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Comment by danhak | Hacker News Reader

I can imagine at least two hugely positive outcomes from the rise of robots and automation:

1) Human labor will no longer dominate COGS--global shipping and logistics will. There will therefore be a massive onshoring of manufacturing back to the developed world. As a result, we will stop subsidizing human rights abuses and substandard living conditions around the globe.

2) In developed countries, this massive onshoring of automated production will make it clear that low-skill, high-paying factory jobs are forever a thing of the past. Simultaneously, xenophobia--"they took our jobs"--may cease to be an effective political tool. Perhaps this will trigger an honest discussion around UBI and revamped social safety nets.

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On your first point, manufacturers moving to places with lower cost human labor with laxer standards does not 'subsidize' substandard living conditions, it raises them. Look at the massive economic growth that has occurred in places like China. If we pull out, standards in poor countries will get worse not better.

It may raise living conditions, but the point about "human rights abuses" still stands.

If you think xenophobia actually arises due to people competing for jobs then you are delusional. Xenophobia is a lot older than job deplacement and will around regardless of it.

More than this. If you thought "they took our jobs" was a big rallying cry, wait until it's "they get our UBI".

It's possible to resent someone who shows up and works hard. (Harder than you'd like to, because he's more desperate.) It's much easier to resent someone who shows up and simply collects a slice of your inheritance.

And in addition: The guy who stepped off the boat in 1900 and then spent a few decades working long hours in a factory, spent a lot of time interacting with other people in his new country. It was unavoidable. (Possibly he got drafted, too, another great way to spend time with the locals.) One of the reasons integration is not going so well in Europe is that this is no longer the story.

The guy that stepped off the boat was probably resented too for a while, until the next big wave of immigration came. At the very least, that happened with the Irish and the Italians.

Absolutely. The fact that this died down with time is the great miracle of 20th century america, but one we're so used to now that we take it for granted. Plentiful factory jobs are one factor behind this (along with rapidly rising living standards for everyone, shared experience in the army etc, and a few generations with almost no further immigration from back home).

Prior to WWI Americans typically self-identified among their ancestral lineage like Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American. It took a war and the associated shared trauma and government propaganda machine to start developing a distinct "American" nationality and more unity which developed into a much stronger nativist agenda.

I agree, if we stop closing factories in first world countries and moving the work offshore, people who formerly worked in those factories might stop complaining about losing their jobs to the people who now do those jobs in overseas factories.

Not sure if I agree with the xenophobia claim, although perhaps you've seen studies or statistics that I haven't.

onshoring is highly doubtful since most developed countries are talking about taxing automation to death right now.

Onshoring of manufacturing sounds like a catastrophe for the developing world to me. What you're describing doesn't sound like a service to the developing world at all, but rather a way for the developed world to continue hoarding wealth while also righteously patting themselves on the back for ending "exploitation".

Do you think substandard living conditions will cease to exist the moment we remove relatively high paying factory jobs and external revenue from impoverished countries?

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