[ghshephard]

Re: " China, which has kinda made the point that human robots are cheaper than mechanical ones."

Not for long.

"The China Business News on Monday quoted Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou as saying the company planned to use 1 million robots within three years, up from about 10,000 robots in use now and an expected 300,000 next year."

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/01/us-foxconn-robots-...

[intended]

The point still stands. It may (should) change in the future as people start asserting their rights. (I have seen the article before, its Foxconn currently, but labor prices and further opportunities haven't reached a point where you can safely bleed off the population away from manufacturing just yet.)

At the same time though, it shows that as long as you have people who have no option, you can use them to easily produce more value than robots at similar costs. Which is what the Mother Jones article is basically about.

Also, its worth remembering that those robots are also going to be used for capacity expansion, while keeping cheap tractable labour.

TLDR: Improving standards of living will make robotics more competitive, unless there are sufficient people who have no other option but to compete with machines.