On January 28, 2015, World Robotics News reports:
By 2017, more industrial robots will be operating in China’s production plants than in the European Union or North America. Operating unit numbers there will double from today’s 200,000 to more than 400,000. To compare: In North America, numbers will rise to about 300,000 – with 340,000 predicted for Europe’s five largest economies. So says the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in its 2014 World Robot Statistics.
China is already the world’s largest market in the sale of industrial robots. But this merely marks the first step in a fast game of catch-up. Given China’s still very low robotic density, the future market dimensions are palpably clear: To date, China only has 30 industrial robots per 10,000 employees in manufacturing industries. To compare: Germany’s robotic density is ten times larger – in Japan it is actually eleven times more. In North America robotic density is five times higher than in China, where the majority of industrial robots are used for handling operations (40%) and for welding (36%). The automotive industry is by far the largest customer (approx. 40%).
“The automation of China’s production plants has just started”, says Per Vegard Nerseth, Managing Director, ABB Robotics. “As the first foreign robot manufacturer to arrive here, we have observed the market and developments for years now. We have witnessed swift, almost explosive growth over the last two or three years, surpassing even our expectations.” Kuka and two Japanese robot manufacturers now also have their own locally-based production sites. Four out of five industrial robots in China are made by foreign manufacturers – the majority from Japan, North America and Europe. Yet more manufacturers are planning to build their own production lines in China.
The Chinese government is simultaneously pushing forward with robotic research. Once again the main partners are leading foreign robotic manufacturers. In contrast, Chinese manufacturers have concentrated on customers satisfied with average quality and unsophisticated technology. But sales in this segment have also more than tripled since 2012.
http://www.worldrobotics.org/index.php?id=home&news_id=280
Robotics sales and the development of labor-saving computerized operations are increasing in all markets, as competitive intensity races to gain more efficient, lower-cost productive gains from the non-human factor of production. This is a disruptive technology that is rapidly shifting toil work from human labor to smart, collaborative “tools” that reduce toil, enable otherwise impossible production, create new highly automated industries, and significantly change the way in which products and services are produced from labor intensive to capital intensive––the core function of technological invention and innovation. The trend represents an unprecedented and ever-accelerating shift to productive capital––which reflects tectonic shifts in the technologies of production. As a result, most changes moving forward in our productive capacity, and that of the world will be increasingly attributed to technological improvements in our capital assets, and a relatively diminishing proportion to human labor. It is nonsense to believe that physical capital “enhances” labor productivity (labor’s ability to produce economic goods). The fact is, the opposite is true. It makes many forms of labor unnecessary. As a result, the trend has been to diminish the importance of employment with productive capital ownership concentrating faster than ever, while technological change makes physical capital ever more productive.
Because productive capital is increasingly the source of the world’s economic growth it should become the source of added property ownership incomes for all. If both labor and capital are independent factors of production, and if capital’s proportionate contributions are increasing relative to that of labor, then equality of opportunity and economic justice demands that the right to property (and access to the means of acquiring and possessing property) must in justice be extended to all. Yet, sadly, the American people and its leaders still pretend to believe that labor is becoming more productive and should be paid more, and ignore the necessity to broaden personal ownership of wealth-creating, income-producing capital assets simultaneously with the growth of the American economy as the legitimate means to increase incomes for EVERY child, woman. and man.
The question that requires an answer is now timely before us. It was first posed by binary economist Louis Kelso in the 1950s but has never been thoroughly discussed on the national stage. Nor has there been the proper education of our citizenry that addresses what economic justice is and what ownership is. Therefore, by ignoring such issues of economic justice and ownership, our leaders are ignoring the concentration of power through ownership of productive capital, with the result of denying the 99 percenters equal opportunity to become capital owners. The question, as posed by Kelso is: “how are all individuals to be adequately productive when a tiny minority (capital owners who OWN “tools”) produce a major share and the vast majority (labor workers, who only own their labor), a minor share of total goods and services,” and thus, “how do we get from a world in which the most productive factor—physical capital—is owned by a handful of people, to a world where the same factor is owned by a majority—and ultimately 100 percent—of the consumers, while respecting all the constitutional rights of present capital owners?”
