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from the employees-will-now-lead-lives-of-leisure dept.
Foxconn, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple's iPhones and other electronic devices, aims to replace human workers with "FoxBots" and achieve nearly full automation of entire factories:
The slow and steady march of manufacturing automation has been in place at Foxconn for years. The company said last year that it had set a benchmark of 30 percent automation at its Chinese factories by 2020. The company can now produce around 10,000 Foxbots a year, Jia-peng says, all of which can be used to replace human labor. In March, Foxconn said it had automated away 60,000 jobs at one of its factories.
[...] Complicating the matter is the Chinese government, which has incentivized human employment in the country. In areas like Chengdu, Shenzhen, and Zhengzhou, local governments have doled out billions of dollars in bonuses, energy contracts, and public infrastructure to Foxconn to allow the company to expand. As of last year, Foxconn employed as many as 1.2 million people, making it one of the largest employers in the world. More than 1 million of those workers reside in China, often at elaborate, city-like campuses that house and feed employees.
In an in-depth report published yesterday, The New York Times detailed these government incentivizes for Foxconn's Zhengzhou factory, its largest and most capable plant that produces 500,000 iPhones a day and is known locally as "iPhone City." According to Foxconn's Jia-peng, the Zhengzhou factory has some production lines already at the second automation phase and on track to become fully automated in a few years' time. So it may not be long before one of China's largest employers will be forced to grapple with its automation ambitions and the benefits it receives to transform rural parts of the country into industrial powerhouses.
To undermine American manufacturing, ditch the meatbags.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 03 2017, @02:34AM
How many jobs are created by automating away 60,000 jobs? Maybe 1000 if we're generous? Sure, nothing to worry about, 1.7% of those people can still have jobs.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday January 03 2017, @06:21AM
How many jobs are created by automating away 60,000 jobs?
Those 60,000 jobs aren't being automated away by magic. The automation technology just made a bunch of jobs viable which weren't before. It is common for such situations to create more jobs than they automate away because a bunch of activities just became viable to do. I'll also note that Foxconn continues to increase its number of employees (over 1.3 million as of 2015, according to Wikipedia) despite this extensive automation.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday January 03 2017, @09:20PM
The automation makes some more jobs viable by reducing the value of human labor. So instead of making x iphones with y people, you can make x iphones with y/z people, or x*a iphones with y/z*a people. Actually automated factories don't quite scale that way, doubling your staff can quadruple your output. However, since there is a limit to the demand for iphones, as you increase output the sale price goes down. You can't just keep increasing your output to employ the same number of people; you have to balance the equation for maximum profit. Often this means producing more product but with a smaller number of employees. Also since there are fewer jobs to go around there is more competition for those jobs and the wage can be reduced.
It is common for such situations to create more jobs than they automate away because a bunch of activities just became viable to do.
Citation?
This shows the opposite:
http://recalcitrantegg.blogspot.com/2012/02/manufacturing-production-vs-employment.html [blogspot.com]
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 04 2017, @12:13AM
The automation makes some more jobs viable by reducing the value of human labor.
Automation never makes human labor less valuable.
However, since there is a limit to the demand for iphones, as you increase output the sale price goes down.
Even Foxconn does other things than just make iPhones.
Also since there are fewer jobs to go around there is more competition for those jobs and the wage can be reduced.
You do realize that hasn't happened yet? Globally, wages [voxeu.org] have been on the rise. I'll note that there's reason to expect humans to work for gain far in the future. First, we have comparative advantage and Jevons paradox from economics. Second, people don't stop working and trading just because they're ostracized from the general economy. There's a fair number of examples of businesses and such which operate outside the normal economy. Some of these employ large numbers of disfranchised people (such as urban gangs).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @06:30AM
If it's mainly cost savings then logically the workers would on average be worse off.
There's a limit to how much productivity can increase in "real" goods[1] due to resource limits on this planet. If you cut jobs from 60,000 to 1,000 and productivity doesn't increase 60x then those 59,000 are going to be worse off too - the created wealth wouldn't be enough to cover them. And that's even assuming the bulk of the extra wealth goes to them and doesn't mainly go to the 0.1% who own the capital.
[1] Virtual goods are a different matter however how many virtual goods would people be able to afford to buy? Wonder if it would help if we have a split currency/token system- one for the Real Bread and another for the Virtual Circuses.