Comment by rglullis
1 day ago
"Becoming viable" does not mean "automatically put into execution". You still need to take overall demand in account.
Consider this: if demand was not a factor, anyone living in a moderately wealthy country would be practicing labor arbitrage and sending money to poorer places. Ask yourself why this doesn't happen.
I'm sorry, I must be missing your point, because isn't that exactly what's happening with manufacturing having gone to China?
No. It's different in two ways:
1) corporations moved manufacturing to where labor was cheap, but brought back the goods to sell them. This only works for as long as there is healhy consumer market somewhere. If AI really gets to automate most white-collar work, there will be no healthy consumer market left anywhere around the world.
2) The essay touches on this: any of the previous offshoring / job displacement movements happened on a much longer timeframe than what is being pushed now by the powers that be.