Valid point. I’d like to add that in public companies their priority is satisfying their shareholders. They don’t care about jobs lost. If there’s an opportunity to replace 2,000 people with robots, and it saves the company money long-term, those 2,000 employees are getting the axe, for sure.
As soon as the CEO makes that announcement, that stock is going up 15% and several executives are getting big bonuses.
As long as these companies keep doing this, they won’t have many consumers to sell their products and services too.
Who knows how this will turn out, I’m not going to stress over it.
You said it. Trade, make your money, and enjoy your life. Do whatever good you can for those around you, and forget everything else.
I have worked overseas in five countries on assignment and have visited dozens for business / site attendance trips in association with projects I have run from the UK. Of the five overseas assignments, all of them were in developing countries. The part of my job I most enjoyed was the knowledge transfer to local staff who had the right background education to understand the principles and practice of their specialist disciplines. I am of the opinion that no country has a monopoly on competent people, or work ethic, or any other attribute of being a contributing human being. I have worked with citizens of over 25 countries over a 50 year working lifetime, and given the same educational opportunities, we all have the same capabilities. As a general observation, those people with the opportunity to move from a less developed country to a better developed country are more hungry to better the conditions for their family than those of the local population in the country they move to. But given the choice to stay in their country of origin and earn similar wages to those of their expatriate counterparts who have been able to migrate, almost all the people I work with prefer to stay in their country of origin to look after those family members less fortunate than themselves. Unfortunately, as a global citizenship, we do not do knowledge transfer very well. Often the basis of overseas investment it based on future exports, and it is in the better interests of the richer country providing the asset base to continue to provide “consultancy and spare parts” to the benefit of the source country and often to the detriment of the recipient country. It is describe euphemistically as “overseas aid”, by the source country whereas in fact it almost always comes with a political and commercial disbenefit to the recipient country. Worse still, that aid is sometimes military in nature, which provides a continuous stream of high value jobs for donor countries, and a permanent debt for poor countries to rich countries, to perpetuate wars of benefit to the western military industrial complex that maims and kills citizens worldwide…
Personally I think countries should deploy their local labour whenever possible in the hope of building a knowledgeable local workforce. Knowledge transfer for full competence takes 10 to 20 years depending on the specialisation. If the leaders of the recipient countries are corrupt (they all are, but there are degrees of corruption), they will not care about the education of their own citizens, but only care about doing everything in their power to remain in power indefinitely, and across generations, because absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I have been privileged to work overseas and to know that as families, the vast majority of us work very hard to improve their nuclear and extended family’s progress in life. Some of us get more lucky than others and it has a lot to do with the luck of where you are born in the first place.
I agree. I’ve read a few stories about military leaders who led a revolt to overthrow a corrupt government, only for those revolutionary leaders to become exactly the corrupt leaders they replaced.
It’s the strangest thing. They don’t revolt, win, then say, ¨Let’s have a free election!¨ Instead they say, ¨Well, I’m the leader now. Wow, look at all this money!¨
Anyway, do you think such countries should invest in robots or their own people?
I hope this will be of relief to some readers. About four years ago, I led a team of engineers tasked with implementing robotic process engineering in a large US company. It was a pilot study that would lead the following year to a productivity increase of 30% and a direct loss of ten medium skilled jobs that the customer was training a few of their more competent and willing staff to manage all aspects of the automation in future years. Each “robot function” had to be defined in a similar way to a conventional job description, and (as per the human resources standards of the customer) each robot function had to be designated a job title, a date of birth and a date of employment. This was in anticipation (in the US and most likely in all countries) that a future tax was going to be levied on all automation (including AI) that had been deemed to replace a human being’s job, or even one that the governments perceived would replace a human’s job.
This was not unique to the customer at hand. For financial benefits calculations we were asked to “value” each robotic automation function at the equivalent cost of $6K per function, and it was my understanding that this was not to estimate the amortisation cost of the robotic function. That was already capitalised and in an amortisation table. This was an anticipated additional corporation tax expected to be paid in future, whether directly or in kind, for the inevitable extra cost to society that will, in time, bring about a change of at least 75% of jobs done today by human beings. About 20% of jobs are associated with driving, whether taxis, or freight haul or public transport. If and when ALL of those driving jobs are automated, we will need to find alternative jobs for all those professional drivers (including driving instructors) and that is just one sector. I could go on and on, but we are changing faster than we all have time to absorb the full consequences. I expect the future to be better, not worse, but I am an eternal optimist. 
A less developed country should invest in its people and in a free market where the most competent people can succeed to build a better future