Reno Selected For Tesla Motors Battery Factory 157
First time accepted submitter Mikenan writes Tesla has finally decided that it will build its battery "gigafactory" in Nevada, sources say. "That's a go, but they are still negotiating the specifics of the contract," a source within the Nevada's governor's office told CNBC Wednesday afternoon. The source noted that it could be a week before the deal is official. Nevada is planning a press conference Thursday in Carson City.
Another building full of robots? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I guess it's good that they're not manufacturing the batteries in China (batteries are heavy so I guess the shipping outweighs the labor savings) but it sounds like Tesla is just going to pocket a ton of tax credits and other stuff in exchange for putting a building of robot manufacturers in Nevada.
Say what you will, but the middle class needs work. We need something for the vast majority of people who aren't scientists, engineers or politicians to do. That used to be traditional assembly-line manufacturing. After that, it was the millions of people routing documents and reports around large corporations. This next wave of automation is going to put a real crimp on the middle class that it can't easily absorb. Unless people start paying full-salary wages for stupid stuff like rating cat videos or posting on social media, the traditional model of 2-kids-and-a-mortgage is out the window. For the low end, we need something like the steel mills and other factories that would employ thousands of workers in 3 shifts. And for the medium end, we need to preserve at least some of the "corporate drone" jobs. At the risk of sounding like a Luddite, it looks like there's nothing left for the middle of the economy -- it's going to split into ultra low end jobs like cleaning and food service, and high-end jobs like engineering, science, etc. (And I'm guessing management will reserve itself a place in the high end too.)
The problem is, without rolling back a lot of the benefits automation brings, I don't know how we're going to handle the next level of change.
Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, which is what I was saying -- no one is going to actually support subsidizing unemployment no matter how bad things get. Look at the number of poor and lower-middle class people who idolize the "job creator" class and deride people on unemployment/welfare. People are convinced that just working harder will make them rich -- and no amount of convincing will change that mindset. Unless, of course, 80% of the workforce is unemployed.
I don't have a good answer for this. People who worked like dogs their whole life won't support it because their entire self-worth is based on what they've managed to save in their retirement accounts. People who are working are going to feel like they're subsidizing freeloaders. It's going to be a very ugly 21st century.
Re:CARson City (Score:2, Insightful)
That and the fact that Reno is just a few hours from Palo Alto and, more importantly, is not located in California.
Re:California Betrayed (Score:4, Insightful)
Bloom off the rose? There are few things that give me greater pleasure than seeing a leftist parasite howling because it's been deprived of it's host. Go Tesla!
Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:2, Insightful)
After unionization, assembly line work became middle class work. As unionization has declined, such unskilled work has reverted to working class.
In almost all interpretations except ridiculous statistical definitions, middle class means an ability to ride out unemployment. How long is a matter of interpretation. 3 months, 6 months, 2 years. Whatever it is, middle class effectively means being able to ride out unemployment without losing your home or family stability. You can be more aggressive in seeking better wages, switch jobs more easily, move to new regions more easily, pursue opportunities to start businesses, and appreciate a vested interest in medium to long term economic policies. And all of these things benefit society as a whole, because it means a mobile work force which is better able to adapt to change, and helps to bolster steadier government policies.
This is why anti-unionization is so sad. Without unionization, your fancy new factory simply can't be a middle class job like it was in the 1950s. If the employee is not empowered, by definition he's not middle class. Even if for the sake of argument we assume that unionization reduces the number of middle class jobs, that can still be preferable to having more working class jobs. This is why things like union seniority matter. Without seniority, you can't offer anybody job stability. If you can't prevent a corporation from pulling the rug out from somebody mid-career, and they don't pay sufficient wages to make that tolerable, then you have nothing of consequence except a wage slave system.
Just like we need so-called job creators (which is a euphemism for capitalist, although its a word more people can delude themselves into thinking applies to themselves), we need middle class jobs, even if that means it's at the expense of the very bottom. Obviously it's a god-awful balancing act, but one smart states (like California, Illinois, and New York, still economic power houses with economies Texas can only dream of) are willing to make.
Re:Another building full of robots? (Score:4, Insightful)
... we wanted more. (And probably always will.)
No, we won't.
This is a major fallacy of economic thinking that really needs to be put to bed. It isn't true. Thinking like this is the basis for the Trickle Down Theory of economics, which has been soundly falsified. No, we won't always want more. Unbridled all-consuming unsatisfiable greed is a neurosis. It is abnormal and very unusual. Adults who suffer from the condition are considered stunted, little more than children. Children are expected to grow out of it, if they ever go through that phase at all. If you always want more, everybody around you thinks there's something wrong with you, and will usually avoid being around you any more after a while.
Normal people, by definition most people, are satisfiable. And satisfiable without actually all that many resources, in the grand scheme of things. Yes we all want more than a 19th century standard of living, but that's because the ancient Romans had a better standard of living than most of the world in the 19th century. It didn't take much to do better than that. Our needs get satisfied in a hurry. A variety of food, some indoor plumbing, and a roof that doesn't leak covers most of it. Add on some form of personal transportation if you live in a large, mostly empty continent like North America, and you're done. The wants that go on top of that are actually quite minimal. Almost nobody has more than two cell phones, and the vast majority of the world has only one. Practically every type of consumer electronics and appliance follows the same pattern. People have one cell phone, one tablet, one laptop, one desktop (they forgot they had), one blender, one microwave, one toaster oven, one deep fryer. The only people who have six cell phones are neurotic or app developers (but I repeat myself).
Yes, once you have one of everything, you can just go bigger. But again, there are pretty serious upper limits. Most people don't want a 700 room palace on the order of Versailles. Even those who did had a tendency to stuff 3000 permanent residents into that space. Most people don't want their own yacht, let alone their very own cruise ship, or there would be many more yachts in the world. So it goes for every thing you can possess.
So no, most people won't always want more. Most people in developed nations are quite satisfied with what they have. Sure they dream about palaces and fleets of sports cars, but drop unlimited funds on their cringing heads and they still won't buy all that. They'd be uncomfortable trying to live in a palace.
People's needs can be trivially satisfied. People's wants can be easily satisfied. Whither now your broken economic system that requires unlimited growth?