[HN Gopher] America Is Missing The New Labor Economy - Robotics ...
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America Is Missing The New Labor Economy - Robotics Part 1
Author : lasermatts
Score : 129 points
Date : 2025-03-11 11:25 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (semianalysis.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (semianalysis.com)
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them? The
| cars? The food and the clothes? Wealth keeps concentrating
| upward, great leaps in efficiency and throughput, but I can't see
| how it's a sustainable model for continued consumption growth
| year after year.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| This is where discussions of post-scarcity and post-labor
| economy come in, like UBI. We keep kicking the can down the
| road on that front, but this is _going_ to happen and we need
| to establish such a sustainable model.
|
| Unfortunately, it really seems like the plan is to strip the
| house of the copper for billionaires to become trillionaires,
| then burn down the house with the rest of us inside.
| sharemywin wrote:
| 1. there are limits to natural resources.
|
| 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets.
|
| 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table if their
| insight and wisdom can be replicated by a machine.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| > 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets.
|
| That's one way of looking at it. Another is that humans
| will find other ways of exploring and spending time that
| doesn't necessitate productivity. I would love to be FIRE,
| for example. A lot of people will love it. Some won't, and
| they will work.
|
| I think UBI is not there yet, but a hallmark of this is the
| rise of influencers and time burned on media and Netflix.
| This tells me that leisure time is rising and we have the
| economic capability of sustaining non-productive
| activities.
|
| But we're not there _yet_. I don't fear the inevitability
| of UBI in my lifetime for example. But I'm confident we'll
| be able to devise a useful system when we get there. In the
| end, we didn't have capitalism untill we thought up this
| system. There is surely another kind of system we could
| have converged to, I seriously doubt it's some magical rule
| of nature. But we did not, we wound up here. We'll end up
| in another place at some point.
| kcb wrote:
| I don't think anyone would choose to work in any way like
| today, especially if work is focused on generating wealth
| with a large portion of it being redistributed. Work
| would have to change to something more like volunteerism.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Well, many people would choose to work for the extra
| income that would bring them. Or some other status symbol
| that working could bring, welfare won't bring you that
| Rolex! Or some cultural shift that makes certain work
| "cool" (1). Or just fostering a sense of community and
| mission for doing certain work. People do many many many
| things motivated by other things than money. I agree that
| it's only a subset of the population, but if you decrease
| the work input needs to less than that percent of the
| population, that's doable. Still, as I said, we're not
| there yet and I believe we won't be there yet for a long
| long time.
|
| 1. Sometimes I wonder if the state shouldn't hire one of
| those fancy firms to push cultural outlooks about stuff
| to change. They have campaigns, but they mostly suck. If
| you put money on the table and say "hey, marketing
| company, by each 1% you improve this behavior you get x
| million dollars" I'm sure that would help motivation.
| razakel wrote:
| >Another is that humans will find other ways of exploring
| and spending time that doesn't necessitate productivity.
|
| Take just about any British musician from the past 50
| years - the ones who weren't middle or upper class almost
| all say that being on welfare (the dole) was what gave
| them the time and freedom to be creatives.
|
| UB40, for example, are literally named for the
| application form.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I think that there are definitely people who have been on
| welfare and used it to better themselves and there are
| people who thrive in the face of adversity, overcoming
| the worst situations.
|
| I also think that there are a large number of people who
| ended up lost without direction or purpose.
|
| People are weird and different.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Fully agree. But I do believe that cultural norms and
| societal expectations and what people push you to do with
| your life play a big role, so these are all levers to be
| pulled if you want to make a more self-driven population.
| netsharc wrote:
| > I also think that there are a large number of people
| who ended up lost without direction or purpose.
|
| People on welfare? I can imagine a lot of these people
| "accept" that the goal is to get themselves out of
| welfare, ASAP (especially if there's a deadline), but
| they can't see a way to that goal - e.g. applying for
| jobs but getting rejected left and right, and feeling
| dejected.
|
| With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they
| want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
| Tadpole9181 wrote:
| This isn't a rebuttal, the only solution you're allowing
| space for is "kill everyone". The universe is finite and
| all things end.
|
| 1. We aren't close to exhausting our resources and we're
| getting better at minimization and reuse. We need to spend
| money on cultural initiatives that discourage consumerism
| and reduce waste. The bigger issues are not the limited
| resources in, but the nasty things going out: the stability
| of the biosphere is far more important and 100,000,000
| people in America outright reject the responsibility.
|
| 2. No, it's not. Or is disability and child welfare and
| Medicare and veterans care all keeping them as pets too?
| It's called taking care of your people. Anyway, glad you're
| proposing solutions too.
|
| 3. They're leeches and need to be removed. Tax wealth and
| productivity gains from automation to pay for UBI.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| > 2. UBI is basically keeping humans as pets.
|
| UBI is similar to confining an animal? Deciding what and
| when it eats, when it bathes, where it goes? Training it,
| whether it likes it or not? Deciding whether it gets
| medical care? Whether it gets to have companions of its own
| kind?
|
| I thought it was giving people money.
| Loughla wrote:
| I mean, depending on the amount, yes it could be deciding
| all of the things you said. You would be limited in your
| choices depending on how much the ubi actually is.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Right now I get zero ubi so I guess I am even more
| limited on all of those, and am even more a pet.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| > 3. what value do billionaires bring to the table
|
| It's a good question. The Reagan-era response would be that
| having billionaires inspires people to work hard, take
| risks, come up with ideas and better themselves. In a post-
| scarcity era where the only route to wealth is capital, and
| machines handle the hard work and ideas, I'm not sure what
| benefit remains from having billionaires. What good are
| incentives at that point?
| Teever wrote:
| Imagine a near term scenario where a humanoid domestic robot
| that can do the dishes and laundry goes on sale for about the
| price of a luxury car. boomers who want to stay out of the
| retirement home for as long as possible will snap that up.
|
| Now imagine it's been a few years and one of these robots that
| used to go for the price of a nice car is outdated and can be
| bought for a couple grand and with a couple grand for a
| replaced battery and maybe upgraded hands for more dexterity.
|
| Let's say an industrious young hacker gets their hands on this
| device and after fixing it up and jailbreaking it decided to
| get it to do stuff -- what's the first thing they should get it
| to do?
|
| Why not see if it can assemble a copy of itself -- if you find
| a genie in a lamp why not ask it for more wishes?
|
| The second a certain kind of mind gets their hands on a self-
| replicator is the second everything for humanity changes, the
| economy will never be the same because any task that used to be
| bottlenecked by materials or labor is now more or less
| bottlenecked only by the time it takes self replicators to
| build copies of themselves to divide and conquer the task.
| sharemywin wrote:
| I don't think the costs go to zero though for that.
| thijson wrote:
| I've seen this plot in various movies, TV shows, and books.
| It definitely is a possibility. In the Dune universe the AI's
| are banned after a war against them.
| allturtles wrote:
| > The economy will never be the same because any task that
| used to be bottlenecked by materials or labor is now more or
| less bottlenecked only by the time it takes self replicators
| to build copies of themselves to divide and conquer the task.
|
| Wouldn't these self-replicators also be bottlenecked by
| materials and other infrastructure? Does each one have a
| semiconductor fab, mining equipment, metal foundry, etc,
| built-in? I also don't see how you get from a laundry robot
| to a self-replicator through garage tinkering, those seem
| very far apart.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| I always wonder when people say things like that. What's
| the first thing a humanoid robot with human like
| intelligence do when you tell it to make a copy of itself?
|
| Does it set up a backyard forge and start to cast new arms
| and legs out of discarded cans? Does it finish the parts on
| a manual Bridgeport or does it carve them out manually with
| a hand file?
|
| When it needs silicon chips, does it make them itself or
| try to order more from the company that made it? Will it
| become a right to repair activist when it finds out the
| company won't sell components to individuals?
|
| Maybe it has to pay for all this with a part time job at
| the local fast food joint.
| Teever wrote:
| All of the above, and more.
|
| Assuming a humanoid robot with human like intelligence it
| may also be able to enlist humans to accomplish it's
| task, either by paying them directly, or through
| intermediaries, or deceiving them into helping it.
|
| If it is capable to human like intelligence and
| creativity it may be able to pioneer new manufacturing
| processes -- perhaps it will learn to grow parts for
| itself by using existing biological processes in ways
| that we haven't yet figured out.
|
| The point isn't so much the how with a self replicator,
| the point is the exponential growth rate. You're right
| that the first machine will take a long time to build the
| second, but those two will certainly be able to build
| twice as many in at least the same amount of time --
| probably less because they can use the infrastructure
| that the first set up to build the second.
|
| Once humans make machines that are capable of self
| replication regardless of where it is on the spectrum
| from base matter and energy assembly to just off the
| shelf parts assembly you're going to see exponential
| growth.
|
| And once certain kinds of creative people get their hands
| on these machines they will inevitably jailbreak them and
| make them work for them instead of the companies that
| will try and lock this kind of stuff down like they
| always try to do.
|
| The war on general purpose computing will transition into
| a war on general purpose manufacturing and the same kind
| of people who want ot sell you devices that you can't
| compile software for without a license will try to do the
| same with self replicating hardware but they will fail.
| kcb wrote:
| I think you've described the second thing a young hacker may
| get it to do...
| ramses0 wrote:
| https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap
| markus_zhang wrote:
| UBI is probably going to happen I think. But I don't think it's
| going to achieve much. Yes it's going to give common people
| some foothold, but with automation and AI I really doubt we
| need that many jobs, and unemployment rate is going to be high
| anyway. The elites are going to throw UBI as a bone and then
| they can do whatever they want.
|
| And that's it -- A cyberpunk future where elites can pretty
| much ignore the common people.
|
| Am I too pessimistic and/or narrow-minded? Maybe. But I don't
| think AI and AI powered robotics replacing humans is the same
| as trains replacing wagons.
|
| We will see.
|
| _Edit_
|
| The reason I think UBI won't fix much is, UBI cannot give
| people purposes to live. Obviously we already have enough
| material wealth for everyone and UBI is just a confirmation.
| But "meaning" is always a luxury, and will be more so when less
| people need to work.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| UBI won't fix much for a far more trivial and mechanistic
| reason: adding $1,000/mo to everyone's income merely gives
| landlords the ability to charge ($1,000*n bedrooms)/mo more
| in rent.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think this can be fixed with social housing. Not a
| fundamental issue but yes I agree this is an issue.
|
| The UBI in my mind is not $$$ but merchandises and services
| coupons.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Landlords have pricing power because people have to live
| close to their jobs. If UBI lets people move freely,
| landlords lose their pricing power.
| krapp wrote:
| Landlords can't simply arbitrarily raise rents like that.
| If they could, they would already charge every individual
| tenant 100% of their income. Renting is a market like any
| other, and markets have limits and competition. The renters
| that do try to increase rent by $1000 will simply not have
| tenants anymore, and those that didn't, would, because UBI
| means people can basically move anywhere, any time they
| like.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| It's not "arbitrary." It's raising rents for the same
| reason rents are ever raised: people's
| willingness/ability to pay has gone up.
|
| That can happen because of a new subway station, a hot
| new employer nearby, or simply because money appeared in
| their pockets.
|
| If money were no object, _more_ people would live in high
| COL areas, not fewer. You know this is true because you
| see it in the prices.
|
| To prevent rent increases you'd need people all to have
| $n appeared in their pockets _and to have a pact not to
| then spend $n to upgrade their living arrangements._ The
| cruel irony of course being if everyone attempts to
| upgrade, then no one achieves an upgrade but they do
| achieve spending their new money!
| krapp wrote:
| Does your rent go up by the precise amount of your
| increase in income every year? Mine doesn't. My landlord
| isn't checking my W2 or tax statements for extra rent
| money, that isn't how it works.
|
| The assumption that all rents, everywhere, would go up by
| the amount of UBI is the definition of "arbitrary."
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Are we talking about one person's income going up, or
| knowably every single person's income going up by a known
| amount?
|
| When minimum wage rises, yes rents rise.
|
| When high paying employers come to an area, yes rents
| rise.
|
| These are a lot more random/diffuse in the market than
| UBI is, but they still cause the same effect.
|
| Can you please explain why rents go up at all?
| krapp wrote:
| >Are we talking about one person's income going up, or
| knowably every single person's income going up by a known
| amount?
|
| What does it matter?
|
| You're claiming landlords have the ability to set rents
| directly based on a tenant's income.
|
| Rents _can_ rise based on minimum wage, but all renters
| do not raise their rents precisely by the increase in
| minimum wage.
|
| And when high paying employers come to an area, not all
| renters raise rents accordingly.
|
| You're ignoring that market forces exist affecting rent
| other than the simple greed of landlords. Not _every_
| landlord would increase rent by the amount of UBI because
| there is an obvious market opportunity in not doing so,
| and because not every property could justify that, even
| with UBI.
| ryandrake wrote:
| No landlord is looking at a particular tenant's income
| under the microscope and adjusting their rent. But, of
| course they do it in aggregate based on averages. UBI
| shifts the overall demand curve, and every supplier of
| goods will adjust their prices proportionally.
| ben_w wrote:
| > You're claiming landlords have the ability to set rents
| directly based on a tenant's income.
|
| I'm a landlord. My agent figures out the rent to charge
| on my behalf. They do this by making an informed guess as
| to what the market can bear -- sometimes they've been
| wrong, and had to reduce the asking rate.
|
| That is, mechanistically, _how_ they discover what the
| market can bear.
|
| If everyone gets PS1000 UBI money each month, everyone
| can afford to pay PS1000 more rent than before. Some
| agents will guess this means everyone can afford PS500
| more rent, some will guess higher, some will guess lower.
| They'll discover through this process of guessing and
| seeing what happens, how much people can actually pay.
|
| This is complicated by all the other concurrent changes,
| including:
|
| (1) the scenario of no-more-work-needed suggests that
| some of the tenants will move to wherever the rent is
| lowest rather than where their previous commute was
| shortest
|
| (2) no-more-work-possible meaning money supply goes
| _down_ rather than up
|
| (3) people won't need to spend a huge amount of money
| commuting, not just time, which may increase personal
| money supply (just not by as much as the loss of income
| from not working)
|
| (4) if they actually like the homes enough to want to
| spend all day in them, rather 5 hours awake and inside
| because the other 19 hours of the day are 8 asleep, 2
| commuting, 8 working, and 1 lunch break; UBI being
| claimed by 500 people who all officially live in the same
| 1 bed flat in a Norfolk village, but they're all actually
| spending their money on living in relatively cheap safari
| cabins in Botswana or whatever, is a very different
| dynamic than everyone staying put to keep close to
| friends and family.
|
| (On the plus side, if we have robot workers so cheap
| there's no point hiring humans any more, then we may also
| get a lot more high-quality housing for a price of next-
| to-nothing).
| Libcat99 wrote:
| A broad UBI plan would likely not have every single
| person's income going up by a known amount, either.
|
| Most of the plans I've seen taper off and then become a
| tax at certain income levels.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Taking the U and the B out of UBI? They should pick a
| different name.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Additional income is not additional willingness to pay
| 100% of that income forthe currently-purchased quality
| and quantity of one particular good or service, and _even
| if it was_ that 's a demand shift which without a supply
| change, will still result in a smaller increase in rent.
|
| UBI, which any realistic method of implementing makes a
| _shift_ in income from somewhere higher on the income
| spectrum to somewhere lower (the exact shift being
| defined by the UBI level and financing mechanism), most
| likely (if it replaces existing means tested welfare
| programs) most favoring a level somewhere above where
| current welfare programs start tapering off, does have
| some predictable price effects, but they aren 't "all
| rents go up by an amount equal to the UBI amount times
| the number of recipients typically living in similar
| units".
|
| First order, they are some price increases across goods
| and services disproportionately demanded by the group
| benefitting in net, with some price decreases across
| those disproportionately demanded by the group paying in
| net. These will vary by elasticity, but in total should
| effect some (but less than total) compression of the time
| money shift, reducing somewhat the real cost to those
| paying and the real benefit to those receiving, but with
| less effect on those paying because of lower marginal
| propensity to spend with higher income.
|
| Beyond first order is more complicated because you have
| to work through demand changes,and supply chnages caused
| by labor market changes from reduced economic coercion,
| increased labor market mobility and ability to retrain
| for more-preferred jobs, which are going to decreased
| supply for some jobs, increase supply for others (though
| on different schedules), etc.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > It's not "arbitrary." It's raising rents for the same
| reason rents are ever raised: people's
| willingness/ability to pay has gone up.
|
| The only landlords who can afford to operate this way own
| many, many units. A long term tenant who pays in a
| _predictable manner_ and isn 't actively damaging
| property is worth their weight in gold, and you can't
| afford to roll the dice on the next tenant unless you're
| able to spread the risk and _cost of the churn_ around.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| All rents are set by the market's willingness and ability
| to pay.
|
| No matter whether you're the 40th percentile (a vacancy-
| sensitive landlord) on price or the 90th (a vacancy-
| insensitive landlord), _the dollar value of the
| underlying distribution_ is defined by the market 's
| willingness and ability to pay. If that goes up, the
| entire distribution moves to the right.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, it doesn't, and the proof of that is that landlords
| don't already charge 100% of income.
|
| You seem to be assuming housing rental is an perfectly
| monopolistic market, which it isn't, and any place where it
| even loosely approximates that needs to correct that
| whether or not UBI is adopted.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Okay then you tell me: why do rents go up at all?
| sdenton4 wrote:
| Because the landlords use price-fixing software.
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-
| department-s...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Most participants in mature markets know approximately
| what percentage of the public's wallet they can grab.
| Obviously it's not 100% for any of them, but they all
| know what they can get away with.
|
| My guess is that if UBI added $1,000/mo to everyone's
| income, landlords would respond by raising rent by about
| $400-$500 or so, grocery stores would raise their prices
| by a percentage of that new income, and so on for all
| businesses, until all $1,000 was soaked up and the public
| is no better off than they were before.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Very obviously correct^
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This seems reductive. Not all goods have inelastic demand
| and no substitutes or alternatives. Not every industry is
| supply limited. Said differently, not everything is
| immune to competition.
|
| If cost of housing goes up, building and moving become
| more attractive by comparison. Instead of saving 500/mo
| by commuting, now you might save $1000 by relocating.
|
| Rate limit edit: I said commuting, not going going to
| live in some random place.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > If cost of housing goes up, building and moving become
| more attractive by comparison.
|
| Do you think "just move away from the city centers (where
| all the jobs that you used to need are) to random middle-
| of-nowhere wherever-we-have-space" will hold forever, and
| won't trail off once the initial phenomenon of everyone
| dispersing is finished?
| outside1234 wrote:
| One market where we see this effect, I think, is
| university education.
|
| Access to cheap loans has lead to an explosion in costs.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Beat me to it and you're absolutely right. There's no
| need to guess what's going to happen here, we've already
| seen what happens elsewhere when the government injects a
| lot of money.
| tzs wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. A few years ago I looked for
| historical university cost data. I didn't find much, but
| when I graphed what I did find I did not see any
| noticeable change in the rate costs grew between before
| the availability of cheap loans and after their
| availability.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > My guess is that if UBI added $1,000/mo to everyone's
| income
|
| Aside from whether the prediction is realistic under this
| assumption, UBI under any realistic financing scheme
| _doesn 't do that_. It replaces (and potentially
| increases the net benefit of) means-tested welfare at the
| bottom end of the income distribution and spreads the
| clawback from a set of relatively sharp cliffs that occur
| between working poor and middle income levels to a much
| more gradual effective trail-off over nearly the whole
| income distribution as part of progressive income
| taxation.
| tzs wrote:
| Has anyone considered something like UBI but instead of
| income make it UBG--Universal Basic Goods.
|
| The idea would be that when automation advances to the
| point that something can be made with very little labor
| the government would build automated factories to produce
| that thing and make the output available for free.
|
| There would still be room for private companies to make
| those things too. They could make fancier or higher end
| models for those people who want something more than the
| free models from the government.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| - Are you assuming that all these people _also_ have
| employment income on top of their UBI? Or only UBI? The
| premise upthread seemed to be UBI in response to mass
| unemployment caused by automation. Are you sure renters
| will still have more money in their pockets, even with
| UBI?
|
| - If they don't have employment, and incomes are $0, then
| in the absence of UBI, would rent also drop to $0? If
| not, then I think we're better off with UBI.
|
| - These higher prices for rent and groceries seem like
| strong incentives for competition. Maybe we can't expect
| that in NIMBY San Francisco, but without a jobs market,
| the only attraction to live there is the weather. Why not
| move somewhere cheaper?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Are you assuming that all these people also have
| employment income on top of their UBI
|
| Any system with UBI requires other sources of income to
| exist (thr absence of such sources means that nothing of
| value is being produced for exchange, in which case any
| money printed is basically monopoly money and how you
| distribute it doesn't matter because it isn't doing
| anything), and a major premise of UBI has always been
| that it enables those transitionally deprived of income
| more freedom to reconfigure their lives and ramp up these
| sources of income (and does so with less redundant--with
| the progressive tax system--bureaucratic overhead) than
| do means- and behavior-tested welfare programs.
|
| The particular mix of available other forms of income
| between wage labor, independent business, or capital
| don't really change the basic arguments.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| Well, my question implies that being a landlord would be
| a remaining source of income, for starters. But if that
| landlord also owns the automated farms and factories
| producing consumer goods without labor, then the people
| they're renting to really might not have any other
| income. At any rate, where a UBI is substituting for
| employment income that someone used to earn, but is no
| longer able to, then I don't think the renter gains
| purchasing power to pay more for rent. (They do gain free
| time though).
| jacobgkau wrote:
| I had to move out of an apartment a few years ago and
| into a spare half-story at a friend's house. The
| apartment was attempting to raise my rent, while not to
| 100% of my income (yet), a significant amount. Their
| excuse was "that's the market rate now," and when I told
| them to F off and went to check other nearby apartments,
| they were correct, that was the "market rate."
|
| I have absolutely zero doubt that if the government had
| paid me the difference they were trying to charge (as UBI
| or any other stipend), they would've raised the rate
| again by the same amount very quickly. In fact, going by
| the idea that supply & demand are what caused that
| (rather than simple landlord greed that I generally see
| it as), UBI _definitely_ can 't fix it, since UBI will
| not increase supply or decrease demand-- they'll still
| need to charge just enough that some people can't afford
| it in order for there to be "enough."
|
| You're somewhat correct in that the solution (building
| more housing, I guess) is not really related to UBI.
| jimbokun wrote:
| This argument applies equally to never increasing
| anyone's wages. If income goes up for anyone, rent will
| instantly rise to match the increase.
|
| (It's not clear why this only applies to rent and not
| other things people spend money on.)
| llamaimperative wrote:
| This is correct, it does apply to all forms of wage
| increases. I wouldn't say "instantly," but yes that's why
| cities are perpetually expensive despite constantly
| increasing productivity. They are highly productive ergo
| they have high wages ergo they can sustain high rents
| ergo they _have_ high rents ergo they "are expensive"
| compared to adjacent markets.
|
| Mentioned above but I'll put it here too for other
| readers: the reason rent is unique is that in high COL
| areas, it's driven primarily by the price of land which
| is has zero supply elasticity. Higher prices induce
| supply in all other forms of goods and services.
| jimbokun wrote:
| High cost of housing and rent is driven just as much by
| regulations preventing new housing from being built.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Applying it to rent is arbitrary. The general point is that
| it is inflationary for all goods and services.
|
| That is assuming UBI is funded through government borrowing
| as we saw with COVID stimulus. If funded through new taxes
| the inflationary impact should be much less.
|
| (I don't have enough economic training to determine how
| much less.)
| llamaimperative wrote:
| Well it's not quite arbitrary because it will induce
| supply in other goods and services. Rent in high COL
| areas is driven primarily by land rent (i.e. cost of
| land, regardless of whether that land is actually rented
| to the building on top of it or not), which has zero
| supply elasticity.
|
| And then the other portion of rent (the building itself)
| is also pretty darn supply-inelastic as well, though not
| entirely.
| dttze wrote:
| This is the optimistic take. The reality is they will find
| some way to cull the unwanted poor. These elites in power are
| stupid, cruel, spiteful, and have no sense of decency.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| If they don't adopt UBI then some populist politicians are
| gonna raise a flag and grab some power.
|
| They don't really need those lower end resources anyway. I
| think they are OK to give them away just in case.
| ben_w wrote:
| > If they don't adopt UBI then some populist politicians
| are gonna raise a flag and grab some power.
|
| Only in a democracy.
|
| China has elections, but is also a one-party state. Given
| the culture (thinking in terms of the group rather than
| the individual), I think they may actually want UBI
| anyway.
|
| America is a democracy right now, but such things have
| been known to change before. Doesn't even need to be all
| at once -- say the US disenfranchised convicted felons,
| that would mean the sitting president wouldn't be allowed
| to vote... and because I google before posting comments,
| wouldn't you know it, this is already a thing the states
| do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchiseme
| nt_in_t...
|
| (I don't know how accurate the book title is, does the
| average American really commit 3 per day?
| https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
| Innocen...)
| jimbokun wrote:
| The trouble is those populist politicians, in the US at
| least, are the very same billionaires at the top of the
| system who have somehow convinced the working class
| people they are on their side.
| hnthrow90348765 wrote:
| What I think will happen is the US tries to mimic China by
| creating an even lower class of our workers that form a new
| industrial/manufacturing base to compete with.
|
| This becomes less of a difficult pill to swallow if a)
| we're involved in a trade war, b) the economy has crashed
| and we must work our way out of it "for the country", c)
| the right people get enough money.
|
| They're too smart for mass murder because that would
| actually spark a resistance, not to mention get other
| nations involved. I don't think a sweatshop labor economy
| will spark a resistance because we can't even resist our
| current labor abuses (and neither can that segment of
| China's population).
| ben_w wrote:
| If "meaning" was a good argument against UBI, then nobody
| would want pensions, because UBI is exactly the same as
| setting the state pension age to zero.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Leaving aside that older people aren't as enthused about FT
| work they've known for 30 years, many of them keep jobs or
| get bored and lonely without them. Not everyone wants to
| sit around crafting useless projects, or consuming.
| Creating value for others and connecting ( _and_ status
| signaling) can provide meaning, and granted in retirement
| there are other vectors for that made available such as
| volunteering.
|
| It's not a good argument against UBI, but there are better
| arguments against UBI.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| I think volunteering could actually solve part of that.
| Butarge scale of volunteering work, thinking about the
| scale of unemployment in the future, might need
| governments to step in to create them.
| AngryData wrote:
| You don't have to make a binary choice between work and
| useless craft projects. Community projects and helping
| other people in their more meaningful projects can be
| useful and be fulfilling and make someone feel
| accomplished. Part of the problem with working as much as
| possible until retirement age is you never build any
| community presence or report and don't often make friends
| doing their own projects that would need your help.
| elcritch wrote:
| The elites leaving common folk relatively alone would be a
| best case scenario. If people are free to build and supply
| for themselves with UBI then life wouldn't be bad.
|
| Problem is elites usually want control. Oh you're running
| small scale manufacturing with open source AI and robots?
| That'll be a fine for "safety" reasons. Look at California
| requiring permits for everything.
| chasd00 wrote:
| by "UBI" i think you just mean everyone, except for a few,
| will be on food stamps.
| nartho wrote:
| Do you have data to back up this claim or is this just bar
| talk ?
| feoren wrote:
| I too worry about a future where the rich no longer have any
| need for the poor. I think the scenario where the rich end up
| just giving the poor a bit of money each month is an
| extremely optimistic one. Much more realistic is a slow
| genocide, where the poor simply die en masse in the streets
| due to having no homes, food, and healthcare, while such
| homelessness becomes both increasingly more unavoidable and
| more illegal.
|
| And before talk about violent uprisings and guillotines:
| surveillance and law enforcement are also becoming
| increasingly more powerful and automated. The French
| Revolution might have turned out differently if the
| Bourgeoisie had cameras on every street corner and AI-powered
| murder drones.
| opan wrote:
| >The reason I think UBI won't fix much is, UBI cannot give
| people purposes to live. Obviously we already have enough
| material wealth for everyone and UBI is just a confirmation.
| But "meaning" is always a luxury, and will be more so when
| less people need to work.
|
| I agree that people will still want/need meaning, and some
| may lose it, along with their jobs, but having the money for
| basic needs by default gives you the ability to explore your
| interests with less risk. You can spend 6 months learning to
| paint or program or write stories without worrying about food
| and bills if UBI is properly implemented. If you miss your
| tech support job, you can go idle in 30 channels on Libera
| and help people that wander in asking questions about
| whatever software.
|
| What am I missing here? People giving up without trying to
| find something to do? People who feel useless if they aren't
| the family breadwinner? I personally look forward to a day
| when most people don't need to work, and instead can "work"
| on what they choose.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| You cannot do everything with robotics, no matter what those
| selling you robots will claim.
|
| There will always be demand for those supporting the machines
| that make things. Tech will still require humans.
|
| The goal should be to make as many things as China and EU with
| a USA population.
| fragmede wrote:
| Everything, sure, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to
| have them do the things they can.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them?
| The cars? The food and the clothes?
|
| Other wealthy people. I knew someone in the yacht-building
| business who would say "If you want a business that will last,
| sell to rich people--they're the ones who have money." We are
| very quickly moving towards a world where the economic activity
| (earning + spending + producing) of the median person is
| insignificant next to the activity of the very rich. There are
| individuals who have more wealth than the GDP of entire
| countries.
|
| We're bifurcating into a society like the movie Elysium: A
| relatively small number of wealthy people who matter to the
| economy, and a huge number scraping by day to day whose
| economic activity amounts to a rounding error in the grand
| scheme of things.
| netsharc wrote:
| The Uberfication of the workforce is incredible to see: you
| work when the algorithms tell you there's work, you'll get
| paid what it wants to pay you.
|
| Cheap transport, cheap postage, cheap delivery of foods...
| hangsi wrote:
| Tell that to the Pierce-Arrow company: makers of the first
| official cars for the white house, but they didn't survive
| cash flow problems from the great depression. Meanwhile, Ford
| survives.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierce-Arrow_Motor_Car_Company
| atrus wrote:
| But the wealthy don't _spend_ their money.
|
| A billionaire doesn't spend more money than a million people
| on...anything probably.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Wealthy people would buy hundreds of millions of different
| phones? I strongly doubt it. Luxurious electronics for very
| rich people is usually something like iphone with diamonds
| covered back. This solves nothing and creates zero
| innovations.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| Maybe they'll subsidise them so they can monitor us
| 24/7/365
| dgfitz wrote:
| Have you ever read _Atlas Shrugged_? When I read comments
| like yours, my head goes there.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I have read Atlas Shrugged, but I'm not sure how to
| interpret your comment.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| If I was running a busniess, all tings being equal, I would
| rather sell 1,000 units at $100 than 10 units at $10,000.
|
| The more customers I have, the less risk there is if I lose a
| customer. The less I have to bow to my customers whims.
|
| If one of the 10 people ask me to hire their cousin, I might
| have to do that. If one of the 1,000 people ask me to do so,
| probably not.
| treis wrote:
| The West more or less doesn't pay the people who produce phones
| today. Partially because they don't make much and partially
| because of the trade imbalance.
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| When all the labor (physical or mental) is automated, you've
| basically solved a huge problem for humanity. Doesn't matter
| who owns the robots. They either share the products of the
| labor for close to nothing, or they are producing for
| themselves only. Someone will produce for the population.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| There is an interesting twist here. "Socialist" and "Communist"
| economic models where those who can't work are supported by
| spreading a portion of the GDP produced by an economy to
| support those (whether it is UBI or a 'free' living space,
| whatever) are more able to make the transition to a robotic
| workforce.
|
| In the US, if we transformed to a robotic manufacturing base
| today our oligarchs would horde all of the resulting wealth
| that was generated rather than provide for folks who were no
| longer employable. As a result we get strong labor actions that
| resist the automation of factories because they know that if
| their jobs are replaced by robots, they won't be able to work.
|
| The other twist has been the "GenAI" replacement[1] of
| technical workers today which is easier to do because of the
| lack of unions and collective bargaining leverage. They are
| getting screwed faster than the factory workers are.
|
| The 'utopian' outcome when a society overproduces wealth
| relative to its population is distribution of that wealth
| across the population, a "post scarcity" society where people
| can do what ever they want without fear of poverty. A
| 'dystopian' outcome when a society overproduces wealth relative
| to its population is the concentration of wealth into
| individuals and their families and regulatory capture that
| prevents any distribution outside of that circle. Dooming the
| bulk of society to poverty and depredation.
|
| While China has it's oligarchs, its communist roots may allow
| it to come out on the positive side of the transformation. The
| US, in its current configuration, would likely not become a
| post-scarcity society.
|
| [1] Yes, I know, so far it hasn't actually been an productivity
| or efficiency 'win' yet, and may not ever be, but it is
| happening anyway.
| regularization wrote:
| Keynes wrote about how this can be done, while kicking the can
| down the road. Basically debt of all types, and government
| spending. For the US this would be military expenditures and
| social welfare for the elderly.
|
| Of course the can can only be kicked down the road so far. So
| to answer your question more in depth, there was a German exile
| in England who wrote a book answering this question back in
| 1867.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| And yet the revolutions he inspired end up (in many ways)
| more dystopian than the capitalism they seek to replace..
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Since then there's been a realization that you can simply
| regulate the worst aspects of capitalism while still
| reaping most of its rewards.
|
| Now, that has been realized - but hasn't happened - _in the
| United States_ , but it can certainly be done.
|
| It'll probably be too late though.
| AngryData wrote:
| So what? People have been misinterpreting and misusing
| knowledge, realizations, and stories since basically
| forever. That doesn't make the original works worthless or
| any less insightful. You would be hard pressed to link most
| of the policies of communist nations to things Marx said or
| advocated for. The vast majority of Marx's works is
| pointing out flaws in capitalism, not prescribing policies
| to use instead.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Why are manufacturing jobs special? People will upgrade their
| tastes to consume more. Middle class houses with artistic stone
| work and well-manicured gardens. Skin treatments, massages, and
| health scans galore. More entertainment and more niche too.
| Banking apps that could win design awards. We are nowhere near
| the end of useful work.
| guhidalg wrote:
| I think most MAGAs have this idea that 1) manufacturing is a
| good paying job and 2) if the US isn't manufacturing stuff,
| that means China is doing it for us, which will lead to 3)
| when we decide to go to war with China we will not have the
| industrial capacity to fight the war. In their world model,
| the opportunity cost of manufacturing things domestically is
| not considered, and certainly not the benefits of
| manufacturing things cheaply abroad and having US workers
| move up the value chain.
| from-nibly wrote:
| Is there not opportunity cost in both directions? At some
| point someone needs to have a reason to trade with the us
| right? Specializing only works when line goes up forever.
| Heck sometimes line not going up as fast as yesterday is a
| "crisis".
| kccqzy wrote:
| Your comment perfectly illustrates why communism doesn't
| work. The one-sentence summary of communism is "from each
| according to his ability, to each according to his needs" and
| clearly people's needs grow. I don't know how much longer CCP
| can still keep communism in its name; how will CCP leaders
| reconcile that the fact that only by abandoning communism did
| the country rise?
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| What happens when every single physical and mental job that
| could be done by humans is done by AI/robots? Sure, you'll
| always have people imagining and creating new things, but
| it doesn't seem wise to tie that to economic compensation
| when technology reaches a state where every single human
| being gets to experience an upper-middle class American
| lifestyle, unconditionally, from birth to death.
| thiagoharry wrote:
| Communism, as you described, is an ideal. An horizon, a
| direction to walk. Therefore, it never was achieved, and it
| is not expected to be achieved in any short term. So, it
| does not make sense saying that only after abandoning
| communism China rose. What they abandonned was a soviet
| flavour of socialism. Communism never existed (at least not
| the flavor that you described), but it is still an
| inspiration and source of values. Perhaps in a far future,
| with more technology, and without existing an upper class
| above a lower class this could be possible.
| paganel wrote:
| > Why are manufacturing jobs special?
|
| Because you need manufacturing to win wars, or to be seen by
| outside great powers that you're in a position of winning
| wars. You're not winning wars based on git commit messages,
| but based on the steel any one country is able to produce at
| a certain moment in time (and to transform it into
| tanks/armoured vehicles and artillery shells).
| megaman821 wrote:
| That is manufacturing capacity, not jobs. A factory of ten
| people and a few hundred robots is fine. Other types of
| manufacturing like chips, aerospace and medical equipment
| are high value and low workforce.
|
| Tariffs and industrial policy may increase the US'
| manufacturing capacity, but don't expect to see many
| manufacturing jobs from it.
| sgnelson wrote:
| aerospace in the US is very much NOT low workforce. It's
| quite the opposite. One of the highest employers of
| "traditional" manufacturing in some ways. I think you
| also underestimate how many employees are required for
| medical equipment manufacturing as well.
| bumby wrote:
| > _People will upgrade their tastes to consume more._
|
| "Diseases of civilization" would make one think we're
| consuming ourselves sick.
|
| I think one issue is that manufacturing jobs were part and
| parcel to creating a robust middle class without substantial
| debt. Masseuses and landscapers aren't typically the strong
| middle class jobs that manufacturing was in decades past. I'm
| not convinced there will be a large market for stone
| craftsman when only a relatively small subset of the
| population can afford it. All that aside, a lack of
| manufacturing is a national security issue because you need
| the ability to make physical stuff if you're ever in a war.
| App economies won't cut it when bullets are flying down
| range.
| keybored wrote:
| Why is this difficult to imagine? The capitalists need human
| labor commodity as long as, well, human labor commodity is the
| only labor commodity that can do the job. Once it (if ever)
| isn't? And _they_ own all the robots that can do the work? _And
| they_ own all the robot soldiers that can protect their ill-
| gotten wealth? (Just in short total automation) Well, no need
| for consumer capitalism any more. Then you just have
| totalitarian capitalism where everyone else will have to live
| out their lives at the total mercy of those overlords.
|
| (It doesn't _have_ to pan out like that. But the point remains
| that there's not law of nature that consumer capitalism has to
| continue, even under Capitalism.)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| That was a fear the first time automation came around. (I have
| a vague memory of machines used for weaving textiles.) Turns
| out people bought more cheap clothes, and thus people were
| needed to run the machines.
|
| I would assume that automating menial jobs in one place will
| create menial jobs in another place. I would also push for
| strengthening social security so we can lower the retirement
| age. If there really are less menial jobs to go around, it's
| easier to shrink the workforce if everyone can retire at 55
| instead of 65.
| ambicapter wrote:
| The plight of the poor is not an economic problem it is purely
| a political one. Progress in technology isn't really a root
| cause of poverty, rather a proximate cause with the root cause
| being "because the fruits of technology are not adequately
| shared by government policy", a policy issue.
|
| Tax the billionaires and do what government is supposed to do
| (use that money to protect the safety of their people), it
| won't matter if they make their wealth via robots or via
| people.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Economics is inherently political. The original (and more
| descriptive) term for the subject is "political economy".
| ambicapter wrote:
| > Economics is inherently political.
|
| Yes? The political policies will have an impact on the
| economy.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| In past times this question was solved by the ruling class
| commissioning monumental buildings and fine art, as well
| consuming enormous amounts of luxuries. This gave at least some
| form of employment back to the people.
|
| Today's rulers however have no interest in monuments or in
| culture. And the great expenses of the past time have mostly
| gone out of fashion; such as having a harem, waging small wars,
| or constructing impressive public works. Today's rulers are
| content to let everything rot, as long as they themselves get
| to sit highest up on the pile. Not even maintaining their power
| through client networks cost them much, as they sway the entire
| population any which way they desire through the media. And
| that cost is tiny. The populace worship their rulers because
| they are told to, and the rulers do not need to show their
| greatness in any way at all.
|
| The only exceptions I can think about who are actually doing
| something different, are the American billionaires building
| space ships. At least that's something.
| yannis wrote:
| How I hate articles like this, painting everything as
| "existential" threat. Feeding the paranoia that has grubbed the
| US. Everything is viewed as a threat.
| piva00 wrote:
| Paranoia is the USA's way of life, when life always seems to be
| teetering on the edge of a cliff: losing your job at a moment's
| time, losing your life savings for a healthcare emergency,
| losing your kid to a school shooting, losing your stuff to
| burglars. Any of these have a very low chance of happening but
| they can be so life-changing that Americans seem to always be
| in some state of paranoia, a low-trust society with few safety
| nets and a highly-competitive mindset is primed for that.
|
| American media just capitalises on the sentiment, it's a
| vicious cycle of abusing paranoia. The government does it too,
| just look at the red-scare from the Cold War that feeds into
| American public discourse to this day, anything remotely
| socially progressive is "communist".
|
| It's amusing and sad to watch from a distance.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I've observed this as well, I do wonder though if that
| doesn't strongly encourage competitivity(is this word right?
| autocorrect highlights it, huh) and make people work... well,
| more. More effective, more time, more angry. It's certainly
| one possible explanation for why they dominate in many areas.
| But it does sound like such an exhausting thing.
| jsnider3 wrote:
| > competitivity "competitiveness" might be the word you
| want.
| gosub100 wrote:
| I don't think it makes us work more, but I think it makes
| us less satisfied with our lives. Which ultimately fuels
| the consumerism and pleasure-seeking.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Well, that solves the consumption part of the things, but
| not the production side.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Ironic, since the rage/fear-baiting and hijacking of dopamine
| is an existential threat!
| pphysch wrote:
| Once upon a time, a US president said "the only thing we have
| to fear is fear itself". His unconventional administration
| brought USA from deep economic depression into a golden age.
|
| Meanwhile, the current ruling elite smears him as one of the
| worst presidents of all time, and has spent decades undoing
| that legacy and racing towards a repeat of 1929.
| dingnuts wrote:
| he also ran for reelection four times and made private
| ownership of gold illegal, and vastly expanded the power of
| the executive branch.
|
| Reminds me a lot of the current guy and his obsession with
| another term, and whether or not the gold (that FDR largely
| stole from the people in the first place) is in Ft Knox.
|
| I guess the biggest difference is DOGE but it's all too
| much centralized power for me
| Fricken wrote:
| The US has squandered its advanced manufacturing capabilities,
| warning bells have been sounding for decades, and yes, those
| chickens will eventually come home to roost. Not yet but soon.
| chasd00 wrote:
| trying to spread democracy to China through its economy was
| the biggest mistake the US has made in 50 years.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| It seems eager to make even bigger mistakes. The current
| administration started playing with levers it does not
| understand.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| When there's no social safety net and you live in a society
| which insists on "he who does not work, does not eat", anything
| which sidelines labor is not "perceived as" an existential
| threat, it _is_ an existential threat. And recognizing it as
| such is not paranoia, but straightforward realism.
|
| If you don't want the paranoia, then fix the system which
| causes people to (correctly) see automation as pure downside.
| imtringued wrote:
| China is known to scale out in the low end market without having
| a strategy to go upmarket.
|
| Reading this article I honestly got the opposite impression.
| China is hopelessly behind Japan in both high end machine tools
| and robotics.
| digital_sawzall wrote:
| China creates the most high end drones and 3d printers, and my
| Hisense TV is better and cheaper any of my Samsung's. This is
| from personal experience of things I have purchased.
| sct202 wrote:
| China is definitely growing quickly. At the trade shows I go to
| where some of the robots in the article are presented, Chinese
| companies have become quite prominent in the last few years
| when they were completely non-existent 10 years ago.
| pphysch wrote:
| This "is known" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. "Is known" 15
| years ago, perhaps. Things are changing rapidly.
| decimalenough wrote:
| I take it you haven't seen any Chinese cars lately.
| Particularly in the EV space they're demolishing the
| competition in price and quality, and a huge part of that is
| thanks to automation with the robots described here.
|
| Check out eg the Xpeng G6, which delivers an Audi ride but
| undercuts the Tesla Model Y on price:
|
| https://www.xpeng.com/g6
| papertokyo wrote:
| It "was known" in the 60s that Japanese electronics and cars
| were inferior in design and quality. Chinese products are going
| through the same trajectory.
| blueyes wrote:
| Some authors of this piece are deeply involved themselves in
| building robots and other hardware technology. They should be
| taken seriously. The US is moving into a trade war, however
| unwise, with the country that supplies components for everything
| we make and need. That country has expansionist ambitions and a
| superior manufacturing base, which is typically what wins wars.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| Damn, thanks for plainly stating why we need manufacturing back
| to the states.
| rtp4me wrote:
| Yes, and I think this is the core motivation behind the Trump
| messaging - bring it back to the US if possible. In fact, he
| wants to bring back commercial and maritime ship building
| back[1]. Pretty cool! Hopefully this will employ lots of
| people.
|
| [1] https://news.usni.org/2025/03/05/trumps-make-
| shipbuilding-gr...
| cladopa wrote:
| >That country has expansionist ambitions and a superior
| manufacturing base, which is typically what wins wars.
|
| What country are you referring to. US with Greenland, and
| Canada?
| dingnuts wrote:
| CHINA!
| moomin wrote:
| By the time MAGA is finished, it'll be Greenland.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| We can eventually automate our economy by buying software and
| hardware from China. By electing Trump, we basically missed the
| chance to lead on anything, and instead decided to engage full
| time in trade and culture wars that aren't really going to
| yield anything. But as long as the work gets done, even if in
| China, we should be able to enjoy it.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Indeed, no one sane will invest in building factory systems
| on US soil under a Kakistocracy.
|
| Robot platforms are already a difficult business model in the
| private sector. With the exception of robot vacuums the
| market just isn't viable in the US yet. Best of luck =3
| rtp4me wrote:
| It seems Honda just decided to produce the next Civic in
| Indiana. See [1].
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-
| transportation/honda-...
| Aromasin wrote:
| "Just decided" =/= decided today. They decided months if
| not years ago, after months of negotiations with local
| authorities. Don't look at plants opening now to judge
| the current administration. Look at it 2 years from now.
| rtp4me wrote:
| I don't know - the article specifically said Honda will
| produce the cars "to avoid potential tariffs". I don't
| think the Trump tariffs were in place "years ago"...
| toss1 wrote:
| Of course, a marketing line to fit the current situation
| (and curry favor with the current vindictive
| administration) is easily added/updated at press time.
|
| This does not mean the making of the deals and building
| the factory had anything to do with it at the time, but
| stating that those past decisions also have benefit in
| today's situation is not surprising.
|
| It also does not mean that this has anything to do with
| the actual reason the deals and investments were made
| years ago. As you point out, those deals & investments
| years ago couldn't have anything to do with this week's
| tariffs.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| Its not a new plant. I drove by it several months ago on
| I-74. Its been there awhile.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Indeed, products for domestic markets may have some
| incentives to avoid international supply chains.
|
| The policies likely will just lead to multiple heavily
| coupled regional factories producing identical products
| at higher COGS. Controlling supply and demand in theory
| also makes communism more efficient, but in practice
| eventually has unintended economic consequences.
|
| We shall see how this evolves... May our popcorn be
| plentiful =3
| dluan wrote:
| You're pointing out one plant making one model in one
| city. Chinese EV manufacturers are rolling out new models
| every week.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Consumer robotics, maybe - but commercial robotics has been
| a critical component of (for instance) Amazon's fulfillment
| infrastructure.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Amazon acquired that facet of its business, and should
| not be considered a B2B product.
|
| Most general purpose robot firms just don't do well
| domestically, and rarely make it past a business cycle. I
| would partner with Festo Germany before touching US
| markets. =3
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Most general purpose robot firms don't do well at all,
| because until very recently, general purpose robotics
| have fallen short of being useful in general purpose
| scenarios. Amazon acquired Kiva 13 years ago. Kiva was
| itself founded and headquartered in the U.S.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Romans used to think that way. Their subjects thought
| otherwise.
| dluan wrote:
| It's funny you invoke some trad/conservative appeal to
| tradition, and meanwhile China's imperial history of
| bureaucratic machinery is never pointed to as an example of
| "look, technocratic meritocracy works".
| sampton wrote:
| China has been methodically preparing for trade war and
| decoupling for the better part of the decade. US went in full
| throttle with zero preparation. This is not going to end well.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| It's the only way the US will learn.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Politics and propaganda tend to dominate national
| "learning", and those forces tend to escalate to prevent
| awareness. So not a lot of learning happens, historically
| ("history tends to repeat itself"; "history doesn't repeat,
| but it rhymes", etc)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If facts don't work, intelligent, rational discourse and
| compromise don't work, and economic pain don't work,
| well, you're out of options (at least options that can be
| discussed here).
| yibg wrote:
| I wonder if this is a consequence of the political systems of
| China vs the US. China tends to think and plan longer term,
| where as the US seems much more transactional; what will win
| me the next election / midterm etc.
| dluan wrote:
| "Decoupling" was started in the US by the Obama
| administration.
| watwut wrote:
| You could also ... try not to make war. Just an idea. Pretty
| offputting actually to see someone supporting expansion being
| upvoted.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| No one is trying to make war, but naturally China is looking
| at changing the order of things, at least regionally. To make
| that happen it needs USA to move out, and create its own
| coalition of countries around the area.
| thuanao wrote:
| USA needs to move out and stop trying to start a war with
| China. Taiwan is China. Historically, legally, even
| according to the US's own policy. The KMT lost. This
| fantasy the US has of toppling or splitting up the PRC in a
| proxy war is extremely deranged.
|
| China has exercised _incredible_ restraint over the actions
| of a belligerent warmonger US.
| Galatians4_16 wrote:
| Taiwan is a sovereign nation, and West Taiwan needs to
| accept that.
| watwut wrote:
| America seems to be trying to make war, unexpectedly with
| Canada. Also, the only coalition America seems to be
| interested in is the one with Russia.
|
| Also, multiple foreign countries like Russia are trying to
| make war right now.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I might be misreading it, but I don't think the comment
| you're replying to supports China's expansionist ambitions.
| iszomer wrote:
| I would like to see a robot hand try and plug in a MCIO or
| OcuLink connector to its MB port because even my fat fingers have
| trouble seating them in correctly.
| debacle wrote:
| Do you not have enough supports/standoffs on your mobo? Just
| because your case comes with 6 doesn't mean you only need 6.
| fragmede wrote:
| you know that pick and place robots are used to put and solder
| the components onto the board that you're trying to plug the
| OcuLink connector to, right?
| ilaksh wrote:
| I wish there was an app for renting humanoid (android) robots.
| Maybe from Unitree or TeslaBot or something, or a US-based robot
| if there is one that is actually being manufactured and similar..
| maybe combined with a built-in AI system.
|
| America definitely seems to be a little bit behind in terms of
| android manufacturing. They have some pretty competitive robots
| but they seem more expensive and to be being built inefficiently.
|
| Maybe there's an opportunity for a startup that can build a stack
| and integrate it into one or more off-the-shelf robots to provide
| the intelligence part. Because a lot of the demos of android are
| teleoperated since the AI is still quite difficult.
|
| Combining the AI and a rental service would be so powerful.
|
| We might be one or two years away from that being practical.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Gonna die with this hammer in my hand.
| dluan wrote:
| Pick up a sickle while you're at it.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| >This is a Call for Action for the United States of America and
| the West. We are in the early precipice of a nonlinear
| transformation in industrial society, but the bedrock the US is
| standing on is shaky. Automation and robotics is currently
| undergoing a revolution that will enable full-scale automation of
| all manufacturing and mission-critical industries. These
| intelligent robotics systems will be the first ever additional
| industrial piece that is not supplemental but fully additive-
| 24/7 labor with higher throughput than any human--, allowing for
| massive expansion in production capacities past adding another
| human unit of work. The only country that is positioned to
| capture this level of automation is currently China, and should
| China achieve it without the US following suit, the production
| expansion will be granted only to China, posing an existential
| threat to the US as it is outcompeted in all capacities.
|
| This is not an "existential threat". It's an existential threat
| to the US being the top production economy. But the US can still
| thrive as an economy. I don't mind the US benefiting off of
| Chinas super productivity. Also there's really no hope, China
| will surpass the US in this area so it's a bit pointless to try.
| keybored wrote:
| > Comparing a robotic system to a human, the current labor force
| is lower skilled, lower ability, and a much higher attrition
| rate. ... The US must take part in the robotics revolution before
| all labor is handed over to China to own in perpetuity.
|
| The US capitalists must monopolize all upcoming labor commodities
| (all-robot) before China does it. Definitely some projection
| here.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Opens with AI art and a banner about how this is an AI site, I am
| just gonna assume the body of the text is AI spam as well and
| close it.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| We didn't want a new labor economy.
|
| We wanted ever-increasing returns for shareholders. If that meant
| parting out our industrial base to our main geopolitical rival,
| _that 's what that meant_.
|
| In the US, capitalism has mostly replaced nationalism and
| patriotism. In China, it augments those things.
| paganel wrote:
| Yes, China is winning, but at what cost?
|
| Leaving the stupid The Economist-list memes aside, the West has
| put itself all by itself in this position, for too long it had
| thought that it could still rule the world based on the services
| industries and on the financialization of the world economy. It
| seems like they bet wrong.
| dluan wrote:
| American tech workers need to start paying attention to Chinese
| national policy, the National People's Congress is happening
| right now and it's how China sets long term goals and targets.
|
| "Made in China 2025" was a massive national strategic plan that
| was 10 years in the making, and was designed in 2015. It laid out
| all of the key sectors for "value added manufacturing", and by
| most accounts, they've been delivering and meeting their targets
| despite all the number fudging you want to point out. None of
| this is particularly secret or pernicious like western media
| tries to portray. Just follow the news. The next 5-year plan is
| being set now.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025
| thenobsta wrote:
| Are there particularly good news sources to follow? I'm not
| sure what to follow to get either the source material or good
| commentary.
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