Follow ZeroHedge in Real-Time on FinancialJuice [4]
Robot is a Czech word, meaning ‘forced labor’. It’s a bit like slavery, but when it’s a machine nobody gives a damn. As if the ruling minority didn’t have enough with the mass majority drudging to the factories day-in and day-out to add value to their portfolios, now is the time when technology has reached a point where robots are a viable thing of the present, or at least the future.
• The automation market is worth an estimated $100 billion and that is predicted to quadruple within the next seven years.
• By, 2020, it will be worth a staggering $400 billion.
• That means that it will be roughly the equivalent of the e-commerce sector.
• Who wouldn’t want a chunk of that?
• The growth rate in the world market for automated products in the manufacturing sector is set to rise from its present level of approximately 6.5% per year to more than 20% after 2015.
• It will then see a second stage in the development of the automation market, whereby, within the next seven years it will spread to the services sector as technology improves and prices fall.
Funding is also increasing from international organizations and for example the European Commission is literally pouring money into what it believes to be our future. The European Investment Fund for example announced in April 2014 that it was investing in “Robolution Capital”, which is the first fund that is intended to invest in turn in European companies that are involved in the robot sector. It managed to raise some 80 million euros to invest in the sector of activity getting money from institutions, as well as the private and industrial sector.
Robots today have seen a fall in their prices roughly equivalent to a quarter of their value half a decade ago.
Construction
Just at the end of April, a Chinese construction company managed to build ten houses in 24 hours by using a giant 3D-printer. That’s a house every 2.4 hours, mainly from recycled material and costing under $5, 000. Now, we shall probably see the market flooded with cheap, low-quality housing, but at least it won’t cost as much as it does now. Perhaps, if the bubble continues, then those super-fast houses will be printed quicker than the money that rolls off the printing presses of Quantitative Easing.
• The printer that was used measures 6.6 m (22 ft) tall, 10 m (33 ft) wide and 32 m (105 ft) long.
• Little labor is needed to assemble the panel blocks that are printed.
• Whether skyscrapers can be built is another matter.
But, how long will they last.
Health
Robots are not just there for building though.
They are extensively used today in the medical field. That may mean that one of the few winners ofObamacare may actually be robot manufacturers. It’s not just about building robot vacuum cleaners that do the cleaning why you are at the gym, but it’s Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant (RP-VITA), or a tablet that controlled remotely in order to allow doctors that are not in the presence of the patient to give a consultation. Or there is the robot that enters a hospital room and zaps the germs and the bacteria with an ultra-violet light (Xenex), just so long as there are no people in the room at the time.
Robots: Good?
The only trouble is: you can’t help thinking that the invention and development of automated technology and robots is perhaps thought to be a way of alleviate the daily tasks that we do. Robots, however, will not replace man. They might put a few out of work, those at the very lowest echelons of society. But, the masses that are sandwiched in the middle of the ruling 1%-ers and those on the bottom rungs of life will still have to continue working. It wouldn’t do to put the mass out of work too much. Keep the majority of the mass of society just ticking over with a minimum subsistence and they will be too afraid to revolt for fear of losing what little they have.
Take everything away from them and they will start the revolution rather than hold a dinner party. The masses will just be working alongside the robots, to the benefit of the wealth, the ultra-high-net-worth people at the top and to the detriment of the poor. It’s the poor that will be out on the streets. But, that’s ok, how many people actually see a homeless person on the streets. I mean, they are there, but they are transparent, aren’t they?
Originally posted: Automation-Market Boom [5]