Honestly, this is bizarre and you’re creeping me out.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that this is a court of law…

The social contract is just that, a contract. The unwritten contract of most developed countries has long been:

*Work hard. Get an education. Don’t steal. Don’t commit acts of violence. Don’t try to foment unrest or rebellion. Walk the straight and narrow. In turn, you’ll have a peaceful and adequate life. You may not be rich, but you’ll have all your needs met during your working years, and you’ll be able to retire when old with a bit of dignity."

For generations, the social contract was that anyone who played along and did things “right” would have a decent life. That decent life might mean living in a modest apartment your whole life, but it was achievable by the vast majority. Traditionally, if you couldn’t achieve self-sufficiency, it’s because you either were excluded from the social contract (like certain minority groups), you were born with some debilitating disability, or because you did something very wrong (like commit a serious crime.)

But contracts are two-way streets. When one side breaks the contract, it breaks for both sides. In wealthy countries, this old social contract has been broken by the rich. Millions are finding they did everything they were supposed to, and they still can’t get a decent life. So with the contract broken, there’s far less reason to follow it.

Most people do not avoid committing crimes simply because they fear the law. Most folks have an ethical belief that stealing and violence is wrong. Most people wouldn’t do these things even if there were no police or prisons. But when you break the social contract, the portion of the population that finds committing crimes to be morally acceptable will inevitably rise.

I solved my issues with urinals by simply removing my ability to use a urinal.

A gantry may not be required in the future. A gantry is used because it greatly simplifies the problem. The gantry allows a fixed known relationship between the print head, the ground, and what is being printed. A simple 3D printer can work completely blind.

But this need not be the only way to 3d print. It’s pointless to have a mobile 3D printer for desktop printing applications. But construction? The case may be different. Imagine a swarm of small robots, each a small cement mixer and print head. Hell, as absurd as it sounds, little flying printing drones might turn out to be a viable solution. The tech required for these is way beyond what is needed for a conventional fixed 3D printer. But it’s probably possible. You don’t set up a huge gantry for your giant house-sized 3D printer. Instead, you unleash a swarm of printing bots onto a construction site. They build up the house like bees assembling a hive from their own wax.

Now you might wonder if this could ever be financially viable. A swarm of printing robots? Well, historically, nothing changes technology faster than war. War forces innovation by necessity. Countries are getting really good at making absurd numbers of high quality robots cheaply.

For example, what’s going to happen to all the Ukrainian drone engineers once the war ends? Sure, some will stay in the defense industry, but peacetime defense budgets are always lower than those of a nation facing existential war. Imagine the minds that are currently inventing drones that can fly a hundred miles and autonomously hunt down and kill individual enemy soldiers. Apply minds like that to the construction automation problem, and suddenly a lot of doors open up.

Hell, I’m sure damn near any builder would happily sell you a fully furnished home. Even tract lot home builders in the middle of Nebraska. You might so annoy them that you’ll end up paying $50k for $10k worth of furniture, but I’m sure it could be done.

You need to use your imagination more. A robotic construction site will not look anything like a human one. Bags of readymix concrete have the form they do because they are intended to be carried by a human being. But the goal isn’t to get a bag from point A to point B. The goal is to get the concrete from point A to point B. Instead of a humanoid robot carrying a bag of readymix, imagine an automated hopper on the end of a crane, with a computer vision and reasoning system that allows it to precisely place it where it needs to go. And instead of that concrete being formed by a humanoid robot holding a trowel in its hands, it will be mounted on a robotic arm mounted on a glorified roomba.

When we automated car factories, we didn’t do so by making millions of mechanical men. Construction will be no different. Individual humans are not masters of every construction trade. Why should we demand the robots be masters of all trades? We can simply purpose-build robots for particular construction tasks. Builders wealthy enough may own a fleet of them. Smaller operations will rent them as needed. Just replace the cost of hiring subcontractors with the cost of renting a particular trade robot.

Keep this in mind. A building is a memory of the tools used to create it. And as those tools change, the buildings change.

Yes, the way we currently build site-built wood-framed construction would be a poor fit for automation. But other building forms may be more amenable to automation. The form of the building itself may change to fit automated construction techniques. The most obvious example of this is 3D printing. And yes, those buildings have many issues. But we not only consider 3D printing.

For example, imagine a building that isn’t so much made from materials cut to length as is made from small blocks or modules assembled together. It’s easier for me to imagine automating ICF construction than stick-built construction. Or maybe in the future, every home will be built with an at-grade or basement slab or basement suitably flat to serve as a working platform for construction robots. Maybe homes are built around a large central vertical shaft, the shaft that once held a large articulated construction robot. (I’m imagining a large robot riding on vertical rails in a vertical shaft. The robot has a long articulated arm that can reach into individual rooms and perform work functions.) Once automation is good enough, you start designing the building for the automation, rather than the automation the building.

Imagine if I could build homes for half the cost of conventional homes. However, it comes with the caveat that these homes look very different from conventional ones. They look different because their design was optimized for automated construction. Would they sell? If they still functioned as homes. If they still kept you warm, dry, and comfortable. Unless the homes were just completely crazy, I think those homes would sell just fine. People have learned to live in all sorts of things. Pioneers built houses on the prairie out of sod. If automated construction requires substantial modification to building design, but those buildings are substantially cheaper or faster to construct? The architecture will bend to the automation.

Yes, some processes can be fully automated. No, we can not fully automate the assembly of a whole car. It’s still too complex.

One important caveat to this is that this isn’t really a technical limitation, but more of a financial one. We absolutely could build a ridiculous Rube Goldberg machine of a factory that took raw materials in on end and spat out fully assembled cars on the other. And have it so automated that the place operates with the lights off.

However, it’s far cheaper to build a mostly automated factory, rather than a completely automated one. It’s a financial limitation, not a technical one.

And further automation will continue. We probably don’t even need humanoid robots. For instance, a robotic ironworker, instead of a humanoid robot, could be a module bolted on to a back hoe or other hoist.

Cassette tapes existed in the 70s I could listen to the same music in my car and in my house, by simply ejecting the tape and carrying it in with me.

And a rich person in 2000 BC could have produced the exact same effect by hiring a troupe of bards to follow them around. Just because the core function is the same, does not mean true innovation is impossible.

The equation changes a lot when you start altering the assumptions.

Who says the robots have to have batteries? Human workers drag power cables all over construction sites. Why can’t a robot be built that’s smart enough to manage its own power cord? Power cord management seems simple compared to doing meaningful construction work.

The wear and tear is a legitimate concern, but fixed industrial robots have been operating for many decades. The wear issues are obviously solvable in the right context.

Keep in mind, prosthetics may not be the perfect analogy. We imagine these things as humanoid, but they need not be. You might have a drywall hanging robot that has suction cups to lift up panels and a screw gun to affix them. They might not even have legs. A welding robot could just be a welding tool on the end of a long boom arm.

There’s really no need to even make general purpose robots. It’s not like individual humans practice every trade. You could have trade-specific robots. A drywall robot, a plumber robot, an electrician bot, etc. Each equipped only with those tools needed to complete just that trade. And instead of mechanical hands, they could simply be mounted.

I would agree that humanoid battery powered robots are not likely to result in mass employment in construction any time soon. But if you start relaxing those constraints, the possibility for mass worker displacement exists. A robotic construction site need not visibly resemble a human one.

The rate was so low in Harris County, TX several years ago that the day rate wouldn’t even pay for parking and the cheapest lunch at the courthouse cafeteria.

Nah, Vegas isn’t so much a city as a big theme park. Hell, the casinos aren’t even in Las Vegas.

In the city of Houston, you can eat any cuisine, from any nation on the face of the Earth…as long as you’re willing to do it in an old run down 1980s strip mall.

People have a hard time understanding that in a capitalist economy, everyone is bidding against each other for resources like housing. If two areas have comparable median income levels, they will tend to have comparable costs of living.

But that “cost of living” includes way more than just the mortgage payment. If people are paying more for property taxes, homeowners insurance, and commuting costs, there’s less money in the budget to go to the mortgage payment. Areas where property taxes, insurance, and commuting are cheap have high housing prices. Texas has extremely high property taxes, insurance, and commuting costs, so people can’t afford to bid the houses themselves up as much.

And this effect can trap people. The real value of a mortgage goes down with time - inflation helps you. But property taxes and commuting costs go up with inflation. And insurance costs rise much faster than inflation due to climate change. If your wages don’t keep up with inflation, then your total cost of housing goes up with time rather than down.

Please, everyone knows the most widely-recognized Fourth City is Salem, OR. 🤣

Life found a way.

Hell, sometimes trans women need testosterone. I am, and I do. My body doesn’t really make much hormones naturally anymore. If I take nothing, my testosterone levels are lower than those in cis women. I take a very very small dose to get my T levels back up into the cis female range. Men and women both have testosterone and estrogen. And while the ratios vary, you still need both, regardless of your gender.

The problem with Kings is they don’t live up to the marketing. Royals are a group of people that claim they have some genetic superiority to the rest of the species. They deserve the right to rule because they simply have superior blood. They’re smarter, stronger, faster, than everyone else. And in an era before modern nutrition, this was a lot easier case to make. The core thesis of monarchy is “ability runs in families. Let’s find the family with the genes best for governing, and just let them run the place.”

If that idea actually worked, monarchy would be a great system. But governing is not a skill that is passed on genetically. Royals are just ordinary human beings in fancy hats. In fact, they tend to be far stupider than the average person, as they’re born into wealth and privilege.

But King Kong? His elevated position over humanity truly is an inborn genetic trait. He is not a common human, and that’s undeniable. President Kong would imply we elected him as first among equals. King Kong is more appropriate in this situation.