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the assumption being that the automated assembly is going to be price competitive with the manual assembly. If this is the case, why doesn't it happen with the

by chii 1y ago

the assumption being that the automated assembly is going to be price competitive with the manual assembly. If this is the case, why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain? After all, there's no reason not to make it cheaper. The only conclusion you can draw is that the automated assembly will still be more expensive compared to the current manual one.

newsclues 1y ago
Or it would mean the time and cost for tooling would be prohibitive to annual releases, as they would need to sell each refresh for longer. Like car manufacturing where the models are more consistent each year with longer cycles to refresh. I honestly don’t see that as a big issue. It may even be better.
Joker_vD 1y ago
Are you arguing that if something hasn't been invented/adopted yet, then it will never be? Because IIRC the Chinese do invest into attempts to automate the phone assembly. It may not yet be price-competitive today but why not tomorrow?
Filligree 1y ago
It does happen in the chinese supply chain; it's already heavily automated. It's a bit late to try to undercut them using automation.
sigmaisaletter 1y ago
The chain of thought goes like this: -american labour is expensive -because of tariffs (or geopolitics) cheap asian labour unavailable -investment in automation research -first Gen automation is expensive -further research -2nd Gen automation is price-competitive with american labour -iterate n times -Nth Gen automation is price-competitive with asian labour > why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain The idea is that because asian labour is so cheap, there is no real incentive to invest in automation research, because everyone knows it won't be price-competitive for long. No idea if that is actually true, but that is the argument.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Americans will not accept the quality-of-life sacrifice of their labor being competitive with Asia. It's never happening. The only way US manufacturing will be competitive with China's is if it is 100% automated from the mines to the store shelves.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Which means 100% of the money goes to the owner. At least now some goes to foreigners who watch stuff on youtube so american workers get a little of the money.
    - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
      > Which means 100% of the money goes to the owner. As more jobs get automated, this is becoming more and more inevitable anyways. There have been massive strides in computer vision and planning in the past few years. I think in 5-10 years we'll have robots that can handle nearly any manual labor task. In 10-15 years, we could be facing skyrocketing unemployment. We'll either see the collapse of society as the economy collapses, or we'll need to increase taxes on the owners to fund UBI.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        This is the obvious end-state of unregulated capitalism. Fewer and fewer people owning and benefiting from the means of production, and more and more people with nothing and nothing to do besides revolt and (eventually) chop heads off. All the ownership class needs to stop the "head chopping" part is a robust and powerful police/surveillance state, which we all know they are diligently working on right now.
        ta1243 1y ago
        The wealthiest 10% of America have increased the ownership of wealth from about 40% in the 1970s to 70% today, with no sign of slowing. A typical HN techbro may not care because they're likely in the wealthiest 35 million, but the only way for the top 3 million / 1% to continue growing at the same rate once the bottom 90% have nothing more to lose is to take the wealth from the 32 million between 1% and 10%. It took 50 years for the bottom 90% to halve the ownership of wealth in the US. Once they are fully tapped out the only way the 1% will continue to increase their wealth is taking it from the 10%. Then the 0.1% from the 1%.
branko_d 1y ago
> why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain There are already "dark factories" that don't require light or heating because they are fully automated and don't require human presence. Guess where they are? China.

by chii 1y ago

newsclues 1y ago

Or it would mean the time and cost for tooling would be prohibitive to annual releases, as they would need to sell each refresh for longer. Like car manufacturing where the models are more consistent each year with longer cycles to refresh. I honestly don’t see that as a big issue. It may even be better.

Joker_vD 1y ago

Are you arguing that if something hasn't been invented/adopted yet, then it will never be? Because IIRC the Chinese do invest into attempts to automate the phone assembly. It may not yet be price-competitive today but why not tomorrow?

Filligree 1y ago

It does happen in the chinese supply chain; it's already heavily automated. It's a bit late to try to undercut them using automation.

sigmaisaletter 1y ago

The chain of thought goes like this: -american labour is expensive -because of tariffs (or geopolitics) cheap asian labour unavailable -investment in automation research -first Gen automation is expensive -further research -2nd Gen automation is price-competitive with american labour -iterate n times -Nth Gen automation is price-competitive with asian labour > why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain The idea is that because asian labour is so cheap, there is no real incentive to invest in automation research, because everyone knows it won't be price-competitive for long. No idea if that is actually true, but that is the argument.

ryandrake 1y ago
Americans will not accept the quality-of-life sacrifice of their labor being competitive with Asia. It's never happening. The only way US manufacturing will be competitive with China's is if it is 100% automated from the mines to the store shelves.
- ta1243 1y ago
  Which means 100% of the money goes to the owner. At least now some goes to foreigners who watch stuff on youtube so american workers get a little of the money.
  - Sohcahtoa82 1y ago
    > Which means 100% of the money goes to the owner. As more jobs get automated, this is becoming more and more inevitable anyways. There have been massive strides in computer vision and planning in the past few years. I think in 5-10 years we'll have robots that can handle nearly any manual labor task. In 10-15 years, we could be facing skyrocketing unemployment. We'll either see the collapse of society as the economy collapses, or we'll need to increase taxes on the owners to fund UBI.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      This is the obvious end-state of unregulated capitalism. Fewer and fewer people owning and benefiting from the means of production, and more and more people with nothing and nothing to do besides revolt and (eventually) chop heads off. All the ownership class needs to stop the "head chopping" part is a robust and powerful police/surveillance state, which we all know they are diligently working on right now.
      - ta1243 1y ago
        The wealthiest 10% of America have increased the ownership of wealth from about 40% in the 1970s to 70% today, with no sign of slowing. A typical HN techbro may not care because they're likely in the wealthiest 35 million, but the only way for the top 3 million / 1% to continue growing at the same rate once the bottom 90% have nothing more to lose is to take the wealth from the 32 million between 1% and 10%. It took 50 years for the bottom 90% to halve the ownership of wealth in the US. Once they are fully tapped out the only way the 1% will continue to increase their wealth is taking it from the 10%. Then the 0.1% from the 1%.

branko_d 1y ago

> why doesn't it happen with the chinese supply chain There are already "dark factories" that don't require light or heating because they are fully automated and don't require human presence. Guess where they are? China.