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My rural town's high school, with an average graduating class of about a hundred, has an after school robotics class that kicks a$$ and takes names at local, regional and state level competitions. Combining programming, problem solving, mechanical engineering, CAD/CAM, milling, machining and human resource allocation skills in a state of the art wood and metal shop. Admittedly, their 4x8 flat bed wood router cnc is a bit clunky and antiquated but the HAAS metal machining center is up to the job and they go hard for that state wide brass ring every year.
More and more robotics are in small local job shops in every community. I know, I'm one. Robotics allows me to maintain my current existence. Robotics and a global supply chain that looks to be going away from hubris and incompetence. I doubt Jake Sullivan knows how to turn a screw much less know where they come from.
There's a lot of capability in the streets. The ruling classes above?... not so much.
My rural town's high school, with an average graduating class of about a hundred, has an after school robotics class that kicks a$$ and takes names at local, regional and state level competitions. Combining programming, problem solving, mechanical engineering, CAD/CAM, milling, machining and human resource allocation skills in a state of the art wood and metal shop. Admittedly, there 4x8 flat bed wood router cnc is a bit clunky and antiquated but the HAAS metal machining center is up to the job and they go hard for that state wide brass ring every year.
More and more robotics are in small local job shops in every community. I know, I'm one. Robotics allows me to maintain my current existence. That and a global supply chain that looks to be going away from hubris and incompetence. I doubt Jake Sullivan knows how to turn a screw much less know where they come from.
There's a lot of capability in the streets. The ruling classes above?... not so much.
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.
Am I off by weeks, or even months in either direction? Maybe but the idea is to make training widely available and accessible. Perhaps companies can offer subsidized training after an initial HR screening where candidates who pass get asked to make a commitment to training and an eventual job if they're deemed good enough to be hired.
Robotics as I am sure you know, doesn't always translate to utterly empty factories because it's about consistent speed and quality but we carbon based life forms have to babysit the machines to keep them happy and filled up with parts.
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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.
So....we need to be more like China to survive, We aren't going to become more like China so we can't survive as a society, Woe is us we might as well eat worms and die.
China uses sweatshops and slave labor has no respect for the rights of any individuals, and has turned its population into widget makers for the world.
Don't mistake China for a successful socialist endeavor. Xi Jinping is just another Stalin.
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.
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Imagine there's no countries It isn't hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion, too Imagine all the people Livin' life in peace
So....we need to be more like China to survive, We aren't going to become more like China so we can't survive as a society, Woe is us we might as well eat worms and die.
China uses sweatshops and slave labor has no respect for the rights of any individuals, and has turned its population into widget makers for the world.
Don't mistake China for a successful socialist endeavor. Xi Jinping is just another Stalin.
Who said anything about surviving?
You don’t need to be more like China to have a mixed economy. We had more of one ourselves until the neoliberal turn.
Did your criticism of China’s labor conditions ever stop you from purchasing Chinese products? S’funny it should stop you from understanding the differences of mixed vs. fully rent seeking economies. Especially as a self described leftist.
You think we don’t use slave labor in the US? How’s our countries record of transitioning to industrialization compare to China’s?
Sheesh.. Another Stalinhitler comparison in the midst of our nonstop murdering and coup-ing of nonwhite people and governments thru out the world.
Anyhow, my comment was responding to Jeff’s hope of possible restoring of manufacturing jobs. We can’t. We’re to expensive. Neoliberals, wether they be blue or red, will further gut social provisioning thru market privatization.
How do you think ‘serving the oligarchs’ works? Or debt peonage for that matter.
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.
That's not surviving, that's being kept alive in pens like bears for their bile.
China is a lot closer to that scenario than we are and frankly if that kind of labor exploitation is part of your "mixed economy" I want no part of it.
Marx promised there would be revolts to even the odds when the oligarchs got too heavy handed, but the Chinese people stand less chance than the bears of revolting or escaping their plight.
Perhaps the American people may one day find themselves in conditions so harsh, but we aren't there yet.
Like it or hate it. China moved more people out of poverty in the shortest amount of time. All moralizing aside, did you buy Chinese products or were you staying away from them with all that moral rectitude?
Howzat famed American middle class doing? Is it growing or shrinking since the neoliberal turn? How’s China’s? Who’s growing and who’s shrinking?
Your making an economic observation into a moralizing one. A conveniently timed one.
You'll have to avert your eyes some should you decide to play the video. From a civil engineering and construction channel giving some scope to the massive undertaking of China's high speed rail build out since 2008. Avert your eyes to any slave camps and bear cages that may have been accidently caught on film in the background. Joking aside, it is a propaganda piece for civil engineering so it's going to be shot like a tourist ad. Still... the info is fairly accurate to my understanding.
Not a small example of capacity in a governing system delivering benefits to the broadest possible number of people. Similar for it's time was the US's own accomplishments in the earlier liberal and socialist era's. What's incredible is the sheer scope & scale going on today.
