6 ms·
Automating production at China factory reduces 80% of workforce
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sboak 14y agocircle of life
- angdis 14y agoNot so much a circle. More like an arrow. Pointing downward. This isn't going to end pretty in the long term.
- Ralith 14y agoYeah, at this rate nobody will be working long hours at unsafe assembly lines! Wait a moment.
- yock 14y agoWhy? When did it become a universal truth that human labor must be employed in producing the widgets we consume? Throughout history human labor has been replaced by automation. Some pain is always involved, but society eventually repurposes that human labor to more efficient uses of their skills.
- angdis 14y agoBy the same token, I don't think it is a universal truth that human labor will _always_ be able repurpose itself and/or do so in a way that doesn't involve tremendous human suffering.
- yock 14y agoIt always involves some amount of suffering. Entire generations of people have found themselves in a life dedicated to an obsolete skill. Does that mean we should limit the use of, say, printing machines so that people may be gainfully employed manually copying books? What you're suggesting seems to be to limit innovation for the sake of comfort. A society that buys such a line of thought is far more doomed than the one who may or may not innovate themselves obsolete.
- angdis 14y agoHey, I am not suggesting there's a solution-- let alone even suggesting that we preserve jobs by "limiting innovation" (if that could even be done). All I am trying say is that there had better be something hard thinking about what will happen to people whose jobs become obsolete in large numbers. If recent history is any indication, it seems that we're NOT headed towards increasing the size of the welfare state. Instead we're seeing larger and large rifts between the haves and the have-nots. That's a serious problem and not one that has an easy solution.
- msg 14y agoCan someone put this in context? Is this an inkling of things to come? I'm curious about how the trend toward automation, away from human labor, will affect unemployment and disaffection in China.
- anacrolix 14y agoin a country of 1500 million people this is bad idea.
- horsehead 14y agoAnd now other countries start doing the same as the US did 100 years ago. Soon they'll be outsourcing jobs too, though IDK to whom. Soon there won't be any cheap labor as the rest of the world catches up!! Or maybe super poor countries will start being better off .... hmmm
- hkmurakami 14y agoThe next destination for labor is Africa. I'm really interested to see what happens after that though, when there is comparatively little wage arbitrage opportunities remaining.
- taligent 14y agoI don't know if that's the case. One of the big reasons Asian countries are so popular is because of their proximity to other members of the supply chain. This is vital for maximizing JIT inventory management. It might just end up moving to Asian countries that still have pockets of cheap labour e.g. Philippines.
- heretohelp 14y ago>I'm really interested to see what happens after that though, when there is comparatively little wage arbitrage opportunities remaining. Post-labor economies driven by efficiency improvements from technological advancement. Most of the western world lives dissipatively save for a cohort of knowledge workers fighting for prestige and social proof. (You already see this in the startup industry with those who have enough money to retire on.) Those that don't adapt to the non-necessity for everybody to be working will experience tumult.
- mtrimpe 14y agoWhat do you mean by dissipatively? My dictionary hasn't caught up with your vocabulary yet ;)
- heretohelp 14y ago
- taligent 14y agoI hope all the people who were so critical of Foxconn are prepared for the consequences. From what we've seen Foxconn were so rattled by it that they are investing massively in robotic automation. To the detriment of hundreds of thousands of poorer workers and the millions that they impact. This ignorance and arrogance on the part of mainly Western countries to judge places they've never visited really needs to stop. Yes we need to maintain basic human rights. But we also need to be mindful that one man's exploitation is another man's livelihood.
- smackfu 14y agoWestern workers : Eastern workers :: Eastern workers : robots.
- Ralith 14y agoIt sounds like you'd prefer that rote labor not be automated. Should the potential for a post-scarcity society be abandoned because it costs a few jobs in the short term?
- vladd 14y agoIn order to live and avoid starvation, people require a minimum amount of income. There are two things they can use to produce income: work and assets (i.e. house renting). As automation continues to elevate the standard of employable "work", there will be a lot of people that don't have the required education to be employable, nor sufficient savings to get an education, nor enough assets to generate sustainable living from them. I'm all for the benefits of automation, but we should have a solution for the above scenario before saying it will be all roses and sunny days. What do we do with these people? Are we willing to get them to an upper level of knowledge via free education supported by higher taxation? Are we going to guarantee minimum income levels or a minimum set of assets to every person to be able to sustain themselves while being educated? Those are difficult questions, and in a changing world where it's not enough to want to work in order to find a job, answers are needed...
- mmatants 14y ago
- RedwoodCity 14y agoProducts get cheaper due to automation, so people buy more stuff. Laid off workers eventually become robot technicians or designers. Some may never adapt but the same be said for any western country that has lost factories to the east.
- smackfu 14y agoMy understanding was that it is strictly a numbers game: workers are used when they are cheaper than robots, and vice versa.