Second Renaissance (Pt. I)

[Chmee]

Not that Toyota using 'robots' is anything new ... but whenever I read this stuff I have to wonder, eventually, who's going to have a job so they can afford to buy all the crap made by robots?

Toyota to employ robots
06/01/2005 08:12 - (SA)

Tokyo - Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labour shortage as the country ages, a report said on Thursday.

The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese labourers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

Japan's top automaker currently uses 3 000 to 4 000 less advanced robots at its domestic factories but their use has been confined mostly to welding, painting and other potentially hazardous tasks, the economic daily said.

The new robots would also be used in finishing work, such as installation of seats and car interior fixtures, that have been too complex for conventional robots up to now, the daily said.

Toyota plans to become the first in the automobile industry to use the advanced robots in all production processes in the future, it said without giving the timeframe.

"We aim to reduce production costs to the levels in China," the daily quoted an unnamed company official as saying.

Toyota also took into account the looming labour shortage in Japan due to a declining birthrate, the report said.

Japan's population is forecast to peak by 2006 with the average number of children a woman has during her lifetime standing at a post-World War II low of 1.29, according to the latest government data.

Japan has so far rejected calls to open up to large numbers of unskilled immigrants, fearing the effects on the country's social framework.

[LadyTevar]

.............
Makes me wonder if they're going o try that over here in the US, especially at the plant they just built in WV not 5 years back.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

.............
Makes me wonder if they're going o try that over here in the US, especially at the plant they just built in WV not 5 years back.

It will happen eventually in the United States. We'll be in the same boat Japan is in less than fifty years. Of course, already in the United States, it costs a lot to produce something when one figures in the cost of maintaining the standard of living an American worker with a labor union behind him or her has come to expect.

Labor here will, of course, likely fight such automatization tooth-and-nail. Though if robots can deliver on the promise of producing something just as cheaply as third-world labor can, the economic realities will be too stark for even organized labor to overcome.

But yes, I think they'll try it here, just probably not so soon.

[LadyTevar]

With all the people out of work over here and moving out of state in an attempt to find work, it might take longer than 50yrs.

[Tom_Aurum]

There's another problem that lowers the population in Japan. It's called suicide. Unfortunate, but their suicide rate is nearly astronomical.

[Admiral Valdemar]

Too bad I care not because my career requires a brain, something no robot is going to get in my lifetime, and isn't based on how well I can do menial and repetitive labour.

We all saw machines as getting to this point eventually, I fail to see why surprise even appears.

[Chmee]

Too bad I care not because my career requires a brain, something no robot is going to get in my lifetime, and isn't based on how well I can do menial and repetitive labour.

We all saw machines as getting to this point eventually, I fail to see why surprise even appears.

Can you base an entire economy on wage-earners who don't make products, though?

[Alex Moon]

Too bad I care not because my career requires a brain, something no robot is going to get in my lifetime, and isn't based on how well I can do menial and repetitive labour.

We all saw machines as getting to this point eventually, I fail to see why surprise even appears.

Can you base an entire economy on wage-earners who don't make products, though?

Where did you get that idea? People don't just dissappear into unemployment. They find other jobs, they change careers, they encourage their kids to look to other fields when they grow up. They move on. This idea that somehow automation is going to take away all our jobs is nonsense. In fact, the rise of automation is a good thing for the economy, because it allows us to specialize on more important and/or complicated tasks.

[Chmee]

Too bad I care not because my career requires a brain, something no robot is going to get in my lifetime, and isn't based on how well I can do menial and repetitive labour.

We all saw machines as getting to this point eventually, I fail to see why surprise even appears.

Can you base an entire economy on wage-earners who don't make products, though?

Where did you get that idea? People don't just dissappear into unemployment. They find other jobs, they change careers, they encourage their kids to look to other fields when they grow up. They move on. This idea that somehow automation is going to take away all our jobs is nonsense. In fact, the rise of automation is a good thing for the economy, because it allows us to specialize on more important and/or complicated tasks.

It was a question, not a statement. Nobody ever *has* had an economy with zero wage-earners who produced a value-add in the production of goods, so it's a very valid (and open question in economics) whether it's viable or sustainable.

In the economies that have transitioned to a higher percentage of service/managerial jobs and a more productive but lower number of manufacturing jobs, there has always been an export market where this transition has not taken place. The smaller number of producers could still sell to a large number of overseas consumers, most of whom were still engaged in labor-intensive value-add jobs.

At some point, if it's all Chiefs and no Indians, can the Chiefs sell to each other exclusively? An economy only needs so many accountants ... if we're all accountants, who do we do the accounting for?

[Admiral Valdemar]

A successful company with no workers? Sounds like an employer's dream.

No doubt there will be mass unemployment, perhaps recession even (though Japan hasn't got out of one yet), the fact still remains that these robots need to be built themselves first, at least until some disturbing Von Neumann event occurs and robots start making more robots.

People will move on. More and more are going to uni, more and more are getting useful degrees (admittedly, useless degrees are just as common it seems). So the circle of life revolves on and the "working class" all hold degrees while the elites are all doctors of some field. If you think we will run out of positions for engineers, scientists and doctors, you're mistaken.

This may be a time of enlightenment as people strive to better improve themselves mentally to take on the more rigorous mental tasks of a well paid job rather than a 9 to 5 at a factory no one likes.

[Chmee]

A successful company with no workers? Sounds like an employer's dream.

No doubt there will be mass unemployment, perhaps recession even (though Japan hasn't got out of one yet), the fact still remains that these robots need to be built themselves first, at least until some disturbing Von Neumann event occurs and robots start making more robots.

People will move on. More and more are going to uni, more and more are getting useful degrees (admittedly, useless degrees are just as common it seems). So the circle of life revolves on and the "working class" all hold degrees while the elites are all doctors of some field. If you think we will run out of positions for engineers, scientists and doctors, you're mistaken.

This may be a time of enlightenment as people strive to better improve themselves mentally to take on the more rigorous mental tasks of a well paid job rather than a 9 to 5 at a factory no one likes.

Japan has huge export markets, that's my point. If you get to the point where everybody is unemployed because a robot has their job, who pays them? Great, you're a doctor ... how do patients make money to treat you? Doctors and lawyers don't make most of their money treating professionals, they make it treating employees of companies with health benefits. Same for every other professional class, they're the top of the pyramid ... you can't turn the pyramid upside down and expect the top level to make very much money.

[Alex Moon]

A successful company with no workers? Sounds like an employer's dream.

No doubt there will be mass unemployment, perhaps recession even (though Japan hasn't got out of one yet), the fact still remains that these robots need to be built themselves first, at least until some disturbing Von Neumann event occurs and robots start making more robots.

People will move on. More and more are going to uni, more and more are getting useful degrees (admittedly, useless degrees are just as common it seems). So the circle of life revolves on and the "working class" all hold degrees while the elites are all doctors of some field. If you think we will run out of positions for engineers, scientists and doctors, you're mistaken.

This may be a time of enlightenment as people strive to better improve themselves mentally to take on the more rigorous mental tasks of a well paid job rather than a 9 to 5 at a factory no one likes.

Japan has huge export markets, that's my point. If you get to the point where everybody is unemployed because a robot has their job, who pays them? Great, you're a doctor ... how do patients make money to treat you? Doctors and lawyers don't make most of their money treating professionals, they make it treating employees of companies with health benefits. Same for every other professional class, they're the top of the pyramid ... you can't turn the pyramid upside down and expect the top level to make very much money.

That will never happen. People will find other jobs to replace the ones lost. It's a constant cycle, as demonstrated by all of human history. Do you think doctors won't have need for entertainment? For gourmet cuisine? For a car (designed by a human)? For new medical technology? Do you get the point? Technology advancement eliminates jobs, but it also creates far more. There is no magic limit to this.

[frigidmagi]

Sooner or late, you need a human to maintain the robot. More than likey several humans,

[Chmee]

A successful company with no workers? Sounds like an employer's dream.

No doubt there will be mass unemployment, perhaps recession even (though Japan hasn't got out of one yet), the fact still remains that these robots need to be built themselves first, at least until some disturbing Von Neumann event occurs and robots start making more robots.

People will move on. More and more are going to uni, more and more are getting useful degrees (admittedly, useless degrees are just as common it seems). So the circle of life revolves on and the "working class" all hold degrees while the elites are all doctors of some field. If you think we will run out of positions for engineers, scientists and doctors, you're mistaken.

This may be a time of enlightenment as people strive to better improve themselves mentally to take on the more rigorous mental tasks of a well paid job rather than a 9 to 5 at a factory no one likes.

Japan has huge export markets, that's my point. If you get to the point where everybody is unemployed because a robot has their job, who pays them? Great, you're a doctor ... how do patients make money to treat you? Doctors and lawyers don't make most of their money treating professionals, they make it treating employees of companies with health benefits. Same for every other professional class, they're the top of the pyramid ... you can't turn the pyramid upside down and expect the top level to make very much money.

That will never happen. People will find other jobs to replace the ones lost. It's a constant cycle, as demonstrated by all of human history. Do you think doctors won't have need for entertainment? For gourmet cuisine? For a car (designed by a human)? For new medical technology? Do you get the point? Technology advancement eliminates jobs, but it also creates far more. There is no magic limit to this.

No, I do get the point, the problem is that you're still inverting the pyramid. A new design gets designed once ... if nobody is producing value in the production process, it's an extremely limited means of providing capital growth in an economy. You're not producing new capital, you're just shifting it around, and every small inefficiency removes it from the system. Instead of growth you get decadence. Luxury economies like gourmet food and nail salons are the service economy, but a service economy has always ... always ... relied on a production economy where value/capital is constantly being added. You can't keep 'replacing jobs' with jobs that build less and less capital, ultimately the system collapses.

This process *can* go on for a long period, because there is still an export market and there is still a huge pool of capital-building labor in the world as other economies are far behind ours in the production/service balance within their economy, but your argument relies on the assumption that all jobs are the same in the way they impact an economy, and this is *not* a widely accepted assumption of economic theory. One job is very definitely not the same as another.

[ATGSNAT]

Right, but what we are seeing is the movement of the economy from one of physical capital towards one of intellectual capital. The base "wage earner" of the future will not be someone who makes the stuff, but the ones who design and discover how to do it. The base level of the pyramid is shifting up but the whole pyramid is getting larger as more engineers and scientists are demanded in a more technical world.

[Petrosjko]

There are other industries that do take up the slack. For example, the need for truckdrivers is getting pretty damn frantic. Right now the industry is at stable point with regards to turnover, taking in about as much as it loses. However, freight demands are increasing, new regulations have made it necessary to put more wheels on the road, and so they're talking about dramatic hikes in pay. My old lessor Schneider National recently announced at a conference that standard pay for solo drivers was going to have to rise into the 60k bracket, which considering that as of about a couple-three years ago it was somewhere in the 30k bracket, that's a pretty damned drastic increase.

It's an evolutionary process.