The article that Sally referred us to ("Skilled Work, Without the
Worker", John Markoff, NYT, 19 August 12) was eloquent on job
destruction but only hinted at another, equally significant
by-product of the increasing use of robotics. This is that robots are
becoming increasingly versatile. If suitably programmed, they can be
instantly switched from one job to another. (Mention was made of one
robot which could switch between four distinctly different
operations.) Items can be custom-made. The mass consumer goods and
services market will also be destroyed in due course.
Which, from the point of view of the very rich and the supportive
specialisms around them (what I call the 20-class), is just as well.
Mass production of standard goods and services is becoming
increasingly risky. Competition between ever-larger corporations in
every field is not only becoming fiercer, profit margins (the future
source of investment finance) are becoming narrower. The Apple
iPhone4S might well have a profit margin of 50% or so at the present
time but, within five years or so, we can be certain that competition
from Samsung, Matsushita, Google and others will drive it well below
10%, perhaps nearer to the 1-2% profit margins of most personal
computer manufacturers. Given an innovative tweak by another
manufacturer to its own smartphone and Apple could easily go out of
existence, much as threatens Nokia at the present time.
Being a more mature industry, what's happening to cars at the present
time is an even more instructive pointer to the future. On the one
hand, we have the mass production of cars by no more than about a
dozen large manufacturers in the world with, at best, only modest
profit margins of around 5-7%, more usually 2-3%, and sometimes 0%
(being kept alive by government subsidies). On the other hand, we
have the recent burgeoning of many luxury types of cars (for the
20-class) which are either brand new in design (e.g. Tesla, McLaren)
or are revivals of some of the hand-made brands of the past (e.g.
Porsche, Aston Martin). They are made in surgically clean workshops
with robots dancing up and down the line and with hardly a worker to
be seen. There are more than 20 luxury car-makers already and
undoubtedly there'll be many more. But they won't be competing on
price, only on customers' personal tastes. Later, they'll be
competing on the basis of how versatile their robots can be
programmed, even down to making customers' own designs as well as
their own brand.
One question will be raised immediately: "If robots are to take over,
and there's to be no future for mass production then there'll be no
future for jobs for most of the population." Exactly! But most of the
populations of advanced countries are declining anyway. For the past
two generations, ever since the post-WWII baby-bulge, families have
decreased to much less than replacement sizes. Within two generations
from now, populations will be halved; within three generations,
populations will be less than a quarter; within four generations
there'll only be remnants. But, with any luck, the bulk of the
population (what I term the 80-class) will decline pari passu with
the onslaught of the robot. Mismatches along the way will have to be
made up with welfare payments from governments.
The other questions will be: "If there's no labour (80-class) for the
20-class to exploit where will profits (for future investment) come
from? How will an economy exist at all?" The answer is that economic
development has never come from labour as such. Slave labour never
gave way to paid labour solely because of the sentiments of William
Wilberforce or the Quakers, but because the energy of paid labour was
more efficient than slave labour. Paid labour is giving way to
robotics because the energy of robots is more efficiently expended
than the muscular (or mental) energy of the routine jobs of humans.
The future economy of a 20-class is perfectly viable so long as
efficiency savings are made between one generation of robots and the next.
Keith
Keith Hudson, Saltford, England http://allisstatus.wordpress.com
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