From: ABlainey@aol.com
Date: Thu Jul 24 2003 - 16:37:08 MDT
In a message dated 24/07/2003 15:58:04 GMT Daylight Time,
puglisi@arcetri.astro.it writes:
>
> American society has no way to deal with a situation where half of the
> workers are unemployed. During the Great Depression at its very worst, 25%
> of the population was unemployed. The robotic future will be twice as bad,
> and it will be permanent."
>
> Ciao,
> Alfio
>
>
I thought about this very problem years ago when I was working as a machine
setter. I saw many people made redundant, when there positions were taken by
bigger, better more cost effective machines. Luckily for me, I was a setter and
also as multiskilled as I could possibly be. So I was simply moved around to
service the new machines and run whatever old manual pieces of hardware that
were left. That was until the entire factory was shut down and replaced by a new
one half way around the world, run by a far cheaper workforce.
Back then I spent many hours sitting and watching the machines, tirelessly
milling, turning and grinding away. 90% of my working day involved just sitting
and watching in case something went wrong or the metal masters needed feeding.
In one eight hour shift, I would watch six machines turn out tens of
thousands of components. I often wondered how many people it would have taken to
produce the same in years gone by.
It forced me to think about what my future had in store and the direction
manufacturing was taking.
It didnt take much to realise that the only people in the future that would
have a job, would be the people that owned the machines. In that, I saw one
possible solution for the average Joe worker.
If Joe owned a machine. He could supply the services of said machine to a
company, rather than his sevices directly. In addition to this, he would be
responsible for the maintenance and running of the machine. The company pays for
either the hours the machine runs or the amount of work done, for example the
quantity of units produced.
This may seem like a stupid idea at first and very difficult to manage.
However it isn't very far from the system that is already in place in many
factories. The machines are rented from one company, The workers stand around watching
and feeding and they are also payed a productivity bonus.
I never did work out the nitty gritty of this system where the workers own
the machines as I left manufacturing and became an IT consultant. Which
irronically has placed me in a very similar position.
Alex
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