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> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVA

by tw04 6y ago

> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. To what end? As a country we're already struggling to create enough middle-class jobs and you're suggesting we try to gut another whole sector. So that owners/executives of prefab factories can pocket the money? If you think it's going to reduce cost or benefit the consumer, you're crazy. I notice you downvoted without responding. I presume you've got a plan to recreate those jobs vs. just transferring wealth upwards and are keeping it a secret. It astounds me people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact is somehow a righteous goal to strive for. Yet you can't even answer what the benefit is to society other than making some really rich dude a little bit richer at the expensive of hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs. And most likely an end product for consumers that's LOWER quality.

seibelj 6y ago
This is the fallacy - The Fallacy - that is always made by those who don’t understand economics. Why did we build the car when it put all of the horse tradesmen out of business? Why do we use elevator buttons and put the doormen out of a job? Why did we create the Internet when perfectly good newspaper printers could pass information to us? You are making an age-old argument that we need to reduce productivity in order to save jobs. If you spent your whole life scrubbing a floor with a tooth brush when right next to you is a mop, just so you can ensure more of your time was spent washing, wouldn’t you feel like your life was wasted?
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  This is potentially very much like saying, "we burned this little bit of fuel, and all that happened was the fire got brighter because it spread to more fuel! It can never go out!". There's no reason to expect the job-generation cycle to last forever. In fact there's every reason to believe it can't. The question is whether it ends on a scale more like decades or centuries. To blindly assume that things will continue as they have is foolish. (To be clear, I think the solution looks more like UBI than Luddism.)
  - marcusverus 6y ago
    I agree that the job-generation cycle may not last forever. But in order to oppose new tech as a bad thing right now, you have to make the case that the job-generation cycle is broken right now. Arguing against new tech now because of some inevitable eventual breakdown of the job-generation cycle is just luddism with extra steps.
    - andrewflnr 6y ago
      Sure, it's the blind faith that everything will magically be fine that pisses me off. We need to be preparing for a post-work economy.
- ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
  I think your example isn't completely off the mark, but I do think the article itself actually answers this: there is a shortage in trade labour in the non-commercial construction sector in (North) America. We are also at a cross-roads with regards to having a housing crisis. There are many places now (Bay Area, Boulder) where housing is skyrocketing not because the value is naturally increasing, but is instead being artificially inflated due to a shortage in homes. One "radical" solution to this: build more homes. However, given the amount of labour and time needed to do so, we may not be able to avoid the housing crisis. One way the market is responding is moving to pre-fab construction, and trying to reduce time / costs that way. The article does seem to claim that the projects cost about the same, even if pre-fab is faster in terms of time. This _does_ identify a problem with pre-fab, namely, how come they can't fulfill this promise of being cheaper & faster. Seems strange that you save time but still cost the same when what you're proposing is taking away a significant chunk of higher-skilled labour from the equation. Some of this is regulatory capture (wasted time / money trying to convince cities of the process), some of this is nascent technology sucking (see top parent comment, sometimes pre-fab doesn't get it right), and some of this seems to just be a lack of experience on behalf of the companies trying to "disrupt" construction.
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    I don't know that you could avoid the crunch. Markets take time to respond to things, and the kind of housing that is prohibited, multifamily and anything >2 stories, is one where you progressively need more and more specialized tradesmen. The US used to have prefab apartment block construction, as did most Western public housing programs, but generally speaking they have not held up over time.
  - someguydave 6y ago
    The "housing crisis" is all about regulatory capture of local zoning laws and local oligopolies over development. None of that has anything to do with construction efficiency, which is already using "prefab" in the sense that the stud walls and roof trusses are already prefabbed offsite. Not to mention non-commercial construction tends to employ a large illegal immigrant labor population, which tends to reduce relative wages.
- tw04 6y ago
  I see you ALSO failed to explain what the replacement jobs for these highly skilled, well-paid employees will be. Horse tradesman became car dealerships. Elevator operator was never a skilled position in the first place. The internet has actually created a massive crisis in the western world that we're just now starting to realize - local newspapers going out of business is HORRIBLE for a functioning democracy, and nations across the globe are suing companies like google because of it. You're insinuating that there will somehow be a new job for the folks put out of work, but fail to explain what that is. Look no further than Detroit, hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs that are simply gone. More weight on the economy, fewer middle class citizens, but a handful of shareholders and executives that are significantly more wealthy. While I appreciate the condescending tone, I don't think you've even begun to put critical thinking skills to the problem. You're just parroting the same old tired story that justified "trick down economics" which is also based on a reality that doesn't exist.
  - seibelj 6y ago
    What’s better - everyone who lost their jobs picks a new career and retrains doing something new that is valued by society, or the government subsidizes unvalued industries that no one wants just so people never experience any pain? I’m sympathetic that government can help those who lose jobs. My preference is straight-up cash transfers so they can pick their own schools and move to where jobs are, rather than a government-run school loaded with bureaucracy. But artificially preserving shrinking industries just so we can all act like we still need them around is a waste of tax dollars and is logically inconsistent.
    - tw04 6y ago
      You keep downvoting me, but you’ve yet to explain where these jobs are coming from. The jobs Detroit lost didn’t shift, they were just lost forever. The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. What are the electricians and plumbers doing instead? You can keep saying people will just retrain and do something else but that’s about as useful as Trump saying he’ll bring manufacturing jobs back to the US without any plan. The end result is a lot of nothing.
- dudus 6y ago
  There was a story once told by Eric Schmidt that while on a trip to China he was touring a bridge construction and no heavy machinery was being used, the Chinese officials were pointing it out as something positive because it meant more people worked at the site and it generated more jobs. Eric said they should have given the workers spoons if that was the goal, which caused a couple laughs that were met with anxious stares by local officials.
  - samatman 6y ago
    Eric Schmidt stole this story from Milton Friedman. I'll restrain myself from any commentary on what sort of person that shows him to be, other than that implied in this sentence.
    - dudus 6y ago
      I didn't include a source because there probably isn't one. But he def told this story. I was there in person at a google off-site keynote
      - samatman 6y ago
        It certainly didn't originate with Schmidt, but according to this, it probably didn't originate with Friedman either: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ Though he's best known for it.
        dudus 6y ago
        It's kind of depressing seeing how much even leaders just blatantly copy each other quotes.
  - Animats 6y ago
    Large steel bridge construction involves much hand labor. Here's a big job in China.[1] If you're not seeing the foundation work or crane work, it may look like it's all hand labor. Large bridges are custom-designed prefabs. Somewhere else, there's a factory making the parts. [1] https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA
- asdff 6y ago
  I think there is something to be said here. The car is a superior technology to a horse, but in many ways a prefab house is an inferior product. It's a regression, built from a need for skilled tradesmen and a lack of this labor supply. I think a better way around that need would be to bolster training of skilled people which would lead to increased labor supply to meet this demand, rather than trying to figure out how to wring the last dime out of everything.
throw0101a 6y ago
>> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. > To what end? To the end that you can get your house built on a schedule that you want. A neighbour is a general contractor who has a good reputation: he, and the specialty teams he uses, are booked at least a year out. This isn't too say we shouldn't train more skilled trades, but having a spectrum of of people available helps those you can't afford to pay top dollar for top talent to also get quality results. It should also be noted that not everyone is gifted enough to be a top or even decent trade, yet we want as many people as possible to be productively employed. There will some percentage of the population that may be most productive simply following what the computer tells them to do: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
michaelmrose 6y ago
No company exists to create jobs and nobody ought to wish any product particularly a vital resource like housing that everyone needs cost more in order to transfer money to the middle class workforce. If you want to do that just be straightforward about it and directly raise that money via taxes and give it to families. It will be increasingly obvious as increasing automation kills jobs that ultimately probably wont ever be fully replaced that we need a solution that isn't deliberate inefficiency to maintain jobs.
solarmist 6y ago
You’re comments come across to me as condescending, argumentative (without being productive), actively hostile to other users, and so one-sided you sound almost completely uninformed on the topic. All of which is unacceptable behavior on HN. That said you’re not totally off the mark, but comments like “It astounds me that people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact” is why you’re getting down voted. How do you know now I or anyone else hasn’t given this thought? If you browse though old stories you’ll see tons of discussion on this topic. My point of view on this is “It’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle and no amount of trying to avoid job losses is going to be productive.” Instead we need to work towards making our gross economic output support everyone. If basic necessities are all provided for (such as though UBI or some other idea) then no one will care if jobs are lost because then people can focus on figuring out how to productively use their time rather than worrying about finding a shitty, or even non-shitty, job so their family can eat and stay out of the weather. And without that we’ll continue hemorrhaging jobs until we reach a critical point where there will be an honest to god revolution in the USA and things will be violently reset (not corrected).

by tw04 6y ago

seibelj 6y ago

This is the fallacy - The Fallacy - that is always made by those who don’t understand economics. Why did we build the car when it put all of the horse tradesmen out of business? Why do we use elevator buttons and put the doormen out of a job? Why did we create the Internet when perfectly good newspaper printers could pass information to us? You are making an age-old argument that we need to reduce productivity in order to save jobs. If you spent your whole life scrubbing a floor with a tooth brush when right next to you is a mop, just so you can ensure more of your time was spent washing, wouldn’t you feel like your life was wasted?

andrewflnr 6y ago
This is potentially very much like saying, "we burned this little bit of fuel, and all that happened was the fire got brighter because it spread to more fuel! It can never go out!". There's no reason to expect the job-generation cycle to last forever. In fact there's every reason to believe it can't. The question is whether it ends on a scale more like decades or centuries. To blindly assume that things will continue as they have is foolish. (To be clear, I think the solution looks more like UBI than Luddism.)
- marcusverus 6y ago
  I agree that the job-generation cycle may not last forever. But in order to oppose new tech as a bad thing right now, you have to make the case that the job-generation cycle is broken right now. Arguing against new tech now because of some inevitable eventual breakdown of the job-generation cycle is just luddism with extra steps.
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    Sure, it's the blind faith that everything will magically be fine that pisses me off. We need to be preparing for a post-work economy.
ThatGeoGuy 6y ago
I think your example isn't completely off the mark, but I do think the article itself actually answers this: there is a shortage in trade labour in the non-commercial construction sector in (North) America. We are also at a cross-roads with regards to having a housing crisis. There are many places now (Bay Area, Boulder) where housing is skyrocketing not because the value is naturally increasing, but is instead being artificially inflated due to a shortage in homes. One "radical" solution to this: build more homes. However, given the amount of labour and time needed to do so, we may not be able to avoid the housing crisis. One way the market is responding is moving to pre-fab construction, and trying to reduce time / costs that way. The article does seem to claim that the projects cost about the same, even if pre-fab is faster in terms of time. This _does_ identify a problem with pre-fab, namely, how come they can't fulfill this promise of being cheaper & faster. Seems strange that you save time but still cost the same when what you're proposing is taking away a significant chunk of higher-skilled labour from the equation. Some of this is regulatory capture (wasted time / money trying to convince cities of the process), some of this is nascent technology sucking (see top parent comment, sometimes pre-fab doesn't get it right), and some of this seems to just be a lack of experience on behalf of the companies trying to "disrupt" construction.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  I don't know that you could avoid the crunch. Markets take time to respond to things, and the kind of housing that is prohibited, multifamily and anything >2 stories, is one where you progressively need more and more specialized tradesmen. The US used to have prefab apartment block construction, as did most Western public housing programs, but generally speaking they have not held up over time.
- someguydave 6y ago
  The "housing crisis" is all about regulatory capture of local zoning laws and local oligopolies over development. None of that has anything to do with construction efficiency, which is already using "prefab" in the sense that the stud walls and roof trusses are already prefabbed offsite. Not to mention non-commercial construction tends to employ a large illegal immigrant labor population, which tends to reduce relative wages.
tw04 6y ago
I see you ALSO failed to explain what the replacement jobs for these highly skilled, well-paid employees will be. Horse tradesman became car dealerships. Elevator operator was never a skilled position in the first place. The internet has actually created a massive crisis in the western world that we're just now starting to realize - local newspapers going out of business is HORRIBLE for a functioning democracy, and nations across the globe are suing companies like google because of it. You're insinuating that there will somehow be a new job for the folks put out of work, but fail to explain what that is. Look no further than Detroit, hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs that are simply gone. More weight on the economy, fewer middle class citizens, but a handful of shareholders and executives that are significantly more wealthy. While I appreciate the condescending tone, I don't think you've even begun to put critical thinking skills to the problem. You're just parroting the same old tired story that justified "trick down economics" which is also based on a reality that doesn't exist.
- seibelj 6y ago
  What’s better - everyone who lost their jobs picks a new career and retrains doing something new that is valued by society, or the government subsidizes unvalued industries that no one wants just so people never experience any pain? I’m sympathetic that government can help those who lose jobs. My preference is straight-up cash transfers so they can pick their own schools and move to where jobs are, rather than a government-run school loaded with bureaucracy. But artificially preserving shrinking industries just so we can all act like we still need them around is a waste of tax dollars and is logically inconsistent.
  - tw04 6y ago
    You keep downvoting me, but you’ve yet to explain where these jobs are coming from. The jobs Detroit lost didn’t shift, they were just lost forever. The people who held them now work minimum wage jobs or live off welfare. What are the electricians and plumbers doing instead? You can keep saying people will just retrain and do something else but that’s about as useful as Trump saying he’ll bring manufacturing jobs back to the US without any plan. The end result is a lot of nothing.
dudus 6y ago
There was a story once told by Eric Schmidt that while on a trip to China he was touring a bridge construction and no heavy machinery was being used, the Chinese officials were pointing it out as something positive because it meant more people worked at the site and it generated more jobs. Eric said they should have given the workers spoons if that was the goal, which caused a couple laughs that were met with anxious stares by local officials.
- samatman 6y ago
  Eric Schmidt stole this story from Milton Friedman. I'll restrain myself from any commentary on what sort of person that shows him to be, other than that implied in this sentence.
  - dudus 6y ago
    I didn't include a source because there probably isn't one. But he def told this story. I was there in person at a google off-site keynote
    - samatman 6y ago
      It certainly didn't originate with Schmidt, but according to this, it probably didn't originate with Friedman either: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ Though he's best known for it.
      - dudus 6y ago
        It's kind of depressing seeing how much even leaders just blatantly copy each other quotes.
- Animats 6y ago
  Large steel bridge construction involves much hand labor. Here's a big job in China.[1] If you're not seeing the foundation work or crane work, it may look like it's all hand labor. Large bridges are custom-designed prefabs. Somewhere else, there's a factory making the parts. [1] https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA
asdff 6y ago
I think there is something to be said here. The car is a superior technology to a horse, but in many ways a prefab house is an inferior product. It's a regression, built from a need for skilled tradesmen and a lack of this labor supply. I think a better way around that need would be to bolster training of skilled people which would lead to increased labor supply to meet this demand, rather than trying to figure out how to wring the last dime out of everything.

throw0101a 6y ago

>> One big area where modular prefab can potentially make a difference is by reducing the need for skilled tradesmen, particularly electricians, plumbers and HVAC techs. > To what end? To the end that you can get your house built on a schedule that you want. A neighbour is a general contractor who has a good reputation: he, and the specialty teams he uses, are booked at least a year out. This isn't too say we shouldn't train more skilled trades, but having a spectrum of of people available helps those you can't afford to pay top dollar for top talent to also get quality results. It should also be noted that not everyone is gifted enough to be a top or even decent trade, yet we want as many people as possible to be productively employed. There will some percentage of the population that may be most productive simply following what the computer tells them to do: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnnwJi40Wzo * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl3_bo-XWGQ

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

michaelmrose 6y ago

No company exists to create jobs and nobody ought to wish any product particularly a vital resource like housing that everyone needs cost more in order to transfer money to the middle class workforce. If you want to do that just be straightforward about it and directly raise that money via taxes and give it to families. It will be increasingly obvious as increasing automation kills jobs that ultimately probably wont ever be fully replaced that we need a solution that isn't deliberate inefficiency to maintain jobs.

solarmist 6y ago

You’re comments come across to me as condescending, argumentative (without being productive), actively hostile to other users, and so one-sided you sound almost completely uninformed on the topic. All of which is unacceptable behavior on HN. That said you’re not totally off the mark, but comments like “It astounds me that people on HN think that eliminating jobs without any thought to the social impact” is why you’re getting down voted. How do you know now I or anyone else hasn’t given this thought? If you browse though old stories you’ll see tons of discussion on this topic. My point of view on this is “It’s too late. The genie is out of the bottle and no amount of trying to avoid job losses is going to be productive.” Instead we need to work towards making our gross economic output support everyone. If basic necessities are all provided for (such as though UBI or some other idea) then no one will care if jobs are lost because then people can focus on figuring out how to productively use their time rather than worrying about finding a shitty, or even non-shitty, job so their family can eat and stay out of the weather. And without that we’ll continue hemorrhaging jobs until we reach a critical point where there will be an honest to god revolution in the USA and things will be violently reset (not corrected).