I see what you are saying, but I think you're incorrect.
What's more likely to happen in my mind is that there will be fewer people running factories. Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. To adjust for that, you'll have to maximize worker productivity.
That means more factories (potentially smaller and / or more generalized) and automation building various parts / equipment. Assembly often occurred in the host country anyway, so I don't see that changing too much. It'll be the tool and part making that'll have to return to places like the United States.
I do think cost of goods will be high if we don't loosen some of the regulations, we need to keep people safe, but I think there's a balance.
The reason people think it'll be an improvement has to do with competition. If there's a market for a set of goods here, it'll be filled. It may start off expensive, but as automation improves the process you need less workers and more machines. That's fine and eventually the product will be cheap to produce, but the people producing the good will be highly skilled (i.e. be well paid).
Where I'm living there's a lot of factories. Salaries range from 65-110k in the factory work, all of which would be considered good wages in an area where the average home price is $300k (with low taxes).
I think de-globalization is a long-term boon for automation (at least in the U.S), but it's not going to operate at the speed needed to replace 3 billion workers dropping out of the labor force. Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right, and the pace of progress is typically uneven and unpredictable. Long-term, it'll be great for the salaries of software engineers, robotics engineers, material scientists, process engineers, etc. Short-term, expect higher prices and shortages. Until we find ways to build things with fewer people, we will just have fewer things.
I'm also not optimistic about the American populace's ability to deal with shortages without rioting.
> Automation usually requires a lot of painful experimentation and tuning by highly-skilled people before you get it working right
A year ago I spoke to an Apple engineer who works on their manufacturing processes, who corroborated that. He said the reason they aren't fully automated is because human workers are still better at repurposing to new assembly lines making new devices than robots are.
They are still better, but no doubt teams of people are working on improving automation to the point where they are not better.
I believe, on a long enough timeframe, every product that can be produced and every service that can be performed will be done by automation/AI/robotics. It's the inevitable destination of the tracks we are currently rolling on. 1. An advancement in automation is made where something can now be done automatically that previously required humans. 2. Those humans no longer have a job. 3. Some of those humans re-train for a job not yet automate-able. 4. Goto 1. This cycle will repeat for generations and generations, probably for centuries. The jobs at the bottom of the skill pyramid will slowly be taken over by automation, and new high-skill, high-complexity jobs will be created towards the top of the pyramid. Humans will constantly be scrambling to get footholds higher and higher up the pyramid, before automation gobbles those jobs up too. The end destination: self-creating automation that can make and do anything. At which point, there is nothing left for humans to do.
If, by that point, we still have not gotten past our primitive economic system based on money-for-labor and private ownership of the means of production, then humanity will simply no longer function.
There is a lot of work where a human body + mind is cheaper and easier than automation and likely will be for the foreseeable future. We will need lots of human labor until you have embodied robots similarly adaptable to a human at <= $20/hr.
Automation puts downward pressure on wages/working conditions. But we must also consider globalization pushback and aging population pyramids that put upward pressure on wages.
You've identified that slave labor happens in the US prison system and elsewhere, I think that most people would agree with this. I don't see any evidence that slave labor comprises "a large amount of what you use."
Well, no, most people don’t realize US is using slave labor. Most people believe China does, though, despite no proofs. Sadly, people are still quite disconnected from verifiable reality.
Perhaps because of the suicide nets? I get the Foxconn is not technically slave labour, but you must admit that suicide nets may give to the observer the impression that the gap is not that large between whatever it is and slave labour?
I lose workers to foxxcon all the time. They are one of the best companies in SZ to work for, with high wages and good benefits.. I dont think many people in CN would agree with your definition of what slave labor is
To note, I don't actually have an opinion on if foxconn is slavery or not, my point was that they can easily appear that way to outside disinterested observers purely based on "they have suicide nets around the buildings" because of the obvious implications thereof, and also the spattering of news stories that play up those implications.
Just compare the wages of the people that work on the goods you consume with your local wages? And look at the lack of regulation in the areas where they work and the resulting pollution etc. It's obviously not fair that someone from another country has less rights than you. It's a kind of slavery.
Different countries having different standards of living isn't "a kind of slavery." Slavery is when people are forced to work and are not paid for their labor.
You're correct that it's not fair that people have fewer rights in some countries compared to others. For example, as an American, I have fewer labor rights than most Europeans. Am I a slave laborer?
What's more likely to happen in my mind is that there will be fewer people running factories. Recall, right now slave labor makes up a large amount of what you use. To adjust for that, you'll have to maximize worker productivity.
That means more factories (potentially smaller and / or more generalized) and automation building various parts / equipment. Assembly often occurred in the host country anyway, so I don't see that changing too much. It'll be the tool and part making that'll have to return to places like the United States.
I do think cost of goods will be high if we don't loosen some of the regulations, we need to keep people safe, but I think there's a balance.
The reason people think it'll be an improvement has to do with competition. If there's a market for a set of goods here, it'll be filled. It may start off expensive, but as automation improves the process you need less workers and more machines. That's fine and eventually the product will be cheap to produce, but the people producing the good will be highly skilled (i.e. be well paid).
Where I'm living there's a lot of factories. Salaries range from 65-110k in the factory work, all of which would be considered good wages in an area where the average home price is $300k (with low taxes).