
China’s Troubling Robot Revolution - prostoalex
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/opinion/chinas-troubling-robot-revolution.html
======
nugget
If you think structural unemployment due to automation will be a problem in
the US, just wait until 500 million Chinese factory workers are put out of
work. A generation ago they may have been content to remain in poverty and
ignorance but now, like the sans-culottes of 18th century Paris, they know
what else is out there. There's a reason many wealthy Chinese desperately want
to expatriate and it's not because they see peace and tranquility in their
homeland's future.

~~~
bduerst
China has had a rising middle class for a while now, and just like with the
agricultural automation brought on by the combustion engine, their
manufacturing laborers will shift into service, skilled, technical, and
professional positions.

~~~
functional_test
Did you actually read the article? Here's the most relevant quote:

> The reality, however, is that China has struggled to create enough white-
> collar jobs for its soaring population of college graduates. In mid-2013,
> the Chinese government revealed that only about half of the country’s
> current crop of college graduates had been able to find jobs, while more
> than 20 percent of the previous year’s graduates remained unemployed.

~~~
muddyrivers
I think this statement is not completely accurate.

First, it doesn't factor in the expansion of higher education in the last 20
years. I don't have the statistics at hand, so I will just use my hometown as
an example. Exactly 20 years ago, ~120 high school students from my hometown
were enrolled into colleges (including both 4- and 3-years colleges). This
year, approximately ~1400 will enter colleges this fall semester. That is more
than 10 times. Note the total number of people of ~18 years old hasn't been
increased. On the contrary, I think it is decreased, as a result of one-child
policy.

Second, I think it has become common that countries, including USA, have been
struggling to create enough white-collar jobs. I have both current and ex-
colleagues who graduated from Ivy Leagues and are/working in customer service,
support, marketing associates, etc. What they majored in colleges, like
English, Classics, Psychology, etc. really doesn't help them much on looking
for their first or second jobs. It is similar in China, but I wouldn't say it
is worse or better there.

~~~
kjs3
Nothing you wrote shows the parent as being "not completely accurate", and you
don't refute objective statistics with "I think".

------
DickingAround
It's going to be really weird if China's ruling 'socialist' party ends up
being forced to become an actual neo-socialism with things like a guaranteed
stipend because there are not enough actual jobs to do...

This whole automation revolution has really just begun to highlight the old
problem that many people don't own any of the things that generate the
fabulous, effort-free wealth. But now instead of people missing out on the
dream of 3-day-work-weeks they were promised fifty years ago and having to
work just as hard as before, they have no work at all. The body/mind they
expected to be able to rent out has literally no value as an asset.

~~~
vidarh
Capitalism "eating itself" by getting too efficient to continue to provide
work for everyone was Marx central thesis for why a socialist revolution would
be inevitable, so nothing "neo" about it.

~~~
saiya-jin
yeah, and having real world socialism with vastly underperforming economy,
forcing everybody to have a job, creating pointless jobs to to fill this
criteria (and unleashing state terror on those who don't fit in).

if you think i'm joking, unfortunately no. had lived in socialist country and
i can still see the damage on people 20 years after we switched to democracy.
people went to jail if they refused to work. if they spoke against the regime,
things might got worse. economy-wise - our neighbor Austria after WWII
borrowed from us money to rebuild itself. after 40 years of socialism, when
curtain fell, they were light years and more ahead of us, in everything, thank
you central planning. i felt like a poor beggar coming there first time.

Sorry if my reaction offended anyone, i'm just too allergic of anything
reeking of socialism. nothing beats first hand experience

~~~
vidarh
These regimes were not much more representative of socialism, or Marxism, than
North Korea is representative of democracy just because it has "democratic
republic" in its name.

They violated the principles they claimed to be built on from day one.

------
mc32
As I mentioned once before, one can only hope they can figure a way out of
this conundrum. Given the relative strength of the central gov't to direct
economic policy, perhaps they'll trike upon a solution to automation and
software eating jobs and thus people's source of making a living.

They are going to hit this economic obstacle on a massive scale first --before
the jobs even get to migrate to the interior where there are masses of
impoverished and underemployed or underproductive workers.

Japan has not been able to age out of this problem, that's to say they have
not figured a way to transfer the wealth generated by automation into the
general population, so you get older people doing redundant jobs or menial
jobs. In other words there isn't an "automation fund" which diverts wealth to
the underemployed and those whose jobs have become redundant an unnecessary.

So perhaps the solution is something akin to the Alaska Permanent Fund fund;
however, instead of being funded by mineral wealth, gets funded by wealth
generated through (hw) automation and efficiencies brought on by software.
This fund then gets redistributed based on a combination of need as well as a
per-capita flat rate.

~~~
eru
> So perhaps the solution is something akin to the Alaska Permanent Fund fund;
> however, instead of being funded by mineral wealth, gets funded by wealth
> generated through (hw) automation and efficiencies brought on by software.
> This fund then gets redistributed based on a combination of need as well as
> a per-capita flat rate.

As a reasonable proxy for that kind of wealth generation, you can just tax
income.

------
narrator
"This is clearly unsustainable. After all, there eventually has to be a return
on all those investments. Factories have to produce goods that are profitably
sold. "

Nope. In China loans go bad all the time and the government prints up some
money to buy and resell the debt at a discount and things keep moving right
along. They have a different system In China. This is so hard for anybody in
America to get since economics is taught as if it's the physical structure of
the world when it's really just a game with a bunch of rules that structure
the society in a certain way.

~~~
sitkack
Don't we do the same thing in the states? Except we loan money to huge banks
at 0% who turn around and sell that money back to the people @ 5+%

------
knz42
Have the workers own the robots, not the elite of company executives. Then
redistribute the profits made by the robots to their new owners.

The idea of having the workers own the means of production is hardly new, it's
just not very popular in the West. Not surprising that the NYTimes missed
mentioning that entirely. It would be deliciously ironic if socialist China
was the nation that would show the rest of the world how to deal with
pervasive automation socially and economically.

~~~
cbd1984
> Have the workers own the robots

How do you prevent them from getting bought out?

~~~
anigbrowl
Astute question. The west's answer seems to be inaccessible but privately-
managed pension funds.

------
sanxiyn
> According to one analysis, fully 43 percent of Chinese workers already
> consider themselves to be overeducated for their current positions.

The obvious conclusion is that there should be less education in China.

~~~
shard
All that computing power going to waste. IF only there's a way to harness that
power, maybe for folding@home or bitcoin mining...

------
vonnik
Martin Ford has one argument to make -- the robots are coming! :( -- and he
makes it again and again in any context possible, even when that point is a
rhetorical stretch. China has a lot of problems, many of them on a grander
scale than any other country because of the size of its population. The robots
are no where near the top of the list. The real issue here is that China has
succeeded so well at manufacturing that it is no longer the center of low-cost
labor that it once was. When wages rise, capital is substituted for labor;
i.e. companies rely incrementally more on robots than humans. Not a lot new
there.

------
stupidcar
It'll be grimly ironic if, having dragged behind the rest of the
industrialized world for decades, suffering with all the attendant poverty and
problems that dogged pre-industrial societies, then rapidly caught up, China
end up being one of the first countries to shoot right past it to a totally
post-industrial society, with all the _new_ problems that are predicted to
accompany it.

------
powerapple
the world needs more jobs of designing softwares to share photos with a time
limit.

~~~
knodi123
jeez man, I hate to ruin your day, but I just designed a program that designs
programs to share photos with a time limit. better find a new niche, quick
quick.

------
itistoday2
HN discussion on this article from two weeks ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697058](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9697058)

~~~
ChrisArchitect
goddamn, yeah, how does this get posted twice

