Will a Pandemic Wave of Automation Be Bad News for Workers? (msn.com) 226
The New York Times reports:
When Kroger customers in Cincinnati shop online these days, their groceries may be picked out not by a worker in their local supermarket but by a robot in a nearby warehouse... And in the drive-through lane at Checkers near Atlanta, requests for Big Buford burgers and Mother Cruncher chicken sandwiches may be fielded not by a cashier in a headset, but by a voice-recognition algorithm. An increase in automation, especially in service industries, may prove to be an economic legacy of the pandemic. Businesses from factories to fast-food outlets to hotels turned to technology last year to keep operations running amid social distancing requirements and contagion fears. Now the outbreak is ebbing in the United States, but the difficulty in hiring workers — at least at the wages that employers are used to paying — is providing new momentum for automation...
[S]ome economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way. "Once a job is automated, it's pretty hard to turn back," said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic... A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world. "Six months ago, all these workers were essential," said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. "Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they're trying to figure out how to get rid of them...."
The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology... Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity. In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that "a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation" — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic. "If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality," Professor Acemoglu said.
"We'll look back and say why didn't we do this sooner," fast-food franchisee Shana Gonzales told the Times after implementing an automated voice-recognition system that takes customers' orders. Gonzales added that she'd gladly hire human workers instead, but she just can't find them, and says she's even tried raising their starting pay rate — from $9 an hour to $10.
"Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course."
[S]ome economists say the latest wave of automation could eliminate jobs and erode bargaining power, particularly for the lowest-paid workers, in a lasting way. "Once a job is automated, it's pretty hard to turn back," said Casey Warman, an economist at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who has studied automation in the pandemic... A working paper published by the International Monetary Fund this year predicted that pandemic-induced automation would increase inequality in coming years, not just in the United States but around the world. "Six months ago, all these workers were essential," said Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers, a union representing grocery workers. "Everyone was calling them heroes. Now, they're trying to figure out how to get rid of them...."
The push toward automation goes far beyond the restaurant sector. Hotels, retailers, manufacturers and other businesses have all accelerated technological investments. In a survey of nearly 300 global companies by the World Economic Forum last year, 43 percent of businesses said they expected to reduce their work forces through new uses of technology... Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity. In a recent working paper, Professor Acemoglu and a colleague concluded that "a significant portion of the rise in U.S. wage inequality over the last four decades has been driven by automation" — and he said that trend had almost certainly accelerated in the pandemic. "If we automated less, we would not actually have generated that much less output but we would have had a very different trajectory for inequality," Professor Acemoglu said.
"We'll look back and say why didn't we do this sooner," fast-food franchisee Shana Gonzales told the Times after implementing an automated voice-recognition system that takes customers' orders. Gonzales added that she'd gladly hire human workers instead, but she just can't find them, and says she's even tried raising their starting pay rate — from $9 an hour to $10.
"Ms. Gonzales acknowledged she could fully staff her restaurants if she offered $14 to $15 an hour to attract workers. But doing so, she said, would force her to raise prices so much that she would lose sales — and automation allows her to take another course."
Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage. This is what will happen. Workers get more expensive, machines get cheaper, eventually the workers will be replaced by machines. I'm surprised it took at long as it did. Even many office workers aren't safe. A lot of office workers could easily be replaced by a bit of software to generate reports, or follow simple business rules with incoming orders.
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:5, Informative)
There are many places where prevailing wages are already over $15. I live in San Jose, where McDonald's is offering a starting wage of $18.
So there is already an incentive to automate and kiosks are already appearing in some fast food joints.
Once the Kiosks are developed and debugged, they will likely be deployed even in places like Mississippi and Puerto Rico where wages are much lower since the NRE is a sunk cost.
Automation is coming, whether the minimum wage is raised or not.
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes, reducing economic activity is the best way to boost an economy, right?
Replacing a cashier with a kiosk is not "reducing economic activity". The order is still being taken and the customer is still served.
The economic activity is the same, but less labor is required. This is exactly what a "productivity improvement" is.
The ex-cashier is now available for a job that actually produces something, thus increasing economic activity.
Welcome to the race to the bottom.
Bullcrap. More productive societies are at the top, not the bottom.
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:4, Insightful)
Guess where the profits from that "productivity improvement" are going to end up? If automation increases profits, it's going to happen whether minimum wage is $15 or $7. Heck, it's already been happening in many places long before wage hikes were on the radar. Self checkout lines and kiosk ordering have been a thing for years already.
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Good, they can lower their prices since they are saving costs of paying that cashier. Oh, wait.
Food prices in developed countries (those with automation) are a factor of ten lower than in undeveloped countries when measured by the hours of labor need to buy it.
So if there is no human labor, everything should hover around free, since there won't be any labor involved.
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So if there is no human labor, everything should hover around free, since there won't be any labor involved.
Yes, of course.
Here are the things I use that require no human labor:
1. Air
2. Rain falling on my lawn
3. Sunlight
All of them are free.
Can you name something, other than land, that requires no labor yet still costs money?
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:3, Insightful)
"economic activity" is a pretty meaningless term. If it's supposed to mean productivity, then no, replacing all of those workers with one worker is actually a massive gain in productivity. That actually increases the GDP, which is the metric most commonly associated with prosperity.
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If one person does the job previously done by 250 people, then 250 times the goods & services are produced per person.
In reality, the other 249 people will get jobs about as productive as their old jobs, but that is still 250 people doing what took 499 people before the kiosks. So about a doubling of wealth creation per person.
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Who cares about making goods if no one is able to buy them?
I see. So automation lowers wages? Is that why Ethiopians are rich?
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They have massive corruption to keep them in poverty.
Re: Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:4, Insightful)
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Jobs aren't unlimited.
The belief that there is a fixed number of jobs in the economy is known as the Lump of Labor Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
Economics expand to absorb available resources, including workers.
People don't just "get new jobs".
Actually, people do that all the time.
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And yet the number of workers has pretty steadily dropped, excepting during war times.
Used to be almost the whole population was employed, with workers starting to work at about 5 years of age and very few considered disabled or retired. Now it probably closer to half the population or less. Kids don't start working until later and later, old people spend upwards of a third of their life not working. Female participation comes and goes but I have a hard time believing they're all working when I drive by a s
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What happens when workers below a certain education level cease to be a resource?
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And 200 of those people don't have the skills to get those other jobs and join the growing homeless population.
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Who is going to place that order when everyone is being replaced by machines?
Demand = Desire + means of purchase. Without the latter, demand is zero.
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Yes, reducing economic activity is the best way to boost an economy, right?
Replacing a cashier with a kiosk is not "reducing economic activity". The order is still being taken and the customer is still served.
The economic activity is the same, but less labor is required. This is exactly what a "productivity improvement" is.
The ex-cashier is now available for a job that actually produces something, thus increasing economic activity.
Welcome to the race to the bottom.
Bullcrap. More productive societies are at the top, not the bottom.
It looks like you're conflating economic activity (good for everyone) with profit margins (good for capital, at least in the short-term). Increasing unemployment, AKA reducing the number of customers & suppressing wages, AKA austerity, has been shown time & again to slow down economic activity & prolong recessions. Perhaps you've heard of some guy called John Maynard Keynes who helped the USA get out of the great depression?
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Careful fella, you are advocating, work cheaper than a machine or starve to death in the street. How many people did https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] out of work millions of ditch diggers, back breaking job, probably glad to see it end but not if they have to starve to death in a street gutter.
In the fifty they cheered automation, WORKS WILL NOT HAVE TO WORK AS MUCH in the eighties that changed to FUCK THE WORKERS automation means more profit for rich clinical psychopaths.
No automation does not mean wages
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Yes, reducing economic activity is the best way to boost an economy, right? Welcome to the race to the bottom.
This latest automation is not about efficiency, safety, or productivity. It's sole purpose is to eliminate as many humans from ever working again as possible.
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:5, Interesting)
People keep bringing up McDonalds...
There is a McDonald's close to me (Switzerland/Germany) that has kiosks you can order from. That one is in Germany... I believe Burger King Switzerland went with an ordering App you can download.
I did not see fewer people working that McDonalds, EVER. Perhaps fewer cash registers, sure, but this McDonalds is FULL. ALWAYS. They are churning out "food" at an astonishing rate.
Have you ever considered that ordering from a low wage, uninterested foreign kid might not be a very efficient and pleasant way of handling things and that now that there is an alternative that people come to the business more often necessitating more workers to prepare the food?
Believe it or not, a web interface that lets you have it your way and that displays EXACTLY what you ordered so you can double check seems to lead to fewer fucked up orders too.
As far as I can see, the automation of actual production isn't coming along as easily as people want me to believe.
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I did not see fewer people working that McDonalds, EVER. Perhaps fewer cash registers, sure, but this McDonalds is FULL. ALWAYS.
Excellent, that's what we all hope for. I'm delighted that in addition to getting rid of drudge jobs like entering orders, people are moving up the value chain to things like actually making the food.
That's been the lesson of the last 200 years: we automate away millions of jobs and people adjust. We didn't wind up with mass unemployment and thus I don't believe we will this time either. All the chatter about "robots are taking all our jobs and we need UBI" is just the fear and lack of historical comparison
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Once the Kiosks are developed and debugged, they will likely be deployed even in places like Mississippi and Puerto Rico where wages are much lower since the NRE is a sunk cost.
This is a fallacy common amongst the managerial staff - the belief that NRE comprises the bulk of project expense. The reality in every system I've seen successfully deployed is that (1) development never ceases, it is an ongoing expense (2) ongoing support & maintenance costs have to be on par with the initial NRE costs, to keep the project at a steady-state. Fail at either of those pieces and the project withers and is soon obsolete. Raising the standard requires an ongoing output of effort & expe
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There are many places where prevailing wages are already over $15. I live in San Jose, where McDonald's is offering a starting wage of $18.
So there is already an incentive to automate and kiosks are already appearing in some fast food joints.
Once the Kiosks are developed and debugged, they will likely be deployed even in places like Mississippi and Puerto Rico where wages are much lower since the NRE is a sunk cost.
Automation is coming, whether the minimum wage is raised or not.
Here in PA, minimum is 7.25, and our McD's are automated and have been running quite well for several years since well before the pandemic - shouldn't we be still employing people since our's cost half as much? In a world where the profit motive runs things, why aren't your highly paid workers the very first ones to go in a system that works fine already?
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No, not everybody wanted it. Some of us understand how economics works in the real world, instead of how academentia wants it to work. And, we understand that when there's a conflict between the two, the real world always wins.
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Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage. This is what will happen. Workers get more expensive [...]
This is one of the reasons I advocate UBI instead of minimum wage hikes. With UBI, workers get *cheaper* (good for businesses), while the workers' standard of living increases (good for workers).
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage.
Actually, everyone wants a living wage but they are willing to settle for a $15 minimum wage. This is still something people want and won't change even if some jobs are automated. However, why do you seem pleased with this development? Do you not believe people deserve a living wage?
This is what will happen. Workers get more expensive, machines get cheaper, eventually the workers will be replaced by machines. I'm surprised it took at long as it did. Even many office workers aren't safe. A lot of office workers could easily be replaced by a bit of software to generate reports, or follow simple business rules with incoming orders.
You behave as though this idea is new or original. This has been happening since we invented machinery and it's no surprise when it happens. People still deserve to be paid a living wage, even if it means that job is later done by a machine.
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The problem is so complicated. Raising wages doesn't mean things get more affordable.
Let's take housing. This is most people's major cost. In general, the cost of a house is not in the labor or materials to actually build the house. It's location, location, location. I think we can all agree with that. So raising wages doesn't actually make housing any more affordable, it just means we can outbid each other higher and higher to raise the price of a house. It's largely the same impact as banks lowering mortg
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$15 an hour is the answer, not the problem. We
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Let's assume for a moment that cashiers, fast food workers, office workers etc. all get replaced by machines.
They are now unemployed. They do not have the trained skills, or perhaps even the mental capacity, to easily retrain into maintaining or designing these machines. What are they supposed to do? Just be happy for society's advance while they go hungry?
And as more and more jobs are replaced with automation, leaving only the extremely specialized and creative niches, where are people going to get the mon
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A lot of bosses could pretty much be replaced by magic-8-balls, but guess what will not happen. Even though it's probably one of the things that could cut the most slack.
Re:Everyone wanted a $15 minimum wage (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, how dare they want to be able to pay for food and shelter from what they earn with working.
So that's really why we abolished slavery? Because feeding and sheltering them was more expensive?
Automation is always an increase in productivity (Score:3)
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Re: Automation is always an increase in product (Score:2)
Look at 1619, the big picture. The south bought the slaves to do the farm labor humans had been doing for ages, the north ultimately went toward automation, basically ending up with tractors. Poverty should have been eradicated with the automation, but this society constantly seeks to recreate the power differential of slavery, so here we are.
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It's got nothing to do with the pandemic (Score:4, Interesting)
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Naaah... (Score:3)
...gig workers are waaay cheaper than robots & the people who tell them how to do their jobs are waaay cheaper too.
I wonder if gig workers are cheaper than slavery?
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Probably. You have to feed and shelter slaves, and you bear the risk of them getting sick or dying because then they're sunk cost.
Gig workers bear that risk for you, and judging from their wages I doubt that feeding and sheltering them would be cheaper.
I guess what is overlooked is (Score:3)
Once upon a time, someone would start at the bottom of a company, making little, but learning.
If they were capable, they would be promoted upwards to increasing levels of managerial positions.
Some would leave, and form their own companies.
With no bottom of the pyramid, there is no base.
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That's ok, managerial positions are largely a waste of space anyway. At least, when they are managing people of any level of competence that is true.
We don't let robots serve us in here... (Score:2)
Re:We don't let robots serve us in here... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Everyone with a flush toilet should pay a tax to support the maid who no longer has a job emptying chamberpots.
We could have a fixed fee per toilet, or install a meter and charge by the flush.
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If there were still any people left alive that had been maids emptying chamberpots, then you might have a point.
Voice recognition at the drive up will fail (Score:5, Funny)
Me: I'd like 2 foos and a bar
Speaker: flwxfooxzz brss grbarmg
Me: Um, what?
Speaker: flzfoo rgshbar correct?"
Me: Um, yeah. That sounds right
Speaker: snap crackle mumble $12.81
Me: Yeah, that ain't right
Speaker: grzzble2bar1blazecrackle
Me: Yeah no. 2 foos and a bar
Speaker: crklthat will be $8.94, please drrveupklwndzw
Me: Sounds about right, hope for the best
Apparently no one wants (Score:2)
To do those jobs in the first place, so build machines to do those jobs
Obviously not! (Score:2)
What workers?
UBI (Score:2)
Universal basic income would lubrication the issue of dropping workforces which then have zero wages and thus zero means to turn over our transactional economy.
If they don't, no amount of robots will be worth the cost of tanking the cycle.
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the taxation necessary for a broad UBI runs counter to globalization. Until we wrestle control of that monster through multinational agreement, then treating workers well will generally lead to questions of economic decline.
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UBI wouldn't necessarily require taxation, at least not in the traditional sense.
The problem in a quote: (Score:2)
The continuous effort to drive down prices, for something that is a luxury, will effectively accelerate automation, resulting in a less equitable society.
But if you raise prices too much, that could tip the balance - fewer people will utilise se
Re:hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation is not "bad for workers".
The prosperity of a nation is production/population. Automation allows a workforce to create more goods and services per person. The elimination of dead-end jobs like cashiers frees up labor for jobs that actually create something.
If automation were actually bad for workers, then America, Europe, and Japan would be mired in poverty, while countries like Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tajikistan, which wisely avoided the "productivity catastrophe", would be living in full-employment luxury.
This is, of course, the exact opposite of reality.
Automation not only creates prosperity, it is the only thing that does so. Believing that it causes poverty requires an astounding level of reality-denying economic illiteracy.
Re:hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of the Rust Belt actually *is* mired in poverty, and there never were enough replacement jobs. Millions of entire *factories* with thousands of jobs in them, are gone forever to other countries. We've been through this already, and even nominally right-wing publications show this. The "promise" of Free Trade has been shown to be largely hot air that benefited only a small slice of society. Mainly, the owners. Everyone else got fucked, even the Mexicans.
Re: hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:2)
Right, so maybe the solution is to enable more ownership. Along with welfare checks (by taxation) we should provide people with vouchers they can use to buy shares in the companies. It will be like owning the productivity of a robot. Basically having a robot do your job while you collect itâ(TM)s salary. Isnâ(TM)t that how many peoples retirement is funded? Except instead of a robot, an actual human is doing their work. Why not everyone switch to having robots do their work while they collect the
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Social ownership of the means of production? Despite all the things that are claimed to be socialism these days, that literally is.
Re: hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:2)
No it is absolute not. I didnâ(TM)t say government should own any entity. It is taxation only. People will get vouchers that allow them to invest in companies they choose. They can be foolish or smart about it.
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Lots of types of socialism that doesn't involve the government besides things like contract enforcement. Ever hear of a credit union or a co-op, both socialist. The workers at the local mill bought it, pure socialism.
Thing is is socialism is often democratic as in one worker, one vote whereas the shares thing is one share, one vote so the guy who owns 51% of the shares gets to dictate, not socialism.
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Essentially, you already have the start of this now, with 401ks, Norway Fund, etc.
The problem is the actual owners of the company (the stock-holders) have little say in the operation of the business, hence the push to reform company boards.
So functionally an oligarchy mixed with socialism (especially when the bailouts happen).
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Right, so maybe the solution is to enable more ownership
That's exactly what the Soviet Union did when it ended communism and privatized most of its industries. Within a few years a small number of oligarchs had accumulated ownership.
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We can't have nice things like this because the sad sacks of shit that everyone in the office hates working with are going to bitch and moan that somebody is getting something for nothing. They will say absolutely dumb shit like "if you gave me a robot I wouldn't come to work anymore and you guys would be so screwed without my contributions", not knowing that most of us would rather they just stay the fuck home and get out of the way. Seriously there are people where I would buy them a goddam robot myse
Re: hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:2, Insightful)
Believing that it causes poverty requires an astounding level of reality-denying economic illiteracy.
Don't generalize; it depends who owns the robots.
You're usually a lot smarter than this.
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Don't generalize; it depends who owns the robots.
I have heard the conspiracy theory before that the rich are going to hoard all the robots. There are some big problems with your theory.
The same claims were made that cars, computers, TVs, and cell phones would be hoarded by the rich.
That utterly failed to happen. They were mass manufactured and are now owned by the guy who picks up your trash.
Anyone can buy a 3D printer. Industrial robots are for sale on eBay.
If mom and pop want an order-taking kiosk for their restaurant, plenty of companies will be happy
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Don't generalize; it depends who owns the robots.
I have heard the conspiracy theory before that the rich are going to hoard all the robots.
When all of the minimum wage and menial work is eliminated, won't we all be wealthy?
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Yeah, making something illegal worked out really well for guns, and drugs.
Re:hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:5, Insightful)
Automation is not "bad for workers".
I hope you realize that automation en masse is going to remove the bottom 4 or 5 rungs from the proverbial ladder of success. Think about the jobs you had growing up. The jobs that helped get you some experience doing something. The jobs that helped pay for your education, and move UP that ladder.
The elimination of dead-end jobs like cashiers frees up labor for jobs that actually create something.
Are we also going to magically pretend that every human in those "dead end" jobs has the mental capability to do something else? 10% of the population has an IQ so low they don't qualify for ANY job in the US Military. Not even front-line border guard fodder. Don't see how this is going to pan out as well as you assume.
Automation not only creates prosperity, it is the only thing that does so. Believing that it causes poverty requires an astounding level of reality-denying economic illiteracy.
My previous point stands. Let's hope our leaders can invent some rather amazing jobs that everyone is capable of doing. Seems we went that way with all of these "colorful" (but rather useless) degrees and the end result was predictable to say the least.
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Automation is not "bad for workers".
I hope you realize that automation en masse is going to remove the bottom 4 or 5 rungs from the proverbial ladder of success. Think about the jobs you had growing up. The jobs that helped get you some experience doing something. The jobs that helped pay for your education, and move UP that ladder.
What the Ayn Rand set mysteriously does not understand is that the coming robotic storm is not about efficiency, or producing better products.
It is specifically about eliminating jobs, and the increased profit that might be gained temporarily from that.
The interesting thing is that while a lot of people will argue about how this will only be a great leap forward, the goal is to eliminate every possible job that can be eliminated.
And this is going to happen. No way that it is not. A really large por
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Which costs money, often earned by doing those jobs.
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Automation is not "bad for workers".
You're missing some nuance. It's definitely bad for the worker who loses their job, especially if they can't find another. That's the root of much of the fear and anger present today. I think that's what got The Orange Man elected.
In the long term, increased productivity is good for a society's material wealth. That's eventually going to benefit everyone. But during a transition, there are definitely people worse off, sometimes just for a while, sometimes for the rest of their lives.
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Automation is not "bad for workers".
You're missing some nuance. It's definitely bad for the worker who loses their job, especially if they can't find another. That's the root of much of the fear and anger present today. I think that's what got The Orange Man elected.
Bingo. I get out of the city on a weekly basis, and out there, you still see Trump signs and flags. To be blunt with a few exceptions, they are obvious losers in the game of life. old dilapidated trailers from the 1960s, ramshackle houses - these are people who have been left behind.
I doubt they will have an effect in the next general election. But throw millions more out of work with no prospects for employment? Hmmm
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It's the opposite because until now, people were still well off enough to buy the shit.
We're facing the recession we're facing because people are no longer able to consume. They did their job in the economy as long as they could, but they simply can't anymore.
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Automation also allows a workforce to produce the same amount of goods and services while utilizing fewer people. Some people will never do anything BUT dead-end jobs.
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Automation is not "bad for workers".
The prosperity of a nation is production/population. Automation allows a workforce to create more goods and services per person. The elimination of dead-end jobs like cashiers frees up labor for jobs that actually create something.
If automation were actually bad for workers, then America, Europe, and Japan would be mired in poverty, while countries like Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Tajikistan, which wisely avoided the "productivity catastrophe", would be living in full-employment luxury.
This is, of course, the exact opposite of reality.
Automation not only creates prosperity, it is the only thing that does so. Believing that it causes poverty requires an astounding level of reality-denying economic illiteracy.
I agree. But there are people who really aren't capable of doing much other than menial work. This is truth. When the task at hand is to end all menial work, and replace it with robots, successful implementation by definition means that people will be purposely be made unemployable. So it is also true that we will end up with surplus population.
That will have to be dealt with. Will we feed and clothe them in a universal minimum income scheme, will population decline via actuarial tables, or will Soylent g
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So, all the cashiers will find "jobs that actually create something"?
Creativity isn't a trait everyone has. For those who do, what are they going to create? There are only so many novelists and rock stars the world needs. There are only so many programmers the world needs. Did you mean "create" in a manufacturing sense? Because those are the ones that are being automated first.
The sheer volume of service workers outstrips everything else such that they can't all find another job producing something someone
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It took the labor movement and the threat of literal communism for automation give us a 40 hour work week. I really don't think it can happen again within my lifetime.
Re: hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the prosperity of the rest of the nation is absolutely worthless to an individual Left between the cracks.
Go visit Ethiopia. Nearly everyone there lives in poverty.
Mass prosperity, where poverty is only in "the cracks", only exists in societies that have embraced automation.
America has problems with wealth inequality. But only a fool believes the solution is to generate less wealth.
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America has problems with wealth inequality. But only a fool believes the solution is to generate less wealth.
This!
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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Farmers are as wealthy as any other small business owner. Everything you describe is just plain old entrepreneurship. The guy up to his neck in small business loans running the local subway sandwiches is no different. The fast-food franchisee Shana Gonzales in TFS who replaced employees with automation is as wealthy as a farmer, even by your new-age definition. I guess what I am asking is "what's your point?"
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America has problems with wealth inequality. But only a fool believes the solution is to generate less wealth.
This!
This is not in argument. But unless you are one of the people who believe anyone can be anything they want to be, we will be dealing with a significant wave of people who are for all purposes never to be employable again.
Like it or not, there are people who are pretty lucky to get their shoes tied in the morning. And they are most of the people working those minimum wage jobs. There is also a subset of Minimum wage workers that don't have much drive.
But any paid task the lowest can do is going to be
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If I'm elderly, say 55 and cannot easily change jobs and go learning a new set of skills, automation is also a clear cost for me
If you're 55 and can't learn a new skill set, then you are in bad enough health that it's giving you a mental disability. Brains do not inherently decline with age. If you have nothing left to offer, you have nothing that deserves being paid for.
That's like saying factory jobs are unfair to fat people.
Re: hahahahaha fight over scraps, plebs (Score:2)
Re:Are workers really being replaced? (Score:4, Informative)
Three or four people used to work the front counter at my local McDonald's.
One person at the counter now, who mostly just bags the orders and hands them out.
The two or three others? They're been replaced by someone who works at multiple locations, and who only shows up when things break - and the kiosks don't really break that much. They're probably not making much more per hour than the counter workers, since most of what they do now is replace standardized parts and restart the kiosk.
Those other counter workers mostly used to be "new kids" - teenagers who got that as their first job because they weren't qualified to do anything else. Now, it's a higher-paid adult. There's never more than one or two teenagers on a shift, instead of half the crew.
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Those other counter workers mostly used to be "new kids" - teenagers who got that as their first job because they weren't qualified to do anything else. Now, it's a higher-paid adult.
Sounds like we have a generation of students who are more free from poverty at home and food insecurity and can afford to spend time on their studies. It's not the restaurant's doing that they can no longer exploit children. There are fewer children available for exploitation.
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"Exploitation."
I hate to break it to you, but you misspelled "experience." And no, the vast majority of kids from the olden days (you know, back in the ancient days of the 1960s through the 2010s) weren't working those jobs to fight off "food insecurity" - they were working them to get some extra cash and to learn what it's like to actually have a job.
So now, people like you are doing your damnedest to make sure those kids - and yes, a lot of them are minorities - not only won't have any way to make extra m
Inquiring minds would know in advance. (Score:2)
A tech literate mind would know the answer in advance by mere observation of the world around them, unless they live under a rock.
The answer is a service tech of course, not necessarily high-priced but likely not cheap. (The parts are and will not be cheap.) This is a very old model used for the other restaurant equipment, HVAC, plumbing, fire suppression and more.
Owners/managers are neither techies nor have the time, tools and rapid access to replacement parts. They're wildly unlikely to be sanitary TIG we
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"The parts are and will not be cheap"
That's not only false, but hilariously false.
The parts in a kiosk are:
A touchscreen, which costs anywhere from about $200 up to about $2000 (for a really big one, like the ruggedized ones you see in a typical McDonald's).
A computer (a low-end i3 or equivalent, with a minimal OS).
A network connection.
That's it.
Kiosks used to be about $10,000, installed.
Nowadays, they're anywhere from $500 up to about $3000 (for a custom install).
A counter worker making $15 an hour costs a
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The 3 people taking your orders and 4 people fixing your food are replaced by machines. Those machines are serviced by one guy who also services the machines at 5 other restaurants.
So unless that service guy costs more than 42 minimum wage workers...
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Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that many of the technological investments had just replaced human labor without adding much to overall productivity.
Replacing workers with gadgets increases labour productivity by definition (I wonder what the author thinks "productivity" is).
Productivity can be defined per worker, per unit of capital, per factory, all sorts of measures. Productivity is output per thing for various definitions of thing. What Acemoglu is saying that output remained the same, basically.