
Mining company says first autonomous freight train network is fully operational - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/12/mining-company-says-first-autonomous-freight-train-network-is-fully-operational/
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EliRivers
This reminds me of the steel plant in Austria that employs a handful of people
(I think the headline number was 14) to make half a million tons of steel a
year.

Mining and steel and all that sort of industry isn't vanishing; nations can
still have these industries, and nations that used to have them can decide to
have them again - they're just not going to be the big employers that they
once were.

If the US goes back into domestic coal mining in a big way, I don't see all
those coal mining jobs from decades past coming back.

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pseudolus
I pretty much thought about same steel plant [0]. It highlights that, contrary
to what many assert, manufacturing is not being eviscerated but rather that
automation is reducing wholesale the number of workers required. Eventually,
the decreasing cost of automation and the rising cost of labor will impact
even low cost labor countries. It will not end well for those countries that
were planning on following the route taken by China and other low cost
countries.

[0]. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/how-
just-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-21/how-
just-14-people-make-500-000-tons-of-steel-a-year-in-austria)

