Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

[don]

http://maxkeiser.com/

[Rajiv]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Truly excellent analysis. Both Keiser and Roberts are very good here!

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

it's all bullshit. the chinese are doing robot jobs. sure, we could trade war enough to get those jobs back here, but then automation will just take over, and voila, no more jobs.

the solution is to compete via automation against the chinese worker and to reduce the work week.

tax incentives to encourage automation would be a good idea.

[Rajiv]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

it's all bullshit. the chinese are doing robot jobs. sure, we could trade war enough to get those jobs back here, but then automation will just take over, and voila, no more jobs.

the solution is to compete via automation against the chinese worker and to reduce the work week.

tax incentives to encourage automation would be a good idea.

In your scenario, Let us assume total automation -- therefore no jobs required for producing goods. The supply chain has been totally automated, and energy supplies are not an issue. Total paradise? Who owns the factory and supply chain? How are jobless individuals going to purchase the goods? Let the Government create jobs you say? How is the Government going to fund those jobs? Taxation? Who does the Government tax?

Please answer these questions for me.

[World Traveler]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Good questions, Rajiv.

I'd also like to point out that Germany is a first world country, with a very strong, leading-edge, high-end, export-oriented industrial economy. They have managed to retain much of the manufacturing within German borders. AND Germany has provided its citizens (workers) with a very high standard of living.

Their example proves that a first world economy can retain its manufacturing sector. Despite the industrialization of Asia in the last 30 years, where the main advantage is cheap labor. How Germany they do it?

One of the answers is that in Germany, Worker Councils have retained a great deal of power. Worker representatives sit on the Corporate Board. So if a corporation decides to off-shore manufacturing, they cannot run rough shod over workers the way they do in the U.S. In a system where workers have more rights and more power, there is more incentive to invest at home, since off-shoring can get quite messy and expensive. Since Germany cannot compete with Asia in terms of labor costs, it has gone after the leading, high-end manufacturing processes and products.

I'm now 61 years old. I remember well the process which undermined unions and labor rights in the U.S., especially in the 1970's and 1980's. Unions were blamed for America's woes in business journals in the 1970's, when they still retained a little clout. After the 1980-1982 which severely weaked labor and unions, the government basically sold out labor, and corporations have had the upper hand ever since.

As the price of oil rises (Peak Cheap Oil), I think some manufacturing will start to return to the U.S. The big question is: What will those jobs pay? Corporations, oligarchs, and their political flunkies will propagandize about "jobs coming home to build a stronger America". AND they will use every trick in the book to pay the lowest wages possible to labor.

How does this all end?

I see 2 potential scenarios:

1. we stay on the path Roberts describes, becoming more and more like Latin America, even if some jobs come back, because they won't pay very much. After all, with NAFTA, corporate America can still threaten to move the jobs to just south of the Rio Grande, if American workers don't buckle under.

2. as the jobs come back to the U.s due to Peak Cheap Oil and American labor is treated shabbily as in #1 above, they get madder and madder and the elite propganda machine starts losing its efficacy, i.e. Americans start believing and trusting what they themselve see and feel. They get mad and start to fight back, first in the political arena, via Independent or third party candidates, then by organizing workingman associations. That is, we get a re-play of the late 1800', early 1900's. The nation's oligarachy will fight back tooth and nail, and progress will be slow, but it will happen. I believe this scenario would play out over a long period of time.

[sunskyfan]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

let's see ... teach computer to write novels ... then ... teach computer to read novels because no human being wants to read a novel a computer has written ... value added ... zero

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

In your scenario, Let us assume total automation -- therefore no jobs required for producing goods. The supply chain has been totally automated, and energy supplies are not an issue. Total paradise? Who owns the factory and supply chain? How are jobless individuals going to purchase the goods? Let the Government create jobs you say? How is the Government going to fund those jobs? Taxation? Who does the Government tax?

Please answer these questions for me.

Nobody will be jobless (well, some % has to be jobless otherwise inflation spikes).

Reduce the work week and share jobs that remain.

It's been happening since the beginning of time. We use to spend 16/7 running around foraging for food and not much else. Many people now work 40 hour weeks with vacations .. in Europe even more.

The key is to to automate automate automate so that everyone can get the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter) by just working 32 hours a week.

For those who want the richie rich lifestyle (beyond the necessities), they'll need to work more than 32 hours a week. Frankly why anyone would grind their life away just so they can brag about their nice car is beyond me, but hey .. each to their own I guess. I suppose if you had a fun research job, I could see it.

Anyways, Andy Grove / Paul Roberts are right we should not have offshored but are wrong to try to onshore now. Rather than bothering bringing those meaningless jobs home, we need to automate our factories and have the factories do the work.

In some ways, offshoring MIGHT have been the best thing, because now nobody will mind if a Robot takes over the jobs. In fact, that's probably why we had to offshore in the first place, because automating at home was just freaking everyone out.

It's interesting how World Traveler mentioned Germany which is doing EXACTLY what I'm talking about here. Check how long their Vacations are? Work sharing is precisely how they deal with recessions and unemployment.

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

The key is to to automate automate automate so that everyone can get the basic necessities (food, clothing, shelter) by just working 32 hours a week.

This technotopian belief fails because it is never worthwhile to invest $100,000 for a fruit picking machine. The maintenance, capital cost, and operational costs are far more than paying $6.80 to a human being.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

This technotopian belief fails because it is never worthwhile to invest $100,000 for a fruit picking machine. The maintenance, capital cost, and operational costs are far more than paying $6.80 to a human being.

Of course! How silly of me. The idea that we could better automate aspects of fruit picking in order to reduce the # of workers is sheer stupidy. We have reached the peak of fruit picking technology and civilization as we know it.

I'll be sure to inform the worlds engineers and scientists of the profound reality you have just shared with us all.

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Of course! How silly of me. The idea that we could better automate aspects of fruit picking in order to reduce the # of workers is sheer stupidy. We have reached the peak of fruit picking technology and civilization as we know it.

I'll be sure to inform the worlds engineers and scientists of the profound reality you have just shared with us all.

Are you an engineer? Do you understand the economics of automation?

There has been lots of work done on automation of fruit picking and so forth - but we are decades away from being able to create such machines.

We are likely never going to see a situation where the economics justifies creation of them - at least until we get to the mythical 'free energy' era or something equivalent (self assembling nanotech, Von Neumann machines, etc.)

There are plenty of areas where machines can do well, but picking and packing fruit ain't one of them.

One example of an economic assessment of a fruit picking machine:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/in...oser-fruitless

This is part of IEEE Spectrum's SPECIAL REPORT: WINNERS & LOSERS 2009, The Year's Best and Worst of Technology.
photo: IAM-BRAIN

Handle with CARE

This robot uses a vacuum arm to pick a ripe strawberry and gently nestle it into a padded container.



In California it’s hard to drive anywhere without spotting people bending down to pick strawberries—some 10 million pint baskets a day during peak season. Because such farming isn’t practical in labor-starved Japan, the government there is backing a more fundamental solution: robots.

Research began in 2003, with funding from the Institute of Agricultural Machinery Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution, or IAM-BRAIN. The first demonstration of a prototype came in 2005. Yet although the system may well qualify as a technical tour de force, it’s hard to see how it makes economic sense, particularly outside of Japan.

To understand why it is such a fascinating technical challenge, you need to know a bit about the berry business. Strawberries ripen only on the vine, and they do so in dribs and drabs. A robot therefore must patrol rows of plants day after day. When the robot comes across a candidate plant, its machine vision has to do more than just tell red from green, because a strawberry goes through many shades of red before it is fully ripe. Finally, the robot has to pluck and place the berry very carefully; a little too much pressure will bruise the strawberry, causing it to rot. In short, strawberries are not the low-hanging fruit for robotic harvesting technology.

”It’s not what I would have started with; you have to get so many things right,” says Joseph L. Jones, chief technology officer of Harvest Automation, a company in Groton, Mass., that develops robots for the agricultural market. ”It seems you could start with something simpler—a winter squash, perhaps.

”There are no large-scale uses of agricultural robots doing anything, because it’s really, really hard,” Jones continues. ”People working in agriculture use all our considerable talents to identify an object, our considerable manipulation skills to manipulate it, and we work under all conditions. Robots aren’t up to that, particularly in an unstructured environment outdoors.”

Sure, dumb mechanical harvesters have long ripped hard, unripened tomatoes off the vine to ripen and be sorted later on. And machine vision has gotten good enough to sort fruit passing on a conveyor belt. Robots being developed now will soon move potted plants around greenhouses. But such jobs are easier to do in these contexts than in a berry-growing greenhouse, let alone a planted field.

15: how many times this year’s California strawberry crop would wrap around the world, laid berry to berry

The original prototype looked like a version of the multimedia cart used in high schools: it had wheels on the bottom and several layers of open shelves, with a laptop computer on the top shelf and a tall arm towering above it, much like the arm of an overhead projector that rises above that media cart. The robot cruised planted rows, illuminating berries with four polarized lights and examining them with three color video-graphics-array cameras. While it conceivably could have gone out in a field, it was designed for the greenhouse environment; outdoors, dust could obscure the machine-vision lenses.

The current version is optimized even more for the indoor environment. It runs on rails built into a specially designed greenhouse; a single arm reaches down to suck the fruit against a tube capped by a soft sponge while a clipper snips the stem. The arm, still holding the fruit by suction, then reaches down and gently places the berry into its own hole on a spongy tray.

When cruising the aisles of the greenhouse, the robot picks, on average, one berry every 10 seconds. That’s nowhere near as fast as a human worker. On the other hand, the robot doesn’t take breaks.

The target cost of the hardware components for one robot—estimated at 7 million yen (about US $72 000 at press time)—equals the seasonal wages of three to four workers. That’s not bad—although that’s Japanese workers, of course; the money would pay for far more labor in California, where the price of an individual strawberry runs as low as a dime, one-fifth the average price in Japan.

But the real expense comes in deploying the robot. Farmers would have to rebuild every greenhouse—raising the beds high enough to let the strawberries hang down for easy picking and installing tracks for the robot. It won’t happen without government subsidies, says Kyoto University professor Naoshi Kondo, a machine-vision specialist who is working on the project under contract to SI Seiko. That’s too bad, because robots would offer advantages beyond a mere savings of labor. Above all, robots collect a lot of data.

Let's see: hardware costs alone run 15 to 20 times that of human labor. Tack on capital investment to rearchitect fields, maintenance of machines, extra margin for supply chain, etc etc.

The vacuum systems in particular will require a lot more care than a human agricultural worker.

[c1ue]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

More data points on agricultural robotics:

http://www.wlshougeji.com/_d268711549.htm

Because the U.S. government to adopt more stringent border control policy, some rely on foreign labour migration of farmers is their vision is a shift in the development of a new generation of robots and high-tech Zhaiguo tractor, such robots can engage in from the collection Wine grapes used to wash lettuce hearts and the removal of the work. Such robots are now in full development period, can become the exquisite fruit and vegetable harvest the basic tools, manual work still to complete.

California Agricultural Bureau National Affairs Manager Jack. Kim said, "If we want to maintain the current California agriculture, we need the introduction of mechanization." According to the U.S. Food and the Ministry of Agriculture statistics, the California harvest of fruits, nuts and vegetables for the U.S. National About half of the output. California Agricultural Bureau Union estimated annual demand of about 225,000 workers, the summer peak period of this value will double.

According to the U.S. Department of Statistics labour statistics, all U.S. farm workers in the half for illegal immigrants. Last year, because the U.S. government to strengthen enforcement of immigration, seasonal migration to California for the 0:00 mark of the shortage, some fruit rot in the fields.

California State University at Fresno viticulture and wine-grower scheme Director Robert. Wamupule said, "California is a lot stronger on the agricultural population, to find profitable labor live." For some mechanized harvesting of crops in California are not new things, such as canned tomatoes, low-grade wine and nuts. But fresh produce decisions of California's agricultural production, consumers expect to find in supermarkets Wuci integrity of agricultural products, is now too easy to use machines to harvest the agricultural Nongsui.

New pick-rely on advanced computing power and hydraulic technology, machinery arm and fingers are similar to the sensitivity of manpower capacity. Modern imaging machines can also make all kinds of identification and selection of quality fruits and vegetables.

Santiago Vision Robotics inventor Derek. Molikawa also California Citrus Research Council and the Washington Apple Commission to develop a fruit picking robot.

Way is to be a mechanical scanning machines into the orchards and orange-lam. Equipped with digital imaging technology and equipment of the robot can generate a three-dimensional map showing location, maturity and fruit quality. Picking a robot in accordance with these pictures, they use the long arm carefully to the acquisition of the cooked fruit.

California Citrus Research Committee Chairman Ted. Batkin, who last month on the prototype for testing, but the real distance between the broad commercial applications are years to go. Molikawa said that in the robot market, a scanning device and the cost of harvesting about 500,000 U.S. dollars.

In addition, a California State University at Fresno wine expert group is developing an automated harvesting robot to make the wine industry to achieve more mechanized. Low Intermediate grape growers have been using mechanical harvesting, but the collection and looking for good quality grapes still need manual.

Wamupule said the new technologies, including a near-infrared spectrometer called the device, it can be detected before the grape harvest in samples of sugar content levels and chemical composition. And then use these data from a global positioning system map, harvesting robot can use these maps for navigation, in particular in the vineyards picking the ideal mature Putao Chuan. Over the past four years researchers have been developing the system, and in the vineyards for testing. The two components of the system at cost of about 230,000 U.S. dollars.

Ramsey in the Salinas Valley. Ayn Rand and sales can be part of the automatic use of band saws or knives from the ground water harvesting lettuce and lettuce for packing, so cleaning and processing. The company's chief executive officer Frank. Macon Naqi said Ramsey. Ayn Rand Corporation and the development of a new machine model has been close to completion, this new robot can picking, cleaning, coring and the lettuce and other green A package of vegetables. The cost of such a robot in the 250,000 to 400,000 U.S. dollars between.

Macon Naqi said, "because immigration issues, we are now hard to find migrant workers. If farmers have a need to harvest crops, they can no one to harvest, so they need to find robots to replace workers."

University of California, Davis, agricultural economist Philip. Martin said, whether the increasingly stringent immigration enforcement would exorcise a large number of workers, causing farmers adopt a new robot, thus paying huge expenditure is still unclear.

Because there are a lot of variables, it is difficult to determine how many farmers to shift through the use of automated systems to save money. However, some farmers have been using the robot and a number of well-trained technicians bright future for the incentive, these technicians know how to operate these systems to replace the current reliance on manual laborers. Citrus farmers Batkin said, "The system will provide a lot in the field of agriculture paid more work, that may change our farm workers is the idea of a dirty work."

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Isn't it funny how hard it is to automate some simple human tasks?
My favorite is getting laundry out of a clothes dryer and onto the hangers. I doubt any amount of money could have a machine untangle the dress shirts, turn them right side out, and put them nicely onto hangers.

None the less, blazespinnaker and Rajiv raise a fascinating issue. At some point automation and specialization will make it impossible for all to be fully employed. How will we organize society and spend our time? Perhaps we should look at new ways of sharing both the material output and the required honest labor inputs, most people want some part of both.

In a novel called the Celestine Prophesy the author spends a few pages near the end exploring how humans might spend their lives in a world where material things are available almost without effort.

It's an important topic; if it isn't already affecting economies it will before very long.

[chr5648]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Good questions, Rajiv.

I'd also like to point out that Germany is a first world country, with a very strong, leading-edge, high-end, export-oriented industrial economy. They have managed to retain much of the manufacturing within German borders. AND Germany has provided its citizens (workers) with a very high standard of living.

Their example proves that a first world economy can retain its manufacturing sector. Despite the industrialization of Asia in the last 30 years, where the main advantage is cheap labor. How Germany they do it?

One of the answers is that in Germany, Worker Councils have retained a great deal of power. Worker representatives sit on the Corporate Board. So if a corporation decides to off-shore manufacturing, they cannot run rough shod over workers the way they do in the U.S. In a system where workers have more rights and more power, there is more incentive to invest at home, since off-shoring can get quite messy and expensive. Since Germany cannot compete with Asia in terms of labor costs, it has gone after the leading, high-end manufacturing processes and products.

I'm now 61 years old. I remember well the process which undermined unions and labor rights in the U.S., especially in the 1970's and 1980's. Unions were blamed for America's woes in business journals in the 1970's, when they still retained a little clout. After the 1980-1982 which severely weaked labor and unions, the government basically sold out labor, and corporations have had the upper hand ever since.

As the price of oil rises (Peak Cheap Oil), I think some manufacturing will start to return to the U.S. The big question is: What will those jobs pay? Corporations, oligarchs, and their political flunkies will propagandize about "jobs coming home to build a stronger America". AND they will use every trick in the book to pay the lowest wages possible to labor.

How does this all end?

I see 2 potential scenarios:

1. we stay on the path Roberts describes, becoming more and more like Latin America, even if some jobs come back, because they won't pay very much. After all, with NAFTA, corporate America can still threaten to move the jobs to just south of the Rio Grande, if American workers don't buckle under.

2. as the jobs come back to the U.s due to Peak Cheap Oil and American labor is treated shabbily as in #1 above, they get madder and madder and the elite propganda machine starts losing its efficacy, i.e. Americans start believing and trusting what they themselve see and feel. They get mad and start to fight back, first in the political arena, via Independent or third party candidates, then by organizing workingman associations. That is, we get a re-play of the late 1800', early 1900's. The nation's oligarachy will fight back tooth and nail, and progress will be slow, but it will happen. I believe this scenario would play out over a long period of time.

Unions in Europe are not in bed with government, their independent, and fight for themselves. That gets a certain amount of respect compared to here in america.

Germany also has more employee and private ownership which IMO leads to more responsible decisions.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Are you an engineer? Do you understand the economics of automation?

There has been lots of work done on automation of fruit picking and so forth - but we are decades away from being able to create such machines.

Decades away .. well, guess what, my daughter will be 25 by the time we master fruit picking. ~20 years. She's going to live in a world where even the fruit pickers don't have jobs.

If we're going to be prepared for that world we need to start NOW - because it's already coming down the pike.

The Japanese, as you can see by your own post, are already very hard at work on it. I suspect they will have economic fruit picking in another 5-10 years (they don't over consume like we do).

5-10 years is NOTHING. That's like tomorrow.

We need to restructure our global economy so we're focused on alt energy and automation. Everything needs to use a fuel that doesn't endanger the planet and everything needs to be manufactured in a way that doesn't require people..

I invision lego like building.

http://www.lunaticconstruction.com/

Everything needs to me made out of pre-fab / interchangeable components. The immense freaking waste of our construction industry nowadays is insane.

People think things would look terrible, but they wouldn't, the amount of virtual designing that would be enabled by this sort of technology would be amazing.. creativity would be unleashed. Incredible things would be created.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: Paul Craig Roberts on Andy Grove

Isn't it funny how hard it is to automate some simple human tasks?
My favorite is getting laundry out of a clothes dryer and onto the hangers. I doubt any amount of money could have a machine untangle the dress shirts, turn them right side out, and put them nicely onto hangers.

Perhaps, thrifty, but imagine living in an extremely large apartment block which is connected with pneumatic tubes. Now, imagine that you could put your laundry into one of the tubes and it will be delivered to a central laundry facility.

Now, imagine that after you've put in enough clothes for one separate washing cycle it will do so (separating into colors and whites and gentle fabrics should be feasible). Now you could have the whole thing delivered back to you in a bundled mess, or an individual could sort and fold it all .. with the help of machines. There could be a pants folding machine, a shirt folding machine, etc. All the person would have to do is drop the shirt into the right machine to sort it.

It would be your job to hang everything up.