An hour of a robot’s time — even with a coffee break — should be about as expensive in the US as it is in Vietnam. What matters now is capital, not labor. It takes massive investment to develop.
The real question is how do we reduce the number of humans in government - especially replace those in Congress with consensual vote of each representatives' voters. The robotics gathers what the voters want on each bill (with AI and internet - the People don't need humans in Congress at all) and make it a true Republic. The real problem in America is the Government and anything that can reduce and eliminate government employees is a blessing.
Seriously.......we actually agree on something. LOL! As Roseanna Roseannadanna was known to say - "Just goes to show you, Abe, you never know!" Have a Great Day!
Careful about the whole “direct democracy” thing, it’s a republic for a reason. Do I need to quote Tytler or de Tocqueville to you? Don’t assume things would be any better when you give the people whatever they want. Can’t believe this has as many likes as it does.
In the 70s, I was an engineer in a factory that was highly automated in some areas but still had quite a few human workers that worked on the production lines. They were unionized. It was always the union that stifled productivity. I moved on to another position in the company. Ten years after the factory, which was a staple in the community for decades, closed and the production was moved down south where unions were not an issue.
With that in mind, more recently I have always wondered why we couldn't bring production back to the US using automation in order to compete against low wage rates in other countries. It wouldn't add a lot of jobs but would certainly add some, and it would bring manufacturing back. Turns out the Chinese have beat us to it by incorporating automation even with their low wage rates. We need to do the same. It's a matter of survival.
Bill’s reflection on the march of the machines is more than an economic forecast. It’s a moral one. AI can’t “take over” the world by itself. It has no hands, no feet, no way to twist a wrench or open a door. It can’t light a furnace or pull a trigger. Not yet.
But give it a body, give it arms that lift and legs that move, and suddenly it can act. And when those bodies are mass-produced, networked, and sitting quietly in the living rooms of a billion people, the difference between a harmless update, a catastrophic one or an intentional "kill" instruction, might just be, a single line of code.
It’s not artificial intelligence we should fear most. It’s the moment we hand it the keys to our homes. When the mind of the machine finally gets its hands? That’s when the future stops being theoretical.
"Alexa/Siri - what do you think about Lucas' comment?"
Just kidding. I wouldn't let ANY of those spy devices or "smart" appliances into my home - even if they were paying me rent. My PHONE lives in a Faraday Bag fer cryin' out loud....
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Finding balance in a world where every tool is also a window. We want convenience — but not a live feed of our lives being mined for data.
At some point, I just decided to live my life. If they ever do send a killer drone my way, the odds of spotting it in time are about zero anyway. So I’ll keep smiling all the way to the morgue.
And for the record, I start and end each day with: “Copyright 2025, Lucas Kandia.” Just in case they ever try to use my own words against me — I’ll have Morgan & Morgan on retainer for the libel/privacy suit. I'm sure they're likely to branch out into that sector of law soon.
You wanna know why the robots are better? They don’t whine! They don’t complain about health insurance! They don’t say, “Oh, I’m triggered by hot molten steel!” They just shut up and WORK! Meanwhile, Americans are filling out FAFSA forms to learn how to make TikToks.
Robots don’t take breaks, they don’t get drunk, they don’t complain. You know who else doesn’t do any of that? Dead people. Yeah. Real efficient. I guess the factory of the future is just full of corpses standing around. Real cost-effective. Mr. Bonner points out that in America 1 in 20 kids studies engineering, and in China it’s 1 in 3. I don’t know the math, but it seems like… uh… one of those groups is gonna build robots. The other’s gonna write a really long blog post about how they feel about robots. And then… you know… starve to death.
America went from the assembly line to the unemployment line in sixty years? WOW! We INVENTED the car factory! We INVENTED the robot! And now? We’re getting our asses handed to us by China because they’re actually training engineers while we’re drowning in student loans for Communications degrees. America’s like that guy who invents basketball, then loses every game 200 to nothing because he’s too busy arguing with the ref. The executives come back from China all “humble”? Haha, Wall Street Gobbers too busy cashing stock options to notice the factories going dark! At least the robots aren’t blowing the profits on call girls and private jets, well, not yet.
Mr. Solomon, Good comment. But I think the corporate senior executives, Wall Streeters, bankers, etc. know exactly what they are doing. They are not stupid people. They are elite globalist one-worlders who are patient world builders who believe in gradualism. They plan things out over many decades, and if they die before their ultimate plans are achieved, they have simply schooled younger acolytes over decades to take over for them when that time arrives. They might have been born into the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. etc. religion, but they eventually become members of the Globalism religion; i.e., the religion of power and influence. If you think the Indian Brahmins are a close-knit clannish group (many who have obtained important corporate and govt. positions in the U.S. via assisting one another--not certain if Second Lady Usha Vance is a Brahmin--but would not be surprised), they don't remotely compare to the Globalists.
Not only is China graduating more engineers they are also sending them to the US to be educated and returned to China. Still China has the problem if everything is done by robots how will the 1.2 billion Chinese earn money.
Don't forget China had a one child policy which means their population will undergo a dramatic reduction in the coming decades. Robots will keep productivity and GDP growing.
You reap what you sow. It's as simple as that. A culture that rewards sloth, crime, corruption, perversion, dependence, injustice and falsity gets what it deserves.
Well, I can point to a few BIG reasons "Why." It ALL comes back to Dumbing Down the populace, putting Man at the top of the heap and making EVERYTHING about Race or Sexual Orientation. News Flash (not) - these destructive EVILS from the last 50 years are laid squarely at the doorstep of the leftist dimocrats - 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚.
Mission Accomplished! Now today's leftarde supporters are too stupid, indoctrinated and/or hateful to acknowledge where we are and what ignorant ideas/policies put us here - thus they have zero interest in actually fixing anything because they can't even see that their religion (leftist politics) is the root cause of our decline.
Yes , but they do break down, that is robots. So some one has to know how to "repair" said bots. That leaves Me out for sure as I do not want to be an engineer.
Frederick Taylor was certainly the first to popularized time and motion studies, but it was W. Edwards Demming that took statistical process control to Japan. He couldn't get American manufacturers to pay attention.
Here in England we’ve got robots running the country. The Starmer robot is quite useless & has zero personality. Clearly programmed for every response to be a lie. Hopefully the next model is better.
Sounds like humanity as a whole. Yes, one way or another, there will be drastically fewer humans on this rock. Fermi paradox- L variable of the Drake equation.
Mr. Angry Icebergs, Right. I think it was in 2005, when the globalist Bushies were trying to put through an eventual amnesty for a few million third-world peasants; and, Rush Limbaugh, who opposed the effort, brought several engineers on his radio program who pointed out that mechanization of lots of low-wage labor was the way to go, not bringing in, then amnestying, millions of third-world peasants who would vote for endless amounts of govt. aid; i.e., free stuff. This was about 20 years ago!!! The Bushies backed off the amnesty, but very little has been done over two decades to mechanize low-wage labor. Instead the Biden bunch broke federal law by allowing at least 10M third-world peasants to illegally enter the U.S., hoping someday if the Democrats can take back the WH and Congress, an immediate mass amnesty of at least 20M third-world peasants would happen, making 98% of them permanent big-govt.-loving Democrat voters.
You good old boys over there have got it really good compared to the UK and Europe. The lunatics are still in charge of the asylum here.
Check out the Eugyppius Substack which today relates how the great indusrial city of Hamburg has just voted to destroy its industrial base.
Here in the UK we are about to pass legislation that gives workers full rights and protections from day 1. This effectively means that if some drongo turns up late for work and drunk on day one and you fire him or her, he/she can claim unfair dismissal on the grounds that he/she was not given a fair warning and suspended on full pay pending an investigation.
Worse still, the pathetic Palestinian State supporting Starmer's Labour party is dominated by MPs who have all been educated by Marxists who were on the long march through the institutions.
Everyone in my peer group with a reasonable level of savings is talking about end times and where to go.
Bill was very prescient establishing his bolthole company.
The reason we arn’t leading in assembly robotics is because back in the 1970’s moronic and greedy people sent all our factories to China and s.e Asian countries. Now we are seeing the tragedy this created. Thank God for Trump who is trying to re-establish manufacturing in the U.S. It will take years but its started.
People will go to such lengths to identify "enemies" to blame - anything to avoid self reliance and responsibility. The spending done for military reasons would most likely cure cancer and wipe out hunger. But heaven forbid we could actually stop fighting long enough to focus on that.
“ROBO”, the Global Automation and Robotics ETF, has 88 companies in its portfolio. The nation with the most companies, by far, is the US, with 33 of the 88. Japan is in 2nd place with 14. China and Taiwan are tied at 6 each.
One of Taylor’s findings, at a GE plant as I recall, was that any positive change increased productivity. (I think it was better lighting). Unfortunately, it was temporary; (reverting to the mean?). Anyway, unions do have something to do with the problem. They will jump on the robot bandwagon as soon as a guaranteed national income is ratified. There are no simple fixes. “Ignorance changes over time. But it is always there, and it remains just as lethal,” p. 88 How To Stop Time by Matt Haig.
When guaranteed national income is ratified, capitalism will cease to exist. It will be swift regression to the stone age. The average man, the so-called worker, will have nothing to do. Not only will he be captive to the state, he will go insane with nothing to do. The human being is a goal-oriented individual. It's in his/her DNA. He/she must be striving to thrive. Then the government brings out the soma and tells everyone and everybody he/she is happy. Just take this pill... Best always. PM
The real question is how do we reduce the number of humans in government - especially replace those in Congress with consensual vote of each representatives' voters. The robotics gathers what the voters want on each bill (with AI and internet - the People don't need humans in Congress at all) and make it a true Republic. The real problem in America is the Government and anything that can reduce and eliminate government employees is a blessing.
WOW. I agree with you.
Seriously.......we actually agree on something. LOL! As Roseanna Roseannadanna was known to say - "Just goes to show you, Abe, you never know!" Have a Great Day!
Blink three times if you need us to rescue you, Ol' LSO.....
Careful about the whole “direct democracy” thing, it’s a republic for a reason. Do I need to quote Tytler or de Tocqueville to you? Don’t assume things would be any better when you give the people whatever they want. Can’t believe this has as many likes as it does.
Anything!!!
In the 70s, I was an engineer in a factory that was highly automated in some areas but still had quite a few human workers that worked on the production lines. They were unionized. It was always the union that stifled productivity. I moved on to another position in the company. Ten years after the factory, which was a staple in the community for decades, closed and the production was moved down south where unions were not an issue.
With that in mind, more recently I have always wondered why we couldn't bring production back to the US using automation in order to compete against low wage rates in other countries. It wouldn't add a lot of jobs but would certainly add some, and it would bring manufacturing back. Turns out the Chinese have beat us to it by incorporating automation even with their low wage rates. We need to do the same. It's a matter of survival.
The "AI" we're investing in is mostly to replace white collar workers and sell more ads, not build real things. Big difference.
Bill’s reflection on the march of the machines is more than an economic forecast. It’s a moral one. AI can’t “take over” the world by itself. It has no hands, no feet, no way to twist a wrench or open a door. It can’t light a furnace or pull a trigger. Not yet.
But give it a body, give it arms that lift and legs that move, and suddenly it can act. And when those bodies are mass-produced, networked, and sitting quietly in the living rooms of a billion people, the difference between a harmless update, a catastrophic one or an intentional "kill" instruction, might just be, a single line of code.
It’s not artificial intelligence we should fear most. It’s the moment we hand it the keys to our homes. When the mind of the machine finally gets its hands? That’s when the future stops being theoretical.
Sitting in my living room:
"Alexa/Siri - what do you think about Lucas' comment?"
Just kidding. I wouldn't let ANY of those spy devices or "smart" appliances into my home - even if they were paying me rent. My PHONE lives in a Faraday Bag fer cryin' out loud....
That’s the problem, isn’t it? Finding balance in a world where every tool is also a window. We want convenience — but not a live feed of our lives being mined for data.
At some point, I just decided to live my life. If they ever do send a killer drone my way, the odds of spotting it in time are about zero anyway. So I’ll keep smiling all the way to the morgue.
And for the record, I start and end each day with: “Copyright 2025, Lucas Kandia.” Just in case they ever try to use my own words against me — I’ll have Morgan & Morgan on retainer for the libel/privacy suit. I'm sure they're likely to branch out into that sector of law soon.
You wanna know why the robots are better? They don’t whine! They don’t complain about health insurance! They don’t say, “Oh, I’m triggered by hot molten steel!” They just shut up and WORK! Meanwhile, Americans are filling out FAFSA forms to learn how to make TikToks.
Robots don’t take breaks, they don’t get drunk, they don’t complain. You know who else doesn’t do any of that? Dead people. Yeah. Real efficient. I guess the factory of the future is just full of corpses standing around. Real cost-effective. Mr. Bonner points out that in America 1 in 20 kids studies engineering, and in China it’s 1 in 3. I don’t know the math, but it seems like… uh… one of those groups is gonna build robots. The other’s gonna write a really long blog post about how they feel about robots. And then… you know… starve to death.
America went from the assembly line to the unemployment line in sixty years? WOW! We INVENTED the car factory! We INVENTED the robot! And now? We’re getting our asses handed to us by China because they’re actually training engineers while we’re drowning in student loans for Communications degrees. America’s like that guy who invents basketball, then loses every game 200 to nothing because he’s too busy arguing with the ref. The executives come back from China all “humble”? Haha, Wall Street Gobbers too busy cashing stock options to notice the factories going dark! At least the robots aren’t blowing the profits on call girls and private jets, well, not yet.
Mr. Solomon, Good comment. But I think the corporate senior executives, Wall Streeters, bankers, etc. know exactly what they are doing. They are not stupid people. They are elite globalist one-worlders who are patient world builders who believe in gradualism. They plan things out over many decades, and if they die before their ultimate plans are achieved, they have simply schooled younger acolytes over decades to take over for them when that time arrives. They might have been born into the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist. etc. religion, but they eventually become members of the Globalism religion; i.e., the religion of power and influence. If you think the Indian Brahmins are a close-knit clannish group (many who have obtained important corporate and govt. positions in the U.S. via assisting one another--not certain if Second Lady Usha Vance is a Brahmin--but would not be surprised), they don't remotely compare to the Globalists.
Not only is China graduating more engineers they are also sending them to the US to be educated and returned to China. Still China has the problem if everything is done by robots how will the 1.2 billion Chinese earn money.
Good question Ken , and if the US of A goes full robot how do our peons make a living ?
We can't all be robot engineers .
Robot Polishers
Don't forget China had a one child policy which means their population will undergo a dramatic reduction in the coming decades. Robots will keep productivity and GDP growing.
You reap what you sow. It's as simple as that. A culture that rewards sloth, crime, corruption, perversion, dependence, injustice and falsity gets what it deserves.
"𝘈 𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 "𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴? 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳? 𝘞𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸."
Well, I can point to a few BIG reasons "Why." It ALL comes back to Dumbing Down the populace, putting Man at the top of the heap and making EVERYTHING about Race or Sexual Orientation. News Flash (not) - these destructive EVILS from the last 50 years are laid squarely at the doorstep of the leftist dimocrats - 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙨 𝙣𝙤𝙩 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙨𝙡𝙞𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙡𝙮 𝙖𝙧𝙜𝙪𝙖𝙗𝙡𝙚.
Mission Accomplished! Now today's leftarde supporters are too stupid, indoctrinated and/or hateful to acknowledge where we are and what ignorant ideas/policies put us here - thus they have zero interest in actually fixing anything because they can't even see that their religion (leftist politics) is the root cause of our decline.
Then this:
"𝘖𝘧 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘧𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘯𝘰𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘯-𝘵𝘩𝘦-𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘪𝘯𝘫𝘶𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘷𝘢𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬 𝘣𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘯."
Well, not yet at least.....
Yes , but they do break down, that is robots. So some one has to know how to "repair" said bots. That leaves Me out for sure as I do not want to be an engineer.
Frederick Taylor was certainly the first to popularized time and motion studies, but it was W. Edwards Demming that took statistical process control to Japan. He couldn't get American manufacturers to pay attention.
Here in England we’ve got robots running the country. The Starmer robot is quite useless & has zero personality. Clearly programmed for every response to be a lie. Hopefully the next model is better.
...BPR is now acknowledging robots as an inevitable workforce.
Mr. Bonner acknowledges a lot of Ai is required, i.e. investment into Ai...
So does BPR condone the massive Ai investments, or not?
Previous missives suggest not.
-
With the advent of robots, the low birth rate and need for immigration are non-issues.
The disadvantageous disparity in labor rates will slowly become inconsequential.
Lower populations in the future will likely be desirable and society's goal.
Robots will become less expensive as they become more prevalent and essential to our daily tasks.
Let's hope the progressive folks think like learned humans instead of robots and avoid taxing the industry to a standstill...
Just curious. Who exactly is the "society" you refer to? "Lower populations in the future will likely be desirable and society's goal."
Sounds like humanity as a whole. Yes, one way or another, there will be drastically fewer humans on this rock. Fermi paradox- L variable of the Drake equation.
Just cause you try to bring scientific language into it, doesn’t make it science.
... does the Drake equation account for cyborgs?
The "L" variable will still be sent... but likely not by 100% humanoid.
The society I refer to is a totality of people regarded as forming a community of interdependent individuals.
Mr. Angry Icebergs, Right. I think it was in 2005, when the globalist Bushies were trying to put through an eventual amnesty for a few million third-world peasants; and, Rush Limbaugh, who opposed the effort, brought several engineers on his radio program who pointed out that mechanization of lots of low-wage labor was the way to go, not bringing in, then amnestying, millions of third-world peasants who would vote for endless amounts of govt. aid; i.e., free stuff. This was about 20 years ago!!! The Bushies backed off the amnesty, but very little has been done over two decades to mechanize low-wage labor. Instead the Biden bunch broke federal law by allowing at least 10M third-world peasants to illegally enter the U.S., hoping someday if the Democrats can take back the WH and Congress, an immediate mass amnesty of at least 20M third-world peasants would happen, making 98% of them permanent big-govt.-loving Democrat voters.
You good old boys over there have got it really good compared to the UK and Europe. The lunatics are still in charge of the asylum here.
Check out the Eugyppius Substack which today relates how the great indusrial city of Hamburg has just voted to destroy its industrial base.
Here in the UK we are about to pass legislation that gives workers full rights and protections from day 1. This effectively means that if some drongo turns up late for work and drunk on day one and you fire him or her, he/she can claim unfair dismissal on the grounds that he/she was not given a fair warning and suspended on full pay pending an investigation.
Worse still, the pathetic Palestinian State supporting Starmer's Labour party is dominated by MPs who have all been educated by Marxists who were on the long march through the institutions.
Everyone in my peer group with a reasonable level of savings is talking about end times and where to go.
Bill was very prescient establishing his bolthole company.
The reason we arn’t leading in assembly robotics is because back in the 1970’s moronic and greedy people sent all our factories to China and s.e Asian countries. Now we are seeing the tragedy this created. Thank God for Trump who is trying to re-establish manufacturing in the U.S. It will take years but its started.
People will go to such lengths to identify "enemies" to blame - anything to avoid self reliance and responsibility. The spending done for military reasons would most likely cure cancer and wipe out hunger. But heaven forbid we could actually stop fighting long enough to focus on that.
Meh -they figured out Cancer DECADES ago. It's WAY too lucrative to actually cure anyone of anything.....
There is no magical cure but there are certainly natural ways you can treat and mitigate it.
“ROBO”, the Global Automation and Robotics ETF, has 88 companies in its portfolio. The nation with the most companies, by far, is the US, with 33 of the 88. Japan is in 2nd place with 14. China and Taiwan are tied at 6 each.
One of Taylor’s findings, at a GE plant as I recall, was that any positive change increased productivity. (I think it was better lighting). Unfortunately, it was temporary; (reverting to the mean?). Anyway, unions do have something to do with the problem. They will jump on the robot bandwagon as soon as a guaranteed national income is ratified. There are no simple fixes. “Ignorance changes over time. But it is always there, and it remains just as lethal,” p. 88 How To Stop Time by Matt Haig.
When guaranteed national income is ratified, capitalism will cease to exist. It will be swift regression to the stone age. The average man, the so-called worker, will have nothing to do. Not only will he be captive to the state, he will go insane with nothing to do. The human being is a goal-oriented individual. It's in his/her DNA. He/she must be striving to thrive. Then the government brings out the soma and tells everyone and everybody he/she is happy. Just take this pill... Best always. PM
Nah. We'll just start killing each other out of boredom and over petty differences in things that don't matter.
Oh, wait...
True. Until it all implodes. Productivity always comes before consumption and if we are not producing....
I know. Won’t it be marvelous? You know I’m kidding - don’t you?
Yes, but what'll be marvelous is that I'll be gone. We're living a Kafka novel. Best always. PM
I’m obviously no Jonathan Swift, but really…