[DavidPeiffer]

I work in manufacturing. There are a few instances where watching YouTube may not be a huge hazard, but 98% of the roles I've seen the are reasonable reasons to not permit that. If nothing else, it'd be easy to let quality suffer which causes many bigger headaches.

I went to a panel discussion at a conference last year. Operations managers agreed labor was their biggest challenge. The manager for the promotional materials company who was probably around 60 discussed how he has loosened up a bit the last ~15 years. If someone sends a couple texts and it slightly impacts the units they (personally) do per hour, it was better than being super strict and losing employees. He had to adapt because the mentality was far different than when he started in the workforce.

[nebula8804]

He just needs to wait a decade, the Chinese workers will be retiring and will not be replaced. Entire product segments probably just go away or the inflation raises the table such that the managers situation now is the norm. Problem solved.

[cpursley]

You seem obsessed with the “China population collapse” propaganda (which is put out by the usual suspects, btw). Anyways, I hate to break it to you, but this is also the trend throughout the entire Western world. Besides, automation and AI is going offset a lot of those worker losses (which is actually a win). And in 20 years the Chinese will still be giving birth to as many if not more people than the entire combine West.

[IsTom]

That's true that West has population decline as well, but due to 1 child policy the decline in China is going to be much steeper.

[cpursley]

I think mainly on the pensions side of things, and perhaps a lot of empty real estate and infra maintenance issues. But they will still be graduating more engineers than the West combined and in general, a better educated and more socially cohesive workforce. I think they are gonna be just fine, even if we don't like their political system (which will likely evolve, anyways).

[baq]

China demographics are disastrous, this is not propaganda, it’s facts. That doesn’t mean western aren’t disastrous.

I agree it won’t matter too much, they’ll automate more so they won’t need this many people.

[cpursley]

So how is that a disaster? Wasn't one of the big concerns a decade or go about over population? This means less agriculture required, more land for nature, less pollution, fewer energy needs, etc.

[baq]

It's a disaster for China's economy in the long term unless they automate themselves, which they'll very much want to do. It isn't a disaster for the natural ecosystem obviously.

[cpursley]

Want to do? They’re doing it now, and are ahead of the west in some processes already. It’s a made up concern because they are a geopolitical rival. And their economy is already a major success story; they’ve lifted something like 800 million people out of abject poverty in the last 25 years.