China’s Troubling Robot Revolution

[madville]

"In 2014, Chinese factories accounted for about a quarter of the global ranks of industrial robots — a 54 percent increase over 2013. According to the International Federation of Robotics, it will have more installed manufacturing robots than any other country by 2017.

Midea, a leading manufacturer of home appliances in the heavily industrialized province of Guangdong, plans to replace 6,000 workers in its residential air-conditioning division, about a fifth of the work force, with automation by the end of the year. Foxconn, which makes consumer electronics for Apple and other companies, plans to automate about 70 percent of factory work within three years, and already has a fully robotic factory in Chengdu."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/opinion/chinas-troubling-robot-revolution.html


I always find this topic fascinating. In the coming decades we will be losing tons of service and transportation jobs as well, like taxi drivers, truck drivers, pilots, conductors, etc, it will all eventually be automated. One day our great grandchildren may think it was nuts and ridiculously dangerous that we even drove our own cars. Artificial intelligence is a whole other issue, when it replaces human engineers and scientists we'll know things are in for an interesting turn.

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Here's the plan for all that surplus labor.

1. Do nothing about catastrophic climate change.
2. Wait.
3. Let nature adjust the population.

[Recursion]

3. It's people, not "labor". That's the mindset we need to break

We're very close to a point where there's simply no need for most of the world to work most of the time. People who are interested in something, sure. Or people who want a little something extra, sure.

That was the situation for most of the human race's existence (hunter gatherers generally need to exert themselves about 2-3 hours a week to get the food they need). Just think of it as H sapiens coming back home.

[Recursion]

2. The post-labor world is coming

A world without scarcity could end up making most of us very, very poor. Or not. Depends on what we do about it.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. We've lived without scarcity in the US for 70+ years.

And as soon as the commies stopped being a threat the ruling elites went to town. We now have artificially induced scarcity as they have pillaged the commons, raped the treasury, and "financialized" the entire planet.

[madville]

5. They'll have to tax corporations

And disperse the revenue to the unemployed public as a minimum standard income.

[Recursion]

6. A social dividend like that seems like the simplest way to do it

Which is a reason I'm very much for it.