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You could say that about basically every labour-saving device though. Tractors, earth-moving equipment, container ships, whatever. And even textiles are almost

You could say that about basically every labour-saving device though. Tractors, earth-moving equipment, container ships, whatever. And even textiles are almost wholly automated now - lots of textiles are grown or spun, woven, dyed and printed almost entirely by automated machines - robots, in effect. Final assembly is in many cases the first time a given piece of textile has been touched by human hands. So why is the automation of this final step going to be the thing that prevents countries from climbing the "development ladder"? When cellphones became affordable, it didn't mean that countries without decent landline networks couldn't "move up the ladder". They just jumped straight to the more advanced technology. If higher-productivity technologies are available, and are cheaper than using scarce human labour, then you use it. More productivity is not somehow a bad thing.

Bartweiss 9y ago
I'm not convinced this point carries. Sure, "lump of labor" is a fallacy, more productivity is not likely to drive massive unemployment. But that doesn't mean all labor is interchangeably easy in all environments. Competition is still possible. Early tractors didn't do much for underdeveloped nations. Mainframe computers didn't either. The default state of capital-intensive technology is to improve productivity, but not to bring capital and work into underdeveloped nations. Whatever benefits accrue there are the diffuse rewards of expanding global production. The economic boom in China, Taiwan, etc was something vastly more specific than "rising labor productivity". Container ships, telecommunications, (Western labor laws,) and efficient but labor-intensive production came together to make offshoring incredibly profitable. The boom wasn't just rising productivity, it was a confluence of incentives that made production in certain countries much more attractive than others. We didn't just make more things, we closed factories in the West and reopened them in China. If the next wave of productivity gains is high-capital, high-tech, low-labor, we'll probably see the reverse happen. People will engage in production where they can get extremely stable infrastructure (including internet), skilled labor, and precision parts. Factories in countries with cheap labor but unreliable power and internet might well close in favor of more production in countries like South Korea or even America. That won't be the end of the world, productivity will still rise, but it might end the specific forces that have caused so much growth via mass production.
- snrplfth 9y ago
  > Early tractors didn't do much for underdeveloped nations. Mainframe computers didn't either. The default state of capital-intensive technology is to improve productivity, but not to bring capital and work into underdeveloped nations. Whatever benefits accrue there are the diffuse rewards of expanding global production. When early tractors were being deployed, all regions and countries were quite undeveloped in agricultural mechanization, compared to today. Likewise, when early computers were being created, all countries had primitive infomation technology. The default state of capital intensive technology is to be deployed first where capital is relatively cheap and labour is relatively expensive. The "diffuse rewards" of expanding global production are pretty much the whole point, since the magnitude of those rewards are huge. The recent economic boom of much of the less-industrialized world was characterized by (compared to the industrialized world) labour-intensive production, true - however, it was much less labor intensive than had been the case before. It was absolutely characterized by people adopting more mechanization, more automation, more technology. So this is why it doesn't make sense to me to think that a high-productivity technology will stall growth. If a t-shirt robot is more expensive than a Bangladeshi textile worker's wage, then we'll see continued high use of human labour in that industry. If the robot becomes cheaper, then the Bangladeshi textile workers will shift to other industries (as they mostly did when they went from being farmers and handcraft workers to being textile workers, over the last few decades.)
zdkl 9y ago
> So why is the automation of this final step going to be the thing that prevents countries from climbing the "development ladder"? I believe you're misharacterising the issue. The trouble with technology is that well, you either have it or you don't. Labour on the other hand is fungible. So with a sweatshop you can go from unskilled workforce to $$$t-shirt$$$ with base supplies and bog standard infrastructure. Acquiring, operating and conducting maintenance on precision robotics on the other hand...
- snrplfth 9y ago
  > I believe you're misharacterising the issue. The trouble with technology is that well, you either have it or you don't. Technology is always a matter of degree. Let's say I have a handloom barn making fabric and clothing. Is that already "technology"? If not, then what if I install a diesel generator to power the looms? Then I get some treadle sewing machines to replace hand-stitching? Then I get a laptop to replace hand-accounting? Do I "have technology" yet? As a handloom barn owner, I certainly couldn't have developed or manufactured a diesel generator, a sewing machine, or a laptop, yet I can buy and maintain (or just replace) them quite easily. Doing the same with robots is just a matter of degree and difficulty. Compared with getting humans to do the same work, is it worth it or not?
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    I think it is a matter of competition. The unpowered loom does not enable you to compete, but some amount of powering it and accepting a lower wage does allow you to compete with shops that have slightly more tech. Accepting lower wages is how these shops came into existence in the first place. This is the first production quality version of this robot the next one could be twice as fast. How do you compete with that? The only way to compete is to build another machine that is cheaper or better. This is not something Bangladesh is able to do.
    - snrplfth 9y ago
      The point is that if the robot really is that fast, and that cheap, then you don't compete - you start doing something else where the robot cannot compete at that price. Textile workers aren't robots - they have the capacity to shift to other work, and there's an enormous amount of work to be done. This objection to automation has been brought up every time anything's been invented, for hundreds of years - if we do something with less human labour, then humans won't have work or incomes. But actually, they just end up finding other useful things to do that weren't getting done before.
bmcusick 9y ago
> More productivity is not somehow a bad thing. I didn't say it was bad! I'm pro-productivity. My contention is simpler; that going from a pre-industrial economy to an advanced economy has a path that's been well trod by the West and now by east Asia too. There's a give-and-take, or zig-zag path, between automating the old jobs and finding new jobs for people to do. You need to automate farming to free up farm labor to do more productive things, but you also have to have a large demand for jobs to absorb all those ex-farm laborers. Otherwise you just get urban slums full of the unemployed. India tried to jump directly from pre-industrial economy to a financial and technological services economy, and it's not working as well as China's model. India's GDP/capita is still a fraction of China's. The problem is that you can't take a billion subsistence farmers and turn them into the 10 million specialties needed to run a modern economy. Growing human capital is an organic process that takes decades and requires intermediate steps of sophistication. And for centuries now, garment production was a good stepping stone to more advanced kinds of manufacturing. It's like if you take the middle three rungs out of a ladder, how do you get to the top? You can't. The top is still there, but you're stuck at the bottom. Now maybe there's another path from Pre-IR to OECD-level economics that doesn't involve sweatshops, but if so, can you point to a country that's done it?

Bartweiss 9y ago

I'm not convinced this point carries. Sure, "lump of labor" is a fallacy, more productivity is not likely to drive massive unemployment. But that doesn't mean all labor is interchangeably easy in all environments. Competition is still possible. Early tractors didn't do much for underdeveloped nations. Mainframe computers didn't either. The default state of capital-intensive technology is to improve productivity, but not to bring capital and work into underdeveloped nations. Whatever benefits accrue there are the diffuse rewards of expanding global production. The economic boom in China, Taiwan, etc was something vastly more specific than "rising labor productivity". Container ships, telecommunications, (Western labor laws,) and efficient but labor-intensive production came together to make offshoring incredibly profitable. The boom wasn't just rising productivity, it was a confluence of incentives that made production in certain countries much more attractive than others. We didn't just make more things, we closed factories in the West and reopened them in China. If the next wave of productivity gains is high-capital, high-tech, low-labor, we'll probably see the reverse happen. People will engage in production where they can get extremely stable infrastructure (including internet), skilled labor, and precision parts. Factories in countries with cheap labor but unreliable power and internet might well close in favor of more production in countries like South Korea or even America. That won't be the end of the world, productivity will still rise, but it might end the specific forces that have caused so much growth via mass production.

snrplfth 9y ago
> Early tractors didn't do much for underdeveloped nations. Mainframe computers didn't either. The default state of capital-intensive technology is to improve productivity, but not to bring capital and work into underdeveloped nations. Whatever benefits accrue there are the diffuse rewards of expanding global production. When early tractors were being deployed, all regions and countries were quite undeveloped in agricultural mechanization, compared to today. Likewise, when early computers were being created, all countries had primitive infomation technology. The default state of capital intensive technology is to be deployed first where capital is relatively cheap and labour is relatively expensive. The "diffuse rewards" of expanding global production are pretty much the whole point, since the magnitude of those rewards are huge. The recent economic boom of much of the less-industrialized world was characterized by (compared to the industrialized world) labour-intensive production, true - however, it was much less labor intensive than had been the case before. It was absolutely characterized by people adopting more mechanization, more automation, more technology. So this is why it doesn't make sense to me to think that a high-productivity technology will stall growth. If a t-shirt robot is more expensive than a Bangladeshi textile worker's wage, then we'll see continued high use of human labour in that industry. If the robot becomes cheaper, then the Bangladeshi textile workers will shift to other industries (as they mostly did when they went from being farmers and handcraft workers to being textile workers, over the last few decades.)

zdkl 9y ago

> So why is the automation of this final step going to be the thing that prevents countries from climbing the "development ladder"? I believe you're misharacterising the issue. The trouble with technology is that well, you either have it or you don't. Labour on the other hand is fungible. So with a sweatshop you can go from unskilled workforce to $$$t-shirt$$$ with base supplies and bog standard infrastructure. Acquiring, operating and conducting maintenance on precision robotics on the other hand...

snrplfth 9y ago
> I believe you're misharacterising the issue. The trouble with technology is that well, you either have it or you don't. Technology is always a matter of degree. Let's say I have a handloom barn making fabric and clothing. Is that already "technology"? If not, then what if I install a diesel generator to power the looms? Then I get some treadle sewing machines to replace hand-stitching? Then I get a laptop to replace hand-accounting? Do I "have technology" yet? As a handloom barn owner, I certainly couldn't have developed or manufactured a diesel generator, a sewing machine, or a laptop, yet I can buy and maintain (or just replace) them quite easily. Doing the same with robots is just a matter of degree and difficulty. Compared with getting humans to do the same work, is it worth it or not?
- sqeaky 9y ago
  I think it is a matter of competition. The unpowered loom does not enable you to compete, but some amount of powering it and accepting a lower wage does allow you to compete with shops that have slightly more tech. Accepting lower wages is how these shops came into existence in the first place. This is the first production quality version of this robot the next one could be twice as fast. How do you compete with that? The only way to compete is to build another machine that is cheaper or better. This is not something Bangladesh is able to do.
  - snrplfth 9y ago
    The point is that if the robot really is that fast, and that cheap, then you don't compete - you start doing something else where the robot cannot compete at that price. Textile workers aren't robots - they have the capacity to shift to other work, and there's an enormous amount of work to be done. This objection to automation has been brought up every time anything's been invented, for hundreds of years - if we do something with less human labour, then humans won't have work or incomes. But actually, they just end up finding other useful things to do that weren't getting done before.

bmcusick 9y ago

> More productivity is not somehow a bad thing. I didn't say it was bad! I'm pro-productivity. My contention is simpler; that going from a pre-industrial economy to an advanced economy has a path that's been well trod by the West and now by east Asia too. There's a give-and-take, or zig-zag path, between automating the old jobs and finding new jobs for people to do. You need to automate farming to free up farm labor to do more productive things, but you also have to have a large demand for jobs to absorb all those ex-farm laborers. Otherwise you just get urban slums full of the unemployed. India tried to jump directly from pre-industrial economy to a financial and technological services economy, and it's not working as well as China's model. India's GDP/capita is still a fraction of China's. The problem is that you can't take a billion subsistence farmers and turn them into the 10 million specialties needed to run a modern economy. Growing human capital is an organic process that takes decades and requires intermediate steps of sophistication. And for centuries now, garment production was a good stepping stone to more advanced kinds of manufacturing. It's like if you take the middle three rungs out of a ladder, how do you get to the top? You can't. The top is still there, but you're stuck at the bottom. Now maybe there's another path from Pre-IR to OECD-level economics that doesn't involve sweatshops, but if so, can you point to a country that's done it?