Friday, June 29, 2012

China, Robotics and I

I haven't figured a way to make money off of the robot manufacturers (other than ISRG which isn't even my idea) so this may be a situation where the users of the robots get just enough incremental advantage that compounded over time allows them to own their markets.

The usual suspects like ABB and Fanuc, Dover or even Immersion don't really attract.
 (ABB is superior for other reasons though).

So, like nano tech figure out who integrates the concept into their product offerings best, Caterpillar and Deere come to mind, or into their manufacturing  processes.
Anyhoo, from ZeroHedge, who's been on a roll today:

I, Not Robot: Why The Rise Of SkyNet Leads To Automatic Unemployment For The People
With so much hollow and pointless discussion over the past week, month and year over such fundamentally trivial things as who will inject more money faster, who will be bailed out first, who will go back to their own currency before everyone else, it is easy to forget that reality actually matters. And the reality is not who has their CTRL-P macro stuck, but what does the future of the world truly hold when one sidesteps such idiotic flights of fancy that debt may be cured with more debt. In order to completely change the topic from what has become trivial and generic - i.e., the various encroaching forms of central planning: Fed, SCOTUS, G-8 through G-20; European Finance Ministers, and now, with the ESM passing German parliament, the German Constitutional Court, we focus on something few have discussed, yet all have a morbid fascination with: Robots... And China. And why the combination of the two just may be the most dangerous thing for China's several hundred million strong migrant labor force, which, on the margin may just be the deciding factor defining the engine of global growth for the next decade. Oh, and did we mention global structural unemployment which will only get worse as increasing automation leaves more and more millions collecting their 99 weeks of extended unemployment benefits.


And since we have written far too much this week, we will let the charts do most of the talking.
Machinations and autobots, and unmet Chinese markets:

Robots and unemployment: correlation or causation?


Finally, here is why China better have learned all the tricks of the labor market manipulation trade from the BLS. It will need it....MUCH MORE