W
If you look at vast steel mill complexes in Pennsylvania at one time they employed like 30,000 normies working in the mill and the related subcontractors. You just needed a lot of labor doing repetitive tasks.
Each generation of steel making equipment they made it so less normies were needed, mainly by how the designs of the equipment. So today those vast steel complexes are still there, and still making the same amount of steel, and still really good union jobs, but they only employ like 3,000 normies.
The ideologists I used to debate online years back, they said well people will just and work other jobs. But my argument was the problem is the same thing is happening across the economy. Its not just steel mills which have rising productivity. Another argument they had was that then we will use more steel. But if anything we are using less steel over time. After we build a bridge we don't need to build a second bridge there. And our materials science and coatings science is advancing so steel lasts longer with each generation of improvements in those areas.
What makes the whole thing hard to see is that it happens slowly and its not a 100% thing. Its not like the steel mill is all robots, they might not even have robots there. Just a bunch of design changes that meant less workers were needed. The materials science advances meaning that things last longer is another thing hard to understand for people, on how that is another form of automation. If you make materials science advances that mean things last twice as long and then four times as long, it means you need 1/4 the replacement rate.
Each generation of steel making equipment they made it so less normies were needed, mainly by how the designs of the equipment. So today those vast steel complexes are still there, and still making the same amount of steel, and still really good union jobs, but they only employ like 3,000 normies.
The ideologists I used to debate online years back, they said well people will just and work other jobs. But my argument was the problem is the same thing is happening across the economy. Its not just steel mills which have rising productivity. Another argument they had was that then we will use more steel. But if anything we are using less steel over time. After we build a bridge we don't need to build a second bridge there. And our materials science and coatings science is advancing so steel lasts longer with each generation of improvements in those areas.
What makes the whole thing hard to see is that it happens slowly and its not a 100% thing. Its not like the steel mill is all robots, they might not even have robots there. Just a bunch of design changes that meant less workers were needed. The materials science advances meaning that things last longer is another thing hard to understand for people, on how that is another form of automation. If you make materials science advances that mean things last twice as long and then four times as long, it means you need 1/4 the replacement rate.
