We can't feasibly stop automation, nor should we. We SHOULD be taking the profits back from billionaires that they've stolen since time immemorial. Automation means less work overall. But we need to ensure the workers actually benefit from that.
this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Self checkout is not automation. It's making the customer do the work.
Automation would be: Stick an RFID-tag to all your items, make me check in with my phone at the entrance. Automatically "scan" all the items when my cart and my phone leave the store at the same time. Bill me.
Yeah. That's like saying a buffet automates waiters.
As the customer you're already taking stuff out of your cart and putting it on the counter. Maybe automation isn't the right word, but it's certainly more efficient than having a human clerk. It removes a bottleneck.
But it’s not a bottleneck. It’s the opposite. An experienced human checker will tap in the code for oranges way before you find it in their stupid menu.
And introduces others: “unexpected item in bagging area”
Norway has roughly the same unemployment rate as the us, but most supermarkets have the option of self service, most fuel pumps are self service (never have someone pumping it for you), and if anyone bags your groceries for you it's kids raising money for their football team or something. Very few people (comparatively) have menial jobs but unemployment isn't really higher. I also don't know anyone who has to work more than 1 full time job to survive. Menial jobs trap people who could otherwise flourish.
I'm so tired of people with social anxiety always trying to appropriate introversion. Introverts don't have that kind of phobia of personal interaction.
...many do
If you do, that's social anxiety, not introversion. It's attempts like these that make life for us introverts so hard, because everybody thinks we have that condition when in reality, we just need less socialization. A majority of us are socially functional.
Just because you have one condition doesn't mean you can go around appropriating and encroaching on others identities, that's hella offensive.
The 'job killers' argument is kinda bullshit. I want to kill jobs - I want to eliminate all labor that can be automated, such that in the ideal perfect future, no human ever has to work; they can spend every moment doing things they enjoy without worry.
But self checkout is not automation. No human work has been eliminated. It is the same exact fucking checkout process, only now the customer does it instead, and the store doesn't pay the cashier. And no they don't pass that savings on to you because of course they don't, they just pocket the difference.
I love your spirit, but that world doesn't exist. Capitalists and conservatives will never allow for a utopian society where people can enjoy their lives on the masses, no matter how advanced production or whatever elses automation becomes. It's always going to be millions suffering and a small majority having more wealth and power than they can even use in a lifetime.
That's stupid. Capitalism is the reason why humanity has advanced so quickly in such little time and why we have the technology that we do.
"job killer" automation in a reasonable society should mean less need for work and the same amount of resources available (if not more).
But we will never reach the point where we consider picnics, parties and painting more valuable than manipulative marketing, unnecessary polluting but profitable industry, and especially the all-important busywork. Do something profitable. Anything profitable. It doesn't even matter if it's a net negative to society, just do something.
Personal hobbies aren't valuable to a society, they're valuable to individuals. A guy playing video games 6 hours a day is probably okay with it, but it's not contributing anything to society. There's an argument to be made for people to be guaranteed time to themselves for their well being, but the idea that an economy can function off of picnics and parties is stupid. Automation is not going to make work obsolete, it'll just shift the economy in a different direction. Just like what happened in industrial revolution 200 years ago.
You can bet a lot of people who hate self-checkouts only hate it because they can't yell at and order the employee around to do their bidding.
I hate using them most of the time because it's a bullshit hassle for me to unload and scan and bag all of my groceries, when there used to be an employee to do that for me. I don't work for the fucking store, their employees do, so they should do that work and get paid for it. The stores where I shop have gradually scaled back real cashiers for machines to the point that it's more inconvenient for all.
The only time I like using the self checkout is when I'm buying rubbers and sex lube. The cashiers always laugh or make a face when I put the Magnum condoms on the belt.