US gained 230K jobs and 135K robots, other countries probably lost 1 million jobs to compensate. Automation goes full speed ahead, but what about sharing in the benefits?
Let's say GP was right and 1M jobs disappeared. Robots are cheaper. Are cars going to get cheaper? My bet is on no. Where does that money go? Up. Who will buy the cars? Definitely not the 1M people losing those jobs.
I'm not saying we should go backwards, but just producing more stuff cheaper with less labor without a goal in sight isn't a net positive impact on the world, and the economic inequality will only grow steeper.
I'm saying this as a cushy white collar business owner that will likely be comfortably ahead of that curve. But we're still just lemmings scurrying to get ahead of everyone else, while a whole lot will be left behind.
This is what decided this election, regardless of anyones politics (I certainly didn't agree with the choice).
It is a net positive (shareholders or management and consumers gain), but not necessarily Pareto efficient (some people lose).
> Definitely not the 1M people losing those jobs.
Why? They would get a lesser paying job, but I think they could still buy a cheap car.
Alternatively, this could be an aberration and not generally applicable - but either way it's worth looking at the thing itself and not immediately pivoting to secondary concerns.
Look at a small part, in a small area and you see positive.
A lot of things are moving back home because of automation, devastating some countries.
Garment workers are about to be fucked. Robots are getting cheaper than cheap labour. So why not process it next door to the subsidized cotton.
But even from a selfish point of view, things currently at home are also going to be devastated.
One industries small renaissance at home is probably coupled with another's larger destruction.
It folds and distorts in shape in much less normal patterns, requiring more sophisticated algorithms.
http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21651925-...
Such a self replicating factory would be organized like a computer. It would have memory, which will be the storage space, and a data bus, which is the logistics system, and a CPU which is the collection of processing units (3d printers, cnc, ovens, presses, etc). We will program it with an API and define products like we define software, then the factory would compile it to production and actually produce it. When the factory is able to reproduce its own tools, it can create more of itself and jumpstart the process.
You could also say it works like a cell or an organism - self reproducing, self healing, able to survive. We're self reproducing factories ourselves. It's the birth of a new life form, when robots don't need us to reproduce and repair themselves.