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cuuupid 2 days ago

Automation is not replacing sweatshops, they've just made the sweatshop workers more productive (economically) while requiring them to be less productive (in activity).

So all that's happened is an exponential increase in the output volume of sweatshops :/

Retric 2 days ago | parent [-]

There’s many industries that have moved beyond sweatshops due to automation.

Pepsi can’t get glass bottles from 3rd world sweatshops at anything competitive with a highly automated factory. In the vast majority of industries it’s just a question of levels of automation and climate control inherently makes automation easier by reducing variability in temperature and humidity. Of course the original distinction around climate control that created the term sweatshops is dying as such operations are largely dying out, but that only reinforces the notion of automation killing off the inherent advantages of unskilled cheap labor.