Reflections on culture and technology

Or perhaps labor verses capitol.

Several years ago I had the privilege to spending a couple weeks in Mexico. The weather was amazing, the food great and cheap. The people were warm and friendly. One day I got to watch the process of pouring a second floor concrete floor. A dump truck delivered the sand and gravel, the bags of Portland cement were unloaded by hand and stacked close to the sand and gravel. The cement mixer was filled with a half sack of cement the right number of shovel-fulls of sand and gravel while it was rotating. When the mix was right the cement was poured out into 5 gal buckets and passed up the ladder bucket brigade style.

In my part of the United States a similar project would involve a pumper truck and the truck from the pre-mix company. The job would probably take about the same time to complete. The difference being four workers in the North and twenty-five in Mexico, and two million or so dollars worth of equipment vs an electric mixer from the Sears catalog.

Thinking back on that story and how much easier it is to accomplish difficult tasks with fewer person hours invested, when does it stop. This year in Boise, half of the garbage collectors lost their jobs when the trucks became self-loading. How many years does it take to amortize a high-tech garbage truck against the loss of jobs? Especially jobs that could be open to felons?

How long will it take until we are living the life of the space travelers in Wall-e.