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Comment by bwhiting2356 | Hacker News Reader

If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries. All kinds us good projects that could be happening, if you dig into why, labor intensive work is a factor. Why didn't the hydroponics project take off? Why is that still an empty lot instead of a new home? Why isn't there live theatre in this small city? Why is there a pot hole in the bike lane?

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Isn’t this more a function of how the American construction market is just really messed up somehow (corruption?)? In China, actual things get built fairly cheaply and quickly. You just don’t see workers hanging around watching one guy dig a hole like you do in the states. I would guess that automation is the only way out of the mess we are in, since just throwing more money and people at the problem just seems to make it worse.

What’s different about the market in China that enables this?

The usual answer is slave labor, like in the middle east. But some combination of an extremely poor job market with laborers that can't leave, and can't do anything else.

Could you expand on the corruption claim?

n = 1 …

Go to Miami, Florida, and see how virtually all public projects magically go to Cuban-American-owned companies — even huge multinationals with far greater skill, capacity, and efficiencies can't seem to land the good work.

Trades seem to have high barriers to entry and have stringent unproductive working rules. I’m not really sure, but does to make sense that construction prices have risen so much so fast without even considering the cost of materials? The public sector is much worse, of course, where a short jaunt tram at LAX costs more than a 75 mile HSR run in China. We obviously aren’t competitive in building things anymore.

Somewhat related, but I know construction is the one of the only industries that has gotten less productive in the past 100 years. You'd think more machinery and such would make it more productive, but no.

I think part of that is safety and labor cost, but I think another part is that construction is contracted almost always.

Infinite demand, maybe, but not at wages that most people are willing to accept. Of course, if there's literally no other work, then previously-middle-class people will take what's available and become homeless because the wage doesn't pay the bills (which are, in places, extremely inflated due to decades of jaw-droppingly bad housing and transport policies). Sounds like a highly desirable future.

Yes, but thanks to Baumol's cost disease productivity increases in other sectors can have spillover effects in terms of wages.

That assumes the current high wages are here to stay. This seems unlikely if AI consumes most white collar jobs.

Um, I expressly said that high wages wouldn't stay? If the choices are either being jobless and homeless, or doing some menial cotton-harvesting job while still being homeless, we got a slight social problem. The GP said that there's a lot of demand for menial labor. That demand only exists if you don't have to actually pay for said labor. In other words, it's not demand at all.

>> If robotics progress starts to pick up, I'll take this more seriously. Right now, there's practically infinite demand for labor in construction, manufacturing, agriculture and many other industries.

Don't be so sure: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/economy/blue-col...

Lucky not to live around small towns that were killed by the introduction of robotics?

Yes there is some demand for labour in fields like agriculture , and many rather not pick the work and survive elsewhere, because feudal lords rather pay peanuts for the hard work.

So you work in one of these fields, right? Hydroponics, homebuilding, theatre construction, pothole repair?

I currently work as a software engineer, but I've worked in the past in restaurants (dishwasher/prep cook), doordashing, as a musician, as moving help. If AI automates software I'll just do something else.

Spoken like a 2007 bond trader

Good luck with physical labor when you reach your 50s.

Fair point

All of those are basically low wage garbage jobs. We have little to no respect for them as a society, too, to add insult to injury.

If it were up to me, I'd be flipping burgers right now. But I literally can't do that, it doesn't pay enough for that to be a job I can take. Id have to, like, find roommates.

Yeah I am always disappointed in how little there is automated in construction and how slow humans are in this activity. It feels like an exclave of the Dark Ages in the Information Age.

Construction is interesting because productivity has actually fallen in recent decades.

Safety and quality have increased.

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