Comments on: Are robots hurting job growth?
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- Robots are not the problem. One cannot stop the progress of technology and manufacturing. We are approaching a new era and need to figure out new social norms that allow the greatest possibility for each person to fulfill their maximum skills.
This new era will be one where their is an over production capability in each manufacturing sector where only a small percentage of the population will be needed to produce all basic goods needed by a worldwide large middle class. The best current example of this era is in farming in the USA where only about 1 percent of the population is needed to produce all the basic food it needs and a large percentage needed by rest of the world. One can easily see that a fraction of 1% of the population will be needed in future as robots will be allowed to travel on roads (California has already passed a law directing its agencies to draw up regulation for driver-less transportation.) Robotic combines could harvest the fields with one person supervising several of them.
Our discussion should not be about robots causing unemployment but about what type of society will we have when only 5% of the world population producing the goods we need like food, housing, transportation, and recreation. - Reply to this comment
- We could have been rid of the coal industry 20 years ago but for the damn whining "da future-folk turk err jurbs" luddites. Things have only gotten worse with meaningless political catchphrases like "job creator" being spread and Republicans actually getting away with insinuating intellectualism is to be scorned rather than aspired to and going to college is somehow elitist.
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- Robots are not new, especially in the auto industry. Toyota Motor Corporation has been using robots for years. Welding, parts handling, parts delivery, etc. This is not a new industry. Robots came from Kawasaki, Nachi, Yasuka, Friend, etc. They all have CPU's, which hold the program for their type of use. Parts delivery robots may have a "track" they follow, but even these tracks are going away. Instead they have an "eye" installed. These eyes, as long as they are not blocked, will allow the robot to travel "their route".
Welding robots are programmed, by using a teach pendant, by "steps". You can program seperate routines for any robots. You also need to program the welding controller to use a welding program, as to how much current to use. This has been going on for decades.
It seemed that the 60 Minutes story tonight was trying to suggest this is a new process. It is not. - Reply to this comment
- Wow. The state-run media knows no bounds when it comes to propaganda. Purely laughable. Robots were around long before the economically clueless Obama took office, and they were never before to blame for our miserable economy.
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- good lord these boards are getting overrun with spam anymore
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- People haven't come to grips with this yet? Get into the business of building and repairing robots.
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- Here is a possible, traditional solution to technological unemployment; one that was the primary response to technology for over 150 years in the USA. To see the details of that historical solution, see my book, just out (Temple Press, 2013). Below are descriptions early reviews.
Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt
Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream, Temple Press, publication date Jan 11, 2013
Short Description: Now facing an epidemic of unemployment, and the limits to economic growth, Americans need to be reminded of the forgotten, best part of the traditional American dream that even now offers a realistic alternative—the forgotten dream of steadily increasing free time away from work and the marketplace; time to live, to progress in the arts of living together freely, enriching family life, enjoying nature and other people, experiencing the life of the mind and adventures of the spirit.
Longer Description A: Has as the "American Dream" become an unrealistic utopian fantasy, or have we simply forgotten what we are working for? In his topical book, Free Time, Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt examines the way that progress, once defined as more of the good things in life as well as more free time to enjoy them, has come to be understood only as economic growth and more work, forevermore. Hunnicutt provides an incisive intellectual, cultural, and political history of the original "American Dream" from the colonial days to the present. Taking his cue from Walt Whitman's "higher progress," he follows the traces of that dream, cataloguing the myriad voices that prepared for and lived in an opening "realm of freedom." Free Time reminds Americans of the forgotten, best part of the "American Dream" - that more and more of our lives might be lived freely, with an enriching family life, with more time to enjoy nature, friendship, and the adventures of the mind and of the spirit. Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt is a Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Iowa. He is also the author of Kellogg's Six-Hour Day and Work Without End: Abandoning Shorter Hours for the Right to Work (both Temple).
Longer Description B: The modern project of everlasting economic growth and the eternal creation of full time, "good jobs" for all is unsustainable. Environmental limits and economic and cultural realities suggest that this project has become an unrealistic utopian fantasy. (Chapter 10) Struggling against the limits of economic growth, Americans have so far neglected the obvious alternative, close to home. For over two centuries the American dream had two parts. Technological and economic progress that would not only provide more of the material blessings of life but would also free us to make advances in the convivial arts of living together. (Preface and introduction) Just as higher wages made the first part of the dream more accessible, shorter working hours offered increasing opportunities for what Walt Whitman (together with Frank Lloyd Wright, Robert Hutchins, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, Fannia Cohn and a myriad of others-Chapters 2, 4, 6, 8) called "Higher Progress." Having more and more time to live, Americans from all walks of life expected great things: progress in civility, family life, individual expression, the enjoyment of nature and other people, the life of the mind and adventures of the spirit, that would far surpass mere economic achievements. (Preface and introduction) That forgotten American dream, and the shorter hours process that made it a reality, must be represented and vigorously promoted as one of the few viable alternatives to the failing faith in eternal economic growth and" full-time," full employment. (Chapter 10) - Reply to this comment
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