Quote: (03-09-2019 05:27 PM)BeardedMastodon Wrote:
I believe the automation is a scare.
Mining for example... a mine that might employ 2000 people will use 50 heavy mining trucks that will become automated. Dozers, graders and other equipment that need more skill will not be, you need to feel the equipment. No way around that in the near future.
Since automation is cheaper, it allows projects to become economical that were not before... so we will have all of those technical jobs now.
Mechanics cannot be replaced, railroad workers cannot be replaced, some underground miners, etc. and with all of the automation we will need more mechanics to work on the automation robots when they break and more IT techs....
Mechanics can't get replaced at least not directly, but the things they work on can get less maintenance intensive. And railroads? When was the last time you saw a caboose on a train? They were automated out of existence decades ago, as were their occupants. Automation is very real:
BUT Yang made a ton of early and eager assumptions in his interview. Self driving trucks seem inevitable, but remember we were once promised flying cars too. Since it won't do a trucker any good to get out of the business until the jobs actually start disappearing, Yang should use another example to promote a UBI scheme. Checks can be cut just as quickly easily once jobs are gone, the pitchforks come out and torches start to get lit.
As Black Knight pointed out, he doesn't win me over on immigration and tried to make it sound like Trump won because manufacturing jobs were taken over by technology. The reality is Trump won because wages are being driven down in manufacturing and many other places by cheap labor at all levels as a result of immigration, both legal and otherwise.
I am very skeptical that any candidate will act cut off the supply of cheap labor for donors (RNC) or more dependent voters (DNC). Trump is acting like he has no power here, which is a slap in the face. We still have anchor babies, chain migration and all manner of sneaks into the system via an alphabet soup of visas. I didn't support Trump because I'm scared of a toaster taking my job - he needs to get off his ass.
As for going after big tech, Elizabeth Warren must have got a phone call from Silicon Valley because she quickly backed away from a brief anti-tech stance just recently. Similarly, Yang can't get anywhere without the support of globohomos in Silicon Valley, which goes hand in glove with cheap tech labor (H1B visas). No wonder he's avoiding the subject of cheap labor and trying to blame it all on ill-defined threats of automation.