5 ms·

I don't think undoing globalization is going to mean going back to the old ways. Personally, i think those well paying middle class jobs are gone, the status qu

by sottol 4y ago

I don't think undoing globalization is going to mean going back to the old ways. Personally, i think those well paying middle class jobs are gone, the status quo is too enshrined in the minds of business leaders, political thought (not just politicians, the populace) and the economy. The end of globalization will be more of the status quo, but different, not how it was once was in the golden years after WW2. If i had to guess, same global companies, some of the workforce still making 10-100x the average salary but now many of the low-paying jobs simply onshored, maybe even furthering the socio-economic divide because you won't be able to buy an American-made 60" TV for $800 anymore.

citilife 4y ago
I see what you are saying, but I think you're incorrect. What's more likely to happen in my mind is that there will be fewer people running factories. Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. To adjust for that, you'll have to maximize worker productivity. That means more factories (potentially smaller and / or more generalized) and automation building various parts / equipment. Assembly often occurred in the host country anyway, so I don't see that changing too much. It'll be the tool and part making that'll have to return to places like the United States. I do think cost of goods will be high if we don't loosen some of the regulations, we need to keep people safe, but I think there's a balance. The reason people think it'll be an improvement has to do with competition. If there's a market for a set of goods here, it'll be filled. It may start off expensive, but as automation improves the process you need less workers and more machines. That's fine and eventually the product will be cheap to produce, but the people producing the good will be highly skilled (i.e. be well paid). Where I'm living there's a lot of factories. Salaries range from 65-110k in the factory work, all of which would be considered good wages in an area where the average home price is $300k (with low taxes).
- projectazorian 4y ago
  > Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. Citation needed
  - trasz2 4y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...
    - projectazorian 4y ago
      You've identified that slave labor happens in the US prison system and elsewhere, I think that most people would agree with this. I don't see any evidence that slave labor comprises "a large amount of what you use."
      - trasz2 4y ago
        Well, no, most people don’t realize US is using slave labor. Most people believe China does, though, despite no proofs. Sadly, people are still quite disconnected from verifiable reality.
        projectazorian 4y ago
        China does use slave labor, mostly in its prison system. Just like in the US. It's a marginal part of the overall economy. Just like in the US. Yet people talk about China like it's an entirely gulag based economy.
        etherael 4y ago
        Perhaps because of the suicide nets? I get the Foxconn is not technically slave labour, but you must admit that suicide nets may give to the observer the impression that the gap is not that large between whatever it is and slave labour?
        tim333 4y ago
        They have suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge. They don't prove slavery.
- nostrademons 4y ago
  I think de-globalization is a long-term boon for automation (at least in the U.S), but it's not going to operate at the speed needed to replace 3 billion workers dropping out of the labor force. Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right, and the pace of progress is typically uneven and unpredictable. Long-term, it'll be great for the salaries of software engineers, robotics engineers, material scientists, process engineers, etc. Short-term, expect higher prices and shortages. Until we find ways to build things with fewer people, we will just have fewer things. I'm also not optimistic about the American populace's ability to deal with shortages without rioting.
  - SkyMarshal 4y ago
    > Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right A year ago I spoke to an Apple engineer who works on their manufacturing processes, who corroborated that. He said the reason they aren't fully automated is because human workers are still better at repurposing to new assembly lines making new devices than robots are.
    - ryandrake 4y ago
      They are still better, but no doubt teams of people are working on improving automation to the point where they are not better. I believe, on a long enough timeframe, every product that can be produced and every service that can be performed will be done by automation/AI/robotics. It's the inevitable destination of the tracks we are currently rolling on. 1. An advancement in automation is made where something can now be done automatically that previously required humans. 2. Those humans no longer have a job. 3. Some of those humans re-train for a job not yet automate-able. 4. Goto 1. This cycle will repeat for generations and generations, probably for centuries. The jobs at the bottom of the skill pyramid will slowly be taken over by automation, and new high-skill, high-complexity jobs will be created towards the top of the pyramid. Humans will constantly be scrambling to get footholds higher and higher up the pyramid, before automation gobbles those jobs up too. The end destination: self-creating automation that can make and do anything. At which point, there is nothing left for humans to do. If, by that point, we still have not gotten past our primitive economic system based on money-for-labor and private ownership of the means of production, then humanity will simply no longer function.
nimbius 4y ago
the "good old days" were a time when capitalism itself was made to capitulate to the post-war reality of an America that very much distrusted the idea of the free market itself. Major companies like GE and Dow Chemical bankrolled themed rides and attractions at Disney not because they had the marketing budget, but because most Americans emerging from the great depression and the new deal had found themselves accustomed to the concessions they had made during their time in the bread lines. Americans had to be bought, in a way. Excellent pay, generous time off, and pension retirement was all on the table as industry bent the knee to capital that threatened slipping back into a pseudo-agrarian role after the war and in doing so rob the barons themselves of the capital they sought to exploit. By the seventies things had turned around. capital was eager to return to its former position of exploit, anyone from the WW2 era had been sufficiently promoted to leadership and their kids placated with the same, and Reagan-era liberalization could return the globe to various states of servile production and slave-classery oncemore. The death of globalization is stymied by major hangovers of the cyclical crashes of global capitalism itself. in the eighties stagnant wages meant everyone got a credit card, and in 2008 amidst the credit crash it meant everyone got free money in the form of low and no interest. the red flag of the death of globalism should have been when equifax and other houses of the guild of credit made the shift to stop factoring medical bankruptcy at all as part of the credit report. another factor hindering globalizations death is the collective disinterest in considering real unemployment in favour of fanciful mathematic aerobics designed to appeal to policymakers and the very market such a KPI could inform. US unemployment judged at the U6 rate is more than six percent and compounded by other factors such as medical debt, undischargeable student debt, and once again stagnant wages and this doesnt even begin to cover things like COVID rent freeze debt and the chronic effects of the methamphetamine and opoid addiction crisis in the US still ongoing today. 2023 also sees the expiration of covid rental protections in numerous major states, which will likely drive up homelessness and unemployment oncemore. Finally theres the rampant inflation that not even a return to Clinton era interest rates seems capable of stopping. So if anything we'll probably "bail out" globalism before we advance past it.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  The "good old days" were a time when every factory in the world other than America's had just been destroyed in a massive world wide war. That's not happening again. We are never returning to "blue collar american workers create most industrial products the world consumes" and so we are never returning to massive demand for unskilled American workers. Even if the US completely bans imports low skill workers still wouldn't have the advantage they did in the post war era because every other country will continue to import cheap goods from china instead of expensive american ones.

by sottol 4y ago

citilife 4y ago

I see what you are saying, but I think you're incorrect. What's more likely to happen in my mind is that there will be fewer people running factories. Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. To adjust for that, you'll have to maximize worker productivity. That means more factories (potentially smaller and / or more generalized) and automation building various parts / equipment. Assembly often occurred in the host country anyway, so I don't see that changing too much. It'll be the tool and part making that'll have to return to places like the United States. I do think cost of goods will be high if we don't loosen some of the regulations, we need to keep people safe, but I think there's a balance. The reason people think it'll be an improvement has to do with competition. If there's a market for a set of goods here, it'll be filled. It may start off expensive, but as automation improves the process you need less workers and more machines. That's fine and eventually the product will be cheap to produce, but the people producing the good will be highly skilled (i.e. be well paid). Where I'm living there's a lot of factories. Salaries range from 65-110k in the factory work, all of which would be considered good wages in an area where the average home price is $300k (with low taxes).

projectazorian 4y ago
> Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. Citation needed
- trasz2 4y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-workers-low-wages-exploited https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/us-prison-wo...
  - projectazorian 4y ago
    You've identified that slave labor happens in the US prison system and elsewhere, I think that most people would agree with this. I don't see any evidence that slave labor comprises "a large amount of what you use."
    - trasz2 4y ago
      Well, no, most people don’t realize US is using slave labor. Most people believe China does, though, despite no proofs. Sadly, people are still quite disconnected from verifiable reality.
      - projectazorian 4y ago
        China does use slave labor, mostly in its prison system. Just like in the US. It's a marginal part of the overall economy. Just like in the US. Yet people talk about China like it's an entirely gulag based economy.
        etherael 4y ago
        Perhaps because of the suicide nets? I get the Foxconn is not technically slave labour, but you must admit that suicide nets may give to the observer the impression that the gap is not that large between whatever it is and slave labour?
        tim333 4y ago
        They have suicide nets on the Golden Gate Bridge. They don't prove slavery.
nostrademons 4y ago
I think de-globalization is a long-term boon for automation (at least in the U.S), but it's not going to operate at the speed needed to replace 3 billion workers dropping out of the labor force. Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right, and the pace of progress is typically uneven and unpredictable. Long-term, it'll be great for the salaries of software engineers, robotics engineers, material scientists, process engineers, etc. Short-term, expect higher prices and shortages. Until we find ways to build things with fewer people, we will just have fewer things. I'm also not optimistic about the American populace's ability to deal with shortages without rioting.
- SkyMarshal 4y ago
  > Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right A year ago I spoke to an Apple engineer who works on their manufacturing processes, who corroborated that. He said the reason they aren't fully automated is because human workers are still better at repurposing to new assembly lines making new devices than robots are.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    They are still better, but no doubt teams of people are working on improving automation to the point where they are not better. I believe, on a long enough timeframe, every product that can be produced and every service that can be performed will be done by automation/AI/robotics. It's the inevitable destination of the tracks we are currently rolling on. 1. An advancement in automation is made where something can now be done automatically that previously required humans. 2. Those humans no longer have a job. 3. Some of those humans re-train for a job not yet automate-able. 4. Goto 1. This cycle will repeat for generations and generations, probably for centuries. The jobs at the bottom of the skill pyramid will slowly be taken over by automation, and new high-skill, high-complexity jobs will be created towards the top of the pyramid. Humans will constantly be scrambling to get footholds higher and higher up the pyramid, before automation gobbles those jobs up too. The end destination: self-creating automation that can make and do anything. At which point, there is nothing left for humans to do. If, by that point, we still have not gotten past our primitive economic system based on money-for-labor and private ownership of the means of production, then humanity will simply no longer function.

nimbius 4y ago

the "good old days" were a time when capitalism itself was made to capitulate to the post-war reality of an America that very much distrusted the idea of the free market itself. Major companies like GE and Dow Chemical bankrolled themed rides and attractions at Disney not because they had the marketing budget, but because most Americans emerging from the great depression and the new deal had found themselves accustomed to the concessions they had made during their time in the bread lines. Americans had to be bought, in a way. Excellent pay, generous time off, and pension retirement was all on the table as industry bent the knee to capital that threatened slipping back into a pseudo-agrarian role after the war and in doing so rob the barons themselves of the capital they sought to exploit. By the seventies things had turned around. capital was eager to return to its former position of exploit, anyone from the WW2 era had been sufficiently promoted to leadership and their kids placated with the same, and Reagan-era liberalization could return the globe to various states of servile production and slave-classery oncemore. The death of globalization is stymied by major hangovers of the cyclical crashes of global capitalism itself. in the eighties stagnant wages meant everyone got a credit card, and in 2008 amidst the credit crash it meant everyone got free money in the form of low and no interest. the red flag of the death of globalism should have been when equifax and other houses of the guild of credit made the shift to stop factoring medical bankruptcy at all as part of the credit report. another factor hindering globalizations death is the collective disinterest in considering real unemployment in favour of fanciful mathematic aerobics designed to appeal to policymakers and the very market such a KPI could inform. US unemployment judged at the U6 rate is more than six percent and compounded by other factors such as medical debt, undischargeable student debt, and once again stagnant wages and this doesnt even begin to cover things like COVID rent freeze debt and the chronic effects of the methamphetamine and opoid addiction crisis in the US still ongoing today. 2023 also sees the expiration of covid rental protections in numerous major states, which will likely drive up homelessness and unemployment oncemore. Finally theres the rampant inflation that not even a return to Clinton era interest rates seems capable of stopping. So if anything we'll probably "bail out" globalism before we advance past it.

HDThoreaun 4y ago
The "good old days" were a time when every factory in the world other than America's had just been destroyed in a massive world wide war. That's not happening again. We are never returning to "blue collar american workers create most industrial products the world consumes" and so we are never returning to massive demand for unskilled American workers. Even if the US completely bans imports low skill workers still wouldn't have the advantage they did in the post war era because every other country will continue to import cheap goods from china instead of expensive american ones.