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Fears of employee displacement as Amazon brings robots into warehouses
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Any company that doesn't automate will eventually get priced out. People are just too expensive compared to robots. We're smack dab in the midst of a technological revolution and just like the industrial revolution the job-scape is about to change rapidly and radically.
Automation is not the point of argument. That going to happens no matter what. In fact I touch about it in my other comment.
The point to ponder is how to address the impact of automation. As far as I know even without full automation, the US (and many other capitalism based) don't have a good record to address the difficulty faced by low skilled workers, e.g. depicted by Nomadland. To simply give utopian solution won't address the issue and would be premature.
Unless we are talking about Scandinavian countries (socialism system), that's a whole different issue.
There are so many factors at play right now and they're all changing so fast that it's hard to even guess at what strategy might be beneficial. AI development and automated manufacturing could theoretically bring down the costs of making in America to the point where American companies bring manufacturing back to the States again. On the other hand it could exasperate the rust belt trend that killed many Midwest cities.
I think in the short term it's going to be pretty bad for unskilled labor and it already has been pretty bad especially in certain areas of the country like west Virginia. The problem is all of Scandinavia has a population lower than California's let alone the entire US. It's amazingly easier to adapt when you have a small densely populated populous. Wyoming has a population density of 6 people per square mile.
Only time will tell but if Congress's current misadventures is telling at all I'm not overly optimistic.
Finally, I get a realistic answer.
Anyway, if I am a capitalist like Bezos, I will discreetly implement the full automation system to a new factory instead of rebuilding the system in already existing factory. By doing that, the system is there by design and its introduction won't impact any prospective workers, because there won't be any (existing) worker anyway. However, its impact to the society can't be neglected, because it's a lost opportunity for low-skilled people.
If there are enough number fully automated facilties built this way and if there is no social system in place to help them, the unemployable lower skilled workers will be doomed. As a capitalist, I don't care. The politicians won't bat an eye, as they're no issues being raise as it is done discreetly. The low-skilled people will become more.and more impoverished without them ever realize.
Capitalism means different things to different people. In my opinion it's an almost meaningless term now.
Building new factories is definitely one strategy. The upside is the building's infrastructure and footprint can exactly match the system you're implementing. The downside is that it's much more expensive and time consuming. The bottom line is if you can't fulfill your orders or your projections predict you won't be able to in the short term then it might convince you to retrofit an existing building rather than build a new one.
I'm a firm believer that there will always be someone who's willing to pay someone else to do something. New technologies obliterate old jobs but tend to create new jobs in the process. It's the in-between time that's truly difficult. When you have a job force trained for a job that isn't needed anymore. Retraining is the often cited cure but I don't know how scalable that really is.
A social safety net is important but there are a lot of states that either can't or won't provide that safety net in any substantial way. Just look at the republican state that sued trying to prevent the federally subsidized Medicaid expansion. The voters in these states don't seem to care enough about it to vote politicians in who want to provide a safely net.