[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 : 233 points
Date : 2025-03-11 11:25 UTC (1 days ago)
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(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.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| No, there a lot of people who have no idea what to do
| when they have free time.
|
| There are lots of older people who go back to work, not
| because they need the money but because the need the
| structure. In fact, there is an increased risk of death
| due to retirement.
|
| >Available evidence suggests it is unlikely that changes
| in health insurance and income can account for the
| increase in mortality at age 62. So, to further examine
| the plausibility of retirement leading to higher
| mortality, Moore examines which causes of death increase
| when men turn 62, and considers the connection between
| those and decreased labor force participation.
|
| https://business.purdue.edu/news/features/2022/retirement
| .ph...
|
| >With utopian UBI, one would be free to do what they
| want.. even if it's just jagging off the whole day.
|
| People have need to feel like they are doing something.
| Usually something positive but they will settle for
| something negative, generally that ends poorly for
| society.
|
| Also UBI would only, as my understanding is, take care of
| the basics. Food, shelter, medical care. So you would end
| up with a population that has enough to survive, hungry
| for more and no way to achieve it.....
| consteval wrote:
| You can achieve the need to do something by forming human
| connections. Mutual necessity between people, a form of
| fulfillment that long predates any economy.
|
| We have the unfortunate combination of being uniquely
| individualistic and with too much time. Community-based
| societies, which we will have to transition to in a post-
| scarcity world, don't have that problem.
| 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.
| c0nducktr wrote:
| Right now you can live without it.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| As a pet. More of a pet than someone on UBI. I'm someone
| already experiencing the bad thing we worry might happen
| to someone on UBI--withdrawal of it.
|
| Not the worst, unclear to me why this was a concern in
| the first place. Be cool to have UBI though.
| 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
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >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?
|
| Robots that can build things already exist and can be
| purchased second hand, but I haven't see this level of
| hacking them to self replicate. The logistics of getting
| enough parts, and having the general purpose ability to
| diagnose a very wide range of issues with used components,
| and similar seem to prevent this from being some sort of self
| replicating singularity.
|
| If such a robot did already have the power to do such self
| replication, why would it wait for a second hand hacker
| instead of the builder of the robots using them to produce
| copies at reduce cost?
| 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.
| tcfunk wrote:
| I always disagree with this moving freely argument.
| Certainly some live where they do specifically for work,
| but some are also there to be close to family. They will
| not be interested in relocating to save a buck.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| In other words, the real estate market is sticky. There
| are large costs to moving, so consumers put up with price
| increases more readily than they do in other markets.
|
| But there's a big gulf between "sticky" and "laws of
| supply and demand don't apply".
|
| People on UBI will be much more price sensitive than
| those supplementing with wage income since the UBI
| dependent will be time rich and money poor. Landlords
| will have less power over them. They'll still have some
| power because of the stickiness.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| There's a big gulf between "eventually all marginal
| productivity increases are eaten by rising land rent" and
| "laws of supply and demand don't apply."
|
| You have no reason to believe people with new marginal
| income from UBI would move to _lower_ COL areas. We have
| strong reason to believe they 'd spend that money to move
| toward _high_ COL areas. Evidence for this is the fact
| that people, when they have money, choose to live in high
| COL areas.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| People living solely on UBI will be the poorest people in
| the country. It's absurd to believe that UBI will be
| generous enough to cover more than basic living expenses.
| They're not going to behave like "people with money".
| llamaimperative wrote:
| I didn't say anything about "people living solely on UBI"
|
| Your claim is, I guess, that people supplementing wages
| with UBI will move to poorer locations, because they are
| less tied to their jobs, and then the poorest of the poor
| (those who already live in bottom-percentile COL
| locations) will... move to _even poorer_ locations?
|
| Seems like a wacky argument relative to: "people will do
| what they literally always do with new marginal income,
| which is move to nicer areas, and since everyone is doing
| it simultaneously without new supply, prices will go up
| and nobody will improve their lifestyle."
| 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.
| 8note wrote:
| this isnt descriptive of the past while.
|
| the prices are going up because the landlords have
| entered a web2.0 mediated cartel.
| 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...
| llamaimperative wrote:
| And before that software rent never went up?
| 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.
| EMIRELADERO wrote:
| And who would purchase those, and with what?
|
| The only scenario where UBI/UGI would make sense is one
| where AI can replace most/all humans at any job they
| could have. At that point it makes no sense for there to
| be a economic hierarchy at all.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, UBI makes sense _right now_ (the exact level that
| makes sense changes over time), it is a lower-
| bureaucracy, lower perverse-incentives alternative to
| means-tested welfare (and, possibly, also minimum wages)
| as a means of providing a support floor (its not _really_
| a flat addition because any means of financing it will
| provide some form of clawback, and if done through the
| progressive income tax, it becomes redistributiion that
| compresses the pre-benefit-and-supporting-tax income
| distribution.
|
| UBG is a completely different story, though.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| The way it does all these things is by adding $1,000/mo
| to everyone's income. That is what UBI is. Whether you
| choose to cut means-tested welfare or increase
| progressive taxation alongside it is up to you.
| 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).
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, if you have a single capital owner that owns all
| productive assets, that's a serious problem that UBI
| won't solve.
|
| The idea of adopting a downward-redistributive policy
| like UBI is to do it _before_ that occurs.
| 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.
| ako wrote:
| Regulations are causing the fact that housing prices
| follow purchasing power of potential buyers: it causes a
| shortage in supply, which means supply side can dictate
| prices. Prices will be what buyers can afford. Just wait
| for the next recession, housing prices will fall, even
| with the same regulations.
| consteval wrote:
| Rent isn't optional, most things are. For things that are
| optional, which is really a sliding scale, we do see
| consumers just stop consuming.
|
| I can't not consume rent, that's never an option.
| 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.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i live in a high COL area and rent is not high because of
| land costs. there are several empty lots that people want
| to build on but the discretionary review process for
| entitlements make it too easy to wreck the permit process
| (everybody knows this in the entire world; this is the
| YIMBY line which has truth to it). another factor is the
| cost per bedroom to build is very high, due to the cost
| of building in the market (labor, cost of goods, etc). so
| it's actually everything to do with the
| building/entitlements and nothing to do with land cost.
| at least where i live right now. proof: the college
| cancelled a massive housing project because it was gonna
| be too expensive per bedroom. this wasn't because of land
| costs but building costs.
|
| aside, while i'm at it, let's take another swipe at free
| market and housing: the YIMBY line has truth about
| regulations preventing building, but if you look at build
| starts for like the 10 years after the 2008 crisis,
| you'll see a lack of buildings that happened during that
| time. they had record housing starts leading up to the
| crisis, and you know what also existed then? the same
| regulatory regime that we are now tearing down to help us
| build what we need. but after the crisis, the builders
| stopped building because they were fearful about the
| market. this suggests to me that "regulations prevent
| building, just let the free market take care of it," is
| too simplistic and ignores very real data. the market
| took care of it by not building.
| llamaimperative wrote:
| What location is this?
| greenie_beans wrote:
| burlington, vt. a place that has deep regulatory issues,
| but that is only part of it.
|
| https://www.vermontpublic.org/local-news/2024-05-23/uvm-
| halt...
| llamaimperative wrote:
| So 1) yes construction costs are a huge, huge factor
| (especially right now), but 2) land is about $1.5MM/ac in
| Burlington VT. A few miles outside of it, land is about
| $150,000/ac.
|
| Consider a 2 acre project:
|
| $3MM in land costs inside Burlington
|
| $300,000 in land costs right outside Burlington
|
| What projects would could you do on the $300,000 lot that
| you can't possible do on the $3MM? Basically all of them!
|
| Regarding the UVM project: they should sell that parking
| lot to bring the $1.5MM/ac costs closer to $300k/ac so
| people can build stuff instead of a place to store
| asphalt :)
| greenie_beans wrote:
| are you googling your cherry picked facts? nice debate
| win! (might help to have local context)
|
| regardless, why do you think land in burlington is
| expensive?
| llamaimperative wrote:
| No, those are real numbers spot-checked from Zillow. I
| was on my phone and, ya know, it's an Internet argument,
| so they're definitely ballparked, but they are from real
| actual land sales inside Burlington and then a few miles
| outside of Burlington.
|
| I suppose the delta is surprising to you?
|
| It's expensive because it's productive. The marginal
| productivity of living/working in Burlington means the
| market can sustain higher costs, ergo the costs go up.
|
| This is more problematic than every other good because 1)
| they cannot add more land inside Burlington and 2) the
| land doesn't actually have higher carrying costs by
| virtue of being more expensive (unlike roughly every
| other asset).
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i look at zillow multiple times per day so i'm well aware
| of the local market, so no it's not surprising me. zillow
| doesn't give the full picture of what is happening
| locally. zillow list price for vacant land doesn't
| consider all the vacant lots held by people who aren't
| building for various reasons nor does it consider the
| surrounding suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but
| doesn't develop (who they gonna sell to? they have more
| money than anybody). there are a lot more variables than
| just zillow!
| llamaimperative wrote:
| > Zillow list price for vacant land doesn't consider all
| the vacant lots held by people who aren't building for
| various reasons nor does it consider the surrounding
| suburbs etc. or the land uvm holds but doesn't develop
| (who they gonna sell to? they have more money than
| anybody). there are a lot more variables than just
| zillow!
|
| What? Yes it does. That's how prices work. If UVM sold
| all of their land, prices would go down, but they aren't
| selling all of their land, so the prices are higher.
|
| I never said "all land is being used productively." I
| said "land prices are the primary source of cost in high
| COL areas." One contributor to high land prices are all
| the things you mention: people withholding their unused
| land from the market.
|
| No, there are not more variables than just the sale
| price. The price of land is the price of land, and it
| factors in all the variables you mentioned.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| of course land price contributes to housing cost but
| "land price" isn't the full picture. i wish it were that
| simple.
|
| > That's how prices work. If UVM sold all of their land,
| prices would go down, but they aren't selling all of
| their land, so the prices are higher.
|
| yes exactly how prices work in a textbook but a textbook
| is not a local market with all sort of dynamics. imagine
| the political process of UVM choosing to sell all their
| land, that is just absurd to be like "they can do that
| and the price problem is solved!" they probably got the
| land for very cheap and clearly want to develop but they
| can't because they can't afford construction costs, for a
| number of reasons (price of land being only one).
| chgs wrote:
| Rent suffers more from supply and demand because of
| artificial supply problems.
|
| Wages have increased far more than the price of food over
| the last 200 years, wage rises aren't inflationary on
| their own.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| This is why UBI isn't a good solution to the massive glut
| of problems we're facing.
|
| Which is why universal basic services[1] provide a much
| better solution, because they make it the government's
| problem to handle the logistics of creating or procuring
| the resources people will need.
|
| But after decades of red scare, I don't have much faith
| the U.S. government will move in this direction, and even
| the working class may protest it due to how conditioned
| they are to reject anything they might associate with
| communism.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_services
| SkyBelow wrote:
| Increasing the rent price makes it much easier for new
| rentals to come online, as long as the government isn't
| effectively stopping new competitors. Much the reason why
| grocery stores, car mechanics, etc. aren't going to raise
| their prices by an average of $1k/mo.
| 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).
| alienthrowaway 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.
|
| Still too optimistic on how long-term the American
| approach will be. There won't be a UBI, the oligarchy
| will be paid directly from government coffers. The
| deficit, bonds and other government instruments will
| paper over the collapse of tax-revenue and population for
| a while, before the whole house of cards collapses[1]. I
| think the billionaires hope to be in space habitats or
| dead by then, if not, there's always their bunkers in New
| Zealand - their cache of gold bars should still work
| there after they ravage the USD. Capital knows no
| borders.
|
| 1. See late 1990s Russia. Only simple, extractive
| industries will chug along.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| > They're too smart for mass murder because that would
| actually spark a resistance
|
| I don't think they're too smart for that. They're too
| lazy. They prefer to just gut public health and let
| disease take care of the culling.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| > The reality is they will find some way to cull the
| unwanted poor.
|
| I fear this is going to be achieved with a World War in the
| not-too-distant future.
|
| Get rid of a lot of dissatisfied poor people and seize some
| more resources for the wealthy at the same time.
| 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.
| codedokode wrote:
| Aren't you too pessimistic? 1 kg of rice costs somewhere
| around $2 here and you won't eat it in a day. So with
| $20-30 you can have a month worth amount of rice. You don't
| need thousands of dollars to survive.
|
| And giving everyone $30 every month won't break even
| developing country economy.
| DrFalkyn wrote:
| 1 kg of rice has 1300 calories. Not enough for most
| adults. And not very appetizing if that's all you eat
| 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.
| gusmally wrote:
| Also I think a large chunk of people will be happy to just
| consume media all day.
| consteval wrote:
| Or, less pessimistic, a lot of people are happy to
| consume human relationships all day.
|
| That's what life has always been about for a large
| segment of people, going back thousands of years. Media
| is more or less a bandaid. People are busy, people are
| anxious, people don't want to bother to spend money -
| media can give the sensation of human interaction without
| the hard bits.
|
| But ultimately, if I could never work but I was
| surrounded by my loved ones forever, I would be pretty
| happy with that. We can find stuff to do, or just do
| nothing at all. With them, it's always a blast.
| squigz 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.
|
| Employment is the only - or even best - way of finding
| meaning in one's life?
| UncleOxidant 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.
|
| It's not like most jobs in this economy provide purpose and
| meaning now as it is. People on UBI can find meaning in
| hobbies, art, hiking, friendships, and other things that they
| currently don't have time for. Volunteering is another route.
| Remember how everyone started baking sourdough bread and
| making home cooked meals when the pandemic started? We'll
| find other ways to have purpose and meaning. UBI will be a
| lot like retirement is now only it will last for a much
| longer portion of the lifetime.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| i'm very far left ideologically and i think UBI in the
| current political economy is a bad idea because it's just
| gonna go to rent etc. all the capitalists will raise their
| prices.
| 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.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I was referring to this part:
|
| > 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.
| 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.
| analog31 wrote:
| As it stands right now, the common people having phones is
| what justifies investment in the cellular infrastructure.
| Without that investment, wealthy people can have plenty of
| phones but no service.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Wealth =/= spending, and definitely doesn't equal
| consumption.
|
| Elon Musk might have more wealth than 1,000,000 US
| households, but he doesnt eat 3 million meals a day, drive a
| million cars, or sleep in a million houses.
|
| I would be very interested in seeing the breakdown of
| consumption instead of wealth, as competition for goods and
| services produced is where disparity has tangible impact.
|
| However, the productivity of workers in relation to capital
| is a valid concern for their ability claim the goods
| produced.
| krohling wrote:
| Is it realistic to think that the poors will start their own
| economy servicing each other? I'm sure there would be chaos
| and violence for a period but eventually it seems like the
| path upward would be a whole new economic system for that
| 98%. This system could even make use of the automation
| offered by AI.
| 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.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I still haven't seen an example of technical workers being
| replaced by AI
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Perhaps we have differing definitions of "technical
| workers" ? Here in the Bay Area at least there are a number
| of companies which are replacing "senior staff" with an LLM
| and a junior engineer. The argument is that this
| combination is "cheaper" than the salary paid to the senior
| engineer. For me that is exactly analogous to replacing a
| factor worker with a robotic work station and a technician
| to maintain the robot. There is a ceiling on that junior
| engineer's career which occurs when they are themselves
| replaced by another junior engineer to reset the salary
| cost.
|
| We've seen some of them post "Ask HN's" about what they
| should do now because they aren't getting callbacks or any
| traction on their job search.
|
| What I haven't seen yet is this replacement penciling out
| to _actually_ be less expensive when you look at time to
| complete tasks and support costs from faulty code /designs
| getting fairly far into production before being re-tooled.
| That may turn out to be endemic (at which point the
| replacement will stop and the trend will reverse) or there
| may be developments that mitigate these costs and get the
| combination to be more cost effective. It's something I
| watch for, evidence of it going one way or the other.
| 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.
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| I agree with your points but they do not lead to the
| conclusion that the GP was implying (that Marx contains
| the solution to what ails us)
| 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".
| guhidalg wrote:
| > Is there not opportunity cost in both directions?
|
| Yes, but there are more working age people outside the US
| than inside the US, and they're willing to work for less
| than people in the US.
|
| > At some point someone needs to have a reason to trade
| with us right?
|
| We trade plenty of goods, and we trade more services than
| goods. The people that produce services tend to be
| college educated, which is negatively correlated with
| conservatism.
|
| > Specializing only works when line goes up forever.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you want cheaper
| and better quality goods and services, then you need
| specialization. Every country had some competitive
| advantage, whether it's natural resources or specific
| human capital. When an economic downturn happens, it's
| not like that competitive advantage suddenly moves
| abroad. If it's cheaper to make things in China, it's
| still going to be cheaper during a recession. Raising
| tariffs on China _maybe_ means companies move
| manufacturing elsewhere, or _maybe_ means they just pass
| on costs to consumers. I'm willing to bet money it's the
| latter.
| 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.
| paganel wrote:
| > A factory of ten people and a few hundred robots is
| fine
|
| Don't think that that is true when it comes to the steel
| industry when you include all the verticals, i.e. mineral
| extraction + transportation of said minerals + energy
| production + transportation of said energy. You need
| qualified people for that, lots of them. And I've yet to
| see the steel factory that can be run with only 10, 25 or
| even 100 people.
| megaman821 wrote:
| Yes, 10 people is a gross exaggeration, but manufacturing
| output has remained the same while manufacturing
| employment has fallen over the last few decades. Advanced
| robotics will continue the trend even if policy pushes
| manufacturing output up. There is no realistic way to
| drastically increase manufacturing employment.
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Read the Plutonomy paper from CitiGroup circa 2005:
| https://delong.typepad.com/plutonomy-1.pdf
| danans wrote:
| > Who will buy the phones when no one is paid to produce them?
| The cars? The food and the clothes
|
| The headline last week was that the top 10% now accounts for
| 50% of consumer spending [1]. As that trend accelerates, the
| economy will reconfigure to focus ever more on selling goods
| and services to a smaller, wealthier group of people.
|
| This trend is already visible in many service-oriented sectors
| (i.e. concierge medicine, private membership based ski resorts,
| etc).
|
| Exacerbating wealth inequality is the objective with which
| these technologies are being deployed, even if it's not the
| objective with which they are developed by engineers and
| scientists.
|
| 1. https://www.wsj.com/economy/consumers/us-economy-strength-
| ri...
| 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.
| gusmally wrote:
| competition?
| 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.
| consteval wrote:
| The production side of things comes from exploitation -
| the US is the strongest imperialist force in the world.
| We don't just exploit the periphery, we also exploit our
| own citizens to the maximum they can bear.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Well if it's worked so well thus far, why change it up? I
| suspect that if a country is not at least a little paranoid
| about the competition that it doesn't stay #1 for long.
| piva00 wrote:
| To me it's a problem of causality, does it actually made
| the USA be "#1" for long? Is it helping society to be this
| paranoid about everything and everyone?
|
| I'm no sociologist to answer that but I question if it's a
| causal link or if it's more a case of "despite the", what
| if the USA could be doing better without the paranoia,
| maybe it's a drag and not a push... It surely seems to be
| dragging society down into a dark path.
| 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
| pphysch wrote:
| The difference between DOGE and FDR banning gold hoarding
| over $100 ($2K+ today) is that the latter targets the
| wealthy, while the former is focused on looting public
| goods to enrich the privately wealthy.
|
| It could be seen as naked class warfare either way, but
| they are opposites. Increasing wealth inequality is
| fantastic path to social unrest and weakened
| institutions.
|
| FDR was the leader of a republic, Musk is a classic
| robber baron.
| consteval wrote:
| IMO his expansion of the government was a best case
| scenario. The US was quickly barreling towards a
| socialist revolution. Any other president, particularly a
| greedy ultra-capitalist, would've stoked that flame.
|
| The American people were angry about their exploitation
| at a level that hasn't been seen since the creation of
| the US. He successfully bread crumbed the poor away from
| taking heads, literally. We so often forget that the most
| powerful people in this nation is Us, the People. We vote
| and we revolt. A nation-wide catastrophe is the perfect
| opportunity for mass organization.
|
| Make no mistake, FDR was a staunch free market
| capitalist. He just wasn't stupid.
| 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.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Or China will come around one way or another. It is not
| like US did all the hard work.
|
| Let me put it another way, even if China is a democracy, it
| will still compete with US in world economy. So many people
| there need work, the price will be low to produce things
| there.
|
| Blame US's manufacturing woe fully on China isn't logical,
| Japan/South Korea are of the same breed, just lesser on
| China's scale.
|
| Another arguably more important factor is the over
| regulation and bloated governance here, to a degree of
| being comical, just look at the California government.
|
| Is this drawn out, lengthy democratic process really for
| anything of substance or just performative virtual
| signaling that essentially benefits no one in the name of
| benefiting everyone?
|
| Anti manufacturing is a choice, made the government, thus
| by the populace themselves. And please, do not bring Trump,
| California has been in a Dem super majority since 2012.
| Fricken wrote:
| I never believed that the "spreading of democracy" was any
| more than a flimsy pretext for exploiting China's cheap
| labour.
| 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.
| csomar wrote:
| The sub-title of the article is completely unhinged:
|
| > China's Dominance Playbook, General Purpose Robotics Is The
| Holy Grail, Robotic Systems Breakdown, Supply Chain Hardships,
| The West Is Positioned Backward And Covering Their Eyes,
| China's Clear Path to Full Scale Automation, Call For Action
|
| I closed the page quickly despite the subject matter is
| something I am interested in. Also the AI generated images that
| have no raison d'etre of being there.
| 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
| russli1993 wrote:
| And the 2025 xpeng g6 is so much better than previous model,
| 5C charging battery, better ride, even better energy
| efficiency, better looks, better interior design, 30% of car
| parts are updated. And they delivered this update 2 years
| after the first model, when normally it takes other companies
| 5 years for an upgrade of this size. They have positive
| margins on a 17-20k RMB, 270 miles+, 350KW charging, FSD like
| autonomous driving EV, even though they have to price it this
| low due to ultra-competitive market. They can't do this
| without Chinese supply chain. Speed of iterations,
| innovations, fast time to market, efficiency is this all
| about.
| 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.
| missedthecue wrote:
| China has multiple 100% indigenous fifth-gen fighters man. They
| have domestically designed and built nuclear reactors. They
| have a 100% indigenous space station.
| 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...
| torginus wrote:
| Well, no matter what he wants, there's a reason China has
| 5-10 year plans and not 2 week ones.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| This is Chinas greatest strength and their greatest
| weakness. They can actually commit to policy positions
| when they're effective, but they also _commit_ to policy
| positions when they 're not effective.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Shame it's being bungled with flip flops for nothing in
| return. Nor any achievable commitments which business can
| plan for or count on.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| At the same time, he's ripping up the CHIPS act. It's the
| duality of Trump: he wants to bring manufacturing back,
| except when he doesn't.
| Sabinus wrote:
| Words and desires are easy. Crafting, marketing and
| enacting policy to achieve the goals set by your words
| and desires is difficult. The world is complex and reacts
| in complex ways, but try to say that to a Trump voter and
| get called a disconnected elitist.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Talk is cheap, as they say. It's one thing to want
| something to happen, it's entirely another to actually make
| it so.
|
| Generally disassembling the machinery of state and starting
| trade wars is not an effective way to achieve your policy
| objectives unless your policy objective is economic and
| social chaos.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Gonna build boats with steel and aluminium tariffs at 50%
| or more? Good luck with that.
|
| This isn't something you turn around in a few years by
| adding tariffs, it's a long term strategy that requires
| high investments and tariffs. Like the chip act, but Biden
| did that so that cant happen either.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| "Back" is in the mid 1800's, you mean?
|
| Or "back" as in when we built astonishingly expensive
| liberty ships for a large fraction of our GDP in WW2?
|
| Because since the move to steel ships, there's never been a
| time the US has been good at building ships.
|
| Brian Potter goes into great detail on this [0], it's a
| great read.
|
| [0] https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-cant-the-us-
| build...
| mptest wrote:
| see also: his attacks on the "horrible" CHIPS act [0]. If
| anyone think he's doing anything good for anyone but
| billionaires, contact me. I've got some trump coin to
| sell you.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/trump-wants-
| kill-527-bill...
| groby_b wrote:
| "Back" as in undermining EV manufacturing? And non-fossil
| power generation?
|
| "Back" as in massively increasing input costs?
|
| "Back" as in alienating close allies who are a large part
| of our customer base?
|
| "Back" as in repeatedly disrupting the supply chain by
| flip-flopping on tariffs without a clear plan?
|
| "Back" as in undermining research across the board?
|
| The current policy will not employ lots of people. It will
| have lots of people out of work fairly soon, if we continue
| on the current path. It will diminish our industrial base
| further, and reset our manufacturing skills to the 80s or
| earlier. But hey, at least toy manufacturers are hiring,
| that's a really important industry.
|
| Setting aside any questions about intentions, the _effects_
| of the current policies are hugely deleterious.
| whatever1 wrote:
| He is gonna import raw materials from where ? Currently he
| started trade war with all of his allies ?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Ship building is non existent in this country because of
| the protectionist jones act. Protectionism backfires every
| time.
| torginus wrote:
| And is the effort to deport as many Mexican skilled
| tradesmen and manual laborers as possible the part of this
| grand plan?
| dluan wrote:
| The US makes 5 commercial ships per year. China makes
| 1,700.
|
| https://www.seatrade-maritime.com/containers/us-wakes-up-
| to-...
| ActorNightly wrote:
| Not gonna happen. On the 1% chance we have a fair election
| next time around and Dems get elected, they will be too busy
| cleaning up the Republican mess, and nobody will notice. Just
| like what happened under Biden.
|
| China ironically can end US by simply providing easy
| immigration for qualified tech workers.
| chii wrote:
| > simply providing easy immigration for qualified tech
| workers.
|
| I dont believe those tech workers would wish to move,
| unless the political system in china changes to one that is
| more amenable to democracy; not to mention that having high
| salaries in the US, it will be impossible to achieve
| similar levels in china after migration (even if the PPP
| remains the same!).
| bee_rider wrote:
| Move to a democracy-amenable country that isn't engaging
| in a trade with with China.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Err, a trade war. That typo really bungled my comment,
| haha.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I mean, you are going to see an exodus of tech workers
| regardless as US economy withers up and other countries
| (probably in EU) pick up the slack.
|
| China won't even have to have high salaries, all they
| would need to do is basically set up immigrant
| neighborhoods that have all the familiar things that US
| people like, and through the nature of just being around
| people of similar status, whatever the salary everyone
| gets paid gets normalized - there isn't anything you
| would be able to buy to "flex" on your peers, and
| everyone would be in the same boat.
| t-3 wrote:
| China isn't interested in immigration. In a relatively
| liberal and democratic country like the US, immigration
| is a boon because we don't care all that much about
| political or economic stability and are used to not
| having it. In an authoritarian oligarchy like China it's
| poison because an unstable environment will see the
| government in trouble quickly when people lose confidence
| in the party and leadership.
| yuppii wrote:
| But if China starts importing immigrants, it will be just
| another shithole. Their quality and success come from
| their own population. Importing foreigners is just
| poisoning yourself your culture and future.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Well according to you, sieabahlpark, the trivial threat of
| the lack of manufacturing products in the US pales in
| comparison to the enormous menacing threat of the lack of
| manufacturing babies, because so many "genocidal maniacs" are
| hell bent on not breeding. Your final solution to America's
| population manufacturing shortfalls is building more baby
| factories, and punishing those genocidal maniacs who refuse
| to breed.
|
| Your previous posting was full of hysterical bile accusing
| people who simply don't want to have children as performing,
| and I quote your own inflammatory words, "genocide": "You're
| more aligned with societal genocide." "You can begin by not
| phrasing it like a genocidal maniac. Okay? Thanks." "You're
| delusional at best, manipulative at worst." "You honestly are
| just calling for suicide and genocide of America." "You speak
| from very common genocide playbooks." "Your weird
| prosecutorial fetish with you and your offspring being a
| "burden" is fucked" "I think you're actually just depressed
| and/or suicidal and are trying to perversely convince society
| that your mindset is somehow healthy" "I'm sure your view of
| life through shelters and abandoned people leaves you with
| the hard reality of many shitty people" "You need a therapist
| to talk about the deeply engrained depressive and suicidal
| slant of your ideology. It makes zero sense." And ironically:
| "You've proven to have no understanding of compassion or
| empathy and actively champion societal genocide."
|
| So how much money do you insist the government divert from
| other purposes and put towards tracking down and arresting
| all those genocidal maniacs committing crimes against
| humanity by refusing to pump out as many babies as possible,
| arresting and putting all those potential parents on trial,
| and incarcerating them for the rest of their lives, if not
| simply executing them by firing squad, for their indecent
| genocidal crimes against humanity?
|
| Your ideological plans to punish "genocidal maniacs" for not
| having babies will certainly be great for the prison
| industry, unless you want to out-source our overloaded
| justice system and the tasks of arresting, prosecuting,
| punishing, and executing genocidal Americans to the Hague or
| Russia.
|
| Rest assured, I don't want to suppress or even discourage
| your precious free speech (like you so hysterically and
| emphatically want to suppress mine about Elon Musk), and
| that's why I'm quoting your exact words for everyone else to
| read, and asking you to explain yourself more fully. So
| please do tell us more details about your brilliant plans to
| revitalize the American population and economy by rounding up
| and punishing genocidal maniacs, building more baby
| factories, and forced maternal labor camps? Where do you get
| your ideas from? Was there a sequel to the Project 2025 plan
| I missed? Citations and links and evidence, please!
| 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.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Does the number of new models mean a good thing?
|
| It I had a watch company and I rolled out new models of
| watches every week;
|
| 1. Either there would be so little variation that people
| would have choice paralysis. 2. People would wonder why I
| couldn't keep a consistent product line with concerns of
| product quality. 3. People would have major concerns
| about repairs and service parts availability since the
| next new things was not a couple years ago but quite
| literally, last week.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Quick peek on Wikipedia tells me that they've been
| producing Civic there since 2008.
| vel0city wrote:
| Yeah I didn't understand how this was news. Civics and
| Accords for the US market have been produced in the US
| for decades. This isn't anything new to my eyes, maybe I
| missed something though.
| mptest wrote:
| >how this was news I'll explain. It's a 'news' article
| from an arm of a multinational conglomerate trying to
| massage the economic harm the isolationist fascists
| currently in charge of the us govt are doing for
| (hopefully) obvious material reasons. see also: literally
| any of wapo's recent journalistic history, the nyt on
| gaza, social media like twitter's political shift, the
| tech ceo's in the front row of trump's inauguration, or
| if you prefer books, manufacturing consent,
| technofuedalism (yanis), surveillance capitalism, etc,
| etc, etc. capitalists stick together.
| 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.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| My point was robotics startups don't typically survive
| with generic products very long. They are acquired or go
| under even after they reach TRL launch stage.
|
| Best of luck =3
| petra wrote:
| Acquisition is a common result for sucsessful deep tech
| startups. It's because scaling in these markets is hard
| and better done at large companies.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Perhaps, but a few competitors were left with EOL
| hardware after the Amazon acquisition... pushed out of
| that automated inventory transfer system.
|
| Things scaled up at Amazon for sure, and no place else...
|
| Best of luck =3
| 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".
| fancl20 wrote:
| I think it's well documented that modern bureaucracy is
| at least inspired by China's bureaucratic machinery: http
| s://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Service_(United_Kingdom)
|
| > Under Charles Grant, the East India Company established
| the East India Company College at Haileybury near London,
| to train administrators, in 1806. The college was
| established on recommendation of officials in China who
| had seen the imperial examination system. In government,
| a civil service, replacing patronage with examination,
| similar to the Chinese system, was advocated a number of
| times over the next several decades.[10]
|
| > William Ewart Gladstone, in 1850, an opposition member,
| sought a more efficient system based on expertise rather
| than favouritism. The East India Company provided a model
| for Stafford Northcote, private Secretary to Gladstone
| who, with Charles Trevelyan, drafted the key report in
| 1854.[11]
|
| And western countries accepted it as part of the base
| assumption how government should work, then nobody points
| to its origin since now it's so obvious (from modern
| perspective).
| djtango wrote:
| I didn't know this and have always wondered why in the UK
| we didn't have something like the Chinese system for
| civil service.
|
| Ironically the civil service is full of intelligent
| people and it's a competitive grad programme, but it's
| also wholly undesirable as a career path for many.
|
| I know plenty of smart driven people who want to make a
| difference who won't go anywhere near the civil service
| for fear or bureaucracy or salary sacrifice or both. I
| also know plenty of people who left the civil service
| jaded by the whole experience.
|
| I don't know what the solution is but I'm always a bit
| saddened that people end up moving money around or
| optimising clicks because there's no alternative if you
| don't want to get left behind
| t-3 wrote:
| In ancient China, power and social status were gained
| through official positions, and merchants were considered
| the lowest of respectable occupations. This led to the
| exams attracting many of the "best and brightest" to
| government service. In modern western countries, being
| wealthy is the best way to get respect and adulation. The
| "best and brightest" spend their education learning how
| to extract value from the rest.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| China isn't really that different these days. Everyone is
| thinking about being wealthy, but especially the Chinese.
| Hopefully the official class evolves to something like
| what Singapore has, or its going to be a constant brain
| drain on the government as smart kids continue to prefer
| the private sector.
| jhbadger wrote:
| Although it is worth recognizing that although the
| Imperial Chinese did have an examination-based civil
| service, it wasn't examinations on anything actually
| relevant to their jobs as in modern merit-based civil
| services. Instead, people wanting to enter the Imperial
| Chinese Civil Service were tested on their ability to
| recall trivia from classic Chinese literature. Great if
| the job was Jeopardy! contestant, less so for anything
| practical.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Books_and_Five_Classic
| s
| codedokode wrote:
| Given how many obscure characters are there in Chinese,
| this exam would easily filter out lazy and dumb people.
| foldr wrote:
| _Parkinson 's Law_ contains a nice (tongue in cheek)
| summary of the influence of the Chinese system on the
| British Civil Service:
|
| > The Chinese system was studied by Europeans between
| 1815 and i830 and adopted by the English East India
| Company in 1832. The effectiveness of this method was
| investigated by a committee in 1854, with Macaulay as
| chairman. The result was that the system of competitive
| examination was introduced into the British Civil Service
| in 1855. An essential feature of the Chinese examinations
| had been their literary character. The test was in a
| knowledge of the classics, in an ability to write
| elegantly (both prose and verse) and in the stamina
| necessary to complete the course. All these features were
| faithfully incorporated in the Trevelyan-Northcote
| Report, and thereafter in the system it did so much to
| create. It was assumed that classical learning and
| literary ability would fit any candidate for any
| administrative post. It was assumed (no doubt rightly)
| that a scientific education would fit a candidate for
| nothing - except, possibly, science. It was known,
| finally, that it is virtually impossible to find an order
| of merit among people who have been examined in different
| subjects. Since it is impracticable to decide whether one
| man is better in geology than another man in physics, it
| is at least convenient to be able to rule them both out
| as useless. When all candidates alike have to write Greek
| or Latin verse, it is relatively easy to decide which
| verse is the best. Men thus selected on their classical
| performance were then sent forth to govern India. Those
| with lower marks were retained to govern England. Those
| with still lower marks were rejected altogether or sent
| to the colonies. While it would be totally wrong to
| describe this system as a failure, no one could claim for
| it the success that had attended the systems hitherto in
| use. There was no guarantee, to begin with, that the man
| with the highest marks might not tum out to be off his
| head; as was sometimes found to be the case. Then again
| the writing of Greek verse might prove to be the sole
| accomplishment that some candidates had or would ever
| have. On occasion, a successful applicant may even have
| been impersonated at the examination by some- one else,
| subsequently proving unable to write Greek verse when the
| occasion arose. Selection by competitive examination was
| never therefore more than a moderate success.
| 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).
| immibis wrote:
| By denying all other avenues of learning, the USA has
| chosen to revert to the oldest, which can't be disabled:
| natural selection.
| 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.
| SlightlyLeftPad wrote:
| In other words: the lack of long term planning is US's
| well-known strategic weakness.
| roenxi wrote:
| > China tends to think and plan longer term...
|
| Pull the other one, we saw how they went in the 20th
| century. Large centralised governments have never managed
| to systemically outplan democracies.
|
| The issue is US culture has been giving priority to anti-
| industrialists. As a result they aren't the leader of the
| industrial world. This has been planned for a long time and
| a bunch of people were celebrating it the entire way along.
| You try standing up and saying "we should prioritise
| industry!" anywhere in the west - it is a bruising
| experience as soon as it gets to the specific policies that
| are likely to be successful.
|
| Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a
| successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of
| western employment & environmental laws as well as many
| regulations. That isn't bad planning, that was an explicit
| rejection of the outcomes China achieved.
| stuartjohnson12 wrote:
| I'm most of the way through reading Moral Mazes which
| covers this part of American culture in-depth as it
| relates to chemical and textile manufacturing.
| Specifically, it discusses psychological attitudes to
| perception of chemical manufacturing as being dirty, and
| the rationalizations employed by middle managers towards
| their work.
|
| What Moral Mazes lays out is the idea of the tension
| between the perception of manufacturing ethics as matters
| of practicality (as seen by manufacturers), and the
| perception of manufacturing ethics as matters of purity
| (as seen by activists and lawyers).
|
| It is a great book I would recommend to anyone, although
| being primarily an observation of the psychological
| processes at play, there are of course no solutions
| offered.
| mptest wrote:
| Feels like Chip Wars more aptly lays out the material
| reality of why and how we historically ended up here if
| you prefer that to what shape the propaganda took. "We
| want even bigger profit margins. We sought the globally
| cheapest labor pool we could. Whoopsie, they got better
| at it than us and started competing. Let's catch up with
| government subsidy to compete or get SotA at a different
| piece of the market. Ok we caught up with state money,
| time to offshore a different piece of the puzzle to an
| even cheaper labor pool for even bigger profits."
| repeated until: "Whoopsie, an island off the coast of our
| 'rival' makes 90+% of one of the most vital products in
| the world."
| Terr_ wrote:
| > The issue is US culture has been giving priority to
| anti-industrialists.
|
| Perhaps "anti-industrialist" and more the forces of
| "fictionalization"? That can distort companies that
| aren't industrial too.
| Terr_ wrote:
| * financialization, perhaps phone autocorrect?
| intended wrote:
| > The issue is US culture has been giving priority to
| anti-industrialists
|
| > Huge chunks of what China did are illegal. Running a
| successful industrial economy seems to violate a host of
| western employment & environmental laws as well as many
| regulations.
|
| Come on. For the west to combat the "anti-
| industrialists", you would have to suppress the choices
| and decisions of normal people, who don't want to see
| others _die_ for the sake of factory owners.
|
| Just outright say that democracy doesn't work, and that
| Chinese style autocracy does.
|
| Get to the actual heart of the debate. Trying to
| replicate the Chinese economic model, while dodging the
| moral and philosophical choices that supports it, results
| only in deception and prevarication.
|
| Anti-industrialists is arguing via classification and
| nouns; it just grants a short term win which fails to
| live up to its pomp when it hits an obvious counter
| point.
|
| Seize the major question, have people accept and
| acknowledge the tradeoffs in all their misery and glory.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Just outright say that democracy doesn't work, and that
| Chinese style autocracy does.
|
| There is no evidence of that to date. Western liberal
| democracies are much nicer places to live than China and
| at some point the Chinese autocrats will probably
| collapse internally - they're gambling on the CCP being
| competent which isn't a winning strategy long term. The
| problems are a bit more subtle - things like security
| implications and rates of progress.
| dluan wrote:
| "Decoupling" was started in the US by the Obama
| administration.
| r00fus wrote:
| > China has been methodically preparing for trade war
|
| Mostly because it was prompted by decoupling from the last
| three administrations before going full-bore in this latest
| Trump admin.
| 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.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| The Taiwan obsessed PRC loonies online always seem to
| think that the west spends _way_ more time thinking about
| Taiwan then they actually do.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I don't agree with most of what you've written, however,
| if the US has only mineral-profits interest in defending
| Ukraine from Russia, then there's only slightly above
| zero chance that the US will be rushing to defend Taiwan
| from China. What seems more likely is that the US will
| agree to let China take Taiwan in return for allowing the
| trade of TSMC chips to continue.
|
| TSMC is the majoity (only?) value proposition the US has
| in Taiwan, and, from memory and a cursory Wikipeding, it
| seems that TSMC has been 'de-centralising' into Japan,
| the US, and Europe of late.
| 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.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| America is nowhere close to going to war with Canada.
| Tariffs are import taxes, not weapons of war. Good lord.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| Telling a sovereign nation, and the US's closest ally, it
| should become the 51st US state isn't making war, but
| it's way more than imposing tariffs in contravention of
| treaties this president signed in his last term.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Canada still considers the King of England to be its Head
| of State. Inviting Canada to shake off the bonds of
| monarchy and fealty to the U.K. and join the United
| States is a high form of flattery. Canada has itself
| violated the USMCA trade agreement (not a treaty),
| including dairy and poultry quotas, subsidizing timber,
| imposing a digital services tax and restricting foreign
| investment. Many of these policies were disputed under
| Biden's administration as well, albeit toothlessly.
| Brybry wrote:
| Dairy quotas are part of USMCA.[1]
|
| The issue under Biden was protectionist/preferential
| policies which were challenged and got changed through
| the dispute mechanism[2]. The changed policy was then
| disputed again but the US lost the dispute[3].
|
| The US has never gotten close to surpassing the tariff-
| rate quotas so the tariffs haven't applied.[4] Though the
| American dairy industry claims that's because of further
| protectionist policies.[5]
|
| I'm not an expert on this so if you have more specific
| information please share sources.
|
| [1] https://ustr.gov/sites/default/files/files/agreements
| /FTA/US...
|
| [2] https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-
| office/press-...
|
| [3] https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-
| office/press-...
|
| [4] https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-trump-
| doesn-t-12005222...
|
| [5] https://www.idfa.org/news/idfa-statement-on-
| potential-u-s-ta...
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Canada isn't bound to the monarchy or to the UK. The king
| is just a figurehead, and the king's representative (the
| Governor General) is a powerless rubber stamp.
|
| Now, to be clear, the (conceptual) figurehead is taken
| seriously. When the queen died, a great renaming
| happened, changing each province's court of queen's bench
| to the court of king's bench, Queen's Counsel are now
| called King's Counsel, and of course new currency is
| being minted with images of the king. But, none of that
| means the actual King Charles the person has any power at
| all.
| mercutio2 wrote:
| What definition of treaty are you using that the USMCA is
| not a treaty?
|
| The difference is negligible in international use, but in
| the US it means "agreement that was ratified by the
| Senate".
|
| Are you claiming the USMCA was not, in fact, ratified by
| the Senate?
|
| Disputing under the terms of a treaty is quite different
| than unilaterally breaking a treaty.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| In the U.S. a treaty requires a 2/3 Senate confirmation.
| The USMCA is an executive trade agreement.
| t-3 wrote:
| It's just a joke. A bad joke, but just a joke.
| Republicans are afraid to add Puerto Rico as a state for
| fear of it voting Democrat, they would never _allow_
| Canada to become a state even if you wanted to (or
| rather, 10 states), because they would never win an
| election again.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| What's all this annexation talk then?
|
| That sounds pretty disrespectfully inflammatory.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's not annexation to invite a country to join the
| Union. It's quite the honor, to be honest.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Upvote for my literal laugh out loud.
| canadymouse wrote:
| If it is such an honor, why has the response of 90% of
| Canadians been "Go fuck yourself"?
|
| Up here, we consider it a betrayal, certainly nothing
| honorable.
| watwut wrote:
| America repeatedly threatened annexation and wanted
| water. It demands registration of goverment citizens.
| They call premier governor. Tariffs seem ti be
| preparatory steps meant to weaken Canada as a preparation
| for further attacks.
|
| In general, conservatives are nowhere near to do the
| awful thing they say loudly they will do - and then, each
| time, they do that exact thing. Again again and again.
| These are plans and ignoring them is a self delution.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| I might be misreading it, but I don't think the comment
| you're replying to supports China's expansionist ambitions.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >The US once had a solid base to spin up heavy industry
| factories, but this withered away as cheaper overseas
| manufacturing cut US producers out and the American economy
| shifted toward leading edge technology and services.
|
| The Americans in charge of the "economy" _settled for_ "leading
| edge" technology and services.
| 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.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| In China, Capitalism exists to benefit the state.
|
| In the USA, the state exists to benefit Capitalism.
| 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.
| jawiggins wrote:
| > Leaving the stupid The Economist-list memes aside
|
| What are you referring to?
| paganel wrote:
| Something like this [1].
|
| I've singled out The Economist because I used to read them
| until not that long ago so that I can confirm first-hand that
| they also use that rhetoric (but can't be bothered to look
| for an online source right now).
|
| Later edit: A X [2] post pointing to an Economist article [3]
| that does just that, but, as I said, the examples are too
| numerous, just purchase a Economist issue and go through
| their China section, you'll see it right there
|
| [1] https://x.com/slipknothooh/status/1433496026795630598
|
| [2] https://x.com/Liberation_Blk/status/1690911685312126976
|
| [3] https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2023/08/08/what-does-
| xi-j...
| 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.
| dluan wrote:
| Right now, I try to consume content directly from the
| dragon's mouth with official news and reports, but it
| requires a bit of experience knowing how to read between the
| lines and having a strong bullshit parser.
|
| Similarly, most English language analysis from mainstream
| media is comically bad - CNN and American news outlets sent
| reporters to Beijing this week and bombarded attendees and
| delegates walking into the congressional hall with questions
| about Trump and tariffs, in English. Who does that??
|
| Admittedly, I do like the stuff that comes out of Stanford's
| Digichina group, https://digichina.stanford.edu/work/?page=1&
| sort_order=desc&..., they seem dedicated to doing an actual
| analysis and not just spewing brainless propaganda (HBR,
| looking at you). But yeah, it's hard out here to find any
| real meaningful information, so I've been debating starting
| up a substack myself, but with an additional academic
| research focus.
| jorvi wrote:
| TP Huang has a pretty good substack[0].
|
| Its a nice insider look. And its not fake stuff, its just
| looked at through the most red-yellow colored glasses there
| are.
|
| [0] https://tphuang.substack.com/
| dluan wrote:
| There's a ton of people I follow on twitter too,
| @beijingdai, @wmhuo168, @rnaudbertrand. All have great
| rants.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Have a feed I can add to mine?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| At this point all China needs to do is the gaben strategy,
| doing nothing while America keeps shooting itself in the foot.
| Trump seems to have unlimited bullet supply.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| How does Valve put out one of the worst releases of all time
| in Artifact and not get dragged through the coals ever for
| it? The only working strategy Valve has succeeded in running
| in the last 10 years is making passive income from Steam and
| that won't last forever.
| HFguy wrote:
| Think this was posted in the wrong thread?
| wcarss wrote:
| > the gaben strategy
|
| this was a reference to Gabe Newell and Valve
| nicoburns wrote:
| If the goal was "be better than the US" then sure. But
| presumably their strategy is aimed at actually improving
| their country as it is for it's own people to live in. Much
| of which has nothing to do with the US.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Why would you presume that? CCP has become far more
| autocratic, and the goals of autocracy:
|
| 1) maintain the autocracy
|
| 2) have a strong police to preserve the autocracy from
| rebellion
|
| 3) have a good enough economy to defend the autocracy from
| external threats
|
| ... ten more "for the autocracy" points ...
|
| improving the country for the people
|
| Also, Zeihan overselling or not, China is facing an
| unprecedented demographic decline. So to the parent comment
| about "not doing anything and winning", honestly the US can
| do the same and watch China implode demographically.
| decimalenough wrote:
| CCP under Xi has reverted to form after some temporary
| loosening up, but it's still way _less_ autocratic than
| it was during the Mao era.
|
| Also, the CCP ultimately derives its legitimacy from
| materially improving the country for the Chinese people:
| back in the day fighting back against the Japanese and
| corrupt warlords, now economic progress. Both the Chinese
| people and the CCP know well what it means if they stop
| delivering and the "Mandate of Heaven" expires.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_of_Heaven
|
| China's demographic decline will take decades and unless
| the CCP _really_ fucks things up (eg. invading Taiwan and
| failing miserably at it), it 's going to be a
| Japan/Korea-style slow-motion stagnation, not a dramatic
| implosion.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Mao killed 50-60 million people with starvation.
|
| Yeah I hope he's better than that
| immibis wrote:
| Interesting tangent to bring up. How many people does
| America kill?
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Mao killed his own people. The only possible historical
| analogue is what USSR argued about missing people from
| the Great Depression.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| US mostly kills people outside its borders.
| skyyler wrote:
| The closest analogue would be the culling of the buffalo,
| an intentional effort to destroy the food supply of the
| natives.
|
| Americans don't like to acknowledge this.
|
| But even that's a little different. Application of new
| farming practices is not an intentional genocide. The
| culling of the buffalo was an intentional genocide.
| ActorNightly wrote:
| I mean, US was the shining beacon of supposedly the best
| capitalistic policies are, but look at where it got us.
|
| Meanwhile, China has been getting better and better,
| looking at US as an example, and correctly avoiding
| providing the "freedoms" given to us in US in avoiding
| the same fate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| I'm a strong China hawk. But Beijing currently has an
| opportunity to craft a global alliance that balances the
| U.S. in a way that America has historically excelled at.
| Put another way, the idiots who voted this man in have
| turned America into an Axis power.
| roenxi wrote:
| That is normal; the world worked that way prior to 1990.
|
| The real change is that the US economy isn't obviously
| superior to the next however many economies combined.
| Consequently the US is losing the ability to impose its
| opinions on others as fundamental truths. It looks like
| everyone in the West will have to re-learn negotiation
| and it'll probably be a rocky process.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the world worked that way prior to 1990_
|
| Sort of. I'd move the needle to the 1970s, when Soviet
| power was on an obvious downside. _Realpolitik_ would
| dictate, at that time, for Europe and Asia to balance
| America. But we were a good ally. So balancing wasn't
| seen to be necessary.
| roenxi wrote:
| > So balancing wasn't seen to be necessary.
|
| Wasn't seen as _possible_ , an important distinction. The
| Australian experience so far is the US demands we ...
| basically commit war crimes every so often. Or whatever
| the term is for invading countries without justification.
| It is a lot like being good friends with a shark; it is
| important to keep them pointed at other things and the
| shark isn't ever going to go out of its way for you
| unless it is hungry and the friendship is ending.
|
| The world was probably better for us when the US was
| unconstrained by reality; but the reality is the US have
| been behaving very irresponsibly for decades. Trump is on
| the upper end of the presidential scale in recent
| history, the world can't cope with another Bush or Biden.
| Obama might have been able to get better diplomatic
| results.
| downrightmike wrote:
| Sadly, they really need to start consuming 100x what they are
| currently to even have a shot
| t-3 wrote:
| That would make American businesses very happy, but what
| would be so good for China? There's a reason they made the
| decision to artificially suppress domestic consumption in
| favor of building a strong manufacturing base and export-
| focused economy, and it seems to be working well for them.
| echelon wrote:
| It looks like China is quickly becoming a domestic consumer
| economy.
|
| Look at BYD sales and Ne Zha 2.
|
| Their gaming industry and entertainment industries are
| starting to pull ahead of the US.
| consteval wrote:
| Hyper-consumerism took off in the US because it's a false
| economic indicator. It makes lines go up, but doesn't
| materially improve anyone's lives.
|
| We're seeing the effects of ~70 years of hyper-consumerist
| behavior. It worked for a while, but now the costs have
| accumulated. There's shit everywhere, and everything either
| breaks or is poison. Or both.
| DrFalkyn wrote:
| Chinas demographics are a ticking time bomb
|
| They've also massively overinvested in sectors like real
| estate
|
| But maybe if Drumpf screws up the US enough, they will be
| able to weather these problems
|
| Or perhaps AI will get so good it won't matter
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| China is automating [1], they know the demographics
| dividend is ending. More industrial robots are built and
| sold in China than anywhere else in the world. They are
| going high tech [2], and will outcompete the US in high
| tech (based on all available info). They have the will, the
| US does not (too busy chasing short term gains and
| ideological wins), based on all available evidence [3].
|
| [1] https://itif.org/publications/2024/03/11/how-
| innovative-is-c...
|
| [2] https://www.aspi.org.au/report/critical-technology-
| tracker
|
| > Our research reveals that China has built the foundations
| to position itself as the world's leading science and
| technology superpower, by establishing a sometimes stunning
| lead in high-impact research across the majority of
| critical and emerging technology domains.
|
| > China's global lead extends to 37 out of 44 technologies
| that ASPI is now tracking, covering a range of crucial
| technology fields spanning defence, space, robotics,
| energy, the environment, biotechnology, artificial
| intelligence (AI), advanced materials and key quantum
| technology areas. The Critical Technology Tracker shows
| that, for some technologies, all of the world's top 10
| leading research institutions are based in China and are
| collectively generating nine times more high-impact
| research papers than the second-ranked country (most often
| the US). Notably, the Chinese Academy of Sciences ranks
| highly (and often first or second) across many of the 44
| technologies included in the Critical Technology Tracker.
| We also see China's efforts being bolstered through talent
| and knowledge import: one-fifth of its high-impact papers
| are being authored by researchers with postgraduate
| training in a Five-Eyes country. China's lead is the
| product of deliberate design and long-term policy planning,
| as repeatedly outlined by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43338771
| ChromaticPanic wrote:
| In contrast to North America which has under invested in
| real estate, having all that extra real estate sounds like
| a dream.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes. China's five year plans are translated into English and
| are quite readable. Here's the 14th Five Year Plan,
| 2021-2025.[1] Wikipedia has a summary.[2]
|
| This is China's business plan. The top level is expanded into
| more detailed plans at lower levels. For example, here's the
| plan for Fujian province.[3] Further down, here's the
| transition plan for IPv6.[4]
|
| You can go back and read previous five-year plans. The success
| rate for the individual goals is reasonably high.
|
| [1] https://cset.georgetown.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/t0237_5th_Ple...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_five-year_plan
|
| [3]
| https://ccci.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/Policy%20Brief...
|
| [4] https://www.cac.gov.cn/2021-07/23/c_1628629122784001.htm
| downrightmike wrote:
| Oh, cool, someone is going to use ipv6
| dluan wrote:
| Chinese people have an irrational amount of love for
| international standards.
| calcifer wrote:
| What makes it irrational?
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| Sure beats sitting around discussing, complaining, and
| half assedly developing a replacement standard and
| getting nowhere. Perfect being the enemy of good and all
| that.
|
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| dluan wrote:
| I just meant that they REALLY love international
| standards. They have the assumption that a group of
| really smart people must have decided it democratically
| and fairly, so no matter what it is about they will get
| excited about it.
| throw839399939 wrote:
| In this case it is quite rational love. Some US
| universities have more IPv4 addresses than entire China!
| Single IPv4 address cost like $50, it is impossible
| possible to buy large ranges.
| chii wrote:
| What makes these plans go so successfully, when the soviets
| have historically not been able to make such plans successful
| (despite being richer and more powerful at the time)?
|
| This video about Argentina's economic failures mentions why
| free market capitalism failed in argentina, and why a
| "similar" opening up in china didnt fail (but not so much
| detail that another country could follow it and replicate the
| success). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7MzfNTSk4A
|
| Basically, is such 5 year plans a recipe for success, or just
| a facade (aka, china would've had success regardless of what
| those 5 yr plans are)?
| scotty79 wrote:
| Soviets might just really be bad at everything. Capitalism
| didn't work for them either.
| bdangubic wrote:
| If it wasn't for the Soviets you'd be writing this
| comment in German :)
|
| And Capitalism does not work for USA or anywhere else
| either (except for very few people at the very top of the
| pyramid (scheme...)
| kubb wrote:
| They're good at throwing their population into the meat
| grinder, sure.
| jajko wrote:
| They really did the bulk of Wehrmacht killing on European
| mainland. But they didn't collapse only due to massive US
| support, be it in armament, equipment, medicine etc.
| Absolutely massive. Also it was basically due to bad
| German planning and preparation for winter, not some
| soviet strategic brilliance, which was very hard to be
| found on eastern front, just meatwave after meatwave till
| german machine gun barrels literally melted.
|
| You could see tons of US equipment during WWII reels on
| eastern front including heavy machinery, soviets tried
| desperately to remove such footage (just like photos of
| soviet soldiers wearing 3+ watches on each hand... err
| borrowed from friendly locals) but truth has this
| behavior of seeping back to light.
|
| Capitalism works pretty well in any moral society
| actually, much better than any other system thats for
| sure.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| What they got wasn't capitalism, it was kleptocracy.
| scotty79 wrote:
| If you look how capitalism is actually implemented, it
| always has bigger or smaller kleptocratic component.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Of course, but it's the proportion of that that makes all
| the difference.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I agree. But that might be why soviets are bad at
| everything. They always get this proportion wrong, in all
| systems.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| The non-working capitalism just kicked the collective
| butt of the entirety of NATO. Previously in Vietnam the
| non-working communism did the same.
| mayama wrote:
| > What makes these plans go so successfully, when the
| soviets have historically not been able to make such plans
| successful (despite being richer and more powerful at the
| time)?
|
| Soviets had more hardcore ideologues at helm most of the
| times until SU dissolution. They hardly allowed their
| ideology to be diluted without challenge, which made plans
| infeasible without real time feedback. China's Mao era was
| somewhat similar to that. After Mao, during fight between
| Gang of Four and Deng Xiaoping, realistic faction came on
| top with famous Deng saying "it doesn't matter if a cat is
| black or yellow, as long as it catches mice". Also China
| does experimentation at province and city level, with
| people succeeding promoting to national level, containing
| pitfalls of bad policy.
| kranke155 wrote:
| So China introduced market competition at the political
| level and at the economic level.
|
| And they did it while remaining authoritarian.
| Incredible.
| dzonga wrote:
| highly meritocratic system all the way from bottom to
| top. incredible indeed. in china you start as a low level
| official managing a village, if you succeed - you're
| promoted to town etc. they keep detailed records of your
| performance in school from kindergarten and a
| comprehensive dossier is compiled to evaluated by party
| officials. that means you will never have a nincompoop in
| charge at any level.
|
| maybe chinese nationals / or ccp members can correct or
| add some things.
| chii wrote:
| > they keep detailed records of your performance in
| school from kindergarten and a comprehensive dossier
|
| this also means you want your record pristine. And it is
| also why officials cover up problems rather than report
| it up.
|
| But their current success to out-maneuver the US in terms
| of trade, as well as capacity, is testament to perhaps
| the success of such a system. I do recall there was a
| massive purge on corruption over the past decade(s),
| which is probably helped a lot. This did not happen in
| soviet russia.
| jajko wrote:
| Rooting out corruption in russia is simply not possible
| when biggest thief is at the top of the pyramid (absolute
| minimum stolen from russian nation is on the order of 100
| billions $$ stashed all over the world, but its hard to
| count when its spread across many 'representatives').
|
| He also actively promotes corruption of his underlings,
| but the important point is - within hard limits of their
| position. Get greedy and overstep that and either modern
| gulag or window for you. Good luck saying to the rest of
| population 'don't steal!'.
|
| Xi is not flaunting his billion dollar mansions with
| golden toilets or megayachts while his kids grow up in
| Switzerland, is he.
| mayama wrote:
| That massive corruption purge is mainly Xi purging rival
| factions like Shangai and Jiang. Sure, it also targeted
| corrupt officials, but main target is rival factions in
| consolidating Xi grip on power. There isn't lot of taboo
| about corruption if you align with the correct faction.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| And also stay aligned with the correct faction. This also
| provides golden handcuffs: should one's alignment change,
| past misdeeds will instantly be remembered.
| klipt wrote:
| Meanwhile the USA now has an openly corrupt president
| (openly favors his pal Elon Musk's companies in his daily
| speeches, lets Musk shut down the same agencies that
| regulate Musk's companies, etc) who is shielded by his
| party from impeachment.
|
| China is starting to look quite well run by comparison.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| If you appear to succeed- all that is needed is a face of
| success and connections to others who appear to succeed.
| skyyler wrote:
| How does this differ from the US or western Europe?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Argentinas economy is a mess because of a long history of
| corruption. The CCP embraces markets while also having
| state ownership of everything by basically acting as
| venture capital funding different companies combined with
| heavy subsidies. So the 5 year plans are for signaling for
| which industries are going to get funding in the near
| future. My understanding is that this does have a pretty
| big impact and funding priorities change pretty drastically
| based off these plans.
| culopatin wrote:
| Not to mention the orders of magnitude of difference in
| population capital and that the people of Argentina are
| not under a regime that promotes basically slave labor
| for the benefit of their economy. Even if they did I
| don't think they'd be able to produce as much just
| because they don't have enough people.
| woooooo wrote:
| The early industrialization 5 year plans actually worked
| better for the Soviets than the Chinese, and I think it
| comes down to execution? Stalin being the more numerate
| psychopath?
|
| The last 30-40 years it's different, the Chinese have
| navigated market liberalization and transitioned from
| copying to leading in a number of areas, while still having
| a central planning aspect. It could be that some amount of
| central planning is preferable to pure ideological
| communism or capitalism.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| China to a large extent is following the Japanese and
| South Korean playbooks, to the point where the Chinese
| financial system runs under the concept of window
| guidance invented by the Japanese:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_guidance
|
| The question is whether or not this blows up in China's
| face when they stop accurately picking winners. We are
| already seeing the property bubble collapse in a manner
| similar to Japan's.
| chii wrote:
| > the question is whether or not this blows up in China's
| face
|
| Japan didn't "blow up" due to picking wrong. The US and
| allies negotiated the value of the yen up (the plaza
| accords) when the trade imbalance started to rack up
| against the US. This popped japan's bubble, which
| ultimately caused their lost decade.
|
| China, on the other hand, would be unlikely to sign any
| sort of similar treaty with the US. Their property bubble
| collapsed, but i dont think to the same extend as the
| japanese one. Not to mention that it was triggered by
| gov't, so it popped earlier than japan's one in the
| lifecycle - therefore, it must be the case that it's less
| bad.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/rvid0x/why_did_ja
| pan... has some details in the comments.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| I think there are different ways of defining bad. In
| Tokyo in 1990, the ratio of median house price to median
| income was 15. In Shanghai when the bubble popped, that
| figure was above 40, and even today it is at 36.
|
| To put this in perspective, San Fransisco, a city
| considered to have a housing crisis, has a ratio of 9.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Yeah, but the mortgage rate in China is around 3%.
| Individual income taxes are under 10% [0]. And there's
| your multiplier for affordability comparisons.
|
| [0] https://taxfoundation.org/blog/us-china-tax-policy/
| astrange wrote:
| IIRC the Soviets got that done with a lot of help from
| the US.
| csomar wrote:
| Free market capitalism and soviet state socialism or
| communism is just editorial masturbation. Regardless of the
| economic system, the everyday tasks are done by regular
| humans. The system can organize them but if they don't want
| to do the work, the work won't get done. There is no magic
| system for that.
|
| Over a decade ago, I worked in a public hospital with a
| really tight budget. The Pneumology section was clean,
| orderly and provided service to patients _as they came_
| with no waiting time. The service in the building nearby
| could well fit in the definitions of crimes against
| humanity. Same hospital, same financing, same system, just
| a different boss.
| _zamorano_ wrote:
| It's about the execution. The plan is just the first step.
|
| Basically, China is centralized politically and
| decentraliced economically. The soviet centralized
| everything... even meat prices, a recipe for disaster.
|
| They plan the outcome, but let the governing to the
| different provinces and the implementation to the (mostly)
| private sector. These actors are forced to compete, among
| other things, via export discipline that cannot be faked.
|
| And somehow, despite facing the same corruption and
| cronyism problems we do in the west, they seem to get
| better results.
| treis wrote:
| It's much more just population. Rapid population growth
| and then a one child policy has left China with a
| population bulge. Right now that bulge is 25-60ish which
| gives China a large amount of workers compared to
| children and the elderly. In 20-30 years that's going to
| switch and they will have a large amount of retirees
| supported by a relatively small amount of workers.
| culopatin wrote:
| That video is pretty... weak. Argentina can't be looked at
| on a GDP graph and say "oh yeah let's find some random
| country that's similar in this graph". Most of Argentina's
| problems are self inflicted sabotage. The graphs are also
| very misleading in the video, not only in the axis scales.
| dumbledoren wrote:
| The Soviets were insanely successful: From the 1920s to
| 1960s they raised the USSR to space age, industrialized it
| to become the 2nd superpower, won a world war, upgraded
| citizens from village huts to apartments, from being
| barefoot to cars and subways.
|
| What 'went wrong' was the economic war that Kennedy admn.
| started to starve the USSR of GDP by starting an arms and
| space race. The USSR did not bite the space race bait, but
| arms race was impossible to not participate. So it did.
| Then in the 1970s, the US started an economic warfare
| against the USSR with the help of its Gulf allies by
| manipulating oil prices. That wasn't enough either, so
| Reagan started another arms race. In the end all of that
| combined, crippled the USSR and it went bankrupt.
|
| The US also went bankrupt, but it was able to delay it for
| ~15 more years by printing money and pumping it into the
| stock market and real estate thanks to the reserve currency
| status of the dollar. That came crashing down in 2008. The
| US did some more of the same and dragged it a decade and
| half more and here we are, where everything is finally
| crashing down.
|
| China avoided most of that economic warfare by sitting on
| the sidelines and taking lessons. Sometime a decade ago, it
| passed the threshold of being too well-rounded and large to
| fail. To the point that it became a driving engine of the
| world economy, but backed with actual goods and services
| instead of the financial voodoo that the US built
| everything on.
|
| > Basically, is such 5 year plans a recipe for success
|
| Yes, if your country can keep the private interests and
| capitalists under control. Otherwise, they derail every
| plan to maximize their profit by siphoning off state
| resources for little actual progress. Like how the last US
| administration's 'build back better' plan was derailed.
| gertlex wrote:
| Long article. Mostly interesting!
|
| Surprising that they skip over autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) in
| their survey of types, but perhaps that's because it's a weird
| interstitial with high interaction with Humans for less-general
| usecases (material movement, but no material handling/auto-
| interfacing with other automation besides e.g. an attached
| conveyor). Also, less clear success in the market. I think Locus
| robotics probably qualifies as the most widely used AMRs (vs
| Kiva/Amazon being posterchild for AGVs)
|
| This article, like many conversations I've had, covers "making
| competitive hardware", but skips a lot of the "how to do things
| with the robots" successfully /for multiple uses/, which is also
| a hard problem.
| j_timberlake wrote:
| I assume that future AGI which is smart enough to control
| "general purpose robotics" is probably smart enough to design
| robotic forms that make all the current stuff obsolete anyway.
|
| Like the article says, physical world data is too scarce to jump
| straight to powerful robotics first.
| diego_moita wrote:
| A Latin American perspective (from the B in BRICS):
|
| There are 3 economic blocks dreaming on global dominance: Europe,
| US and China. The difference among them is how they pursue these
| dreams.
|
| The Europeans talk, discuss, gather and don't do anything.
|
| The Americans shout, yell, go alone and do everything wrong.
|
| The Chinese just do it, mostly right.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > posing an existential threat to the US as it is outcompeted in
| all capacities
|
| Is US ever gonna grow out of sore loser mentality or do we really
| need WWIII?
| jongjong wrote:
| The problem is that, at some point, the west decided to stop
| rewarding excellence in tech and started rewarding people for
| their social networking abilities. Now we have a lot of people
| who are good at talking and few people who are good at tech who
| have money to invest in robotics. Had I been even moderately
| rich, I'm certain I would have been investing in robotics right
| now. But instead, I'm working on document management software for
| government... While extroverts who got rich from Facebook IPO get
| to build Instagram for dogs...
|
| I think the decline coincided with the crackdown against
| cryptocurrency. Had it been allowed to develop normally instead
| of being suppressed and corrupted (by governments), things might
| have looked very different.
|
| Now I don't believe the system has any integrity so it makes no
| sense for me be productive. I actively look for the highest paid,
| most unproductive jobs I can find... Fortunately, there are MANY
| of those available in our system.
|
| I've made it my life's mission to exploit the system's flaws,
| while simultaneously complaining about them. Helping the bad guys
| self-destruct while earning a living is about as rewarding as it
| can be for me.
|
| A lot of other people my age are in the same boat, some
| knowingly, most unknowingly. I hope situation will change soon.
| There are some signs but it's going to take some big changes.
| southernplaces7 wrote:
| The sheer quantity of completely ridiculous, absurd economic and
| political beliefs, and predictions on this comment thread is
| amusing, all the more so when you consider that so many on HN who
| deride the wealthy are themselves part of the global 1% of elites
| in terms of income and access to resources, and have made their
| way to this position in the very same market economies that are
| supposedly bringing us all to slavery and misery of nearly feudal
| proportions.
|
| For a site whose readers like to tout the general trend here as
| being of people with above average intelligence, ignorance and
| blindness to the obvious is rife.
| grumpy-de-sre wrote:
| I believe a lot of this is where China's current deflationary
| pressure is coming from. China has driven the cost to produce
| energy and goods right down to the floor through tremendous scale
| and efficiency. There doesn't seem to be any sign prices have
| reached the bottom yet. A lot of parallels to "The Great
| Deflation" [1] of the late 1800s.
|
| Quoting Wikipedia,
|
| "The prices of most basic commodities and mass-produced goods
| fell almost continuously; however, nominal wages remained steady,
| resulting in a pronounced and prolonged rise in real wages,
| disposable income and savings - essentially giving birth to the
| middle class. Goods produced by craftsmen, as opposed to in
| factories, did not decrease in price"
|
| China's system really prioritizes worker and middle class
| prosperity. Over here in the west we're too busy sliding into a
| rent seeking oligarchy that we haven't noticed yet.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Deflation
| Delomomonl wrote:
| Ai and robotics will push us into a golden area for x years until
| they become so good that we better have an answer to the
| implications of full automation of everything.
|
| Also the laber shortage is pushing this transition even faster in
| potential traditional/ slow areas.
| bwfan123 wrote:
| so, the narrative from semianalysis is shifting from "agi is
| imminent" to "robotics will take over" - what does that mean for
| semi sales ?
| meetingthrower wrote:
| Where can one go and keep up with the latest in special purpose
| robotics? E.g., if I wanted to know about every new robot in the
| construction industry and similar labor intensive trades, is
| there a place that covers that?
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