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Making nail manufacturing more efficient freed up labor to manufacture more complex and valuable things. Automating the entire manufacturing industry will requi

by natrius 17y ago

Making nail manufacturing more efficient freed up labor to manufacture more complex and valuable things. Automating the entire manufacturing industry will require workers to shift to something that isn't manufacturing. "Earlier generations of automation actually replaced fairly skilled labour with relatively unskilled labour ... There is good reason to assume we can go the other way too..." The other way is vastly more difficult. If you replace unskilled jobs with skilled jobs, more people will need more education. What happens to the people who aren't capable of learning more complicated things? Based on history, it's very likely that I'm wrong. Based on the facts of this specific case, it seems hard to justify the need for non-creative labor.

netcan 17y ago
Automating the entire manufacturing industry will require workers to shift to something that isn't manufacturing. That is very related to the point I was trying to make and why I used nails instead of clothes. Nail making had been important for a long time and required lots of people. Automation led to 10,000% or more increase in the number of nails per person. A handful of today's nailmakers can manufacture more nails then all the world's nailmakers a few centuries ago. It was effectively automating the entire industry. The other way is vastly more difficult Maybe. I'm not sure. I do think it's a fallacy however to think, as politicians seem to, of "number of unskilled workers" as some sort of constant that we can prod & shift slightly but essentially more of less the same.
- natrius 17y ago
  Technology made nail manufacturing more efficient, but the cost savings created new products to be manufactured. This phase of technological advancement will effectively eliminate manufacturing as a profession. The savings may lead to more new products, but robots will manufacture those too. It truly is a unique moment in history, which is why I think the lessons of the past may not apply.
  - netcan 17y ago
    I'm not trying to demonstrate how the economic transition will mimic earlier ones (though, I am tempted), just how the illusion might. A lot of what you say now could have been said at any point, particularly tipping points, which are by definition, unique. Try taking your perspective to the 18th century when Adam Smith came up with the example I bastardised. To a manufacturer of pins (Smith's example) it must have appeared that all jobs were dissolving: Adam Smith estimated (his high estimate) a productivity increase from 1 to 4800 pins per day per person. Even if demand for pins grew ten or one hundred fold, the vast majority of pin makers (47/48 pin makers after a 100X increase in demand) would end up unemployed. Pins were just one unimportant example. There are two things that would have seemed unbelievable to his contemporaries: (1) That demand could possibly increase by that much, not just for pins, but for stuff. How much can you eat? How much can you wear? (2) That all these people made redundant by machines would ever be needed for anything. Even if all these pins (and other stuff) made manufacture of other stuff cheaper (this would have been less part of the consciousness then), all that other stuff will be manufactured by machines too. If new stuff gets invented and manufactured (this would have also been unintuitive at the time) it too will be made by machines. I think the trick to understanding the point of this example is the magnitude: 1 to 4800. For all practical purposes (at the time) that meant getting rid of all pin makers in the same way (actually, much more) as auto-checkout will get rid of all checkout chicks.

by natrius 17y ago

netcan 17y ago

Automating the entire manufacturing industry will require workers to shift to something that isn't manufacturing. That is very related to the point I was trying to make and why I used nails instead of clothes. Nail making had been important for a long time and required lots of people. Automation led to 10,000% or more increase in the number of nails per person. A handful of today's nailmakers can manufacture more nails then all the world's nailmakers a few centuries ago. It was effectively automating the entire industry. The other way is vastly more difficult Maybe. I'm not sure. I do think it's a fallacy however to think, as politicians seem to, of "number of unskilled workers" as some sort of constant that we can prod & shift slightly but essentially more of less the same.

natrius 17y ago
Technology made nail manufacturing more efficient, but the cost savings created new products to be manufactured. This phase of technological advancement will effectively eliminate manufacturing as a profession. The savings may lead to more new products, but robots will manufacture those too. It truly is a unique moment in history, which is why I think the lessons of the past may not apply.
- netcan 17y ago
  I'm not trying to demonstrate how the economic transition will mimic earlier ones (though, I am tempted), just how the illusion might. A lot of what you say now could have been said at any point, particularly tipping points, which are by definition, unique. Try taking your perspective to the 18th century when Adam Smith came up with the example I bastardised. To a manufacturer of pins (Smith's example) it must have appeared that all jobs were dissolving: Adam Smith estimated (his high estimate) a productivity increase from 1 to 4800 pins per day per person. Even if demand for pins grew ten or one hundred fold, the vast majority of pin makers (47/48 pin makers after a 100X increase in demand) would end up unemployed. Pins were just one unimportant example. There are two things that would have seemed unbelievable to his contemporaries: (1) That demand could possibly increase by that much, not just for pins, but for stuff. How much can you eat? How much can you wear? (2) That all these people made redundant by machines would ever be needed for anything. Even if all these pins (and other stuff) made manufacture of other stuff cheaper (this would have been less part of the consciousness then), all that other stuff will be manufactured by machines too. If new stuff gets invented and manufactured (this would have also been unintuitive at the time) it too will be made by machines. I think the trick to understanding the point of this example is the magnitude: 1 to 4800. For all practical purposes (at the time) that meant getting rid of all pin makers in the same way (actually, much more) as auto-checkout will get rid of all checkout chicks.