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> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling,

> Samsung’s 12-inch line utilizes an overhead hoist transport (OHT) system, an automated transport network that operates along tracks installed on the ceiling, to move bundles of 25 wafers called “lots.” On the 8-inch line, however, this transportation is done manually. There is much more market demand for 12-inch wafers, so Samsung has modernized and automated many processes. The 8-inch line, however, is outdated. While abuse of assembly line workers has always happened, as factories become increasingly automated, 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them.

ryandrake 2y ago
> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that maintains and repairs itself, and a magical AI box that makes optimal business decisions, and then just sit there owning these magical things and harvesting money every quarter. Humanity consists of the few who own all the boxes, living in opulent luxury, and the many who don't and barely subsist enough to buy the products.
- Blackthorn 2y ago
  Historically, violence has been at least somewhat successful as a disincentive for this. Hasn't always fixed the immediate problem but the threat of it, and eventual implementation, kept too much of a gap from happening.
  - kybernetikos 2y ago
    I doubt it'll work this time though though, since we are beginning to make big strides in automating violence too. The people who own the boxes will own the murderbots too.
    - Blackthorn 2y ago
      They always owned the police anyway.
      - kybernetikos 2y ago
        True but police are people too with their own expectations and morality and the number of police required to suppress a population is relatively large. There's still enormous room for abuse, but automating suppression drops even the imperfect checks that we have on the power of the few to oppress the many
        ryandrake 2y ago
        > True but police are people too That can be solved, too. Some other (now deleted?) comment mentioned the inevitability of killbots, which will have to be created and deployed for this dystopia to stick. The elite living in Elysium will need a controllable, automate-able, way to keep the underclass in line, one that doesn't involve less-reliable human enforcers.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >The elite living in Elysium will need a controllable, automate-able, way to keep the underclass in line, one that doesn't involve less-reliable human enforcers. I thought the rich elites living in Elysium had to completely depend on one weird mercenary dude on Earth with a shoulder-fired rocket launcher that somehow had rockets that could achieve escape velocity in order to protect Elysium from spaceships with illegal immigrants attempting to invade and use their magic healing machines.
        Blackthorn 2y ago
        It's a historical fact that the police (or police-adjacent things before they were called the police) have always been quite willing to crack the skulls of workers.
        2y ago
- alfiopuglisi 2y ago
  If you own enough of these automated factories, you don't need to sell anything at all. Just produce whatever luxury item you want, in addition to mundane things like food and shelter (in the form of caviar and villas, because why not?). That will mark the time when technology is advanced enough that humanity will fracture with small independent groups going out and fending for themselves, possibly in outer space. Some SF scenarios call them "great houses", because they somewhat resemble feudal kingdoms where a kind of extended family rules, except there are no peasants.
- bibliotekka 2y ago
  The richest and most powerful will lobby for universal basic income because it will benefit them at some tipping point, where the masses will need to be subsidized to keep the consumption machine running, maybe?
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I think the middle class feels safer with the notion that the economy will not survive without them, thus whatever system results must maintain some sort of middle class. I don’t think this is true at all, while not ideal many places continue to operate just fine with a few very rich and everyone else very poor. The consumption machine has a wealth effect which is an artifact of a ponzie economy. This mathematically cannot last forever, even if it has lasted for a long time and will continue to last for a long time. What matters to wealth is production. Traditionally highly technical production needed a decent middle class, but efficiencies mean fewer such people are needed to maintain the same proficiency. Coupled with globalization where a smart person anywhere can design technical things that can then be used everywhere. This decouples the wealth of the rich from the health of the middle class and the rich would be happily sacrifice the middle class in the alter of cheaper labor and will whisper sweet nothings in your ear while doing so. Not them personally but the people they pay to operate on their behalf. To me it makes perfect sense to promise UBI to undermine resistance and then not deliver on that promise to again undermine resistance. I think the middle class would be fools to believe that UBI will come and save them.
    - kwere 2y ago
      yeah, to bargain one needs strenght, on such scenario, UBI would mostly like benevolence of the powerful to stabilize their power structures. The masses will comply with UBI or not
  - csomar 2y ago
    UBI will benefit them in the sense that work will no longer be a right; since now you get that government pay check. No one wants to keep the consumption machine running for your benefit. The rich can always get a bigger yacht and more holiday residences. UBI is a power play and the worst outcome for a sovereign citizen.
- Aperocky 2y ago
  I think this is purely focused on the supply side and neglecting demand and its role in the economy. The world economy today isn't driven by lack of supply (for the vast majority categories of products), rather it is by lack of demand. Whoever owns the demand owns the power in this dynamic. One can have all the factories in the world when consumer stop buying it's in for a rough time, like China is finding out.
  - immibis 2y ago
    Demand can be easily manufactured, it seems. Just look at all the bullshit people buy, from fidget spinners to timeshares to ready-made chocolate cake.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      We have entire industries dedicated to creating demand for things that would otherwise not be demanded (advertising), and enabling people to buy things they cannot afford (debt). I'd expect both of these industries to balloon during the late stages as people get further squeezed out of voluntarily participating in the economy.
    - corimaith 2y ago
      On an aggregate level, no. Those things you've listed only occur when times are good and the gravy train is running. In a recession or hyperinflation it's a different matter altogether. China would certainly want that magical ability for their economy right now if they could.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      I don't think anyone with half a brain is buying a timeshare these days. Those things have been going down for many years now I think. They were a stupid fad, and the fad's over. Of course, some new bullshit fad will come along for people to waste their money on. What's wrong with ready-made chocolate cake? Freshly-baked might be better, but there is value in convenience. It's the same reason people buy pizza: if you're a master pizza chef and have a proper pizza oven at home, you could probably make a better pizza, and of course have it a bit fresher, but most people simply can't make a pizza that comes close to those made in real pizza ovens by people who make them every day. Some people don't even have an oven in the first place.
- huijzer 2y ago
  I think you can find businesses like this already. They only have a few capable people and that’s it. For example, MasterCard, Visa, RenTec, and probably some hedge funds somewhere.
  - prewett 2y ago
    You're telling me that of MasterCard's 33,000 employees and Visa's 28,800 employees, only a "few" are "capable"? Either management is negligently incompetent or, well, maybe the hubris is from a different direction.
    - huijzer 2y ago
      Well Visa does have about half a million net income per employee (assuming 17 billion net income which they reported in 2023), but yes you’re right. I thought the number was lower.
- svara 2y ago
  That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy as a system for making widgets. Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. Being a valued member of a community is a rather basic human need. As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that aggregated desire, if it's not being met anymore by jobs that employ many workers today. That's a rather unconventional view maybe, but I'm rather convinced it's the right one. Of course, it leaves all the details open and the path to get there might be rocky.
  - its_ethan 2y ago
    I think there's something very true about your idea here. I don't know that there's really any study or data that would back it up, but if a large amount of people don't have the structure and expectations that employment provides, things would deteriorate quickly. Obviously there's a spectrum here, and mindless jobs that pay as little as legally allowed aren't exactly providing fulfillment that people need. In any individual case, of course it makes sense to say "why should I/they have to do this? they should be able to chase passions or find other opportunity" but when you talk about that being "granted" to large chunks of the population (happening at essentially the same time).. I don't see it working out super well in the short or long term.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    > Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. I like that definition.
  - marcosdumay 2y ago
    > As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that aggregated desire, if it's not being met anymore by jobs that employ many workers today. I'm sorry. You are claiming that the poor will buy job-alternatives from the market once they don't have a job to sustain themselves? You seem to be missing a slight power imbalance.
    - 2y ago
- Tade0 2y ago
  The many will quite simply stop having children, because why bother? Then the mgic box owners will attempt doing something to have a population to sell to, but that will ultimately fail. It can be argued that it already started - globally the number of children born peaked around 2013-2017. The pandemic only accelerated the process.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    There was a short in the second batch of Love, Death and Robots[0] (Netflix), that had a cop, whose job it was, to kill children of "poors," as the rich could live practically forever, and didn't want the competition. [0] https://www.netflix.com/title/80174608 https://www.netflix.com/title/80174608 (Volume 2: "Pop Squad").
- mschuster91 2y ago
  Well... yes, for capitalism, that is the endgame. Neo-feudalism to be precise. And unlike the last times where feudalism was overthrown, these days police is often enough on par with the military, and the governments can track us whenever and wherever we want by the tiny little bugs we carry around in our pockets. Call for a revolution or for violent acts online, and a day later the FBI knocks on your door and takes everything digital you have.
  - cjbgkagh 2y ago
    I worry that people don’t understand how much violence it took to obtain enlightenment values and that such values may only be a quirk of history. We are very fortunate to live in such a time that is not the natural and default norm for humanity. I worry that attempts to further the gains will fail and we will not only not make additional gains but lose what we had with no possible way or regain even enlightenment values in our lifetimes or any number of lifetimes.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >these days police is often enough on par with the military I'm pretty sure this is completely unique to the USA.
    - AngryData 2y ago
      And even then it is bullshit. US cops have dogshit training and the majority of them are cowards. Sure they got more guns than cops in other countries, but the population has even more.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all Maybe? This has been hypothesised since the Industrial Revolution. We’re nowhere close to labour obsolescence.
- theamk 2y ago
  Have you seen "good vs services employment" graphs, like this one? [0] Number of people producing goods has been shrinking for a longest time, its under 20% now. It'll likely keep shrinking as automation becomes more advanced, and in the future "service" would be much more important. When I was a kid, I've read some sci-fi stories about societies like those, where most people were working in service industry. [0] https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/07/employment-in-goods-and-services-industries-since-1939 https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/0...
  - hammock 2y ago
    That graph is US only
    - vivekd 2y ago
      Good point - the graph being US only means it misses offshoring manufacturing jobs to places like China. We can't assume that the loss of manufacturing jobs was solely caused by automation
      - eru 2y ago
        Why call it 'loss', if it was outsourced? UnAmericans are also human.
        trealira 2y ago
        Why do you think the word "loss" implies they think non-Americans aren't human?
        justinclift 2y ago
        Pretty sure the point was that the jobs are just being moved around, not "lost".
        2y ago
- Ajedi32 2y ago
  That sounds like a very low-margin business, if literally anyone can create and maintain it with close to zero human input. Its like the sci-fi equivalent of generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon. The cost of goods produced by your hypothetical business would plummet, and the real value would simply shift somewhere else that is still able to benefit from human labor or ingenuity. If you're talking about a world where AI has become so advanced that humans have literally nothing to contribute to society, in any field, then that's called a post-scarcity society, where the very concept of a "business owner" (not to mention the concepts of "business" and "owner") starts to lose all meaning.
  - dangrossman 2y ago
    The fictional automated business may cost tens of billions of dollars to build. That means almost no one, not literally anyone, can create it. If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories, then there's no competition to drive down prices, and no automatic path to a post-scarcity society. Instead, it's the dystopia ryandrake described.
    - Ajedi32 2y ago
      > If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories So AI can build everything except the factory itself? Sounds like there's still a need for human labor. And if the opposite is true and AI can build the factory, then it's not going to "cost tens of billions of dollars to build"; the factory will be just as cheap as the goods its producing. Literally everyone could have their own factory.
      - mewpmewp2 2y ago
        Maybe the resources, materials and land is the constraint here. So whoever builds the first one will be able to quickly expand, buy more land and solidify their lead. Land is likely what would cost billions in this specific scenario. If you don't have land or materials then there is nothing your AI can do, because it doesn't have anything to build things from.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- immibis 2y ago
  Pretty much this. We see it starting to happen already. When's the last time a really big company actually did something to improve its product for its users and thereby get more money from users, as opposed to either raising the price, or improving its product for people who are not the users at the detriment of the users? They do this because the users aren't where the money is - money is concentrated among rich people, and the best way to make more money is to pander to other rich people.
- DonnyV 2y ago
  The end game is once corporations don't need people to work or for security. Thats when kingdoms will return. They will act like monarchy's. We're already starting that transition now. Different parts of the US State departments have been captured by corporations. Bending them to their will. They're stealing public waterways, land, ground resources.
- galdosdi 2y ago
  Not even. Humanity would consist of a small elite who owns everything, a small, continually shrinking middle class that consists of the remaining few workers who are actually needed for some reason (eventually, this tiny middle class would shrink to just the members of boards of directors, or something -- someone has to supervise the machines even if it's just rubber stamping them) and a vast underclass experiencing a life similar to an urban homeless today or a hunter gathering tribe in the amazon or something, existing in the margins, trying to steal, beg, scam a bit here and there to survive another day in whatever weird insect-like social niches are left to be found, that are just too marginal for the elite to even care about, even with their optimal AI. Look at life in Gaza or on the streets of Kensington today, and that is the sort of destiny we are bound for -- if fully replacing all humans really ever happens -- to become totally disposable people, who only continue to survive because someone has found it too much hassle to get around to getting rid of you at least just yet. But that's an endgame state, it's not a path for getting there, thank goodness. I believe it would not be so simple. It would happen gradually, and it would engender resistance, eventually violent resistance once people have little to lose. Power grows out of the barrel of a gun after all. Now, OTOH, if at that point, robot/AI weapons are sufficient so you only need 10 people to run the entire US Army.... then it's game over. But can you even get to that state without provoking a war before you get there? AI is extremely vulnerable in war because of its reliance on datacenters and fabs, which are fantastic military targets in wartime. So easy and quick to sabotage and so expensive and slow to build.
  - SI_Rob 2y ago
    I dread that we are going to see a _lot_ of of cults appear, and a disturbing concentration of political power around cult leadership as a social modality. With a large overlap with the despair-distraction-escapism industry as entertainers become increasingly valorized into spiritual and thought leaders, and eventually leaders, full stop. They will, as did monarchs in feudal times, draw their power base from the multitude of disenfranchised commoners seeking guidance, respite from the bleak outlook for those with little or no prospect of upward mobility, and a rallying point from which to focus any semblance of pushback against the landed baronial classes. But they will all the while be paying a hefty tax to those who maintain the broadcast infrastructure that enables them to marshall and monetize their followers, so even these kings and queens will need to stay in the graces of some potentate or other.
- amelius 2y ago
  That's not the end game because ultimately voters determine the rules of the economic system. And if voting doesn't work, there's the possibility of a revolution. So the capital owners will probably make it so that they please a majority of people just enough to stay in power.
  - p1esk 2y ago
    Or they simply kill everyone who complains.
- fuzzfactor 2y ago
  >Humanity consists of the few who own all the boxes, living in opulent luxury, and the many who don't and barely subsist To me that represents lingering inhumanity. There are still plenty of people around the world who have maintained this high lifestyle proudly since their early ancestors first got into opulent condition. But there are even more descendants who have not been able to maintain a previous level of opulence at all and would do anything to get it back. Then you've got a whole bigger group who never came close and are even more envious than those who once had luxury. So much of the time it's easy to recognize that improved wealth is a result of fortune one way or another. When you get an aggregate amount of greed focused on manipulating fortunes, the best they can do for themselves is when everyone else ends up barely subsisting. IIRC, civilization was supposed to bring an end to the barely subsistence thing. Doesn't look too civil when things trend backward toward medieval.
- squigz 2y ago
  Where are they going to harvest money from? If people can't work, they can't buy things.
- ClassyJacket 2y ago
  Kind of like the system we already have with landlords.
- Teever 2y ago
  The eventual end game is a self replicating machine. It'll start with just businesses owning the prototypes of them but once common folk know that such a machine is possible they'll build one themselves and then use it to build as many as they want. If it's a very large machine it will be miniaturized until it fits inside the human body and everyone will have synthetic ribosomes that can be used to produce whatever they want provided they have access to enough energy and raw material. What happens then is anyone's guess.
- Xen9 2y ago
  The end game is that average human becomes a pet. Horses weren't needed and they became pets; same for average human. This can only happen perfectly if the manufacturers eventually start to come after those who are self-reliant, which I believe is in line with the psychology of humans. Funny thing is this is ALSO analogous to what we have done certain animals.
  - Xen9 2y ago
    Further analogy: Holding $100 US dollar bill in front of the pets, one can make them do lots of tricks. The pets are willing; like dogs that want to play, they will send tons of CVs to potential owners and give do anything to gain advantage in an interview. This makes me wonder, what happens to the dogs.
  - csomar 2y ago
    Onlypets.com. I see the future now.
    - Xen9 2y ago
      The most correct use for this analogues of owners, hermits and pets is as tool of desconstructing the cyberpunk genre. It's no longer human culture in animal nature; but owner culture in anthroposcenic nature. What happens when one that can live centuries in an intellectual enlightened form lives in a world of pollutatition, cities, old infastructure—and of course the organic leftovers? --- Noteworthy to say this makes up perhaps half of cyberpunk's foundations—one should not ever define cyberpunk solely with this idea.
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
    You’re thinking of slavery with extra steps.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      Don’t think that needed clarification from “pet”
- csomar 2y ago
  In this case, there is no end game since Samsung exports these products. The money will keep flowing. Your logic makes sense only in a closed system. The government will then redirect that labour to other stuff they can make and export; and make more money.
- cageface 2y ago
  It seems increasingly likely to me that we're going to see the standard sci-fi script flipped. Instead of AI and robots doing grunt work for humans, AI will be doing most of the decision making, perhaps guided by a small human elite, and humans will do most of the grunt work. Making machines that think will turn out to be a lot cheaper and easier than building machines that can do general purpose physical work. People are cheap to make and maintain, especially if you're not very concerned with their well-being.
  - eru 2y ago
    People are pretty expensive. So far we have automated more and more, including and especially grunt work. Why would grunt work come back? Especially if you have machines that can help you design more efficient machines, and can help you re-design production processes to be more efficient and amenable to further automation.
    - cageface 2y ago
      People in first world countries, with education, health care, good housing etc are expensive. If you're willing to deny them all that then they're cheap and easy to replace. Whereas building a machine that can do even the basics of what a human hand can do is quite expensive.
      - eru 2y ago
        > If you're willing to deny them all that then they're cheap and easy to replace. It's not about what the employer is willing to do, it's about what people are willing to accept; especially if there's competition for their services. > Whereas building a machine that can do even the basics of what a human hand can do is quite expensive. We even have robots that can wash dishes, and they are cheap enough to be in a substantial proportion of households. There's lots of of basics and not so basics that we automated. Of course, build a machine that can do _all_ the basics of a human hand is expensive (at least so far). But people can and have arranged their business processes around these limitations: you don't expect your welding robots to wash dishes; you use a dishwasher for that.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Hopefully a land tax
- analog31 2y ago
  Going further, if nobody can afford to buy goods, then there will be no need for factories.
- geraneum 2y ago
  > harvesting money every quarter How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. Sometimes people forget that the workers are also consumers. You may displace some, but to replace all, blue and white? Not that easy.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. The idea is that you sell your stuff to people who are employed in other industries/companies that haven't been so successful at automating all their employees out of a job. At Samsung, for instance, the workers are not the main consumers: Samsung is a huge exporter, and most of their customers are outside of Korea. Even if all their current and former employees suddenly decided to stop buying Samsung products, it wouldn't even be noticeable in their balance sheet. What you're describing is a situation where all the companies have managed to eliminate most of their workforces, which has never happened. If it comes even remotely close to that point, societies will be forced to change their economies somehow, perhaps with UBI.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    This is the theme of the "Twenty-fourth Voyage of Ijon Tichy" by Stanisław Lem. Goods are mass-produced but no one has income to buy them. In the end they asked AI to find the way out of this deadlock. The AI found the solution of crushing them all and arranging their remains in visually aesthetic patterns. Funniest part is that they voluntarily went along with this plan because they could see no other. The whole "Star Diaries" series is such a gem. Many stories are exploring this question of "what is the endgame for societal trajectory X" in a form of some remote planet that Tichy visits on his trip.
- nradov 2y ago
  The notion of a factory that repairs itself is so hilarious to anyone who has worked in a real factory. After a few years of operation, all of the production machinery is constantly on the edge of breaking down. It takes continuous effort to keep things working at all, plus there are always changes for design updates and new models.
- kelseyfrog 2y ago
  > I wonder what the eventual end game is The end game for the US is a small group of people(approx 36M) having fun. It's not too different from how it is now, but rather than be supported by human labor, it's supported by the labor of machines. If all wage labor is automated, and ignoring the issue of the social and political implications of a mass of people with nothing else to do, the remaining professions will be SME business owners, investors, and landlords[1]. We can estimate the size of this population. There are approximately 28 million American SMEs[2]. SMEs can have owner-employees or hired labor, all of which will be automated. Considering SMEs as financial black boxes, the inputs, and outputs remain the same with the exception that salaries are replaced by a presumably smaller figure representing either the purchase or rental of automated labor. An estimated 7 million[3] high-net-worth individuals(HNWI) reside in the US. These are people with large investment portfolios who can live off gains indefinitely. It's difficult to estimate the number of full-time investors, but some estimate range from 200k-1million, and arguably, and these are folks who are doing potentially automatable work anyways. The upperbound of US landlords is 10.6 million people[4], or 7.1%. There are 5.9 million[5] commercial buildings in the US, compared to 44 million[6] residential rental properties. Let's estimate the number of commercial landlords to be around 1 million people in the US. We can also presume that maintenance and repair is automatable labor. The common features these groups share is the ability to generate income without labor. Presumably, this leaves them plenty of time to engage in leisure activities. Looking toward HNWI individuals as an indicator, they spend much more of their time engaged in "active" leisure, that is to say praying, socializing, exercising, hobbies, and volunteering[7]. 1. I'm assuming self-employed people are automated away. 2. https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-chapter-chapter-negotiating-8 https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran... 3. https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/world-wealth-report/ https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/world-we... 4. https://www.doorloop.com/blog/landlord-statistics-by-category-income-unit-more https://www.doorloop.com/blog/landlord-statistics-by-categor... 5. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/commercial-buildings-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environm... 6. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187577/housing-units-occupied-by-renter-in-the-us-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187577/housing-units-occ... 7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2019/07/13/how-do-the-very-wealthy-choose-to-spend-their-time/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2019/07/13/how-do-t...
- yMEyUyNE1 2y ago
  > Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. Who will they sell to? For business/markets to exist, it needs people who can buy.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  Eventually the "fully-automated factory in a box" will be widely available and the race to the bottom will work its way up the chain. You can already see this at work on platforms like Etsy or Amazon. People are buying tools like crickets, CNC, or 3d printers, then starting a business selling their products (often copies of other successful products) on these platforms. Eventually, someone will make copy-cat platforms, then someone else will build a tool for building copy-cat platforms, etc. There's no end game, it's just a loop of people trying to replicate the success of others.
- Nasrudith 2y ago
  The "logical conclusion" is frankly a bad extrapolation as hinted by the number of times 'magical' appears in it. A magical fully-automated self-maintaining and repairing factory isn't a very good model for the real world even with advances. We've already seen how over-invested LLMs have gotten relative to their financial returns. A magical AI box with optimal business decisions is even more fantastical - computibility isn't there, and the resulting homogeneity of a 'perfect' approach in business strategy would by game theory promote decisions counter to the prevalent strategies. The more likely result in a dynamic world is a market crash in the domain of factories as everyone and their dog tries to get in on the "free easy money, last chance to get rich!". The end profit margins would be tight indeed and collapsed values of good. Not to mention the whole value of money is that it can get you other goods and services while shielding you from the logistical hellscape of trying to DYI. If everything is being auto-produced anyway then currency isn't even desirable a commodity, now is it?
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  Well, no. Labor value decreases, but hours stay the same since more can be produced in the same time. This creates surplus value, which is taken by whoever controls the means of production. Workers, realizing they are being cut out, strike, negotiate higher wages. Rinse and repeat (this, if you ask the progressives at least!)
eru 2y ago
The negotiation power of workers largely relies on what their outside options are. If the rest of the economy is booming, they'll have more power, because they can walk away. If the rest of the economy is doing badly, they can't threaten to walk about (or at least they can't threaten that as easily and credibly).
Joeri 2y ago
But the article mentions the 8 inch production line is always shorthanded on staff. You would think workers on a line that has shortages of employees would have negotiating power. The article also mentions better circumstances on other lines. The workers on strike also say they’re not even really asking for better circumstances, just to not be treated like parts in a machine. I think this is a typical case of a bad manager at the top of the 8 inch line, and not of some larger theme of automation leading to worker abuse.
- eternauta3k 2y ago
  > You would think workers on a line that has shortages of employees would have negotiating power Depends on whether we re looking at a system in equilibrium or out of equilibrium. Maybe the "shortage" is the equilibrium for the unyielding crappy conditions the company is offering.
fred_is_fred 2y ago
Swap out 12-inch line to something like weaving and you could have posted this in 1770.

ryandrake 2y ago

> 1. Some workers lose their jobs to automation. > 2. The remaining ones have a weaker negotiation power, as their jobs are on the way out anyway. So companies have even more incentive to abuse them. I wonder what the eventual end game is, when you let everything play out to its logical conclusion. Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. They'll own a magical fully-automated factory that maintains and repairs itself, and a magical AI box that makes optimal business decisions, and then just sit there owning these magical things and harvesting money every quarter. Humanity consists of the few who own all the boxes, living in opulent luxury, and the many who don't and barely subsist enough to buy the products.

Blackthorn 2y ago
Historically, violence has been at least somewhat successful as a disincentive for this. Hasn't always fixed the immediate problem but the threat of it, and eventual implementation, kept too much of a gap from happening.
- kybernetikos 2y ago
  I doubt it'll work this time though though, since we are beginning to make big strides in automating violence too. The people who own the boxes will own the murderbots too.
  - Blackthorn 2y ago
    They always owned the police anyway.
    - kybernetikos 2y ago
      True but police are people too with their own expectations and morality and the number of police required to suppress a population is relatively large. There's still enormous room for abuse, but automating suppression drops even the imperfect checks that we have on the power of the few to oppress the many
      - ryandrake 2y ago
        > True but police are people too That can be solved, too. Some other (now deleted?) comment mentioned the inevitability of killbots, which will have to be created and deployed for this dystopia to stick. The elite living in Elysium will need a controllable, automate-able, way to keep the underclass in line, one that doesn't involve less-reliable human enforcers.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >The elite living in Elysium will need a controllable, automate-able, way to keep the underclass in line, one that doesn't involve less-reliable human enforcers. I thought the rich elites living in Elysium had to completely depend on one weird mercenary dude on Earth with a shoulder-fired rocket launcher that somehow had rockets that could achieve escape velocity in order to protect Elysium from spaceships with illegal immigrants attempting to invade and use their magic healing machines.
      - Blackthorn 2y ago
        It's a historical fact that the police (or police-adjacent things before they were called the police) have always been quite willing to crack the skulls of workers.
        2y ago
alfiopuglisi 2y ago
If you own enough of these automated factories, you don't need to sell anything at all. Just produce whatever luxury item you want, in addition to mundane things like food and shelter (in the form of caviar and villas, because why not?). That will mark the time when technology is advanced enough that humanity will fracture with small independent groups going out and fending for themselves, possibly in outer space. Some SF scenarios call them "great houses", because they somewhat resemble feudal kingdoms where a kind of extended family rules, except there are no peasants.
bibliotekka 2y ago
The richest and most powerful will lobby for universal basic income because it will benefit them at some tipping point, where the masses will need to be subsidized to keep the consumption machine running, maybe?
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  I think the middle class feels safer with the notion that the economy will not survive without them, thus whatever system results must maintain some sort of middle class. I don’t think this is true at all, while not ideal many places continue to operate just fine with a few very rich and everyone else very poor. The consumption machine has a wealth effect which is an artifact of a ponzie economy. This mathematically cannot last forever, even if it has lasted for a long time and will continue to last for a long time. What matters to wealth is production. Traditionally highly technical production needed a decent middle class, but efficiencies mean fewer such people are needed to maintain the same proficiency. Coupled with globalization where a smart person anywhere can design technical things that can then be used everywhere. This decouples the wealth of the rich from the health of the middle class and the rich would be happily sacrifice the middle class in the alter of cheaper labor and will whisper sweet nothings in your ear while doing so. Not them personally but the people they pay to operate on their behalf. To me it makes perfect sense to promise UBI to undermine resistance and then not deliver on that promise to again undermine resistance. I think the middle class would be fools to believe that UBI will come and save them.
  - kwere 2y ago
    yeah, to bargain one needs strenght, on such scenario, UBI would mostly like benevolence of the powerful to stabilize their power structures. The masses will comply with UBI or not
- csomar 2y ago
  UBI will benefit them in the sense that work will no longer be a right; since now you get that government pay check. No one wants to keep the consumption machine running for your benefit. The rich can always get a bigger yacht and more holiday residences. UBI is a power play and the worst outcome for a sovereign citizen.
Aperocky 2y ago
I think this is purely focused on the supply side and neglecting demand and its role in the economy. The world economy today isn't driven by lack of supply (for the vast majority categories of products), rather it is by lack of demand. Whoever owns the demand owns the power in this dynamic. One can have all the factories in the world when consumer stop buying it's in for a rough time, like China is finding out.
- immibis 2y ago
  Demand can be easily manufactured, it seems. Just look at all the bullshit people buy, from fidget spinners to timeshares to ready-made chocolate cake.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    We have entire industries dedicated to creating demand for things that would otherwise not be demanded (advertising), and enabling people to buy things they cannot afford (debt). I'd expect both of these industries to balloon during the late stages as people get further squeezed out of voluntarily participating in the economy.
  - corimaith 2y ago
    On an aggregate level, no. Those things you've listed only occur when times are good and the gravy train is running. In a recession or hyperinflation it's a different matter altogether. China would certainly want that magical ability for their economy right now if they could.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    I don't think anyone with half a brain is buying a timeshare these days. Those things have been going down for many years now I think. They were a stupid fad, and the fad's over. Of course, some new bullshit fad will come along for people to waste their money on. What's wrong with ready-made chocolate cake? Freshly-baked might be better, but there is value in convenience. It's the same reason people buy pizza: if you're a master pizza chef and have a proper pizza oven at home, you could probably make a better pizza, and of course have it a bit fresher, but most people simply can't make a pizza that comes close to those made in real pizza ovens by people who make them every day. Some people don't even have an oven in the first place.
huijzer 2y ago
I think you can find businesses like this already. They only have a few capable people and that’s it. For example, MasterCard, Visa, RenTec, and probably some hedge funds somewhere.
- prewett 2y ago
  You're telling me that of MasterCard's 33,000 employees and Visa's 28,800 employees, only a "few" are "capable"? Either management is negligently incompetent or, well, maybe the hubris is from a different direction.
  - huijzer 2y ago
    Well Visa does have about half a million net income per employee (assuming 17 billion net income which they reported in 2023), but yes you’re right. I thought the number was lower.
svara 2y ago
That's the argument for universal basic income in a nutshell. I'm not so convinced, I think this comes from the limited mental model of thinking of the economy as a system for making widgets. Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. Being a valued member of a community is a rather basic human need. As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that aggregated desire, if it's not being met anymore by jobs that employ many workers today. That's a rather unconventional view maybe, but I'm rather convinced it's the right one. Of course, it leaves all the details open and the path to get there might be rocky.
- its_ethan 2y ago
  I think there's something very true about your idea here. I don't know that there's really any study or data that would back it up, but if a large amount of people don't have the structure and expectations that employment provides, things would deteriorate quickly. Obviously there's a spectrum here, and mindless jobs that pay as little as legally allowed aren't exactly providing fulfillment that people need. In any individual case, of course it makes sense to say "why should I/they have to do this? they should be able to chase passions or find other opportunity" but when you talk about that being "granted" to large chunks of the population (happening at essentially the same time).. I don't see it working out super well in the short or long term.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Rather, the economy is what happens when a society organizes its member's aggregated needs and desires. I like that definition.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  > As such, the economy will find novel ways to meet that aggregated desire, if it's not being met anymore by jobs that employ many workers today. I'm sorry. You are claiming that the poor will buy job-alternatives from the market once they don't have a job to sustain themselves? You seem to be missing a slight power imbalance.
  - 2y ago
Tade0 2y ago
The many will quite simply stop having children, because why bother? Then the mgic box owners will attempt doing something to have a population to sell to, but that will ultimately fail. It can be argued that it already started - globally the number of children born peaked around 2013-2017. The pandemic only accelerated the process.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  There was a short in the second batch of Love, Death and Robots[0] (Netflix), that had a cop, whose job it was, to kill children of "poors," as the rich could live practically forever, and didn't want the competition. [0] https://www.netflix.com/title/80174608 https://www.netflix.com/title/80174608 (Volume 2: "Pop Squad").
mschuster91 2y ago
Well... yes, for capitalism, that is the endgame. Neo-feudalism to be precise. And unlike the last times where feudalism was overthrown, these days police is often enough on par with the military, and the governments can track us whenever and wherever we want by the tiny little bugs we carry around in our pockets. Call for a revolution or for violent acts online, and a day later the FBI knocks on your door and takes everything digital you have.
- cjbgkagh 2y ago
  I worry that people don’t understand how much violence it took to obtain enlightenment values and that such values may only be a quirk of history. We are very fortunate to live in such a time that is not the natural and default norm for humanity. I worry that attempts to further the gains will fail and we will not only not make additional gains but lose what we had with no possible way or regain even enlightenment values in our lifetimes or any number of lifetimes.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >these days police is often enough on par with the military I'm pretty sure this is completely unique to the USA.
  - AngryData 2y ago
    And even then it is bullshit. US cops have dogshit training and the majority of them are cowards. Sure they got more guns than cops in other countries, but the population has even more.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all Maybe? This has been hypothesised since the Industrial Revolution. We’re nowhere close to labour obsolescence.
theamk 2y ago
Have you seen "good vs services employment" graphs, like this one? [0] Number of people producing goods has been shrinking for a longest time, its under 20% now. It'll likely keep shrinking as automation becomes more advanced, and in the future "service" would be much more important. When I was a kid, I've read some sci-fi stories about societies like those, where most people were working in service industry. [0] https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/07/employment-in-goods-and-services-industries-since-1939 https://www.advisorperspectives.com/dshort/updates/2023/09/0...
- hammock 2y ago
  That graph is US only
  - vivekd 2y ago
    Good point - the graph being US only means it misses offshoring manufacturing jobs to places like China. We can't assume that the loss of manufacturing jobs was solely caused by automation
    - eru 2y ago
      Why call it 'loss', if it was outsourced? UnAmericans are also human.
      - trealira 2y ago
        Why do you think the word "loss" implies they think non-Americans aren't human?
        justinclift 2y ago
        Pretty sure the point was that the jobs are just being moved around, not "lost".
        2y ago
Ajedi32 2y ago
That sounds like a very low-margin business, if literally anyone can create and maintain it with close to zero human input. Its like the sci-fi equivalent of generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon. The cost of goods produced by your hypothetical business would plummet, and the real value would simply shift somewhere else that is still able to benefit from human labor or ingenuity. If you're talking about a world where AI has become so advanced that humans have literally nothing to contribute to society, in any field, then that's called a post-scarcity society, where the very concept of a "business owner" (not to mention the concepts of "business" and "owner") starts to lose all meaning.
- dangrossman 2y ago
  The fictional automated business may cost tens of billions of dollars to build. That means almost no one, not literally anyone, can create it. If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories, then there's no competition to drive down prices, and no automatic path to a post-scarcity society. Instead, it's the dystopia ryandrake described.
  - Ajedi32 2y ago
    > If a small group of giant conglomerates are the only companies wealthy enough to build these automated factories So AI can build everything except the factory itself? Sounds like there's still a need for human labor. And if the opposite is true and AI can build the factory, then it's not going to "cost tens of billions of dollars to build"; the factory will be just as cheap as the goods its producing. Literally everyone could have their own factory.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      Maybe the resources, materials and land is the constraint here. So whoever builds the first one will be able to quickly expand, buy more land and solidify their lead. Land is likely what would cost billions in this specific scenario. If you don't have land or materials then there is nothing your AI can do, because it doesn't have anything to build things from.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
immibis 2y ago
Pretty much this. We see it starting to happen already. When's the last time a really big company actually did something to improve its product for its users and thereby get more money from users, as opposed to either raising the price, or improving its product for people who are not the users at the detriment of the users? They do this because the users aren't where the money is - money is concentrated among rich people, and the best way to make more money is to pander to other rich people.
DonnyV 2y ago
The end game is once corporations don't need people to work or for security. Thats when kingdoms will return. They will act like monarchy's. We're already starting that transition now. Different parts of the US State departments have been captured by corporations. Bending them to their will. They're stealing public waterways, land, ground resources.
galdosdi 2y ago
Not even. Humanity would consist of a small elite who owns everything, a small, continually shrinking middle class that consists of the remaining few workers who are actually needed for some reason (eventually, this tiny middle class would shrink to just the members of boards of directors, or something -- someone has to supervise the machines even if it's just rubber stamping them) and a vast underclass experiencing a life similar to an urban homeless today or a hunter gathering tribe in the amazon or something, existing in the margins, trying to steal, beg, scam a bit here and there to survive another day in whatever weird insect-like social niches are left to be found, that are just too marginal for the elite to even care about, even with their optimal AI. Look at life in Gaza or on the streets of Kensington today, and that is the sort of destiny we are bound for -- if fully replacing all humans really ever happens -- to become totally disposable people, who only continue to survive because someone has found it too much hassle to get around to getting rid of you at least just yet. But that's an endgame state, it's not a path for getting there, thank goodness. I believe it would not be so simple. It would happen gradually, and it would engender resistance, eventually violent resistance once people have little to lose. Power grows out of the barrel of a gun after all. Now, OTOH, if at that point, robot/AI weapons are sufficient so you only need 10 people to run the entire US Army.... then it's game over. But can you even get to that state without provoking a war before you get there? AI is extremely vulnerable in war because of its reliance on datacenters and fabs, which are fantastic military targets in wartime. So easy and quick to sabotage and so expensive and slow to build.
- SI_Rob 2y ago
  I dread that we are going to see a _lot_ of of cults appear, and a disturbing concentration of political power around cult leadership as a social modality. With a large overlap with the despair-distraction-escapism industry as entertainers become increasingly valorized into spiritual and thought leaders, and eventually leaders, full stop. They will, as did monarchs in feudal times, draw their power base from the multitude of disenfranchised commoners seeking guidance, respite from the bleak outlook for those with little or no prospect of upward mobility, and a rallying point from which to focus any semblance of pushback against the landed baronial classes. But they will all the while be paying a hefty tax to those who maintain the broadcast infrastructure that enables them to marshall and monetize their followers, so even these kings and queens will need to stay in the graces of some potentate or other.
amelius 2y ago
That's not the end game because ultimately voters determine the rules of the economic system. And if voting doesn't work, there's the possibility of a revolution. So the capital owners will probably make it so that they please a majority of people just enough to stay in power.
- p1esk 2y ago
  Or they simply kill everyone who complains.
fuzzfactor 2y ago
>Humanity consists of the few who own all the boxes, living in opulent luxury, and the many who don't and barely subsist To me that represents lingering inhumanity. There are still plenty of people around the world who have maintained this high lifestyle proudly since their early ancestors first got into opulent condition. But there are even more descendants who have not been able to maintain a previous level of opulence at all and would do anything to get it back. Then you've got a whole bigger group who never came close and are even more envious than those who once had luxury. So much of the time it's easy to recognize that improved wealth is a result of fortune one way or another. When you get an aggregate amount of greed focused on manipulating fortunes, the best they can do for themselves is when everyone else ends up barely subsisting. IIRC, civilization was supposed to bring an end to the barely subsistence thing. Doesn't look too civil when things trend backward toward medieval.
squigz 2y ago
Where are they going to harvest money from? If people can't work, they can't buy things.
ClassyJacket 2y ago
Kind of like the system we already have with landlords.
Teever 2y ago
The eventual end game is a self replicating machine. It'll start with just businesses owning the prototypes of them but once common folk know that such a machine is possible they'll build one themselves and then use it to build as many as they want. If it's a very large machine it will be miniaturized until it fits inside the human body and everyone will have synthetic ribosomes that can be used to produce whatever they want provided they have access to enough energy and raw material. What happens then is anyone's guess.
Xen9 2y ago
The end game is that average human becomes a pet. Horses weren't needed and they became pets; same for average human. This can only happen perfectly if the manufacturers eventually start to come after those who are self-reliant, which I believe is in line with the psychology of humans. Funny thing is this is ALSO analogous to what we have done certain animals.
- Xen9 2y ago
  Further analogy: Holding $100 US dollar bill in front of the pets, one can make them do lots of tricks. The pets are willing; like dogs that want to play, they will send tons of CVs to potential owners and give do anything to gain advantage in an interview. This makes me wonder, what happens to the dogs.
- csomar 2y ago
  Onlypets.com. I see the future now.
  - Xen9 2y ago
    The most correct use for this analogues of owners, hermits and pets is as tool of desconstructing the cyberpunk genre. It's no longer human culture in animal nature; but owner culture in anthroposcenic nature. What happens when one that can live centuries in an intellectual enlightened form lives in a world of pollutatition, cities, old infastructure—and of course the organic leftovers? --- Noteworthy to say this makes up perhaps half of cyberpunk's foundations—one should not ever define cyberpunk solely with this idea.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 2y ago
  You’re thinking of slavery with extra steps.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    Don’t think that needed clarification from “pet”
csomar 2y ago
In this case, there is no end game since Samsung exports these products. The money will keep flowing. Your logic makes sense only in a closed system. The government will then redirect that labour to other stuff they can make and export; and make more money.
cageface 2y ago
It seems increasingly likely to me that we're going to see the standard sci-fi script flipped. Instead of AI and robots doing grunt work for humans, AI will be doing most of the decision making, perhaps guided by a small human elite, and humans will do most of the grunt work. Making machines that think will turn out to be a lot cheaper and easier than building machines that can do general purpose physical work. People are cheap to make and maintain, especially if you're not very concerned with their well-being.
- eru 2y ago
  People are pretty expensive. So far we have automated more and more, including and especially grunt work. Why would grunt work come back? Especially if you have machines that can help you design more efficient machines, and can help you re-design production processes to be more efficient and amenable to further automation.
  - cageface 2y ago
    People in first world countries, with education, health care, good housing etc are expensive. If you're willing to deny them all that then they're cheap and easy to replace. Whereas building a machine that can do even the basics of what a human hand can do is quite expensive.
    - eru 2y ago
      > If you're willing to deny them all that then they're cheap and easy to replace. It's not about what the employer is willing to do, it's about what people are willing to accept; especially if there's competition for their services. > Whereas building a machine that can do even the basics of what a human hand can do is quite expensive. We even have robots that can wash dishes, and they are cheap enough to be in a substantial proportion of households. There's lots of of basics and not so basics that we automated. Of course, build a machine that can do _all_ the basics of a human hand is expensive (at least so far). But people can and have arranged their business processes around these limitations: you don't expect your welding robots to wash dishes; you use a dishwasher for that.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Hopefully a land tax
analog31 2y ago
Going further, if nobody can afford to buy goods, then there will be no need for factories.
geraneum 2y ago
> harvesting money every quarter How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. Sometimes people forget that the workers are also consumers. You may displace some, but to replace all, blue and white? Not that easy.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >How? Who pays for their stuff when most of the people are out of work. The idea is that you sell your stuff to people who are employed in other industries/companies that haven't been so successful at automating all their employees out of a job. At Samsung, for instance, the workers are not the main consumers: Samsung is a huge exporter, and most of their customers are outside of Korea. Even if all their current and former employees suddenly decided to stop buying Samsung products, it wouldn't even be noticeable in their balance sheet. What you're describing is a situation where all the companies have managed to eliminate most of their workforces, which has never happened. If it comes even remotely close to that point, societies will be forced to change their economies somehow, perhaps with UBI.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  This is the theme of the "Twenty-fourth Voyage of Ijon Tichy" by Stanisław Lem. Goods are mass-produced but no one has income to buy them. In the end they asked AI to find the way out of this deadlock. The AI found the solution of crushing them all and arranging their remains in visually aesthetic patterns. Funniest part is that they voluntarily went along with this plan because they could see no other. The whole "Star Diaries" series is such a gem. Many stories are exploring this question of "what is the endgame for societal trajectory X" in a form of some remote planet that Tichy visits on his trip.
nradov 2y ago
The notion of a factory that repairs itself is so hilarious to anyone who has worked in a real factory. After a few years of operation, all of the production machinery is constantly on the edge of breaking down. It takes continuous effort to keep things working at all, plus there are always changes for design updates and new models.
kelseyfrog 2y ago
> I wonder what the eventual end game is The end game for the US is a small group of people(approx 36M) having fun. It's not too different from how it is now, but rather than be supported by human labor, it's supported by the labor of machines. If all wage labor is automated, and ignoring the issue of the social and political implications of a mass of people with nothing else to do, the remaining professions will be SME business owners, investors, and landlords[1]. We can estimate the size of this population. There are approximately 28 million American SMEs[2]. SMEs can have owner-employees or hired labor, all of which will be automated. Considering SMEs as financial black boxes, the inputs, and outputs remain the same with the exception that salaries are replaced by a presumably smaller figure representing either the purchase or rental of automated labor. An estimated 7 million[3] high-net-worth individuals(HNWI) reside in the US. These are people with large investment portfolios who can live off gains indefinitely. It's difficult to estimate the number of full-time investors, but some estimate range from 200k-1million, and arguably, and these are folks who are doing potentially automatable work anyways. The upperbound of US landlords is 10.6 million people[4], or 7.1%. There are 5.9 million[5] commercial buildings in the US, compared to 44 million[6] residential rental properties. Let's estimate the number of commercial landlords to be around 1 million people in the US. We can also presume that maintenance and repair is automatable labor. The common features these groups share is the ability to generate income without labor. Presumably, this leaves them plenty of time to engage in leisure activities. Looking toward HNWI individuals as an indicator, they spend much more of their time engaged in "active" leisure, that is to say praying, socializing, exercising, hobbies, and volunteering[7]. 1. I'm assuming self-employed people are automated away. 2. https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/trans-pacific-partnership/tpp-chapter-chapter-negotiating-8 https://ustr.gov/trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements/tran... 3. https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/world-wealth-report/ https://www.capgemini.com/insights/research-library/world-we... 4. https://www.doorloop.com/blog/landlord-statistics-by-category-income-unit-more https://www.doorloop.com/blog/landlord-statistics-by-categor... 5. https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environment/commercial-buildings-factsheet https://css.umich.edu/publications/factsheets/built-environm... 6. https://www.statista.com/statistics/187577/housing-units-occupied-by-renter-in-the-us-since-1975/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/187577/housing-units-occ... 7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2019/07/13/how-do-the-very-wealthy-choose-to-spend-their-time/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2019/07/13/how-do-t...
yMEyUyNE1 2y ago
> Eventually, business owners will no longer need people at all. Who will they sell to? For business/markets to exist, it needs people who can buy.
mywittyname 2y ago
Eventually the "fully-automated factory in a box" will be widely available and the race to the bottom will work its way up the chain. You can already see this at work on platforms like Etsy or Amazon. People are buying tools like crickets, CNC, or 3d printers, then starting a business selling their products (often copies of other successful products) on these platforms. Eventually, someone will make copy-cat platforms, then someone else will build a tool for building copy-cat platforms, etc. There's no end game, it's just a loop of people trying to replicate the success of others.
Nasrudith 2y ago
The "logical conclusion" is frankly a bad extrapolation as hinted by the number of times 'magical' appears in it. A magical fully-automated self-maintaining and repairing factory isn't a very good model for the real world even with advances. We've already seen how over-invested LLMs have gotten relative to their financial returns. A magical AI box with optimal business decisions is even more fantastical - computibility isn't there, and the resulting homogeneity of a 'perfect' approach in business strategy would by game theory promote decisions counter to the prevalent strategies. The more likely result in a dynamic world is a market crash in the domain of factories as everyone and their dog tries to get in on the "free easy money, last chance to get rich!". The end profit margins would be tight indeed and collapsed values of good. Not to mention the whole value of money is that it can get you other goods and services while shielding you from the logistical hellscape of trying to DYI. If everything is being auto-produced anyway then currency isn't even desirable a commodity, now is it?
DiscourseFan 2y ago
Well, no. Labor value decreases, but hours stay the same since more can be produced in the same time. This creates surplus value, which is taken by whoever controls the means of production. Workers, realizing they are being cut out, strike, negotiate higher wages. Rinse and repeat (this, if you ask the progressives at least!)

eru 2y ago

The negotiation power of workers largely relies on what their outside options are. If the rest of the economy is booming, they'll have more power, because they can walk away. If the rest of the economy is doing badly, they can't threaten to walk about (or at least they can't threaten that as easily and credibly).

Joeri 2y ago

But the article mentions the 8 inch production line is always shorthanded on staff. You would think workers on a line that has shortages of employees would have negotiating power. The article also mentions better circumstances on other lines. The workers on strike also say they’re not even really asking for better circumstances, just to not be treated like parts in a machine. I think this is a typical case of a bad manager at the top of the 8 inch line, and not of some larger theme of automation leading to worker abuse.

eternauta3k 2y ago
> You would think workers on a line that has shortages of employees would have negotiating power Depends on whether we re looking at a system in equilibrium or out of equilibrium. Maybe the "shortage" is the equilibrium for the unyielding crappy conditions the company is offering.

fred_is_fred 2y ago

Swap out 12-inch line to something like weaving and you could have posted this in 1770.