Automation and AI could Shift the Balance of Power between China and America

Automation and AI could Shift the Balance of Power between China and America.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkhecTI-DJo

Over the past two decades, helped in large part to behind the scenes trade deals such as NAFTA and the TPP, there has been a massive shift from a production-based economy here in the United States to a consumer-based economy. In blunt terms this means that millions of factory jobs have left America and headed overseas.

In this new free-trade system goods are made in places like China, India, Vietnam and shipped all the way to the United States to be purchased in large quantities. The primary driving force of this movement away from first-world production is the increase in profitability that occurs when you produce goods in a location that allows you to exploit cheap third-world labor. Despite the obvious human rights issue here and the terrible slave-like conditions these workers live in, there is little doubt this has harmed the US economy and empowered China to become the new production and surplus country while we have become the creditor and consumer country.

Historically, a creditor nation has always become subservient to the nations with surplus. We have avoided this radical shift of power for a long time with the Federal Reserve fiat system. Since the dollar has held monopoly status as the world reserve currency, we have always been able to finance our national deficit and the welfare/warfare state and to prop up failing businesses and keep the jobs associated with them. This is not real wealth or real work. This is wealth that is based on credit rather than real production and value. There appears to have been little inflationary consequences to the massive debt our nation has accumulated, and the dollar has retained its value surprisingly well. However, any sensible person that considers current trends in the world right now must begin to wonder: for how much longer can we keep up this charade before inflation and eventually hyperinflation begin to ruin the value of the dollar?

The US dollar hegemony will come to an end due to our exponentially increasing deficit and a sharp decrease in wealth and business in our country due to the damage caused by the coronavirus lockdowns. China and Russia are in a good position now buying up gold and soon they will be able to offer a replacement to the dollar with some type of gold standard currency that will seem very appealing in comparison to this nation's fiat money.

If we are to preserve our way of life against China and Russia we must find ways to bring production and real value back into our country, because we cannot rely on reserve notes forever!

Just as cheap labor was the driving economic force that pushed industrial production away from the first world and into the third world, it may be that automation, robotics and AI efficiency will push production and factories back to the United States and elsewhere.

It makes far more sense to produce goods as closely to the points of distribution and sales as possible: this minimizes shipping costs, eliminates tariff costs, increases efficiency and profit. There are tremendous benefits for the nation in having consumer goods produced domestically rather than internationally. It is a taxable source of revenue that will lower the costs of materials and goods for the average American and will allow us to “insource" production-based wealth away from countries such as China that exploit their own people in these sweatshop factories.

Localized production and distribution of goods makes sense as long as we eliminate this need for cheap third world labor. The US government should invest in research and the building of fully/semi-automated factories with increased efficiency; factories that greatly reduce necessary human labor with the inclusion of AI robotics capable of making “smart” decisions on the factory floors etc...

Although the initial costs of making a fully automated or semi-automated factory would be high it could eliminate labor costs altogether in the long run. More than that there is a level of efficiency that can be achieved with AI "smart" robotics that could never be achieved with a standard assembly line factory operated with conveyor belts and third world slave-laborers. Production lines could move vertically as well as horizontally maximizing production efficiency in each space.

Since the damage has already been done and we have lost our factory jobs, it is time to embrace the future and put an end to China’s slave-labor economy and create automated factories right here in America. Let socialist/communist nations provide bread for their workers through government debt but do not force these desperate people to work in sweatshops. And it is time for the West to stop pretending that these people work for a wage when they make so little that in truth they work for bread and live and die at the factory. It is the moral obligation of international corporations to end the primitive and barbaric exploitation of these people and to eliminate these terrible third world “jobs” altogether.

Imagine offering the average American a home or a vehicle produced in their own state of residence through automated factories with prices that are 70% to 80% lower per square foot or per vehicle than the traditionally made home or car. $10,000 and a chunk of land could be all that is necessary to have a modest and well-made home with solar powered electricity, water and all the modern amenities we want. No more risky mortgages and interest rates, and no more rent. With a few more thousand dollars this same American can have a fuel-efficient car with no monthly payments.

Imagine going to the store to buy supplies and every item on the shelf costs less to buy because it is no longer shipped halfway across the world or made by slave workers. Imagine too that these items no longer say, “made in China,” but instead say, “made in the United States of America.”

With the fiat dollar and welfare/warfare system coming to an end, unless we can lower the cost of living itself through increased efficiency and unless we can bring production back to the United States, we will live in a future where more Americans will be homeless, starving and desperate. It is a world with increasing civil unrest all around the globe and it will ultimately be a world dominated by the Yuan. We must bring production back to our country and away from China and increase efficiency in the way goods are manufactured, produced and distributed!

The introduction of automated factories will be the beginning of a nation where labor will no longer be necessary in order to survive. Labor and work will be a privilege because increased efficiency will lower the cost of living itself to where the masses will no longer need to slave away in order to have the modern amenities of life. The great myth that communism and socialism can save us must be debunked! It will not be an all-powerful, all-knowing government backed by fiat debt that solves the labor problem in the age of automation. It will be increased efficiency itself that will solve the problem by dramatically lowering the cost of living for the average person.

America must become a surplus nation once again if the world is to progress into the next technological age with liberty, prosperity and the free market still intact. Production and consumption must take place within our country and we must eliminate wasteful shipping lines and distribution costs. This will mean an end to “free-trade,” and its barbaric practices.

The Free-Trade system relies on communist governments, fiat debt and secretive central banks in order to finance and perpetuate a wasteful and unsustainable standard of living that cannot continue for much longer. Already we have seen the modern world be brought to its knees by just two months without labor.

The West should embrace positive change towards a more rational world order, where the basic needs of the masses are provided for by technology-based efficiency and a lower standard of living, rather than by the current system that keeps the price of goods low by exploiting people that are forced to labor in order to survive. Automation is the true beginning of the next phase in the development of the human experience, and the nature of what labor and money really means will change accordingly. What nation will be at the forefront of this development?