This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Step Aside Human: World's Second Biggest Mining Company Unveils Robot Trucks
One week ago we were shocked to learn that while all other commodity miners, first and foremost Glencore, were copycatting US shale producers and scrapping capital spending as well as production across virtually every commodity class, one company would buck the trend when the world's second largest miner Rio Tinto said it would not cut copper production, adding that it would be "illogical to hold back output and leave space in the market for higher-cost rivals."
"Why should I make cuts?” asked Rio Copper & Coal Chief Executive Officer Jean-Sébastien Jacques rhetorically.
The logical answer to that question is that being constrained by the same labor costs as all his peers, Rio Tinto would have no choice but to limit the cash outflow.
Logical, that is, assuming we had all the necessary information. We did not.
Thanks to Xinhua, we have now learned something fascinating - in its attempt to evade the shackles of conventional fixed and variable costs, Rio Tinto has decided to begin eliminating humans from its "workforce" altogether.
According to the Chinese state media, Rio Tinto has started using automated, driverless trucks to move iron ore in its Pilbara mines, controlled from an operations center 1,200 kilometers away in Perth.
Xinhua reports that "the world's first commercial implementation of the technology removes high risk, repetitive roles which expose employees to fatigue while also reducing significant operating costs and maintaining consistency, said Rio Tinto Yandicoogina operations manager Josh Bennett."
"One of the biggest costs we have got it maintaining mobile assets, so we spend a lot of time on our operator training, education," Bennett told the national broadcaster ABC.
Rio Tinto now has 69 driverless trucks operating 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, estimating a saving of 500 work hours per truck per year.
"So, there is obvious capital savings, in terms of setting up camps, flying people to site, there is less people so there is less operating costs, but there are some costs that come into running the system and maintenance of the system as well," Bennett said.
It's not just well-paid drivers that suddenly became obsolete: the resources giant is also trialling unmanned trains and robot drills, aiming for a roll out of the machines to as many mine sites as possible in the next year.
And where Rio Tinto is boldly going, all of its competitors are sure to follow: rivals BHP Billiton and local middleweight Fortescue Metals are also in on the act, trialling similar technology at their mines.
While we were surprised at this development, others said this was a logical evolution in the displacement of humans with unpaid robotic replacement.
Local market analysts have said the shift to autonomous vehicles was to be expected if Australian miners wanted to remain competitive through the cycle following "unrealistic" wage increases and increased scrutiny of safety concerns. Though the resource sector is developing driverless technology in a commercial closed circuit enterprise, it is in fact the automotive industry that is leading the technological advances.
"Obviously it's not public because there is a lot of money... and it's a very competitive industry with different automotive manufacturers, therefore they keep it behind closed doors," University of New South Wales associate professor of industrial automation and engineering, Jay Katupitiya, told Xinhua on Monday.
So if thousands of commercial drivers find themselves without a job in the coming months and years, thanks the likes of Tesla, Apple and Google, who are "streamlining" even more costs, and creating massive "synergies" for shareholders.
Global automotive manufacturers have recently created a new battleground in the technology market against the likes of Google and Apple, snapping up software experts in the race to develop a self-driving car for the consumer market.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, on the sidelines of the Frankfurt Auto Show in September, said he expected driverless cars to be widespread operation throughout the world within 10 years.
High-end electric automotive manufacturer Tesla has taken the realization of that expectation a step further by releasing a software upgrade for the Model S four-door saloon's autopilot system, to be released in European and Asian markets this week. The upgrade allows its cars to automatically change lanes by the touch of the indicator, managing speed and even hit the breaks.
There are two clear outcomes of this technological innovation, one which we previewed back in 2012 with "I, Not Robot: Why The Rise Of SkyNet Leads To Automatic Unemployment For The People."
- The first is that the commodity mining space is about to see an unprecedented wave of layoffs, crushing the personal income of millions of households and leading to yet another surge in unemployment.
- The second, is that the deflationary wave in the commodity sector is not only here to stay, but is about to get even worse as several layers in overhead costs are about to be eliminated, in the process lowering the breaking extraction costs for all commodity classes substantially lower.
The bottom line is that any company that does not follow in Rio Tinto's footsteps is doomed to a slow, miserable, cash-burning death, even if it means another major deflationary wave is about to be unleashed across the commodity sector, and "forcing" central banks around the globe to engage in far more easing in the years ahead as one after another central-planner desperately looks for the source of global deflation when it is right there, in front of their eyes.
»
- 19685 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
I believe I am in the last generation that actually works for a living.
I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.
They've got computer programs that write symphonies and pick hit songs and other things too.
There has to be a mass die-off of the outsiders. They consume resources yet aren't necessary for the neo-techno economy. Ray Kurzweil talks about this all the time, with his Singularity concept. How we'll have nanobots put in our brains by injection in the bloodstream, and all sorts of miraculous changes will take place, turning us into god-like beings. Can't have everybody be god...
So there you have it, the evolution of mankind into a power-crazed collection of psychopath. I guess they'll be looking for the spice on arakis...
Technological unemployeement is coming for 90% of the population.
Same for the Cotton and Wheat farmers. Gps and way points on a fixed plot of ground and your done. Even the offload trucks can be done this way in the paddock.
Is anyone working on a Wall-E robot?
"I, Not Robot: Why The Rise Of SkyNet Leads To Automatic Unemployment For The People"
A corollary of the broken window fallacy. When has an increase in productivity lead to unemployment?
Good thing we're not 100 years ago, with such ideas we would be trying to save the horse carriage industry.
As an Aussie I'm surprised that you had to go via China to find this out. Every man in the pub knows that the mines are all go autonomous. Driving a truck used to be the most lucrative job an unskilled worker could get. Not being able to get it any more is the talking point of every regional town.
Fortunately I'm trained in the technological skills required to perform maintenance on them. And I'm retraining (since being a maintenance technicion, while paying well, is boring as shit) to teach the engineers, coders and mathematicians who will power us forward into the future.
...but, we'll all be chilling by our pools with our T-1000 'Megan Fox Mod' pleasurebots! j/k, of course...
Those of us on the right side of history.
I want a t-1500 Jen Psaky wild bitch edition. im gonna have her sucking all day long.
:P
SuperRay
So who will the consumers be, if "There has to be a mass die-off of the outsiders" ?
Dats rayciss!
When machines took over the labor we became fat. When they take over our thinking there will be no need for that anymore and we become stupid. The trend is clear. Utopia is a fat, lazy, stupid future where nobody has to do anything except play video games and take a lot of psychotropics to deal with purposelessness in life. The bright side is such a future will likely be peaceful. Fat lazy stupid fuckers who dont have to work are unlikely to go to war, nor be capable of it.
I think someone made a documentary about such a future a while back.
Go away.....batin'.
https://youtu.be/hetaBX00wtI
Truck drivers in Australia were being paid in excess of $200k per year to do the job. I'm pretty sure that was magnitudes above what a normal driver would earn in the US or UK. In my opinion makes sense at that cost to go to robots.
This form of capitalism is cannibalizing itself. Even Henry Ford understood that he needed workers at good wages to buy his cars.
Nah. Watch the flick, “Grapes of Wrath”.
The “Cats” would come and roll over the farmhouses. People still ate.
We'll all just live off our dividend checks.
Interest checks!
No, not at all. He understood that you needed to pay skilled workers high wages to stop them from jumping ship to another comapny or starting their own. If you are relying on your employees to buy your products with the money you pay them, then you are absolutely fucking doomed, and deserve it for not understanding math.
And this has nothing to do with cannibalization. That is your twisted ideology projecting itself. This is capitalism lowering the prices of things until they cost nothing (like it costs nothing to publish your comments on ZH, or retrieve the comments of others). Reduce costs until it isn't worth it to collect money for your products, and make money (and effectively subsidize your other business) by selling premium content to a few.
This is simply a step towards post scarcity. This is "unambiguously good", in the long term.
tmos - you forgot the sarc tag on that last sentence. Pretty sure they forgot to factor in realistic long term energy prospects/costs.
Post-scarcity will give way to actual scarcity within our lifetimes. Money does not create energy, and automating processes like this only speeds up the real scarcity train of energy and ores for us all.
it does cost to post and read here.. you pay electric right? internet? the device you are using?
all free?
Henry Ford $5 wage myth.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/04/the-story-of-henry-fords-5-a-day-wages-its-not-what-you-think/
Part of the reason we have large population is because of the industrialist-made urban environment where cities are the reproduction and training centers for future factory workers. In an industrial capitalist world people are encouraged to "print eachother" much like bankers print fiat. With seemingly abundant resources, the more the merrier. Right?
An industrialist with the most productive units wins against the other industrialists either though pressure on wages, or by sending the excess meat to fight other industrialists, ruining factories and destroying their distribution systems.
People and their wages are only concern to the point where they make the company more or less competitive against other companies.
If more workers help the property owner get there - he'll have more. With robots doing work, having more people only means having more mouths to feed. More is now less.
With machines being excessively productive, population can deflate all by itself, pressured by reduction in the standard of living, but I have a feeling that our owners - industrialists, bankers and their mouthpiece politicians don't have the patience and are afraid of some of us choosing not to put up with such turn of events, so they'll hasten the transition. They'll create wars, exterminating the last set of brains and muscles that could pose danger to their never-changing exploitation regime.
The owners - the same ones are still in charge and will be there till the very end. Few private underground bunkers stuffed with the best products machine workers can manufacture, keeping their obese and paranoid masters safe while their computers are busy calculating whether to spend the next megawatt of electricity growing food or sending an army of self-piloting drones to bomb someone else's bunker.
So the last guy with a job in robot world is the one who....
builds the robots that builds the robots that...........
Didn't youse guys see Elysium?
We'll just hire a bunch of latino's squatting it out in Mexifornia to build the robots.
While the privileged few get to live on the Death Star and attend gala parties with Darth Sidious and Darth Vadar.
Throws the breaker?
...and to think Truck drivers were making the equivalent of $200K+ U.S. in W Australia a few years ago.
It's only a matter of a few years before the most common job in the US, Truck Driver, becomes a very rare occupation.
Robot factories manufacture goods that are robotically palletized and robotically loaded into driverless container trucks. The trucks drop off the containers robotically into the shipping yard queue.
Robotically the containers are > loaded onto ships; driverless ships guided by GPS to the next destination where the robots unload and Amazon delivers directly to the consumer by drone.
So who will be the future consumer the robot techies?
Assuming an endless supply of energy to run this delusion ... That's what makes it a delusion.
Exactly. This automation only speeds up the end of BAU.
I'm not saying that the assholes that are running things plan very far ahead... Only to the next quarter or two, it seems.
Like the people working on creating killer-bots for .mil not thinking about the very possible likelihood that their work will contribute to the slaughter of their own descendants...
Iron ore goes to a smelter. The billets are rolled into rod. The drawn rod is transported continuously to a nearby nail factory. Automated circuits draw the wire to the right gauge, sending it to nail-making machines. The nails are automatically packed into boxes, then automatically packed into pallets. The pallets are automatically packed into trucks.
The above process is reality and actually has been pretty much this way for the past decade.
Without someone to drive the nail, the above is a pointless and expensive exercise in futility, not to mention robots don't buy houses.
but ,but, but, who will fill the nail guns?
and it only gets better....
"Retiree Bill Hendershot stands to lose $2,104 a month if his pension fund gets its way. The Central States Pension Fund is pursuing a plan that would slash pension checks in half for some former union truck drivers. The fund is on the brink of insolvency and says it needs to cut benefits for 273,000 current and future retirees in order to stay afloat.
Hendershot was told earlier this month that he should brace for a 60% cut as early as July, pending approval from the Treasury Department. If that happens, his remaining check will be $1,396."This is going to be rough. It's quite likely that I'll have to try to find some work. But who's going to hire a 74-year-old?" he said.Hendershot retired after working 35 years as a truck driver. He and his wife live on his pension and their Social Security benefits. The sharp reduction in his payment from the Central States fund would wipe out more than one-third of the total monthly income they have now.
Before last year, current retirees would have been protected from these cuts. But a controversial law passed last December allows multi-employer pension funds to reduce benefits if they are projected to run out of money. A lot of these funds -- which cover more than 10 million workers -- are in financial trouble.
Related: 273,000 union workers face pension cuts
The Central States Pension Fund covers workers and retirees from more than 1,500 companies across a range of industries including trucking, construction and even Disneyland workers. Truck drivers once made up a majority of participants, and are now a majority of those facing cuts. A lot of their companies went bankrupt after the industry was deregulated in the 1980s, which is a big reason why the fund is in trouble now. It has five retirees for every active worker."
http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/15/retirement/central-states-pension-fund-c...
The madness is receding.
http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-house-price-bubble-is-deflating-and...
Pension funds running out of money but there isn't any mass inflation over the years... nah none... heathcare bankrupted pensions yet that doesn't count when talking about inflation
Only on closed circuits like a mine.
True, but the "closed circuits" will expand. All long distance routes will become robotic with human drivers at the end.
In France, already many McD's fast food restaurants have non-human order/check-out/pay stations. They'll be here soon.
LOL Mcdonalds is toast, Walmart too, Inflation is a business killer that no one, not even the government can escape, Central bankers ultimately become a victim of their own devise.
I see a great opportunity on the horizon to operate a lucrative hijacking business......
I believe the land pirates that you speak of reside in places like Manhattan, D.C., and London to name a few.
I see a great opportunity on the horizon to create the T-1000 'Pesci Mod.'
Truck Driver: [Henry and Tommy just boosted a rig] Hey, you got a phone? Two niggers just stole my truck. You believe that shit, huh? You fuckin' believe that?
so im sure this will cut the cost of bringing Silver out of the ground to $0 from $5....right....?
and it will still be one of the only 2 forms of real money...i aint scared.
soylent green
Good luck.
Old story, this broke in Canada in the summer when they said they would do this in the tar sands. All kinds of interviews with the overpaid drivers crying about safety, the trucks would not be able to adjust for alternating muck and frost, yada, yada yada...
But, of course we must import millions and millions of illiterate 3rd worlders to do the jobs the robots won't do.
Pretty soon the only people left to buy anything will be robots! Whoops, robots don't get paid. I think we can see where this is going.
Oh no you don't, Bender don't work for free, so kiss my splintery, wooden @ss!
I am reminded of the Luddites who feared the spinning wheel. Yet this feels different. To me it appears the future of low skilled workers is to be servants of high skilled workers or to live off SSD or SSI. If you not only replace the spinning wheel but you replace every other low skill job by robotics (yes trucking and most jobs are low skill) then where does that leave us?
What is different is that in the day of the Luddites, the new machines were used to make more goods than before which could be sold at a lower price than before thereby creating a greatly expanded market. But nowadays we have hit (or soon will hit) the limits of a finite system. You cannot have a quantum leap forward in market size and demand because the world is finite and already overpopulated.
Nowadays the world will not use five times as much copper if the price is cut in half. Five hundred years ago it very well might have.
Henry, by god, you're right - the world will NOT use 5 times as much copper, even if the price is cut to zero! Unfortunately, there is not 5 times as much copper to be had nowadays (no matter the price).
Do those who are unskilled in coding serve those who are highly skilled in such on the internet?
No?
Then fuck off.
Huh? Executives fuck over coders like sheep in heat.. and they can barely read their email... where you been?
The time is coming when SSD/SSI will be available only on condition that the recipient is Spayed/Neutered!
$200,000 milking robots replacing $12 / hour immigrant labor at a dairy I know of. The second machine age is here. A lot of farm equipment already has the GPS enabled driverless capability. They are working on replacing immigrant straw berry pIckers, McDonald's cashiers, bank tellers, taxi drivers, miners etc. One of the reasons for the open border is if they don't get them in now the rotten economy and deflationary wage pressures will make it politically impossible to get them in at a later time. Hence the appeal of trump. I'm sure WWIII can make good use of all of the useless eaters and unemployables.
People simply are too stupid to recognize change. Take the venerable green bean, for instance.
Just three or four years ago green beans changed.
At the grocery store, place your hand into the pile of green beans. They'll be very, very cold.
They are now shipped at half a degree below freezing, and more often than not once you have them home, they will wilt. Use them that day or they will rot.
Why? simple, they are now mostly picked by machine via flails, rubber fingers. Look closely at a day old GB, it'll be speckled, that's where the flail injured them. If they are not shipped near freezing they will scar and develop brown spots within 24 hours.
I think we will see a move back to small farms soon, Those that continue to buy poisoned modified or fake food will eventually die out, leaving only those who demand real sustainable locally grwon and picked food.
As simple as that sounds, a die-out may end up more as die-offs, which are chaotic events. Many will not go so gentle into that good night.
Note that GPS driven wheat combines are a thing also. Also automated chicken-pickers (that pick up the chickens and stuff them into the cages needed for them to go to the slaughterhouse).
One benefit they don't mention - the robot-driven trucks can be driven in a way to minimize braking, and wear and tear on the tires, which are very expensive to replace. Less replaced tires = more time for the truck to be working and less maintenance workers and replacement tires.
John Deere cant' get those high dollar machines off the sales floor anymore, they take up to much of the ever tightening profits from years of unsustainable farming and unreported inflation. Like the Uni rail before it, it looks good on paper, but have no chance in the real world environment. Robots/computers will not buy new robots once the old ones are paid off/off lease, think about it. All GPS farming does is confirm that current practices are unsustainable, and that we reached peak productivity years ago. Something I'll tell you for free.
So my completely off the wall idea for a robotic lobster shell shucker may have some merit after all...
nah - we'll just 3D print lobsters without shells
Auto jacs have been around for decades
This is a big reason why they should stop immigration ASAP especially for low skill workers. Maybe Japan doesnt look so bad now as compared to 10-20 yrs ago.
thats because the japs are racistss - need to boat in some mexicans into Osaka asap
I have a slam-dunk success idea that will one day be a reality, though I've never heard anyone say it. Will greatly improve quality of a commonly consumed product. Now everything comes as the result of manual labor there will one day be robots manufacturing it far better. Potential to put millions of people out of work. Wish I had time and a financial backer to design the key component, the brains if you will.
So what will the population do? How are they going to afford to pay for stuff? Where is the money going to come from? Where are the products going to go to? If everyone is replaced by robots, then there are no need for the goods afterwards. No one will be working, and no need for the products altogether, cause no one will be buying since they cannot afford anything as due to no jobs.
Kind of an issue, no?
They will continue to produce and consume outside of the system with some lag, until they finally figure out that economics are not about governments, bankers, or even balance sheets, economics are/have always been about people, and their ability to prosper.
The matrix will still need batteries...
the world is not providing enough jobs for workers. and these robots are taking away good jobs. the people who are unemployed are literally left out in the cold.
I used to be highly skeptical about criticisms of the "economics of robots". robots do improve efficiency and they can cut costs. But the HUMAN COST of lost jobs is spiralling upwards, and there is something very wrong with how capitalism is operating here. And it's true across a broad variety of cultures and nations.
It's not Capitalism when the entire financial system is based on a wealth redistribution upwards through inflation and debt re-inforced by cronyism and state protected monopolies. the only purpose capitalism serves is as a scapegoat for socialisms failures as the socialist shriek for more socialism to counter Capitalisms percieved failures.
Primal - "the world is not providing enough jobs for workers." I'll not bear that cross, thanks though.
There is plenty of productive work for all in the world if we choose to live by a hierarchy of needs - food, water, shelter, clothing and heat can all be had for zero $$ cost, just ask any native. A large share of the world lives less like us on our computers and more like natives already anyway. Our "Western" societies might feel the pinch of unemployment, but many will (re) learn the skills of their ancestors to get by - - or they will die.
The human cost of a separation from nature and stark reality, combined with a reliance on $$, is far more destructive than any automaton.
on what land?? you mean in District 9 type slum chambers?
Any land you choose to settle and defend. Won't be a big plot for too many, but enough to feed, shelter and heat a family (or extended family) is not all that much. Lots of labor to be had as well (clearing, tending food/animals/copper kettle).
Don't underestimate what is heading this way - none will have the "umph" to kick you out should you choose to stay grounded and play defense soon enough.
Come with me if you want to live.
We just need to find a way to make machines eat donuts.
Dude, China OWNS that piece down under companies.
http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1879866,00.html
So, they can put "HONGKONG POEY" for all i care..
Build a fence to keep robots in their own country
the fucking workers comp lawyers and multi hundreds of thousands of dollars have helped to speed along this process toward no more loading dock lifting injuries. I unloaded semi trailers full of west coast produce hauled to Grand Rapids when i was a 19 year old lad in junior college. Midnight to noon five days a week. Not an ounce of fat on me either. Nothing on those trailers was palletized so two men in the truck and one on a fork lift. We could unload a 40 foot trailer of bananas in an hour and 20 one box at a time.
If a robot did that job would I have paid my way through Junior College? I can't answer that. I did however get my two small toes flattened when a too high fork lift driver hit the wrong button and dropped a double skid of cases of potatoes across my left foot. Popped my baby toe like a grape and filled my work boot with blood. The cocksuckers made me drive myself to the emergency room. That is a whole nother story. With the lawyers today I would have owned that produce terminal. As it turned out I had 3 weeks left to go back to school and when i went back to work a week later they said they had replaced me.
Everything in business ,, production, manufacturing, harvesting, delivery,, is inter related. Be careful what you wish for. That is all.
An employee is the most dangerous entity in any business.
I've hired plenty of workers for easy jobs and excellent environment while paying liveable wages. I made the mistake to think this would get my business steady, helpful, happy employees who would want to grow with the company and prosper.
Reality is a different story.
The majority of employees didn't work out very well. Common problems included theft of products costing many thousands of dollars, not showing up on time and leaving us in the lurch with hundreds of customers at the door. If an employee doesn't really care or is having a bad day he can cost you tens of thousands of dollars by simply making costly picking/packing/shipping mistakes - what does he care, he still gets his paycheck and goes home at night worry free.
There was always the big risk of an employee suing me for whatever reason, hoping to hit the lottery by destroying the company. There was no way I was going to hire a woman, who can claim some sort of sexual or descrimination crap in order to get her million dollar payday.
Try getting rid of a bad employee. There are so many labor laws the bad apple could hit the jackpot and make alot of money, maybe even get you in jail.
Robots? Hell, knowing what I know now I would use them! In fact, I'd also get me one of those Cherry 2000's who cooks, cleans, and services me whenever I need with no threat of lawsuits.
So don't blame the employers for going full-robot.
you got it White Mountains. The most valauble asset of any company is its people. Period. I have spent my first 20 some years in management at many levels of the hospitality/chef business. I would take a good crew of employees over all brand new equipement any day of the year. Attitude isnt the only thing it is everything. One in a crew of 40 can drag down the whole ship.
I have spent the last 20 plus years in sales/sales management. Same thing. Training sales people you have to elminate the whiners right out of the gate or you will have hell to pay. I once trained at a company, very briefly, who had hidden microphones in all their training rooms and even out in the parking lot. They trained sales people on an on going basis cause they were classice big city gypsy go get the money thinkers. I don't think secretly recording employees or trainees is even legal but if you do anything for 20 plus years you do see it all.
Having said all that, machines cannot do everything a human can and never will. We have logic. We have innate decision making capabilities. I once had a prep cook brand new on the job who ground up three 20 lb wheels of cheddar cheese, plastic wrap and end staples on plastic wrap included. I threw out 60 lbs of 2 dollar plus per lb cheese. As an owner/manager you can never assume everything. Can robots grind cheese? I dont know. Can robots sell home imporovements at someones kitchen table after measuring and doing an estimate of scope of work? I dont know. Can a robot tear off and replace a roof? I don't know. I somehow dont think we will ever replace everyone.
Robots, A.I. and automation will lead to an unemployment crisis much like what happened in the 1930’s Depression.
Before the Depression, 85% of the population was involved in some way in agriculture. After the depression, 15% of the population was involved in Agriculture.
The development of the gasoline powered tractor/combine revolutionized the economy and social structure. The radically increased productivity of farms coupled with radical decrease in demand for horse feed (most food grown was used to feed horses which plowed fields) resulted in the deflation of the cost of food (which by itself is a good thing) and massive unemployment.
The problem is not robots, or office automation software (which I myself have done a great deal of). The problem is: Who owns the robots?
When I was first hired, I was paid a salary of $42K/yr to do Specials with Autocad. I wrote a program that used another program (SolidWorks) to essentially automate that work. It did better work, dozens of times faster.
Since then, I wrote other programs and took over the responsibilities of 2 other engineers that were making more than me when I started.
If I owned the software (robots) that I wrote, and got paid for the goods that I produce, I could be retired right now and the company/customers would still be better off.
But that isn’t the way it works is it?
Oh the corporations scream about intellectual property all day long while requiring you the peasant to sign away rights to any software or ideas you come up with while working for them. They do this as a condition of employment. It is extortion by any other name.
Robots and automation should be making us all stinking rich and better off. Instead, a small number of people are keeping all the gains for themselves and using robots against peasants in order to severely underpay people what their labor is worth. They say: “We pay what the market will bear”. But the market is not free. It is like living in a “Company town” the size of the entire country/world.
Wealth concentration is skyrocketing for the top 0.01% while everyone else is losing their job and going bankrupt. In a few years all the capital is going to be owned by the new royalty. All the farmable land, all the mines, all the buildings, all the real estate, all the vehicles, corporate stock, debt, robots, software, patents, copyrights, websites, servers, everything. And at what price will they be willing to sell this capital back to us peasants? They don’t need “money”. If you have a complete monopoly on something which allows you to extort money from people, you would not sell at any “fair” price. You would never sell at all. Let everyone else work as your slave while you’re sitting on a beach sipping Mai-Tai’s, earning 20 percent.
I don’t know how capital ownership can be redistributed, and I am not a communist who believes the world owes me something just because I am breathing. But the markets are not free and the revolution is coming.
Robots, A.I. and automation will lead to an unemployment crisis much like what happened in the 1930’s Depression.
Before the Depression, 85% of the population was involved in some way in agriculture. After the depression, 15% of the population was involved in Agriculture.
The development of the gasoline powered tractor/combine revolutionized the economy and social structure. The radically increased productivity of farms coupled with radical decrease in demand for horse feed (most food grown was used to feed horses which plowed fields) resulted in the deflation of the cost of food (which by itself is a good thing) and massive unemployment.
The problem is not robots, or office automation software (which I myself have done a great deal of). The problem is: Who owns the robots?
When I was first hired, I was paid a salary of $42K/yr to do Specials with Autocad. I wrote a program that used another program (SolidWorks) to essentially automate that work. It did better work, dozens of times faster.
Since then, I wrote other programs and took over the responsibilities of 2 other engineers that were making more than me when I started.
If I owned the software (robots) that I wrote, and got paid for the goods that I produce, I could be retired right now and the company/customers would still be better off.
But that isn’t the way it works is it?
Oh the corporations scream about intellectual property all day long while requiring you the peasant to sign away rights to any software or ideas you come up with while working for them. They do this as a condition of employment. It is extortion by any other name.
Robots and automation should be making us all stinking rich and better off. Instead, a small number of people are keeping all the gains for themselves and using robots against peasants in order to severely underpay people what their labor is worth. They say: “We pay what the market will bear”. But the market is not free. It is like living in a “Company town” the size of the entire country/world.
Wealth concentration is skyrocketing for the top 0.01% while everyone else is losing their job and going bankrupt. In a few years all the capital is going to be owned by the new royalty. All the farmable land, all the mines, all the buildings, all the real estate, all the vehicles, corporate stock, debt, robots, software, patents, copyrights, websites, servers, everything. And at what price will they be willing to sell this capital back to us peasants? They don’t need “money”. If you have a complete monopoly on something which allows you to extort money from people, you would not sell at any “fair” price. You would never sell at all. Let everyone else work as your slave while you’re sitting on a beach sipping Mai-Tai’s, earning 20 percent.
I don’t know how capital ownership can be redistributed, and I am not a communist who believes the world owes me something just because I am breathing. But the markets are not free and the revolution is coming.