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IluvBsissa t1_jar1acv wrote

Reply to comment by vernes1978 in Figure: One robot for every human on the planet. by GodOfThunder101

With progress in bio-reactors, I think it will be possible for everyone to brew their own insulin at home in the very near future, even if it gets illegal.

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vernes1978 t1_jar48jk wrote

We already have CRISPR, why do we still have genetic illnesses?
How old is nuclear power now?
Where is my consumer-version reactor?
Time does not fuel progress.
Economics does.
And as long as it's still economically interesting to charge exorbitant prices for elderly people to receive basic care, there is no way any company will invest in these robots.

Every scifi dream ignores kapitalism, economics and just plain old greed.

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TheAnonFeels t1_jas4efk wrote

Wouldn't greed demand they employ robots instead of people?

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vernes1978 t1_jasc3er wrote

A robot can't be coerced into a destructive effort to go beyond it's limit.
The thing about biologic employees is that biologic creatures have so much buffer you can destroy for that extra bit of profit.
While a robot already gives exactly 100% and has zero buffer to go beyond because then it catches fire and needs to be repaired by the owner while an human gets sick and because it's not your property, can be fired and replaced by the next human you lied to about the working conditions.

Humans are a hilariously cheaper workforce then robots.

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TheAnonFeels t1_jaseojp wrote

What price point are you basing this all on? Because there's a threshold there, is there not?

Humans absolutely have work limits that companies would love to exceed but they don't because lawsuits and work injuries cost them.

Also, the robot can work 168 hours a week - few hours for maintenance.

So human working on production costs:
(I'll be rounding up here)

40k a year in wage.
5k+ in worker taxes the company pays
facilities, parking, etc = unaccounted because same can go for robotics, to a smaller degree imo but i'm not going to write a research paper on reddit.

Robot:

50k Upfront

Power:
250w(=16.8/week @ 0.40/kwh, 873.60/year)
500w(~1750/year)

Maintenance = 20% / year of purchase price seems like a strong number
10k/year

= 12k/year

And with mostly robots, you need less managers to manage the humans. Smaller HR department, less legal issues, less workplace investigations, less PR over how you abused your workers. Then to top that, you can get more work per year from a robot that can do 50% the speed of a human.

So lets calculate total work hours for a human doing quad shifts (we'll combine 4 people into one here)

45k/year for 40 hour weeks, 160 hours for 4 people.

The human cost: 180k / year + unexpected
The Robot Cost: 12k/year at 500w

Even if you absurdly increase the robot cost, we're talking huge savings.

The even trade point here over a worker, the robot would have to cost almost a million dollars(900k), with that 20% maintenance rate. So, spending 180k / year to repair it.

Humans are expensive, we have yet to learn the productivity rate of any specific robot yet, and that'll be the determining factor, but we can calculate how much it has to cost to be worth replacing humans if it's 1:1 productivity rate.

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