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I 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 invest

I 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 ago
Western workers : Eastern workers :: Eastern workers : robots.
Ralith 14y ago
It 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 ago
  In 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
    As countries get richer there is more and more affordable education. In other words, higher job productivity from those who can get jobs means higher contributions to help those who can't. And even if one doesn't have a high-level education, being "poor" in a developed country affords a better lifestyle than being "middle class" in that very same country a few decades ago. In other words, the same minimum wage dollar buys many times more goods. The cost savings spread everywhere - hence post-scarcity.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
GiraffeNecktie 14y ago
I seriously doubt whether the criticism of Foxconn is driving automation. Last I heard there is a labour shortage in China, wages are rising, and jobs are being moved to countries like Vietnam.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
This is the broken windows fallacy. Is anyone on Earth better off today because buggy whip production has almost entirely disappeared? Some people will lose their jobs, but there will be other jobs. Look to Japan, they automated a lot of their factories in the mid 20th century. And now look at how horrible life is there, they are merely one of the richest countries in the entire world. Just think about how life would be so much better there if only more people had entry level factory jobs. China is modernizing, that is in no way a bad thing.
- vladd 14y ago
  Until now it has been the case that you could always sustain yourself via manual labor if you had no education and no assets to support yourself. Automation will change this, we've never encountered this before in our history (see my other comment in this thread).
  - JoshTriplett 14y ago
    Off the top of my head, I can easily name a pile of manual-labor jobs that won't become subject to automation for a very long time; some of these require training or apprenticeships, but none require formal university-style education, and many pay significantly better than minimum wage: Plumber, electrician, woodworker, metalworker, mason, numerous forms of construction-related labor, electronics repair, truck driving, towncar/shuttle/cab driving, most of the hospitality industry, yard maintenance / landscaping, restaurant staff, grocers and other brick-and-mortar stores of all sorts, warehouse labor (only some of this can be automated). I think that list can easily become significantly longer with a bit more thought, but that seems sufficient to make the point. And apart from the handful of crafts on that list that require training or apprenticeship, switching between them does not require significant unproductive time, making them all available as options simultaneously. Try an experiment: imagine you got in a serious accident (a server rack fell on your head), and when you recovered you found that while you still had the ability to think and act resourcefully, you remembered none of your field-specific education (university or equivalent self-study). Your treatment cost precisely all of your savings and assets, so you can't afford to not work immediately. Now, do you really think you couldn't find a job anywhere? Give it a non-trivial amount of thought, and assume that until you come up with an answer you have at least 40 hours a week to think about it.

smackfu 14y ago

Western workers : Eastern workers :: Eastern workers : robots.

Ralith 14y ago

It 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 ago
In 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
  As countries get richer there is more and more affordable education. In other words, higher job productivity from those who can get jobs means higher contributions to help those who can't. And even if one doesn't have a high-level education, being "poor" in a developed country affords a better lifestyle than being "middle class" in that very same country a few decades ago. In other words, the same minimum wage dollar buys many times more goods. The cost savings spread everywhere - hence post-scarcity.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]

GiraffeNecktie 14y ago

I seriously doubt whether the criticism of Foxconn is driving automation. Last I heard there is a labour shortage in China, wages are rising, and jobs are being moved to countries like Vietnam.

InclinedPlane 14y ago

This is the broken windows fallacy. Is anyone on Earth better off today because buggy whip production has almost entirely disappeared? Some people will lose their jobs, but there will be other jobs. Look to Japan, they automated a lot of their factories in the mid 20th century. And now look at how horrible life is there, they are merely one of the richest countries in the entire world. Just think about how life would be so much better there if only more people had entry level factory jobs. China is modernizing, that is in no way a bad thing.

vladd 14y ago
Until now it has been the case that you could always sustain yourself via manual labor if you had no education and no assets to support yourself. Automation will change this, we've never encountered this before in our history (see my other comment in this thread).
- JoshTriplett 14y ago
  Off the top of my head, I can easily name a pile of manual-labor jobs that won't become subject to automation for a very long time; some of these require training or apprenticeships, but none require formal university-style education, and many pay significantly better than minimum wage: Plumber, electrician, woodworker, metalworker, mason, numerous forms of construction-related labor, electronics repair, truck driving, towncar/shuttle/cab driving, most of the hospitality industry, yard maintenance / landscaping, restaurant staff, grocers and other brick-and-mortar stores of all sorts, warehouse labor (only some of this can be automated). I think that list can easily become significantly longer with a bit more thought, but that seems sufficient to make the point. And apart from the handful of crafts on that list that require training or apprenticeship, switching between them does not require significant unproductive time, making them all available as options simultaneously. Try an experiment: imagine you got in a serious accident (a server rack fell on your head), and when you recovered you found that while you still had the ability to think and act resourcefully, you remembered none of your field-specific education (university or equivalent self-study). Your treatment cost precisely all of your savings and assets, so you can't afford to not work immediately. Now, do you really think you couldn't find a job anywhere? Give it a non-trivial amount of thought, and assume that until you come up with an answer you have at least 40 hours a week to think about it.