
Wal-Mart's Dallas optical lab loses over 90 jobs to automation - hourislate
http://www.dallasnews.com/business/retail/2016/11/21/wal-marts-dallas-optical-lab-loses-91-jobs-automation
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TuringNYC
I wish there was more discussion about this during the election. Certainly
many jobs have been lost to NAFTA and resulting exporting of manufacturing
jobs...but so many jobs were just lost to automation. If NAFTA was cancelled,
some jobs would come back, but many most would just come back to a US robot
worker.

I'm sure the costs depend on position and constantly based on technological
progress, but I imagine it is something like this:

$ US Human Wage > $ US Robot Cost > $ Overseas Human Wage I imagine the two
right-hand categories swap around given technological progress, but the
logical conclusion for most jobs would likely be:

$ US Human Wage > $ Overseas Human Wage > $ US Robot Cost

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jrockway
Yeah. Protectionist trade policies are going to be great for software
engineers. What was a bad investment in automation software when it replaced a
$1/hour job starts looking like a good investment when it's a $15/hour job
it's automating away.

We've already seen this with jobs that are impossible to outsource, like
retail. That self-checkout machine may have been expensive to develop, but
it's a lot cheaper than employees. (The machines aren't perfect, but one
employee can now check out 10 customers simultaneously.)

In some ways, nothing will change in America. The jobs were already gone, so
nobody is going to lose their job to a robot. That said, it's time to start
coming up with a real plan for unemployment. We aren't taxing automation. We
aren't considering a world where labor demand is less than labor supply. We
have no plan for the future, and the future is not going to be coal mining and
making cheap flip flops for Wal-Mart. We are going to have to fund basic
income, or some sort of welfare system without a social stigma. (All the
foreign investment driving up housing prices isn't helping either.)

Of course, we aren't immune either. Most software isn't actually needed; as we
improve off-the-shelf software, custom software will be in lower demand. (Ever
pay anyone to write you a custom image manipulation program? Nope. Photoshop
is fine. Really not sure why we aren't "done" with HR databases or shopping
carts yet.) And, of course, machine learning will help fill in the one-off
customizations that are sometimes necessary. And, maybe it's going to start
creating art, music, literature, and whatever else we consider "uniquely
human". Pretty sure I'll be dead by then, but someone should probably start
planning. You thought "peak oil" was a problem... but we're already past "peek
labor".

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sintaxi
> Protectionist trade policies are going to be great for software engineers.

So in addition to manufacturing jobs coming back demand and therefore jobs
will increase for one of the best paying professions in the country.

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eli_gottlieb
Yes, if you _actually believe_ that the new trade policies will be genuinely
protectionist towards American labor in any substantive way.

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mywittyname
Which they won't be. The average American can't seem to understand that trade
negotiations are just that, _negotiations_. Each side gives up something they
would like to have for something they'd _really_ like to have.

Additionally, protecting American labor isn't inherently good. Maybe these
companies decide to bring back a few hundred $40k/yr manufacturing jobs, but
offset the cost by outsourcing a few hundred $60k/yr office jobs.

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rch
I was just wondering about local/regional eyeglass manufacturing. Is there
anything proprietary about the process?

I'm ignoring scale, for obvious reasons.

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theatrus2
There are specialty processes and materials, but even multi-focal lenses are
fully automated production. Stamping out and polishing cheap polycarbonate was
already a razor thin margin at the lab end.

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mrob
Polycarbonate isn't a common material for glasses. It's very soft, so it needs
an anti-scratch coating, and it has high dispersion so the chromatic
aberration is very bad. It's only really good for safety glasses where the
high impact resistance is important. Most cheap glasses are made from allyl
diglycol carbonate (eg. CR-39) which has the best optical properties of any
material commonly used for glasses.

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disposablezero
In case anyone were not familiar, Luxotica virtually-monopolizes sunglasses
and prescription eyewear
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica)

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velodrome
They too are moving operations to China:

[https://consumerist.com/2010/08/31/sunglass-hut-to-
customer-...](https://consumerist.com/2010/08/31/sunglass-hut-to-customer-
italy-and-china-are-the-same-dont-be-picky/)

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kiba
It didn't occur to me that eyeglasses manufacturing still required production
line workers.

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nickik
Do we really have to go threw the next 20 years and its news whenever
something new gets automated?

