as someone who works very closely with automated and almost-automated manufacturing, automation seems like a really big bogeyman. Yes, It will impact the lowest skill jobs because that is what it is most efficient at replacing, but considering how most manufacturing companies operate; automation allows you to generate more work per worker, so when you automate you don’t downsize the workforce, you upsize the facility.
I think a lot of people also have a mental image of stuff like Baxter when they hear automation, which is a neat idea, but in my experience most automation is custom bots made to do highly specific jobs, and more often than not they still require a worker to operate, they just allow the worker to produce 100 widgets in an hour instead of 25.
I’ve seen this fear at the blue and white collar levels as well. Blue collar workers (at least the ones I work with) think that their hours will get cut because robots can do more work faster, but capitalism being what it is, that just means they’re going to make more product in the same length of time. White collar workers also vastly overestimate how advanced automation is right now. No matter how fancy your bot is, it needs regular maintenance and support the entire time it operates. I’ve yet to see any machine that works truly by itself. Maybe CNC machines or 3D printers.
Oh, for sure. A good example of people afraid of machines takes their jobs having the reverse affect is bank tellers. They were worried about ATMs making them obsolete but we actually have more of those now than before (stole that example from Last Week Tonight).
The issues now versus then is that machine learning is in play and rapidly being developed for various fields, which will make certain fields obsolete once it reaches fruition, like in call centers.
There are issues with making workers more efficient as well. If you work at a company that is progressively making you capable of higher levels of output due to automation then where that business would have needed more people to increase production they can now produce more with less, which in a competitive market could put people out of work elsewhere. Maintaining labor at the same staffing levels while increasing output is a loss of jobs.
You raise some good points there, but there are also some subtleties you may be missing there.
Yes, the custom bots can allow the worker to produce 100 widgets in an hour instead of 25. However, if the total number of widgets the producer can sell also doesn’t go up by 4x, either the producer is going to have fewer workers or have the existing workers work fewer hours.
Okay, I concede that you also saw this point, although I’m not sure they’ll make more product in the same length of time. Capitalism being what it is, they’re not going to make more product than they can actually sell. Still, working fewer hours at the same wages does mean that the workers will possibly be bringing home less in their paychecks. Granted, this depends on a combination on what cost savings automation provides vs. how many widgets can be sold and at what price vs. how much the owners are going to reward workers for the increased productivity, so there are some subtle issues here. I think the general fear may be that the workers don’t expect to get any benefit for the increased productivity, get an effective wage cut due to working fewer hours or are let go, and so on.
Yes, but odds are you need some sort of skills to maintain and support the bot, and it’s likely that the workers displaced by the bots lack those skills. Now, if they were retrained with bot support/maintenance skills, that could help offset the problems.
That’s assuming they want to be retrained, though. I’m reminded of a story a heard about the coal mining regions of West Virginia. Coal is, as we all know and despite what the Dotard-in-Chief claims, a dying industry. At best, some coal mining may remain for the sake of raw material use (i.e. making steel from iron or perhaps some other applications yet to be discovered), but given that the majority of coal is used for electricity generation, that’s going the way of the horse and buggy. As a result, two of the fastest growing careers in those regions are health care/nursing (not surprising giving our aging population) and truck driving (autonomous vehicles aren’t there yet and the cheap land in WV makes it perfect for setting up distribution warehouses). Some local vocational schools and community colleges are even offering completely free training in these fields. So, are people rushing to take advantage of the training? Nope… instead they’re still paying a few hundred bucks a course to work as coal miners under the misguided hope that coal mining will come back.
all very good points. I neglected to consider that I work at a contractor, so there’s a lot of money upfront and a lot of work towards constant expansion. I disregarded that a lot of industries will not focus on infinite expansion.
Also a very real concern, granted this is an issue that has been exacerbating since the 70s thanks to technology in general, not just automation.
That was an interesting read, I’m not sure how I feel about that. In the current system you get paid what the system believes your work is worth, and in the case of workers failing to take advantage of literally free training for more skilled labor I want to say tough shit. But on the other hand there is a very real expectation for jobs requiring skilled labor to also require a higher investment of work:life ratio, and for most people I completely empathize with not wanting to give up what little free time they already have. For me right now a day off is worth more than what I would make in overtime pay.
In Germany there was a problem with how seats in parliament were allocated, due to something called “overhang seats”. It seemed like it wasn’t a problem, but over time it effected more and more of the political parties, and so got some attention. And it was fixed:
"Legal situation until the Bundestag election of 2009
Whenever a party won more constituency seats in a Land than it was entitled to by its share of second votes, overhang mandates were created. As a consequence, the composition of the Bundestag did not correspond exactly to the distribution of second votes among the parties. This impaired electoral equality and parties’ equal opportunities.
The Federal Constitutional Court therefore ruled by decision of 25 July 2012 (2 BvE 9/11, 2 BvF 3/11, 2 BvR 2670/11) that Section 6 (5) of the Federal Elections Act in the version in force at the time was unconstitutional since overhang mandates were not offset even when a large number was created. The Court stated that no more than approximately 15 uncompensated overhang mandates may be created, which is half of the mandates required to form a parliamentary group."
This is soooooooo boring! I’m sorry about that. But living in Germany it’s just assumed that when there are issues with democracy, they are going to be fixed. That might be seat allocation or campaign finance or whatever.
But when I see the news from America, even discussion in this thread about the topic in the title, I just assume it won’t ever be fixed.
Our problem is that the process for changing our democracy is well defined and worked for a while. But, it requires a vote using a system that grossly over-represents empty land. As a result, the population of people in the US who do not want democracy are grossly over-represented, and vote to prevent corrections to said democracy.
We can’t vote to fix our system because we set it up such that the people who hate the system are over-represented in the vote.
One solution would be to temporarily disenfranchise that empty land somehow. There is no legal way to do it.
This is 100% wrong. I’d go into more details, but this kind of thing has already been covered in part by a Geeknights mini-lecture:
There are two ways to look at this. Either the process makes the people, or the people need a different process.
If the process doesn’t allow itself to be fixed even when a ton of people don’t give a rat’s ass about it, then it’s a bad process! That’s my point! The way the US constitution is written means that it can’t be fixed now. And that’s not the fault of the people who don’t care, but the fault of the rules as written.
Again, I’m not trying to give solutions, but the solution to a process problem can’t be “let’s hope everyone becomes more intelligent, engaged, and votes in their best interest”. That was the assumption of the Brexit vote, designed in a country that hadn’t had a national referendum for over 40 years. It was a stupid process, and hasn’t led to anything like a success, even for the people who “won” the vote! But we have referendums in Berlin quite often. Anyone here could have pointed out about five ways the Brexit vote could have gone wrong. That a few of those pitfalls were stepped in is hardly surprising in retrospect.
True, but the point is that coal mining is also skilled labor, and arguably even rougher than truck driving and healthcare, and yet people are still choosing it over the careers with more potential and less danger.
Ding-ding-ding, we have a winner here. Of course, one reason why that empty land is so powerful is a fear (right or wrong) that the more crowded land would fuck them over if given the opportunity. Given that said empty land loves to fuck over the more crowded land when they can, well, they may have a point.
Well, there are rules in the process that allow for it to be fixed. It has been patched multiple times in the past. It’s mostly in more recent years, like Rym stated, that it’s started to break down.
So, in your opinion, what makes the Berlin referendums work better than Brexit?
Also you’re talking about wanting a solution to the problems inherent in the process, yet when people talk about how difficult finding a solution to these problems would be (as they would involve going outside the existing process in a manner that’s not allowed by law), you’re all “Stockholm Syndrome!”
It wasn’t a case of not seeing your point about healthcare reform. Obamacare was in many ways a half-assed way of doing it. However, given all your smug sounding (and my apologies if I’m getting your tone wrong) European superiority, I just had to point out that at least one relatively nice place in Europe happens to have a system similar to Obamacare that works for them.
See, when I see that, I can’t help but think of something along the lines of a coup, whether bloodless or not… although maybe I’m just that pessimistic.
Extra-judicial does not have to mean violent, and it only becomes violent when police or counterprotesters are used to quell the protest. At this point I am completely in favor of extra-judicial solutions, and I would vastly prefer them to be non-violent. That being said, I would willingly support violent protesters for a cause I believe in even if I was not willing to violently protest myself.
Nah, it’s too much. I started writing something, but it’s too much to go into for one person who doesn’t trust what I’m saying anyway. I also started writing about how many ways the presidential primaries are fucked up, looking in from the outside, but the list is so long that it would also take too long to write.
I didn’t start this conversation as a springboard for problem solving by Luke, nor as a primer on elections and referendum. With all the best will in the world, I’m just not into it this evening.
Right. Switzerland. The country that has all the money. Cool. That should also work well in America, what with all the money in places like Appalachia just ready to start flowing into the pockets of health insurer shareholders. Glad you’re getting a hang of my arguments.
I don’t mean to come off as smug. Sorry if it feels that way. I’m just looking in from the outside, and there’s no way you’re going to see things the same way.
Well, a coup can be non-violent as well (read up on the Carnation Revolution)… and anything I would prefer to be non-violent. Protests, whether peaceful or violent are only going to get so far, though. Arguably what needs to be done may be a new constitutional convention of some sort, whether to add a bunch of amendments to the existing constitution (not likely as that would have to follow the existing process and we’ve explained how thorny that is right now) or throw out the old and bring in a new, which probably would be extremely messy, difficult to pull off, and probably won’t work either as I’m not sure we’d have enough of a population in favor of it to democratically create one.
Frankly, I don’t see a democratic way to do it.
My apologies if I gave that impression. I trust what you’re saying with respect to your view on how things work where you live. I don’t quite trust your point of view as an outsider as you only seem to see what’s on the surface and don’t have the context to fully know just what’s going on underneath. I’m sure if things were reversed, I wouldn’t be any better off than you in that respect.
True, Appalachia is pretty much screwed unless they get some major subsidies to help with that from places that do have more money. Switzerland probably isn’t all rich, obviously, but it’s small and has enough money in the richer parts that they probably can easily subsidize the poorer areas. On paper, Obamacare offers said subsidies. In practice, with all the loopholes, restrictions, and other crap in the bill, those subsides may as well be unicorns to many people.
Funny thing is, living in Massachusetts, we had proto-Obamacare in the form of Romneycare for years prior to Obamacare and by and large it seems to have mostly worked. However, we aren’t that big and are relatively rich compared to other states, so as I said, we actually do subsidize many of the people who can’t get healthcare otherwise (I happen to know a few personally who take advantage of the subsidies). However, nationwide that may not necessarily work out due to the loopholes and other issues I mentioned.
Oh, and I can understand at looking things from the outside sometimes making people look a bit smug. I’ve probably fallen into that trap myself on numerous occasions. So no hard feelings here.
My brief opinion: Luke is right, America’s system is broken, and people don’t talk about fixing problems in a legitimate way.
Republicans in a state committed proven voter fraud and the news barely talks about it, most people don’t care, and the Republicans will continue to do it in states where they don’t get caught running on a platform of stopping the Democrats for “pushing voter fraud with illegal immigrants.”
Everything is honestly broken beyond fixing because the majority of our representatives are so reliant on pushing legislature for their donors that they don’t actually try to fix the broken government.
Everyone living outside of America, who spends even a little bit of time connected to the news, doesn’t have a choice but to get to know quite a bit about American politics. I’ve been following presidential elections in America closely for about 20 years now. As in, checking polls and news on a daily basis in the run up to primaries and elections (my longest-read site being https://electoral-vote.com which I started following in 2004).
The opposite just can’t be true of politics in Berlin or Germany or even Europe. There’s just not the overwhelming exposure possible, even within Berlin, compared to the output of material to read even in a single day of American politics.
The imbalance of people looking at America and people in America looking out isn’t anything you can do anything about, I’m afraid.
I’m really not sure what would have to happen for America to change outside of this shaky status quo. We’re just so far deep within our corrupt system. Not just politics, but schools, prisons, corporations, energy consumption, everything is just really REALLY bad and yet no matter how extreme things have gotten people have to fight really hard for iotas of change.
Even with the House of Representatives passing this, we can’t get forward cause McConnell has the option to not even bring it to the Senate Floor.
The United States is pretty disgusting and I don’t think most Americans are quite ready to realize that.
we are rapidly hitting that point. this is all the last gasp of the baby boomers. the question is not if, but when the tipping point occurs and how much damage these greedy pigs are going to make their children fix.
