Good points. Not too mention Google and Tesla's experiments with driverless cars---and trucks. I learned years ago to assume nothing, so have you been reading some of the stuff with Coors/Miller sending a driverless semi-truck down the highway to Point B with a load of beer?

Damn !!! Walmart's self checkout stations are getting larger and now I find myself standing in line to check myself out, and I won't be able to get a job as a checker, as a cab driver, or as a truck driver.

*************

We are all going the way of 411 calls for information, telephone operators, and receptionists.

" Your call is very important to us". If you---push 1---push 2--or push 3. Your call is very important to us. All of our representatives are busy helping other customers. " Enter some real crappy elevator music and then, "Your call is very important to us..............

Over the years Harley had 2 kinds of oil "leaks" that were actually built into the systems. One of my best friends back then worked in a Harley shop as a mechanic and explained it like this -

One was a crankcase ventilation system that allowed the engine to regulate the pressure and take the strain off the pistons and rings when it got hot on a long ride. The other was a chain lubrication system that for a couple of pennies of oil significantly increased the life of some parts that wear out quick on other bikes. A slow drip on the chain.

This is why the 80's were an awesome time for bikers. Yuppies want to be weekend warriors and picked up the 883 Sportsters like crazy. Then when they realized there was maintenance involved (like checking the oil) and the constant 1/2 dollar sized circle of oil on the garage floor next to their Beemers they dumped them on the secondary market at a significant loss. Real bikers would pick them up and get them bored out to 1200.

If we keep going here, The Marshall Plan is going to start being discussed.

I like the "freedom from environmental degradation caused by pollution;" That starts delving into the "true costs" for that cheap product we hunger for. Sort of like the "tire disposal fee" we all pay extra for when we buy new tires.

Witness the plastics pollution going on in our oceans. Especially the Pacific. That plastic McDonalds cup or that plastic shopping bag that got tossed into the street washes into the gutter system that drains into the river and then washes out to sea. And now marine life is suffering. And Midway Island is getting buried in plastic garbage from Asia and the US. The true costs for the plastics pollution is going to bite bigtime, sometime in the future. And we all contribute.

Rooster taking credit for the sunrise. Business thrives despite government, not because of it. With debt absolution provided by the government-authorized bankruptcy and business entity personal protections, of course further regulation becomes necessary. Creating legal structure for hurdles to market entry and other market protections, government reduces productivity and in fact, makes us all poorer.... unless, of course, your business has paid off a rule maker or is a chosen winner in a government-skewed market.

Are you talking about that leaky oil pump that was on my '54 Panhead? Or are you talking about that reverse internal threaded bushing that played the part of an oil seal on the crankshaft under the primary chain drive gear?

1973: I still remember hanging out at the local Harley dealership and looking at all the cardboard squares placed strategically under the Sportsters and Superglides to keep the oil drips off of the floor. That was the way it was---and we accepted it. It was Harley, after all. They were supposed to leak oil !!

And then Honda came along with the 750 that kicked ass and did not leak. That changed the game. Instead of seeing cops on their Harley's we started seeing cops on their Hondas (anybody remember the TV show Chips?).

When Indian Motorcycles went broke in the 50s, Harley had no competition and got lazy. It could afford to since if you wanted a big bike you only had Harley or a Triumph 650 Getting sold off to the AMF bowling ball people almost finished Harley off.

Finally, in the early 80s, the Evolution engine came along.

The argument for moving American factory jobs to China as otherwise the company will go out or business is a bunch of BS in most cases. Greed has caused many companies to move factory jobs to China. $75 million in profit isn't enough for some companies, they need $100 million.

Apple for example could easily make every single product they sell in the US but instead of making let's say $10 billion for the quarter they will make $9 billion. How could a company like Apple get by with only $9 billion? Again, greed.

There's a reason why the average CEO salary is now over 300x that of the average employee, up from 30-50x in the 1950's. Greed.

Exactly.

Those stories are for old people watching Faux News all day long.

"UBER??? You can't use that!! Don't you know a guy got murdered by an Uber driver!"

(as if normal taxi drivers don't kill a dozen people every day)

Corporations are sociopaths(some would argue psychopaths, but I leave that to the psychologists). Very few CEOs(or the boards that hire them) can resist the urge to dehumanize workers to drive profit. Not sure how to fix the problem, though I am known to go on long, colorful rants about the subject.
****
Personal anecdote. The company I worked at for many years was purchased by another corp. The new CEO made a speech in front of the engineers, telling them that he was looking for "harvestable IP." They applauded. I was incredulous. He was telling them that he didn't want them to innovate anymore. He just wanted to invest as little as possible in the existing portfolio, squeeze it until it no longer met his profitability margin and then sell the division. When he wanted a new product, he'd buy a new company and cut out the parts he wanted to keep. Rinse, lather, repeat. He told them that they were no longer meant to engineer new products, and they applauded.
Needless to say, I was out of there.
****
Eventually, the race to the bottom of the manufacturing game will be won. By machines. And, while we aren't looking, a lot of "safe" white collar jobs will be eaten at the same time. Do we create busy work for the masses? Perpetual warfare to burn excess? Retool society? I would like to think that we are mature enough as a species to deal with it responsibly, but I have my doubts that we'll even recognize the end of the road before we hit it.
Well, look on the bright side. The total destruction of the human race will make a cool dystopian pinball theme!

I could not disagree more. If every Tom, Dick and Harry could enter any business without legal barriers to entry, try to imagine the chaos that would ensue.

So, govt. reduces productivity?

How would you like to go flying on a commercial jet, or any other aircraft without the FAA acting as watchdog make sure your airplane's maintenance is up to date---and more importantly---done correctly? The aircraft industry is filled with legions of plane crashes where sloppy, haphazard maintenance was the cause for an airplane coming down.

When you go to the drug store and buy a bottle of aspirin you can buy with confidence that you are buying 100% aspirin and not some adulterated junk cranked out in someone's basement.

If there were no regulations in the fishing industry, the fishermen would take every last fish from the ocean if given a chance.

If I go buy a bottle of tax stamped booze, I have pretty good idea of what I am getting. If I go buy a bottle of "white lightening" from an unregulated tax-cheating bootlegger, I could be one of those people you read about who died because he got some poisoned liquor.

If it was not for regulations, the timber companies out west would have chopped down the last redwood tree years ago.

Regulations exist because people cheat. All the time.

Regulations exist for natural monopolies, such as the electric company or natural gas company. With no competition, and no regulation, these monopolies would bend you over the meter every chance they got.

Recently, a larger electric company wanted to take over my electric provider with a combination of stock and debt. Let me rewrite debt into DEBT. The stockholders on my electric provider were going to get paid a nice premium over the stock's market price and the remaining company was going to be so debt laden that it would have to come to regulators for a rate increase. Our POS governor thought it was great deal. Fortunately, the state regulators so "NO!' to the high level of debt that would be left over ater this Wall Street style raid.

I could go on and on and on.

Maybe you would be happy living in an unregulated environment. And as much as it can rankle sometimes, I would rather have some regulations for my own protection from those who like to cheat.

That's the dumbest question I've heard in this thread.
Why would anyone compare one economy to another? Every nation has their own currency value and cost of living. Right now the exchange rate is 6.80 US dollars to one chinese Yen. I would expect the average chinese worker to make $1.14/hour, and they probably do. Also China is very strict on hours, the last company I worked for the China factory got fined because some of the engineers had to work 50 hours that week to get 3d models ready for tooling. Meanwhile companies in the US like American Pinball can have employees working 12-18 hour days, 7 days a week (salary, so there's no incentive) but we don't call that slave labor.. We call that Crunch time, or working for their passion.

I think I heard one story of an uber driver attacking a passenger (and technically I think it was someone posing as one, not an actual drive). However, I have heard many stories of passengers attacking uber drivers, including one not far from me a couple weeks ago:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/lincolnwood/news/ct-lwr-man-stabbed-to-death-in-lincolnwood-tl-0608-20170530-13-story.html

I agree with most what you say, but recently regulations are also used to keep smaller competitors out of the market. Large companies can afford to employ accountants, lawyers and, most importantly, lobby politicians to make favorable legislation. This creates very high hurdles for smaller businesses to enter the market. The result is a $600 Epipen that costs $2.50 to produce.
Some rules and regulations exist to make a product safe, others exist to keep competition out of the market for the benefit of the few and the detriment of the many.

>> we started seeing cops on their Hondas (anybody remember the TV show Chips?).

Pretty sure Ponch and Jon rode Kawasaki's....

That's what I mean.

Taxi drivers attack people every day. Taxi drivers get assaulted ever day.

It's only a **headline story** because it involves Uber.

-

100% True Story-

Old Woman: How did you meet your wife?

Dave: On the internet...

OW: Oh my gosh! Don't you know there are crazies on the internet?????

D: How did you meet your husband, rest his soul ?

OW: We met at a bar, across from where we both worked.

D: Yeah, certainly no **crazies** at a bar.

OW: Of course not.

Indeed. And we need a vigilant, educated voting population to know the difference and maintain a healthy balance.

"Most?" You would lose.

It always surprises me how it seems that only in the United States is there this mentality that the more hours you work the better. I've heard at some companies workers seem to be valued more by the number of hours they work vs the quality of work.

Millions have been brainwashed into this way of thinking as its saving companies the expense of hiring more workers. Companies can hire 2 workers and have them work 60 hours a week versus hiring 3 workers at 40 hours per week (less to pay out in benefits for 2 workers vs 3).

Now if the people working crazy hours are doing it out of passion that's one thing but often that isn't the case for the typical worker.

This article about Amazon's corporate work culture describes what I mean. All I know is none of us can buy more time and at the end of the day I want to be at home with family, working on a hobby or being out with friends versus working 60+ hours a week.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon-wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html

One must first remove the jail bars from one's mind before removing the jail bars from one's cubicle.

correction: watching just about any news source this day in age, especially cable news. People who blame fox news (which admittedly is complete garbage) generally are the same people who fall for the same tactics from the news channels or entertainment outlets on the other side of the fence. This is very apparent on many of the posts here, from people who can only align with what their spun "news" outlet of choice is feeding them instead of trying to be truly objective.

Every time I hear people babble on about machines taking over peoples jobs I have to roll my eyes. If you lose your job to automation, that sucks, but hopefully you've developed skills to be useful elsewhere. Automation isn't going to lead to less jobs. I refer you to the luddite fallacy: http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/ Sure I suppose one day technology could advance so far that everything is automated, but honestly its not a major concern for a long time to come

Back in the 70s, all everyone bitched about was how Robots were going to take everyone's jobs.

All the musicians bitched about was how Synthesizers were going to take their jobs.

50 years latter, Robots do sucky jobs like spot welding or spray painting, and Synthesizers have allowed new genres of music.

50 years latter, you can still work on the factory floor, go see an orchestra, go see an EDM festival, or see Eric Clapton struggle to play the only scale he knows.

And when this guy sat down in front of you at a movie theater.

images (resized).jpg

Seriously, I would like to come at the end of June if possible. I haven't been to Shenzhen for 10+ years. I will sort out my visa as soon as I arrived in Hong Kong.

"When the University of Chicago asked a panel of leading economists about automation, 76 percent agreed that it had not historically decreased employment. But when asked about the more recent past, they were less sanguine. About 33 percent said technology was a central reason that median wages had been stagnant over the past decade, 20 percent said it was not and 29 percent were unsure."

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/upshot/as-robots-grow-smarter-american-workers-struggle-to-keep-up.html

So the story with automation is the same as that of labor outsourcing to cheaper locales, that being it is used as a means to increase productivity where the vast majority of the benefits go to the owners and almost nothing of it improves the standard of living for anyone else. Except the rapid and dramatic changes to the labor market as a result of rapid automation will make make offshoring look quaint in comparison.

I think automation is starting to get to the tipping point where it will seriously impact low-skill jobs. But no robot in my lifetime is going to take the job of a plumber or carpenter.

So, send your kids to trade school.

Send them to learn robotics repair.

Sexbots are poised to displace sex-workers around the world

OP, You ever been to China?

You think Pat Lawlor or Steve Ritchie are gonna hang out in a shitty factory 6-7 days a week making sure everything comes out right????

Maybe up in Shanghai where they don't really believe it gets cold enough to need heat??? LOL

The Homepin factory is far from "shitty"....excuse me!

I'm not going to make any prognostications as to the timeline here, but I think that it will "seem" to happen overnight. The truth will be that a lot of jobs will be paired with expert tech to assist the worker for a while until the worker is simply a rubber stamp on a process. Given their track record, I'd trust a Google car to get me safely through traffic over a human(myself very much included). Robots already perform eye surgery better than humans. Even diagnostics aren't safe: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/ibm-watson-proper-diagnosis-doctors-stumped-article-1.2741857

I wouldn't bet everything on that: https://www.engadget.com/2017/03/07/apis-cor-3d-printed-house/

The problem is, we have the idea that skilled trades will be safe, because we can't imagine how the job could be automated. Then, tech comes along that obviates the problem by rethinking the paradigm. If I can install prefab wiring/plumbing/etc in a 3D printer house, there is very little left that can't be automated. Do I need a plumber if a robot could replace the whole subsection quickly and efficiently? Will the plumber become a rubber stamp on a robotic operation? I have no idea. But I'm not betting at all against it becoming possible very quickly. Perhaps more quickly than we, as a society, are comfortable with.

I missed this post.
I owned an 82 Ironhead XLHA for years, and aside from what I spilled when changing the oil, I don't think I ever had a leak. Maybe I was just lucky, or maybe the upgrades AMF made to the tooling when run by competent management finally worked out the kinks.
Best upgrade I did was swap the carb for a CV model from an Evo Sporty. Man, that bike felt like a new beast after that. I had to sell it(along with my wife's 94 Hugger) once I moved out to the coast. I still miss that bike...

Just wait for those craigslist ads.
"Just shopped it myself. Fresh silicone, a nice coat of wax. Won't quit pinching, but I think it is probably just a fuse..."

JJP are not about to disclose that now are they LOL.

To their credit they no doubt buy their mechs, LEDs etc locally BUT they know full well that the PCBs, main PC motherboard, power supply, SSD etc etc etc all come from China at some point even if they don't directly import the parts themselves.

All pinball mechs used for the part 20 years have been made in China. Only someone with their head in the sand could possibly think otherwise. I'm here, I see this first hand.

A point on Chinese "low wages". Everything is relative. Yes, my staff are paid about 25% of an equivalent worker in Australia. They have the same or better conditions that come with the job.

The part that those ONLY believing what they see on the sensationalist news is that costs are far, far lower here for the everyday person.

A can of Coke costs about $0.50 from a corner store in a fridge, can of beer, Budweiser if you like or Heineken is about $0.60 from the same corner store.

Go to a middle quality restaurant for lunch or dinner - 3 people, all you can eat and maybe two large bottles of beer each and the total bill will be about $25~30. In Australia, that exact same meal would be double that, EACH person!!!

One of my "poorly paid, overworked, slaved" staff just bought a brand new Toyota Corolla (new, not used).

Doesn't sound much like they report on the news now does it?

Also, this crap about "factory suicides" is just that - crap. Hyped up bullshit by some in the west with different agendas. I know the full story but I will save it for my book.

Some people really need to get out more - some of the plainly ridiculous comments and "statements made as fact" in this thread alone are just mind boggling to those here that actually DO know the facts.

Without seeking approval with the corner-cutting...

VAT isn't charged on exports.

Seriously dude... read up on the topic. You can start by even 'at home' and research the # of new plants approved in the last 20 years and the significance of even getting a renewal of a license. Then move onto Europe's push to de-emphasize them all together. It's a very touchy subject.

You're forgetting economically. It's one thing to print out a new house, but what about maintenance? What about older homes? What about custom work? Robots are good at doing repetitive tasks in a well defined situation. Look at all the trouble they're having with self-driving cars, and that's a pretty well defined working environment. Planes are even more highly regulated but they still have mechanics, and even though the planes can essentially fly themselves, there's still a pilot in that seat.

There isn't a robot in existence that is cheaper, more flexible, able to adjust to situations than even the poorest illegal immigrant in the world. The dexterity of a human being is still lightyears better than most robots and human labour is super cheap. Go look at the Homepin thread - there's a bunch of photos of people making the plastic toys - don't you think if it was cheaper and easier to use robots they would? Then slap problem-solving and pattern matching on top of that.

Repetitive, low-skill jobs are dying and never coming back. But there's still plenty of work for people.

I think if designed properly in newer homes where wiring and plumbing is modular, and anyone with reasonable skills can just replace entire chunks cheaper than hiring someone to troubleshoot and fix. Think about pinball, used to be if you had board issues, you'd pay a guy $150-$250 to troubleshoot it and perhaps replace perhaps a 20 cent capacitor. Now if that board is available as new, sometimes it's cheaper and easier to just replace the entire board and sell your old broken one on ebay and let someone else troubleshoot it. This doesn't mean it will completely eliminate jobs, there are always lazy people that would prefer to pay someone, but it would certainly change the landscape.

As far as self-driving cars, Elon musk plans to have an update next year to self-drive from LA to NY. Now that's not to say it's 100% perfect, there are always situations where bad weather can impair the vision of the car but you can say the same thing about human error. It's been proven that self-driving cars statistically are FAR more safer than human drivers. I also say that in 5-10 years, so many cars will be self-driving that insurance companies will give those cars breaks on their insurance rates, and those that choose to drive themselves (or not upgrade their car) will face price hikes because they are a bigger risk. I also envision hundred of thousands of jobs to disappear very quickly (cabs, limos, truck drivers, pizza delivery drivers). If a company like say uber can suddenly have an army of self driving electric cars that self re-change and pickup passengers, they now have a huge cost benefit over any other company.

Ever renovated a house? I have - a couple now. Let me tell you, there's really not much you could automate to do that that would be cheaper than humans doing the work. Obviously tools can and will evolve to make the job easier, but human hands are too cheap and too dexterous, human eyes too detailed and human brains too calculating to really be replaced in those kinds of jobs. Basically, anything creative is safe for now.

Not in winter I bet!

There's still the "last mile" issue to deal with when it comes to deliveries. Cheaper to pay someone to walk that pizza up than make a robot do it.

I'm not saying "never", just not in my lifetime. It's too expensive.

I think too many of these companies, many with too much spare money around, are dreaming and reading too much into science fiction.

I'm sure many things will eventually become reality - we have already seen Dick Tracy video phone watches and many other things come to reality.

Trouble is there are simply too many variables to make self driving cars "the norm" for most major cities. I look around here in Shenzhen and ponder "what if that Toyota/Audi/BMW across the road was a self driving car? How could it park in that space when others are jostling around it - it would never ever be able to do it".

Same as on the road, other drivers are too erratic, don't follow the road rules in a lot of cases and are simply too unpredictable and this is what self driving cars rely on - predictability. I also see them easily being fooled by advertising signs etc and "thinking" the lights are red, or green thus causing confusion and possibly accidents. I don't believe this can be overcome with any amount of 'smarts', programming or sensors - just no!

Would you get into an unmanned UBER hover car? I won't.

Drones delivering pizzas, small parcels and books? Nope, too many issues - pedestrians, kites, insects, birds, kids - not to mention bad weather, hoons taking pot shots at them with slingshots/rocks/slug guns etc. I just can't see drones doing city deliveries anytime soon. Possibly is less built up areas but then it kind of defeats the purpose.

The 'dream' Amazon seems to have of fleets of drones zooming out of the warehouse in a constant stream assumes that NOBODY else wants to use the airspace and that is a very big mistake IMO.

Time will tell us I guess and the Chinese have made drones so reliable, stable and cheap for the masses now so who knows?

Never heard the term "Hoon" before.

"Hoon is a term primarily used in Australia and New Zealand to describe the act of driving a vehicle at high speed and pulling manoeuvres likely to cause excitement and cheers from onlookers. Hoon activities can include speeding, burnouts, doughnuts or screeching tyres."

The biggest problem with self driving cars gets to the crux of this debate. When an autonomous car sees an obstacle on the road it has no idea if the obstacle is a brick that should be swerved around or is it Big Mac container that you can just smash through. Humans have critical thinking abilities that computers just don't "get" yet. With machine learning algorithms the computers are getting better at figuring out the world around them and soon will be able to become as skilled as humans in A LOT of jobs. I foresee a future where all cars will be electric and autonomous, gas stations will be few and far between. New jobs will be created, ones that we haven't even thought of yet. Currently kids can leave high school with careers in YouTube or online gaming. I don't understand it, but there's definitely a market for it with the younger generations. Remember, evolution is inevitable your ability to change is not. The world is changing around us at an ever increasing rate and we must keep up.

Move production to china? Hell, in twenty years we might be debating moving production to Africa or some other area of the world that is beginning to prosper in this new Information Age.

Here's another one for you then - "Bogan"

"The term bogan is a derogatory Australian and New Zealand slang word used to describe a person whose speech, clothing, attitude and behaviour exemplify values and behaviour considered unrefined or unsophisticated.

Bogans generally reside in the outer suburbs of larger cities, have teeth that haven't had dental care due to cost, have an anti-authoritarian stance, jingoism, home-done tattoos, a love of classic rock and Peter Brock, hooning and drinking alcohol to excess. A bogan attitude consists of a lack of pretence and a willingness to be brutally honest."

We call them "Hoosiers" here in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Quite a different meaning in the state of Indiana though.

From the Urban Dictionary: HOOSIER "Indiana definition (most common and nationally recognized definition): 1. A native or inhabitant of Indiana (taken from Oxford American Dictionary). 2. An alumnus or student of Indiana University. Also "Hoosiers": Indiana University sports teams. Note: The Indiana University Basketball team is sometimes referred to as “the Hurryin’ Hoosiers.”

St. Louis Definition (regional slang term): Generally means redneck, hick, or someone from Missouri outside of St. Louis or certain areas of St. Louis.

The word itself and its most common definition have its origins in the state of Indiana (also known as the Hoosier State), though the word has taken on regional meanings outside of Indiana, most commonly in and around the St. Louis, MO area. However, even the St. Louis definition can trace its origins to Indiana and Indiana natives transplanted to the St. Louis area."

Now you're just being a yobbo, Mike

That would be where regulation would rear its "ugly" head and put a "crimp on productivity" and then where Amazon might try to "buy" the regulation by hiring a team of lobbyists to swing the regulation in its favor. But Walmart would be a formidable competitor. Result: Los of richer lobbyists.

Can you imagine an Amazon drone, a Walmart drone, and pizza delivery drone all arriving in your yard at the same time?

Sounds like the start of a bad joke.

Looking forward to my pizza delivery guy dying on route and the automatic car carrying his pepperoni-scented corpse to my door.

This sounds like a great criminal exercise. Shoot down the drone and take its cargo. Maybe I win a pizza, or it could be, something special, just for me. I'm going to go buy a slingshot.

Drones already deliver food and drinks in in Reno NV, a city with a quarter of a million people. Apparently 77 deliveries the first day alone.

In American cities, people are really trying to shoot people; rather than drones.

This augrument has being on for years. From hand tools to machine tools. China will build/manufacture any quality you spec. They are a world power. They do it all from space flight to the leds in your pinball machine.

You believe wrong. With sensors 360 degrees around the vehicle and reaction times a hundred times better than a human's, dealing with erratic drivers is where self-driving technology shines. With pinpoint GPS and a database of where lights are, confusion from advertising would be nonexistent. Plus they are never impaired by alcohol or other drugs or even just tired. They'd always obey the speed limit, always signal, never be in a hurry or suffer road rage...

If I had a choice, I'd pick an Auto-Uber every time.