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If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. This is disruption. It will h

If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. This is disruption. It will happen either way, and it's a net benefit for human kind. It doesn't mean it will replace humans, but it does mean it will kill a lot of current jobs, just like the Internet is killing many jobs now, but creating 3x more in return. Having a robot powered economy means consumerism will explode and there will be a lot of new jobs being created. Obviously this will upset a lot of things and people in the short term as they need to change jobs, but I think most people are already starting to get used to switching jobs often. The country leaders will need to think long-term here, but seeing how US thinks about "saving jobs" right now, I wouldn't be surprised if they introduce some laws against robot manufacturing in the next few years, but hopefully they won't. If they push this, it could create a new golden era of growth for USA. If they don't act fast, the Asians will do it first, and they'll continue to remain the leaders in manufacturing (which will probably end up happening).

adaml_623 15y ago
I'm happy that the internet is creating 3x more jobs than it is replacing.... But just in case the unemployment rate continues to rise will you do me a favour and calculate what the tax system should do if you have a couple of hundred rich people who own all the robotic factories, farms and trucks and 80% of the rest of the country on 'government handouts'. I'm just saying that we should think about this problem just in case we accidentally manage to replace all the jobs with computers and robots.
- gst 15y ago
  I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore, as a majority of the tasks is done by machines. I agree with the parent (of your post) that jobs will just change and people will switch to other jobs that provide a better return. But let's assume that this isn't the case and a few hundreds of people own the robots that are doing _all_ of the work (even founding startups). I'd say that this would be the perfect case: We don't need to work to survive, but we would have plenty of resources that allow us to work on things that make fun (of course most of us are doing this anyway). Of course it's pretty clear that for this to work we also would need to change the political and economic systems considerably, but this is not a bad thing - they change all the time.
  - dmm 15y ago
    > I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore What do you mean by this? Are 90% of people farmers now? > I'd say that this would be the perfect case: Actually in that case I'd say people would be consumed by politics and trivial bs and destroy themselves in a generation. It'd be very similar to today, except rather than spending all day minus 8 hours on youtube they'll just be on there all day.
    - beedogs 15y ago
      I think what he means is that there will come a point at which technology renders most occupations obsolete. What happens when 90% of the population aren't needed in the workforce?
      - khill 15y ago
        Read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.
      - mseebach 15y ago
        They do something else, as the said 90% of agricultural workers did during the industrial revolution, as did typesetters in the 80s, as did computers (the profession) when computers (the machines) took over.
      - ebaysucks 15y ago
        Human desires are endless. This is why you will always have employment. Technology frees up time and humans than use part of that time for leisure and part of it for doing more meaningful, higher value work.
        hackinthebochs 15y ago
        What do you mean by "employment"? In the far enough future, anything that's deemed profitable can be done much faster by automation. No one will pay a human a check to do something that can be done dirt cheap by a robot. The point is that our society rations limited resources through money. When resources are no longer limited, and no one can earn any money through employment, we'll require a completely different social and economic system for distributing resources.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  That won't happen, anymore than powerdrills will be the end of carpenters -- it will require people to adapt and learn new skills but so have every invention ever. Replacing humans with computers is easy in a lot of cases, but far from all. Human workers will simply have to take those jobs that are difficult to get robots to do. They tend to be better paid too.
- meric 15y ago
  Here's what's going to happen. http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
snippyhollow 15y ago
Reference needed for "creating 3x more in return". I don't say it isn't true, I just think it's really hard to measure (what is a job "killed by the Internet"/how far do we strech it). I just know that "98% of all statistics are made up".
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  " Among 4,800 small and medium sized enterprises surveyed, the Internet created 2.6 jobs for each lost to technology related efficiencies." This is from a study made by McKinsey for e-G8 this year. I can't seem to be able to reach the direct link so here's the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet_matters/index.asp http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... And their PDF: http://www.eg8forum.com/fr/documents/actualites/McKinsey_and_Company-internet_matters.pdf http://www.eg8forum.com/fr/documents/actualites/McKinsey_and...
  - adaml_623 15y ago
    "Among 4,800 small and medium sized enterprises" that didn't go bankrupt! There may be survivor bias (Is that what it's called?) involved in that figure. Not enough details in the report that I could see. Impressive reference hunting though
weavejester 15y ago
The USA is already a strong manufacturing country. It accounts for 20% of global output, and output has more than doubled since 1975. In the same period, worker numbers have decreased by 31%, implying that US manufacturing is already beginning to replace workers with robots. It's also worth pointing out that China has only exceeded the USA in output this year, and then only by a few percent. Given that China relies heavily on cheap manual labor, whilst USA employment in the manufacturing industry has plummeted, the USA is already betting heavily on robots. Sources: http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-jobs-1975 http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-j... http://articles.boston.com/2011-02-06/bostonglobe/29344173_1_manufacturing-output-black-dress-decline http://articles.boston.com/2011-02-06/bostonglobe/29344173_1... http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/tags/us/china-vs-us-manufacturing-comparison http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/tags/us/china-vs-us-manu...
- adaml_623 15y ago
  You have references but they don't back up that implication robots are being used in US factories. There are a lot of things that have changed in US factories in the last 35 years but I don't think widespread use of robots is one of them. But I can't find references :-(
  - mseebach 15y ago
    For the purpose of this discussion, any machine that automates or assists in a task is a robot. Electric screwdrivers and conveyor belts are robots, albeit unsophisticated ones.
mechanical_fish 15y ago
If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. You are more right than you know. This sentence is ten years or more out of date. I don't blame you for writing this sentence, because journalism is nigh-100%-broken and absolutely nobody understands the following facts. But: The USA is and has been a "strong manufacturing country". US industrial capacity has risen steadily since 1970. Until this last recession started, there was no year since 1970 where that capacity had gone down: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ (The Great Recession is, obviously, a problem, one large enough to show up on this chart. But it's a problem for China and other countries as well.) The problem is that US manufacturing employment has crashed. Here's a chart showing a 30% drop in the last decade alone: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtable http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtab... Why is this happening? Increased productivity. Why has productivity soared in this way? "The robot workforce revolution". And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because there is mass suffering due to mass unemployment, and it is easier to blame "robots" than to blame the humans that mismanage the economy and allow needless suffering to persist.
- ciupicri 15y ago
  And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because a lot of today's stuff, e.g. iPhones, LCD monitors are made in China.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    It's largely sampling bias, though. It seems to us, as regular consumers, that everything is made in China because we buy phones and monitors, but we never buy steel girders and Boeing 777s.
    - mechanical_fish 15y ago

adaml_623 15y ago

I'm happy that the internet is creating 3x more jobs than it is replacing.... But just in case the unemployment rate continues to rise will you do me a favour and calculate what the tax system should do if you have a couple of hundred rich people who own all the robotic factories, farms and trucks and 80% of the rest of the country on 'government handouts'. I'm just saying that we should think about this problem just in case we accidentally manage to replace all the jobs with computers and robots.

gst 15y ago
I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore, as a majority of the tasks is done by machines. I agree with the parent (of your post) that jobs will just change and people will switch to other jobs that provide a better return. But let's assume that this isn't the case and a few hundreds of people own the robots that are doing _all_ of the work (even founding startups). I'd say that this would be the perfect case: We don't need to work to survive, but we would have plenty of resources that allow us to work on things that make fun (of course most of us are doing this anyway). Of course it's pretty clear that for this to work we also would need to change the political and economic systems considerably, but this is not a bad thing - they change all the time.
- dmm 15y ago
  > I wonder what the tax system should do once >90% of the population can't work as farmers anymore What do you mean by this? Are 90% of people farmers now? > I'd say that this would be the perfect case: Actually in that case I'd say people would be consumed by politics and trivial bs and destroy themselves in a generation. It'd be very similar to today, except rather than spending all day minus 8 hours on youtube they'll just be on there all day.
  - beedogs 15y ago
    I think what he means is that there will come a point at which technology renders most occupations obsolete. What happens when 90% of the population aren't needed in the workforce?
    - khill 15y ago
      Read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut.
    - mseebach 15y ago
      They do something else, as the said 90% of agricultural workers did during the industrial revolution, as did typesetters in the 80s, as did computers (the profession) when computers (the machines) took over.
    - ebaysucks 15y ago
      Human desires are endless. This is why you will always have employment. Technology frees up time and humans than use part of that time for leisure and part of it for doing more meaningful, higher value work.
      - hackinthebochs 15y ago
        What do you mean by "employment"? In the far enough future, anything that's deemed profitable can be done much faster by automation. No one will pay a human a check to do something that can be done dirt cheap by a robot. The point is that our society rations limited resources through money. When resources are no longer limited, and no one can earn any money through employment, we'll require a completely different social and economic system for distributing resources.
tomjen3 15y ago
That won't happen, anymore than powerdrills will be the end of carpenters -- it will require people to adapt and learn new skills but so have every invention ever. Replacing humans with computers is easy in a lot of cases, but far from all. Human workers will simply have to take those jobs that are difficult to get robots to do. They tend to be better paid too.
meric 15y ago
Here's what's going to happen. http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm

snippyhollow 15y ago

Reference needed for "creating 3x more in return". I don't say it isn't true, I just think it's really hard to measure (what is a job "killed by the Internet"/how far do we strech it). I just know that "98% of all statistics are made up".

nextparadigms 15y ago
" Among 4,800 small and medium sized enterprises surveyed, the Internet created 2.6 jobs for each lost to technology related efficiencies." This is from a study made by McKinsey for e-G8 this year. I can't seem to be able to reach the direct link so here's the Google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/publications/internet_matters/index.asp http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://... And their PDF: http://www.eg8forum.com/fr/documents/actualites/McKinsey_and_Company-internet_matters.pdf http://www.eg8forum.com/fr/documents/actualites/McKinsey_and...
- adaml_623 15y ago
  "Among 4,800 small and medium sized enterprises" that didn't go bankrupt! There may be survivor bias (Is that what it's called?) involved in that figure. Not enough details in the report that I could see. Impressive reference hunting though

weavejester 15y ago

The USA is already a strong manufacturing country. It accounts for 20% of global output, and output has more than doubled since 1975. In the same period, worker numbers have decreased by 31%, implying that US manufacturing is already beginning to replace workers with robots. It's also worth pointing out that China has only exceeded the USA in output this year, and then only by a few percent. Given that China relies heavily on cheap manual labor, whilst USA employment in the manufacturing industry has plummeted, the USA is already betting heavily on robots. Sources: http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-jobs-1975 http://mercatus.org/publication/us-manufacturing-output-vs-j... http://articles.boston.com/2011-02-06/bostonglobe/29344173_1_manufacturing-output-black-dress-decline http://articles.boston.com/2011-02-06/bostonglobe/29344173_1... http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/tags/us/china-vs-us-manufacturing-comparison http://www.manufacturingdigital.com/tags/us/china-vs-us-manu...

adaml_623 15y ago
You have references but they don't back up that implication robots are being used in US factories. There are a lot of things that have changed in US factories in the last 35 years but I don't think widespread use of robots is one of them. But I can't find references :-(
- mseebach 15y ago
  For the purpose of this discussion, any machine that automates or assists in a task is a robot. Electric screwdrivers and conveyor belts are robots, albeit unsophisticated ones.

mechanical_fish 15y ago

If USA wants to become a strong "manufacturing" country again, it needs to become a leader in the robot workforce revolution, too. You are more right than you know. This sentence is ten years or more out of date. I don't blame you for writing this sentence, because journalism is nigh-100%-broken and absolutely nobody understands the following facts. But: The USA is and has been a "strong manufacturing country". US industrial capacity has risen steadily since 1970. Until this last recession started, there was no year since 1970 where that capacity had gone down: http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ipg1.gif http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/ (The Great Recession is, obviously, a problem, one large enough to show up on this chart. But it's a problem for China and other countries as well.) The problem is that US manufacturing employment has crashed. Here's a chart showing a 30% drop in the last decade alone: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtable http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES3000000001?data_tool=XGtab... Why is this happening? Increased productivity. Why has productivity soared in this way? "The robot workforce revolution". And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because there is mass suffering due to mass unemployment, and it is easier to blame "robots" than to blame the humans that mismanage the economy and allow needless suffering to persist.

ciupicri 15y ago
And why do people persist in maintaining that US manufacturing is "not strong" in the face of very obvious evidence that it is strong? Because a lot of today's stuff, e.g. iPhones, LCD monitors are made in China.
- hugh3 15y ago
  It's largely sampling bias, though. It seems to us, as regular consumers, that everything is made in China because we buy phones and monitors, but we never buy steel girders and Boeing 777s.
  - mechanical_fish 15y ago