"Toyota to staff factories with robots"

[idlisambar]

Toyota Motor will introduce robots which can work as well or better than humans at all 12 of its factories in Japan to cut costs and deal with a looming labour shortage as the country ages, a report said on Thursday.

The robots would be able to carry out multiple tasks simultaneously with their two arms, achieving efficiency unseen in human workers and matching the cheap wages of Chinese labourers, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun said.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Toyota-to-staff-factories-with-robots/2005/01/09/1105205971469.html?oneclick=true

[Birthmark]

1. And so it begins...

[Speck Tater]

2. When will they realize

that robots don't buy the cars they make. When everybody is out of work there are no consumers left to keep the engine of the economy going and civilization fall down go boom.

[Massacure]

4. When robots do everything, good will be free.

Mining robots don't demand money for mining, manufacturing robots dont demand money for making new robots and other goods, and cleaning robots dont demand money for cleaning.

Good or bad, there would be no such thing as wealth.

[idlisambar]

5. Wait a second

Your argument is that these robots will replace human workers, and that those workers who lost their jobs will no longer be able to consume. This would be a fair criticism but does not give the complete picture of the situation. First to the extent that cars can now be made more cheaply -- Toyota's customers, investors, and remaining workers will all be better off because each will get a certain share of the savings from the cost reductions. Second, taking into account the Japanese employment system, my guess is that there won't actually be any layoffs as a result of this move, which basically means everyone will be better off because all workers will remain.

[B0S0X87]

6. There's an interesting anecdote I once heard

that goes like this:

A man was walking through the countryside, when he saw a group of men digging a ditch with shovels. The man went up to the foreman of the project and asked him, "Why do you make these men use shovels, when you could use bulldozers?" The foreman replied, "This way we can hire more people for longer amounts of time." The man replied, "Well, then, why not just give them gardening spades?"

Yes, it's hyperbolic, but it makes a good point.

[FormerDittoHead]

7. My thoughts along these lines... - I'M ALL FOR ROBOTICS

I don't want our society to return to a the days of factory work. First, it is impossible for us to compete internationally, which is inevitable, and second (IMO, the most important factor) it doesn't move us FORWARD.

The American tradition is to invent, innovate, create, IMPROVE. I see no reason why that trend should end NOW.

Cars put blacksmiths out of businesses, I don't see anyone today crying about their plight.

If robots allow a company to produce goods at a lower expense than sending the work over to China, then why the hell should we fight THAT?

I don't want to compete with China and Indonesia to see how LITTLE we can pay workers.

One of our great strengths is our ability to learn, train and retrain people. We should be LEADING the world in robotics, rather than fighting it. We should be making goods cheaper than THEY can make them, EXPORTING goods to them.

The concentration of capital is a problem, but robots wouldn't change that problem, nor would banning robots solve that problem.

We don't live in a "one choice only" world - we can BOTH have robotics AND start to make our economy more equatable.

Our workers EVOLVE - we should be MARKETING the goods, DESIGNING the goods that are manufactured, engineering, making and servicing the robots, etc. etc.

We're not doing ourselves any favors by hoping one day to do the work a robot can do BETTER...

Our unique strength is our diversity, creativity and our willingness to change for the sake of innovation. That doesn't happen elsewhere where traditions are respected so much and creativity is discouraged.

Unskilled labor will always exist, but there will always be jobs for them. The key is to pay them better, IMO, through a better living minimum wage (and yes, unions).

There will ALWAYS be jobs that will be NEEDED to be done by 1) people and 2) HERE. Those jobs, even menial ones, should be RESPECTED and those people paid to reflect the necessity of what their work represents.

Banning / discouraging robots, however, won't help us become a better society.

[TO Kid]

8. Yep, it's a matter of us moving on to the next challenge

There was a time when 90% of Canada's workforce was on farms or in the fur trade. The streets aren't exactly teeming with unemployed trappers and farm labourers. Similar thing happened with manufacturing and is now happening in IT. Less work in those fields, but we've barely scratched the surface in what IMHO will be the next two waves that transform the economy: Biotechnology and space exploration. Biotech is already making an impact on medicine and food production, and the space travel will become a growth area now that private operators are getting into the game.

[Maple]

3. Bingo!

Robots...or what I mentioned here some time ago when people were complaining about outsourcing, and trying to 'force' the jobs to stay in the US.

Got yelled at over it too. :D