Noodle Robots Replacing Workers In Chinese Restaurants 531
kkleiner writes "Recently developed noodle-making robots have now been put into operation in over 3,000 restaurants in China. Invented by a noodle restaurant owner, each unibrow-sporting robot currently costs 10,000 yuan ($1,600), which is only three months wages for an equivalent human noodle cook. As the cost of the robot continues to drop, more noodle shops are bound to displace human workers for the tirelessly working cheaper robots."
YouTube link (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukNkCnNJuR8 [youtube.com]
YouTube link with the robots in action.
Re:And it begins (Score:5, Informative)
Re:And it begins (Score:5, Informative)
We need to first let go of the perverse idea that work is itself virtuous. Especially in the US, the more productive people get, the more they're working (and the less they're making on a real-inflation-adjusted basis). For a decent chunk of time, as people became more productive, their workload decreased and their leisure increased, but that trend stopped in the early 70's.
But, heck, according to the video somebody else posted here, the property taxes I have to pay are alone more money than a noodle chef makes in a year in China and they keep going up, so the total picture isn't just as simple as "so then just work less".
Re:Capital vs Labour (Score:5, Informative)
Whenever Marxists talk about economy they like to overstate the importance of labour and understate the importance of capital.
Umm, the whole concept of Marxism is basically based around technology causing capital to become increasingly valuable, eventually leading to the capital in a few private hands destabilizing the economy and society as a whole.
You are wrong. (Score:4, Informative)
From merriam webster [merriam-webster.com]:
2: a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks
It is a robot.
Note on the noodle (Score:5, Informative)
reaching equilibrium will be painful (Score:4, Informative)
Once all the menial jobs are replaced by robots, what do people that are only suited to menial jobs do? Not everyone can be a robot technician, and there will be fewer robot technicians than robots.
Given that it is physically impossible for the economy to keep growing (due to resource scarcity if nothing else) at some point productivity increases must lead to either a reduced population or else a lower average work week.
This is happening in North America too...here in Canada one of the major banks just got a bunch of bad publicity for shipping skilled technical labour offshore because it's cheaper. It's becoming a global economy, places with relatively high cost of living are going to have a tough time keeping their population employed.
Re:Capital vs Labour - They're made out of meat. (Score:5, Informative)
Socialist and communist don't mean the same thing, nor are either the exclusive domain of Marxists.
Try less rhetoric and you might be a tiny bit convincing.
Re:And it begins (Score:5, Informative)
We should work for our keep, for most of our lives. We're wired to need to - we value what we have if we work for it; otherwise we delight in destroying it.
Studies of hunter-gatherer societies, typical of the evolutionary conditions for which humans might be "wired," indicate rather low typical work loads. Actual "work" time is typically 2-4 hours per day; interspersed with a lot of lollygagging about, chatting, telling stories, playing games, singing songs, sitting about pondering. Of course, there are sometimes brief periods of highly strenuous work and intense need. But the idea that humans are "wired" to need 40+ hour weeks of toil, instead of spending most of their time in leisure and "artsy" pursuits, is an artifact of the development of labor-intensive agricultural societies during the latest tiny fraction of human evolutionary history.