That's a hopeful sign for a hopeful future. But only if we can manage to scale stuff like up to enterprise level penetration.
Prospective factory workers will need to apply themselves to .... Oh I dunno, maybe a six to eight week course to learn robotics basics.
I take a more pessimistic view (surprise!). We have too many built in structural liabilities to be competitive globally now and I see us all going into the neoliberal wood chipper since there’s no alternative in NATOstan. By free market ideology adherence and relentless commodification of all aspects of our lives we have rendered ourselves uncompetitive. Without price supports for food, housing, healthcare, education, etc.. those costs must be born by the employer to provide a wage to meet the minimum requirements. If your gunna allow the market to seek maximum profit your gunna get housing costs, transport, food medicine, etc… way higher than your peer competitors economies. Let’s not even get started on monopoly rents…
China’s pursued a mixed economy of price supports making their labor force and industries globally competitive. Most importantly, they have kept banking a public utility and control financialization. Up till now anyhow. Avoiding western imposed ‘shock therapy’ during their economic transition, as opposed to what Russia experienced by the west, has helped them in that effort, imo. Laying 18k miles of high speed rail pulled the global commodities market out of depression during the GFC. I very much doubt the US has any political economy left to pull of anything of that magnitude. We’ll make marvel action films to substitute for capability instead.
Now that neoliberalism is complete there can be no society. There’s no such thing. Only markets and individual striving. Therefore, there can be no public spaces/goods. Both political factions are committed to this view in the US. Everything is financialized and commodified. Everything’s for sale. Everything must go. Finance now runs the US economy and has a heavy overhead. I see nothing fundamentally changing to reverse that trend. We simply don’t have the political capacity.
