Manual Labor In The Future

[CarlManvers2019]

One thing that gets me is why is it that future settings insist on using manual labor even when said labor rebels after getting really fucking angry

You don’t even have to replace it with humanoid robots, just guys with better tools and using tech for safer working environments

There’s also the issue of having to feed, house, comfort and do medicine on these guys and the fact that they may go crazy or rebel

To me, using manual labor, especially the cheap and dangerous looking Industrial Revolution kind, in the future looks mainly to just look like an asshole than out of efficiency

That is unless they’re doing things specifically to replace technology with humans who can’t do the job as well and may themselves be slaves out of some religion or sheer paranoia of even machinery that isn’t sapient

Or they at the very least are trying to bioengineer humans to be more able to do these sorts of jobs quickly

 

[Deleted member 88]

It depends on the kind of labor involved and the setting itself. SW has slavery, but it seems to be either sexual slavery or household/small shop slavery. Slaves may also have some advantages over droids in that they are more capable of initiative and handling more varied tasks.

There’s also the matter of expense.

As for just manual labor more broadly-it depends. Can be used as punishment or as part of a more technophobic culture, and so on.

 

[JagerIV]

Well, remember people are extremely cheap: keeping someone alive is, like, $10 dollars a day? $4,000 a year? And that's not even the cheapest you can do. Basic, food and water diet is like $400 a year.

So, people can be extremely cheap, and also extremely productive: the basic ditch digger can move, say, 1 meter of soil an hour with basic shovels and tools. So, in raw expenses your talking about something like maybe $1 dollars a ton.

A exivator can move lots of tons, but is also very capital intensive. Anywhere where capital is expensive makes labor cheaper.

Remember, in our advanced age theirs still thousands of people digging ditches. The end of mass ditch diggers in the west ended in, like, the 1960s after centuries of capital accumulation.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

I think if they’re gonna do manual labor, they at least need modern to future age tools

Even shovels that are made of better steel and cheap yet great energy bars made from human corpses

 

[JagerIV]

Well, admittedly most sci fi that does show people engaged in mass physical labor is showing something that sorta post apocalyptic: so, the infrastucture isn't there to do more complicated supply lines.

You also get that on worlds where political instability prevents compicated supply lines: a lot of sci fy evil slave rules after all basically seem to have a kingdom that more or less consists of a fort that they rob the surrounding countryside of. Thus, their high tech in the way a college might be high tech: they have a lot of knowedge, but using the high tech is all based on basically a craftmen system.

Most setting I can think of the use of human labor more or less makes sense: do you have an example in mind where it doesn't?

 

[Deleted member 88]

Manual labor will likely exist until the cost of hiring(or enslaving) human beings is greater than automation and robots across the board in every industry and is more impractical across the board. Where using human labor costs money that could be saved if machines were used, everywhere with no exceptions.

And even then, manual labor for punishment, exercise, hobbies, discipline building and so on will likely remain for a long time.

I suppose eventually even the above might be replaced with holodecks or other VR.

It will be a long long time however.

 

[CarlManvers2019]

Also, manual labor because the guys in charge LOVE being douchebags

And something about the evils of capitalism