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This is the angle I thought first world countries would take to get manufacturing back in-house. It still makes sense to do it if the recurring infrastructure c
by deskamess 10y ago
This is the angle I thought first world countries would take to get manufacturing back in-house. It still makes sense to do it if the recurring infrastructure costs (like power) are similar. However a plant may no longer bring in 100-200 workers so not much for the politicians to preach about. It is going to be a few high skilled personnel, a handful of physical workers (to replace and maintain robots), and a temporary building supervisor (required while humans inhabit the plant). Eventually second generation plants will reduce that even further with only a supervisor coming around for extreme cases.
- ThomPete 10y agoThe way worldwide logistics and shipping is constructed makes this more more or less impossible. The supply chains are based around china, india being the primary manufactoring.
- macspoofing 10y agoThat can change. The supply chain wasn't always based around Chinese and Indian manufacturing.
- my_username_is_ 10y agoWorking at a 'traditional manufacturing' company that makes a lot of products in Asia, I can see that we are already starting to move manufacturing back to America (where the bulk of our customers are), despite our supply chain still being deeply entrenched overseas. I would expect this trend to continue in the coming years.
- ThomPete 10y agoSure but we are talking 30 years of change.
- darkerside 10y agoDisruption is an abused term these days, but it applies precisely to this kind of thinking. When conventional wisdom says things are impossible, there is money to be made by making it possible.
- ThomPete 10y agoSure but disrupting is much cheaper when it comes to technology than when it's about physical space. But sure.
- arethuza 10y agoI thought first world countries still manufacture lots of stuff, just that we're really efficient at it so it doesn't employ many people? e.g. There is a statistic that peak manufacturing output for the UK was actually fairly recently: "A 2009 report from PricewaterhouseCoopers, citing data from the UK Office for National Statistics, stated that manufacturing output (gross value added at 2007 prices) has increased in 35 of the 50 years between 1958 and 2007, and output in 2007 was at record levels, approximately double that in 1958" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_Ki...
- wahsd 10y agoThat was my thought to recently. If you have robots replacing low wage workers, which most people don't really realize was nothing more than the evolution of slavery, then you have zero incentive to produce in said low wage countries. The next wave of "low cost production" regions will be determined by access to low cost energy and low cost space. In many ways, I suspect that the robot based production could even move towards the north as cooling may play a significant factor. We kind of see some of that already as Google and the likes have been moving their massive server farms into northern regions for cooling purposes. Another factor in this matter is that the uncomfortable reality is that "we" need to stave off the influx of uneducated and unskilled people. Reality is that people will lose ever more value, especially as, rather oddly, the liberal autonomist types advocate for things the they don't realize will only commodify the vast majority of people.