So long as people desire the service/good, there will be people who provide the service/good.
If the Qing Dynasty Had Liked Railroads
- Thread starter kernals12
- Start date
So long as people desire the service/good, there will be people who provide the service/good.
But Luddite riots were a thing, and I'd hate to see what millions of unemployed Chinese would do in the same century that brought us the Taiping Revolt.
kernals12
Banned
That's a case of big numbers with no context. China is freaking massive, and *millions* of unemployed Chinese is not a large percentage of the population.
And you're making the laughable assumption that A. this would happen overnight and B. They could not find other work, for instance on, well, the railroads.
Not to mention the urgent requests for funding to repair the rivers and canal system which employs thousands of local officials and barge operators, upon which transportation of food and trade goods depend, and the loss of tax revenue should they fall further into disrepair.
I appreciate the point you are making but please don't graft the present onto the past like that.
Automation in the nineteenth century destroyed plenty of jobs - it was by no means relative to what is happening in the digital revolution at the moment. Thresing machines, tractors, combine harvestors, etc essentially helped empty rural Britain of people in the second half of the nineteenth-century. Yes technological advances in production stimulate economic growth in others, but it isn't an even gain, especially in this period.
Besides, saying it like that glides over the enormous upheaval that means for real people in context. An illiterate, self-employed, carter in Xi'an for example, isn't going to feel great about the railway destroying his livelihood. Getting a job in the nineteenth century relied on having personal connections, relevant skills, and mobility. Even if he is able to uproot his family, travel somewhere like Beijing which is developing as a railway hub, finds people who will tell him about job openings and put in a good word on his behalf, and somehow learn the skills required to work in an entirely new industry different to his own, he's not likely to be very happy about it at all.
I mean, rural displacement by industry in China in this period was pretty much why you had crowds of angry young men able to be radicalised by the Boxer Movement in the 1890s!
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha
Gone Fishin'
Bringing Kasghar/Urumqi/Lhasa closer to Beijing. Which is good. Militariliy this is an advantage. Not sure if it will help its performance though.
The Boxers were radicalized precisely due to canal workers and other courier jobs being driven unemployed by the Qing (half-hearty) industrialization efforts.
Tell me what infrastructure the Qing Dynasty had in place to retrain rickshaw runners to operate trains.
edit:
>being called a luddite for pointing out the objective fact that the Qing Dynasty's meager railroad construction program radicalized many physically fit military-age men
I hate this forum some days
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kernals12
Banned
Railroad jobs aren't very skill intensive. On-the-job training would probably be sufficient.
Define skill intensive, most rail jobs require literacy as a bare minimum.
kernals12
Banned
California's railroads were built by Chinese immigrants, how many of them do you think were literate?
Building and operating a railroad aren't the same thing. There's no career in railroad building (see: the exact same Chinese immigrants you mentioned, who spent the rest of their lives wandering from migrant ghetto to migrant ghetto after the last spike was hammered in), not that a carter or rickshaw runner would be applying to work on the construction of a railroad, as an unbuilt railroad will have yet to put them out of business.
Automation temporarily destroys jobs, but by being more efficient with existing resources as well producing more resources (greater supply) it is supposed to create more jobs (don't exactly know what the future will hold in store for us). Horse cart jobs did go away with the rise of the automobile, but thanks to the automobile, so many more jobs have been created (such at automobile production and in general jobs that are created due to decreased frictional unemployment as well as jobs created by customers, whether it be gas stations, motels or movie theaters). Improvements in technology increase supply and thus end up creating cheaper goods and services as well as increased employment.
What is generally lost on people is that automation does indeed destroy jobs, but it replaces those destroyed jobs with generally better jobs. However, someone in the 1st world who goes from a steady manufacturing job to a minimum-wage service job will find his or her (generally a he, and large part of why service jobs pay less traditionally and today) will find it very hard to appreciate this.