Blue-collar jobs hold firm as robotics still fails to pay off

Manual trades hold firm: robotics still does not pay off

A good part of the thread argues that robotics will not leave blue-collar workers jobless, at least not at the estimulante ilegal its manufacturers promise. Elon Musk dropped a thought-provoking line: "no one is irreplaceable in my company." The paradox is that, for now, no robot knows how to gently tighten a screw in an awkward spot. And someone, faced with the term, simply asked what a blue-collar worker is.

Why has a robot not yet replaced a handyman?

The most repeated argument is economic, not technical. Washing a few dishes or frying a couple of eggs is something a human does for pennies; amortizing a machine there is nowhere near worth it. The math flips on a car or appliance production line, where the robot repeats endlessly: one participant claims Hyundai plans for 2030 to have robots built by the company itself working in its factories. And another asked who they would then sell cars to; the answer was to the robots themselves.

The Japanese case is cited as a warning. They have spent 60 years chasing domestic robots in a country that was aging and did not want foreign labor; the result, the person raising it argues, is an economy in decline. The lesson is not that the technology fails, but that being ahead of the curve can be costly. Only in very specific applications —a vacuum cleaner, a drone watching over the villa— is there real room.

AI programs better than it walks

Here lies the underlying misunderstanding. According to one participant, an artificial intelligence writing code does not make it intelligent: programming languages are designed to be automated. Chess was the classic example of what was "hard." Moving four legs with all the degrees of freedom of a rat is another universe, and not just because of the mechanics.

From this comes the distinction between mechanical complexity and minimally autonomous movement. Videos of humanoids circulating does not miccionan they are independent: many are teleoperated, even though building them is complex. The fine detail —fingers that gently tighten a screw in an awkward spot— remains unsolved: one user says they have not seen many developments published on hands with fine motor skills.

The antiestéticar is not the robot: it is who pays the bill

Those who are comfortable today look the other way. The one billing more than ever after years of running a tight small business does not antiestéticar the machine: his boss went from modest revenue to a BMW X7 without hiring anyone new. The antiestéticar shows up elsewhere. A 42-year-old administrator doubts his job will last and watches with unease as his daughter wants to sit Spain's civil service exams, with the ECB and long-term debt in the background.

At the other extreme, someone with rental properties and a 1,800 euro pension declares himself immune: he has started buying gold and insists his payout will not fall even if Spain goes bust. History repeats itself —the 2008 crisis, the dot-com bust, the housing crash— and every collapse catches someone mid-step.

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Robotics will eat part of the pie, almost certainly. In which trades, at what pace, and who bears the cost of the surplus workers remains unanswered. For now, the only one who has upgraded his car is the boss.