1y ago

I'm not a monster

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I would like to offer a different take on this, even if I’ll be downvoted to hell for it…
So, using Walmart in the US as an example:
They hire people to push carts from the cart returns back to the building and those people are also responsible for snagging the stragglers as well. By putting the cart back in the correct place you are reducing the amount of work that an hourly employee has to do during their shift, thereby reducing their potential hours and potential pay.
For me, it’s the same reason I hate the self checkout, because I’m not getting a discount for running a self serve register but Walmart is saving money by not paying an employee to do it.
I get how using a self checkout is nice because I don’t have to deal with a human, but the human I no longer have to deal with is another potential employee that was getting a paycheck…
- Of all the takes, this is one of them.
- The problem with this take is that you are assuming there is a potential job or hours there to begin with that never existed in the first place and never will. Walmart has always had 15 checkout lanes and only two cashiers, even before self checkouts were a thing.
  I guess you have a private chauffeur because you wouldn't want that person to not have a job due to you selfishly driving your own car around.
  And how many porters do you employ to carry you around all day. I know you wouldn't want to cost any of them their jobs by walking around on your own two legs.
  
  I wasn’t going to respond to this thread again because honestly I was just trying to get people thinking about the little guys, but people are taking it to the extreme, so sure I’ll bite.
  There was a period when I was younger where I was barely making minimum wage, was on food stamps and WIC for my wife and newborn. I was lucky that I got out of that situation, but not everyone gets lucky.
  When I look at the direction the future is heading with self serve kiosks, self checkouts, automation systems everywhere you look… I can’t help but worry about the people that are being replaced for the sake of corporate profits.
  If we had universal basic income, I would say bring all of that stuff on. Since we don’t, my sympathy lies with the workers, not the corporations.
  
  As technology advances, some jobs are going to disappear, but hopefully, those new technologies also add new jobs that didn't exist before. Back in the day, it used to take a whole lot of people to harvest a field. Now it's all done by one guy and a big tractor or two. But people need to build those tractors, program the controller, repair them as they break, etc. More kiosk and self checkouts are going to need techs and repairs. It's just how things work. It probably won't be long when some store switches back to using actually staff because it's a unique feature when no one else has human staff anymore. Like how people buy Amish furniture now because it's like the only way to get handmade furniture today.
  Saying to leave a mess so a company "has" to hire a janitor is just a dumb way to express the idea that there needs to be more jobs.
  I get the fear that if automation keeps picking up, there may be a time where there truly aren't enough jobs to go around, (A.I. is really fucking scary at how fast it is improving) but hopefully if technology advances that far we'll also see improvements in agriculture, housing, and power generation to the point that people don't need a shitty $15 an hour job or a "free" paycheck just to not starve to death in the street because hopefully providing clean water and food won't be as hard as it is now.
  Universal basic income is just a dumb idea. You are taking money from someone who works hard for a living, making life harder for them, just so someone else doesn't have to work for a living. It is the core concept of communism. What happens when no one wants to work because they can just get the free income? Did your teachers really never do the average grading experiment with you? Instead of getting the grade you actually got on an assignment, everyone just gets the classes' average grade. No one should fail, but at the cost of a few good students getting worse letter grades. It lasts for one or two assignments before most people just stop doing the work and now everyone is failing because the few people that are still doing the work can't get high enough grades to average a whole class of zeros out to more than Fs.
  If it's something you are really concerned about, then really try to find a solution that doesn't involve forced labor on one group of people, so another group can benefit. Our ancestors did that shit for years back when it still took people to harvest a farm, and most people are still pretty upset about it to this very day.
- I dRoP mY LiTtEr oN tHe fLoOr So SoMeBoDy HaS a JoB!

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