I robot Rura Ramblings
We see robots on TV and movies all the time. Yet, I think many of us are missing the point that a lot of science fiction is becoming science fact rather too quick for comfort. I already mentioned Flippy the burger flipping robot in a previous column. But there are others, server robots. As early as 2014, The New York Times was reporting about a restaurant in China that was using a server robot and without delving too deeply a read about another one being tried out in the UK in Pizza Hut.
There is already a range of cleaning robots on the market now. In factories, robots have been on the production line for years, now they are moving out into the warehouse space. I have also seen bricklaying robots that are capable of building walls for houses and commercial buildings far quicker than humans can. We have autonomous vehicles too on almost every level. Drones must be beating the heck out of some helicopter contracts.
Here’s the thing. We all need enough money to live on, a living wage or income if you will. Governments love to strike a pose with how they are raising the minimum wage. In years gone by, it was the market that dictated the wage, supply and demand of goods and supply and demand of labour. The more skilled the labour required, the scarcer it was and therefore, the more expensive. Now, tt would be naïve to expect one’s job, any job to be so skilled that it could not be replaced.
Returning to minimum wage. This minimum is usually the bottom of the employment ladder and is often applied to workers in small businesses and enterprises across the board to for low skill, low qualification work, which is often part time. The principal of pushing minimum wage up in a low inflation economy is laudable however, I don’t think governments are thinking this through regarding human behaviour.
Small business owners are often struggling to pay themselves let alone hike their biggest cost year on year. Hiking minimum wage puts many small businesses at risk or takes away most of their viability and enthusiasm to carry on. Deep pocket corporations can see what minimum wage does to their bottom line and they’re not going to like it. The higher minimum wage goes the more likely that corporations will look for technology to lessen the wage bill. They will not have to look far. And, following simple economics the more demand for technology there is, the more will be created.
It’s not unfeasible to imagine businesses of the future with a lot less human workers than there are now, right across the economy. Well meaning government policies could be one of the major drivers to hasten this state of affairs. Not that I don’t think that it will happen anyway.
Then we have another conundrum, assuming we don’t drastically decrease the human population through killing each other, what are we to do? Paying everyone a minimum income is one thought that’s gaining traction. Develop jobs that robots can’t do, yet? Go somewhere else and create new economies? Mars anyone?