06-29-2011, 10:39 AM
(06-29-2011, 05:14 AM)--Pete Wrote: Get out of your moss covered ivory tower and tour a modern automotive assembly plant. The future is 1980s. Most production processes that are not automated are either being done by labor still too cheap to replace or are being done by one man suppling the guidance to a machine replacing hundreds of manual laborers. Go to a major shipping port. Look at how cargo is handled, one crane operator doing the job of dozens of stevedores.
Funnily enough, I actually did go to a modern automotive assembly plant this year, tagging along with our "ivory tower" business history class field trip to the Lotus factory in Norfolk. It actually surprised me how little was done by automation, and how much was still hand assembly. Now, Lotus is not Ford, and scale matters. What it taught me is that, at least for the foreseeable future, there is still a large role for human input into manufacturing, especially where flexibility and customization are important product features. (Not everyone wants their Model T in any colour they like, so long as it's black.) The workers in the factory were skilled manufacturing employees, but they were hardly some kind of creative elite.
However, you're right, we do more with fewer people as time goes on. The resources that were saved by not hiring stevedores can be put to use somewhere else, making the real costs of things drop. This means it takes fewer work hours to earn a given standard of living, so people can either take it easier, or work in more esoteric jobs. Might look a little strange to us, but there's no reason to think it will cause the economy to implode.
-Jester