On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Zan Lynx <[email protected]> wrote: > Even in the current modern world, manpower is usually the biggest cost. > > So it isn't the concrete you have to worry about, it is the union-mandated > six person minimum team to supervise the concrete repair bots. :D
We had some concrete flat work (sidewalk and steps) done last year. Labor -- including the labor of removing the existing work, was quite a bit less than half the cost. While it's true that labor is the dominating cost of much construction work, that will cease to be the case at higher tech levels, in most worlds (and certainly not any that hew to realistic economics). Automation will remove the need for labor inputs. (And you see that in the modern world, even in environments where there is pressure not to keep labor costs as low as possible. If you look at US housing construction practices over the course of the 20th century, you can see the changes. A friend of mine lives in an early 20's shack. It's one of hundreds of houses in his neighborhood that were thrown up to house the rapidly expanding workforce of the local auto factory, the local tractor plant, the local stove plant, the local plane parts plant and so on. They're all not-terribly well built, but it's got features you'd not see in anything but the fanciest custom stuff these days. It's got a roof that's planked, not made of plywood. It's got site-built cabinetry. Not just kitchen cabinetry, but under stair and around the chimney. Site built stair stringers, site built trusses. Plaster and lathe walls. site built windows. All of that would be pre-fabbed stuff today, and some of it, like the planked roof is something that a builder would laugh at if you said you wanted. (or, in his case, fix. He did the work himself, because the roofers all wanted to tear the whole roof off and put on OSB, when only about 2 square feet needed replacing. ) Even if you have custom cabinetry done, or custom sized windows or trusses, it's all built somewhere else, and just installed on site. It's cheaper and faster, because there's less human time involved. ) -- David Scheidt [email protected] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
