just like they have tried to use inequality, class structure, global cooling, global warming, water scarcity, patriarchy, sexual orientation, climate change, globalization, sustainability,world peace, world war, oil prices, energy availability, lack of energy availability,pollution, social progress, social change, social stagnation, basic change in human nature, division of labor, modernization, social stability and pretty much anything else they can thing of to justify their desire to consolidate power and rule over the population with an iron fist.
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