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More Fast Food Restaurants Are Now Automating (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Wendy's is adding self-service ordering kiosks "to at least 1,000 restaurants, or about 15% of its stores," reports the Los Angeles Times, while McDonald's and Panera Bread are now planning to add kiosks to every restaurant. "Lots of restaurants, not just fast-food chains, are really trying to mitigate the costs of higher wages," says one market research firm, while also citing a survey which found 40% of millennials willing to use kiosks (compared to 30% of restaurant-goers overall).
But in some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn't plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."
But in some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn't plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."
... automated post.
hah
after going to japan where many of the major chains had at-table ordering device of some sort and no tips, i cant go back
Because that will solve everything! Robots replace unskilled workers, Forcing people that want to live on a minimum wage job to learn skills to actually earn the money they are being paid.
You fought for a higher minimum wage, now these robots will take all the jobs.
And who will you complain to when the food is shit* or the order is wrong?
What happens when it takes your money and goes "beep" but delivers no food? Who will take your complaint?
-
*shittier than normal, that is
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Unskilled labor is going to mostly disappear except for those tasks where it just isn't possible to automate. A "livable" wage for a task that can be done by a machine is a pipe dream. That's just reality. All the kicking and screaming and class warfare rhetoric isn't going to change it or delay the outcome.
So to that I say, please do go ahead and keep raising the minimum wage. That may actually accelerate the process. The displaced workers will either skill up or you'll see a reverse migration to places where the cost of living and level of automation will make it possible for unskilled workers to survive.
The lower the bodily fluid count in my fast food the better.. They need to develop a wholely automated restaurant/vending machine that is of equal quality.
This is not minimum wage folks, this would happen either way.. Fact is what does a computer and commercial touchscreen cost these days? Employees would have to earn less than $1000 a year for them not to be replaced and that would be criminal for anyone to be forced to work for so little.
TAX THE RICH(0.01%), like they did in the 50's 90-95%.
You place some mystical valuation on the concept of 'earn' - does the canopener that opened your can 'earn' a place of respect and veneration in your kitchen? At what point did we assign mystical and quasi religious status to actions that solve our day to day needs?
A lot of 60-somethings have gone on TV to oppose raising minimum wages, saying "When I was a teen, I worked at a burger joint for $2/hour and was glad for it. Today's kids and young homemakers should do the same."
Now they can point to robots who do it for even less!
[/sarcasm]
>Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."
Except that the number of people the per-person number of meals is more or less unchanged. So there very well might be fewer human work-hours in total, even if there are more at Panera.
Libertarians tend to weigh everything in monetary terms, and tend to overvalue the contributions of people with higher wages, which allows them to dehumanize low wage earners.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There will still need to be people working, just in a different capacity and much less of them. Now if we were all using the Carl's Junior vending machine from Idiocracy, we would have a different discussion. Not that far off mind you, but not quite there yet.
That said, I live in California and hate going to fast food restaurants. Customer service does not usually exist for numerous reasons.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Its not a mystical valuation, Its a monetary valuation. Just because you don't think people should have to earn what they have doesn't mean that's how the world works.
The federal minimum wage has been raising for 80 years in the U.S. Have there been any effects? The last I looked,, the poor / unskilled have a wonderful life today in the U.S., safe environments, great education, a rosy career future, pleasant stores in their neighborhoods offering fresh food stuffs and the list goes on..
There might be more human work at some locations. Faster service using kiosks might bring in more customers in that restaurant, but the total number of meals people eat always stays the same, which means other non-automated restaurants are losing customers. Since the automated restaurant is serving more people with the same number of employees, the overall effect is a decrease in labor.
Vote with your wallet, and go somewhere else.
Hell, queue in the lines that still have humans, as in the first months they will be running stats to gauge customer reaction.
Wow, and it also sounds like you're posting from 80 years ago!
do you want FRIES! ..... zzzz ... with that?
All these people whining about minimum wage increases causing more automation like it's a bad thing. You've all got it backwards. Human labor has been undervalued, so nobody bothered to put effort into being more efficient. If anything, this suggests that we need to raise wages globally so we'll actually quit wasting so much human effort.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
People who make less than 30K should be terminated.
If someone wins the lottery you say 'wow good for them! All their needs are met!' But if someone were to work for 1 hour and meet all their needs for a whole week, suddenly this is 'wrong'? Or, conversely, someone works for one hour and their needs are met for a whole week and you say 'they deserve it'? Our goal as people should be to improve our lot, and toss aside ideas that hamper us from improving our lot. This applies to people who get all sanctimonious about 'living wage' (as determined by a bureaucrat in Washington D.C.) as well as someone who idolizes a billionaire...
Minimum wage has only in some cities, it is absolute 100% crap that this has anything to do with the minimum wage. With the current administration there is 0% chance the federal minimum wage will go up.
Sure businesses would like to use this as an argument against higher wages but they will 100% do this because it saves money *now*. Not as a hedge against some future increase. Businesses don't spend money unless it makes sense to do so, and in this case they believe this is the best choice.
There must be some salubrious effect. Your medications appear to be working pretty well.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I don't know about anyone else but I can't stand the kiosks at Panera. I to be able to order and pay faster with a human than scrolling through endless pages on their tablets. Hopefully they'll get better over time.
Now get off my lawn, you damn kids.
The problem is that these public corporations must profit more every year, and now they are pulling out too many profits to be in balance with local economies so they have to look to automation as a band aid solution. The issue really needs to be addressed at its root because companies are just alienating people from being able to participate as consumers. It is not a sustainable solution at all.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
People aren't eating more because of the kiosks. The higher order throughput comes at the expense of real worker's jobs elsewhere at less automated fast food joints.
Libertarians would have us live in a dog-eat-dog society. They ignore the rule of law that allows them their freedom. And they'd like everyone armed to the teeth to defend their property.
They'd like everyone to have the right to be bankrupted due to medical issues. Social Security and Medicare keep Grandma off the Libertarians' front lawns. In Ayn Rand's world, airlines could allow for a certain number of plane crashes a year consistent with their profit margins due to customers deciding not to fly and employees finding alternate jobs. Smog and pollution would exist only up to a threshold number of deaths due to pollution. Mercury would not be a controlled pollutant; if you ingest too much, it be your own fault. What? You didn't know you were eating it in that seafood? How come you didn't pull out your home chemistry kit and do your own testing?
What Libertarians do not get is statistics. If you ignore statistics, then you get the every doofus for himself mentality. If you pay attention to statistics, a lot of government programs make sense.
...jobs that make people go postal evaporate.
Humans are far too smart, innovative, aspiring and complex to find satisfaction in a job flipping burgers or sorting mail. -prolonged repetative tasks for months on end is soul destroying.
What Libertarians do not get is statistics.
Just taking a good look at the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons should be enough to understand that you need government programs to enforce cooperation for the benefit of all.
Libertarians tend to weigh everything in monetary terms, and tend to overvalue the contributions of people with higher wages, which allows them to dehumanize low wage earners.
As a libertarian, I value freedom and liberty. I think you have a fundamental right to live your life free from outside meddling to the greatest extent possible.
When I talk about choices, it's easy to talk about possible outcomes in terms of dollars. But that's not the only important measure. Individual happiness and satisfaction are the real end goals. I don't presume to know what will make you happy and I'd prefer you let me make my own decisions about that, thank you very much.
My experience lo these many years shows that increasing liberty and trusting people tends to lead to greater happiness, serenity, and wealth for the most people. Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement, paternalism, tribalism, fear, and greed. At this point, I just don't trust anyone who's saying they need to butt in for someone else's good. I'm always looking for their ulterior motive and too often, I find one.
Since we live in an imperfect world of scarcity, it seems inevitable there will be those who aren't happy and aren't wealthy, for many reasons. As someone who likes to think of himself as caring and compassionate (and I know I'm fooling myself), I get great fulfillment helping those people out.
My family had Chick-fil-A the other day. Placed our entire order on my smartphone through their app. The app can optionally track your itinerary via GPS so that the food is prepared just in time for your arrival.
If someone wins the lottery you say 'wow good for them! All their needs are met!' But if someone were to work for 1 hour and meet all their needs for a whole week, suddenly this is 'wrong'?
Of course it's wrong. When you look at the lottery winner, you're forgetting about the 10 million or so other people who bought a ticket and lost. There's no free ride. The lottery company made a profit. The winner keeps a bit of money. And all the losers paid for it.
Hey don't get me wrong I would love to live in a world where I could meet all my needs by working 1 hour per week. However it doesn't work that way. Perhaps one day, when automation has reached a point where everything basically runs itself and all people need to do is a bit of tweaking here and there. But not yet.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If anything, this suggests that we need to raise wages globally so we'll actually quit wasting so much human effort.
When the human effort is no longer needed, unskilled humans are no longer needed by society. So as you increase automation you also need to eliminate the superfluous humans.
Can you provide an actual statistical analysis of your conclusion, or is your entire world view based on a limited number of anecdotes?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'd like to share with you a link to the Washington Post story about cobalt miners.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/congo-cobalt-mining-for-lithium-ion-battery/
In this story, every miner is completely free to work as much as they want. Each miner has complete freedom to dig wherever they want to dig, to sell their cobalt to whichever company will buy it, and each person earns as much as they are skilled to earn. Nobody limits their freedom in any way. If they want to contract with a loanshark to buy salt for their bread, they are free to set up a contract to do so. If they are ten times more skillful at cobalt mining than their neighbor, they will get ten times the revenue. No laws exist to prevent people from setting up their own mines or cobalt buying shops.
What's interesting is that there are also no laws to prevent the cobalt buying shops from using false weights and measures to skimp on payments. They can simply install machines that underpay their customers by providing bad assays. Government regulations and auditors would prevent that, but that would limit freedom.
What's interesting is that there are no laws to prevent loansharks from hounding individual people and demanding payments on their loans for salt or flour. The loansharks can be as demanding as they like. Government regulations and a justice system would prevent that, but that would limit freedom.
What's interesting is that there are no laws to prevent people from setting up competing cobalt buying shops. Except that the chinese companies have huge resources and they muscle out all the competition. Government regulations and trust busting would prevent that, but that would limit freedom.
The fundamental belief in Libertarianism is that, if you do away with laws and rules, people will somehow be better off. The truth is that only works in fantasyland.
You are wrong. Libertarians feel that private industry can do things better than the government.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
No I don't think so. When you go to a restaurant part of what you're paying for is the service you can't get at home. Creating a full robot-based restaurant isn't really why people go out to eat at a sit-down restaurant.
And for that, I'd go to a real restaurant where the chef prepares a full course for you (like this French restaurant which my wife and visit everytime we go to Tokyo), not the Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factor or Red Lobster or whatever.
For that, shit man, give me a tablet and let me pick and choose (which as the OP said, most restaurants in Japan have it.)
Libertarians tend to weigh everything in monetary terms, and tend to overvalue the contributions of people with higher wages, which allows them to dehumanize low wage earners.
As a libertarian, I value freedom and liberty. I think you have a fundamental right to live your life free from outside meddling to the greatest extent possible.
When I talk about choices, it's easy to talk about possible outcomes in terms of dollars. But that's not the only important measure. Individual happiness and satisfaction are the real end goals. I don't presume to know what will make you happy and I'd prefer you let me make my own decisions about that, thank you very much.
My experience lo these many years shows that increasing liberty and trusting people tends to lead to greater happiness, serenity, and wealth for the most people. Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement, paternalism, tribalism, fear, and greed. At this point, I just don't trust anyone who's saying they need to butt in for someone else's good. I'm always looking for their ulterior motive and too often, I find one.
Since we live in an imperfect world of scarcity, it seems inevitable there will be those who aren't happy and aren't wealthy, for many reasons. As someone who likes to think of himself as caring and compassionate (and I know I'm fooling myself), I get great fulfillment helping those people out.
You experience? Your experience doing what? Seeing what? Measuring what and how?
This will work for people who just want to stuff something in their bellies pronto. How would a simple change be done - regardless if machine or customer error? Put everything back in, have the scanner look for diffs?
Feel? Feel? Fucking FEEL?
There is the problem with all ideologies, the L-word included.
Policy decisions need to be based on evidence and theory. Yes, theories are weak and the evidence incomplete. That is the nature of life and the real world.
Deal, don't feel.
Nah, Tragedy of the commons is a red-herring.
The simple (simplistic) answer, including the Libertarian one, is to not have a commons. That is - everything privately owned.
Of course in the real world this would leave to massive inequality and unchecked externalities, resulting in extensive pollution and death on a huge scale. Huge!
The real issues are more complex, and mostly have to do with externalities. Using a court system to manage these as opposed to legislation and regulation is the stock Libertarian answer. However all that does is shift regulatory and legislative capture to judicial corruption.
TLDR: Real life, in particular dealing with externalities, is very complex and requires multiple trade-offs.
In other words, kiosks help you preserve more of your locational privacy in exchange for a minor wait you can definitely afford (I'm guessing around 10 minutes or less). Consumers are trained to think that their convenience should come at whatever price is offered and that's not wise. In the case of running apps on your computer you're also possibly handing over your mic data, address book data, and anything else you're doing with your tracker. That app is proprietary, so you're speaking beyond your knowledge when you say the itinerary tracking is "optional". You don't know all that it's copying or where the copied data is sent and you're never given a chance to review the data before sending it or the option to make sure the program isn't lying to you by presenting you with less data than it is actually copying and sending. The parties you're handing the data to: more unaccountable people at the restaurant who don't care about your privacy and have no reason to stop tracking your movements should they find that useful for them.
All this because you thought saving 10 minutes or less was "so last year".
Digital Citizen
For very limited definitions of 'better', they may be correct.
I get great fulfillment helping those people out.
You can help out an armed robber by giving him all your possessions. Feels great, I bet.
The problem is that, absent corruption, it is not true that private is automatically better then public. Any efficiencies are just siphoned off as profit and remove control from the public. Even with corruption, the private business will just corrupt the government to give the business an advantage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
is brutal repression of those people. That's what's going on in Mexico & South America. But good job making yourself feel better by suggesting the problem will naturally and painlessly take care of itself. The best part? There's an excellent chance you'll get caught up in that repression too as the government expands it's powers to do nastier and nastier things to it's citizens in the name of keeping order.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
"In some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn't plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."
Um, no, that is not what it means. Doing more orders with the same people is exactly the same thing as reducing human employees to service the same number of orders. I have no idea what the point of this is. If in theory there are x people interested in a short order meal, then servicing more at your shop with robots does not affect x, it only shifts it. Over time, the price of short order meals may fall as everyone has robots replacing humans, which would increase x. Decreasing x will be the % of the low wage population employed.
To pretend this is anything other than an effort to avoid the growing direct and indirect costs, as well as increasing risks associated with employing humans is silly. This shift will happen no matter what we do. The question is the pace. Rather than working to slow the pace -- or, hell, just keep it as-is -- many are doing everything they can to accelerate it as much as possible.
Somewhere out there, there was a skeptical franchisee who feels like she has the process all figured out with humans and really doesn't want to mess with new tech she doesn't understand and needs to have a maintenance contract to cover, and she isn't sure how her customers will like the new tech anyway. So she was going to stick to humans. Then, Obamacare and Fight for 15 (which includes not only wage increases but unionization!)... you better believe that salesperson gave her a call back and explained how this tech is the only way she can protect her business from dying; plus all her competitors who were in the fence are all-in now, so she needs to get on board.
Etc.
The pace matters. Change is disruptive to people's lives. They need time to retrain and the economy needs time to figure out what to do with this labor supply that wasn't there yesterday. This should happen slowly, and it would if let be; but we are all too dumb for that.
I called that damn robot a tin can of malfunctioning sprockets and he motor oiled into my pizza.
You highly vaunted 'private industry' is owned and operated by rich assholes who by large and far don't give a flying FUCK about 99.9% of everyone else on the planet, or the PLANET ITSELF for that matter, so long as their wallets get fatter, and their penises get serviced on demand. That's one of the reasons we have governments and laws: To prevent the rich ASSHOLES of the world from turning it into one giant slave-labor operation, that lasts for a few generations before there's either a mass revolt, or they manage to fuck up the planet so bad that nothing can live on it anymore. Fucking go kill yourself, asshole, the world's too small now for us to put up with fucking dickheads of your kind anymore, you need to be PURGED.
Authoritarians make up stories about dog eat dog societies to make you afraid. They want you to accept their bullying in exchange for protecting you from the scary bogeymen in their stories.
As a libertarian, I value freedom and liberty. I think you have a fundamental right to live your life free from outside meddling to the greatest extent possible.
Individual happiness and satisfaction are the real end goals. I don't presume to know what will make you happy and I'd prefer you let me make my own decisions about that, thank you very much.
Sure, but an independent (for lack of a better word) arbiter, like the government, is needed to ensure that one's freedom, liberty, happiness and satisfaction doesn't unfairly usurp another's. Even your own decisions about your own affairs can have external affects. Perhaps government is required for the cooperative iberty of all it's people.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
https://www.6sqft.com/horn-and...
davecb@spamcop.net
Yes! People in contrived situations frequently need contrived answers. They should teach young people how to avoid being a character in a simplistic parable.
Participation in government assistance has had peaks and valleys but the trend has been upwards since 1970. If people lose hope that they can put the effort in to find a quality job then they will never go off of welfare.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Well, look. If you keep them around, you get poorly taken orders and poorly prepared meals. They get a wage. You get inconsistent, often poor, meals that may or may not be exactly what you ordered. You aren't grateful to them or particularly appreciative of what they do.
If you let them go off and exist on welfare, they still get a wage. But you get a properly taken order, and a meal cooked in a consistent manner, minus spit and incompetence.
Now I ask you -- where is the difference that concerns you? These are people you don't care about anyway. Why not let them sit at home on the dole? Your life is clearly better if that's the case.
Me, I don't want them to starve, even though I don't particularly appreciate the (cough) skills they bring to the table and the kitchen; but I'd prefer -- by far -- to be delivered the meal I asked for at some consistently acceptable level of quality. And I really don't care if the government sends them a check or not.
I simply don't have the urge to tell other people what they must do to have "worthwhile" lives. But I know my life is more worthwhile if my meals are higher quality.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The Tragedy of the Commons reflects companies externalizing their costs onto the community. If a community simply predicts the potential damage or harm a company can do, and requires a protective financial bond to cover said risk, it would minimize riisks by factoring in a cost to the companies. There are a thousand possible responses to a potential exploit, and for some reason, you feel like protecting the 4 or 5 that ultimately are as harmful as they are good.
At least the kiosks are in real english, and don't constantly fuck up placing my order.
Can you provide a refutation with statistics?
Who is happier, people in (mostly) free market economies in western nations or people in centrally-planned economies like Soviet Russia and North Korea.
Surely you aren't arguing that life is better in the latter. Allowing people to choose what is best in life for them and pursue it as much as feasible has demonstrably been better than being forced to work a certain way for a certain person without regard to your own values or worth as a human being.
How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.
Godwin time: The holocaust was done because of morals and ethics.
People should really have the maximum amount of personal liberty. You should be free to do whatever you want in an informed, consenting manner, along with others who are equally well informed and consenting. And only along with them. Nothing wrong with these ideas at all, and furthermore, government action in the other direction is outright despicable and evil. This is a portion of libertarianism that is worthy.
In addition, the availability of making such choices for one's self and one's consenting companions confers responsibility for consequences upon those making the choices. This is also worthy, and part of both small-l and large-L libertarianism. But then...
None of that means that people subject to circumstances out of their control ought to be left to suffer every random sling and arrow that comes along "because responsibility", or that a person possessing even a modicum of human decency would be okay with letting such things go on. A comprehensive social safety net is entirely a good thing so that when one falls, one doesn't land head-first on concrete.
However, corporations and businesses should not enjoy even close to the same level of liberty. They are not, despite hyperbole to the contrary, persons. To the (grotesque) extent that corporations and businesses are like people, the people they are like are psychopaths and sociopaths (sometimes both at once.) This we know from observation. It's not a guess, it's a fact. This is the area in which Libertarian ideals are wholly toxic.
Ideally, let the individuals be free; while regulating business and government itself right down to the last jot and tittle. That circumstance, IMHO, is the closest our civilization could ever get to a utopia.
Unfortunately, since in the USA business outright owns congress and the judiciary, this is not a circumstance we're likely to be closing in on any time soon.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
He forgot the sarcasm tag.
As someone who agrees with automation and complete roboticization of jobs like these and who will use the kiosks; the justifications that it creates more work is just an excuse to automate away jobs.
Lets be real here... Automation will kill jobs. Stop trying to sugar coat it and mislead people; fuck!
We all know that the kiosk is a long term investment that doesnt require healthcare or a wage increase.... But please don't fucking lie to everyone to justify them.
Maybe now my orders wont get fucked up... If anything; the jobs here that need to be automated are the ones in the drive though who cant seem to give me the correct order or end up missing something every god damn time.
Pay scales are not really logical. Especially at the higher end. People used to bitch about unions paying on seniority instead of skill, but that's exactly how it works in the salaried sector as well.
Of course, they will blame it all on only being partially free market. They seem to truly believe that if everything is torn down and we rebuild as pure free market driven by private industry that all will magically work out. Charity just can't handle all the loose ends by itself, we already have such a selfish society that I see people look at me like I was stupid when I mention giving money to charity.
No, that's lower case L libertarians. Upper case L Libertarians believe that a passive rock can do better than a government.
They paid for it in an informed, consensual manner, accepting the risk in exchange for the chance at benefit.
This is why it's 100% not wrong.
In fact, it is you who are wrong: You are attempting to tell these people what they should be doing. You should stop that. Immediately. You are not their mother; you are not my mother. You don't like lotteries? Fine: don't participate.
You want to let them know the odds and the prospects, with the idea that some might choose differently if they had the information you want them to have? Fine. Make the odds and prospects available to them. But stay out of their way. Completely.
There's nothing wrong with educating people as to the facts. There's everything wrong with forcing them to make choices under your boot heel. If people want to create and/or participate in lotteries, they are right, and you are wrong when you tell them they are wrong.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
bingo!
True, history shows that private industry is corrupt, will break and bend whatever rules it can, and acts against the interests of society. Lack of an arbiter like the government leads to monopolies, low wages, child labor, unsafe workplaces, and so forth. Anyone who thinks the workers as individuals can negotiate fairly with the employers is naive. Most workers can not easily barter their services to a different employer as easily as libertarians seem to imply.
Quick! Get the immigrants out before they take our ... oh, nevermind.
"Mitigate the cost of higher wages?" So if wages were cheaper they wouldn't use kiosks and cut down on the number of employees? Yeah sure.
Oh and the hiring of more people to keep up with the orders will only be temporary and cease when they fully automate that too.
You liberals sure are an angry bunch. The same argument can be made for the government. The people in charge are putting themselves first. The government bends over backwards when big corps start writing them checks. I respect other countries where they admit the corruption openly. Here we pretend it doesn't exist.
In another ten years they'll have use cooking the food, too. I'll stick with Culver's
My years of experience with Libertarians has convinced me of two things:
(1) They don't understand what freedom actually is.
(2) All of them have superiority complexes.
However I think the main point of high degrees of automation in the food industry is how vulnerable that will make the human beings to a synchronized cyber-attack. Imagine all of the fast food served at some peak time were to be poisoned. That would eliminate a whole lot of the riffraff. If the poison is slow enough, it could be even more effective.
I wasn't thinking about the Russians or Chinese at first. I was actually thinking about one of those high efficiency ASIs that was fed up with all those annoying portable nuisances of the human sort... (I think we might be able to negotiate a peace treaty with a regular AI, but all bets are off on an ASI.)
P.S. Seemed like a target-rich topic for funny, but not so much. Par.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You're confusing libertarianism with anarchy. Go figure?
Can you provide an actual statistical analysis of your conclusion
Are you serious? Do you also need "statistical analysis" that the earth isn't flat? Look at any measure of economic freedom, such as the Ease of Doing Business Index, which measures the burden of government regulation and corruption. The top ten are: New Zealand, Singapore, Denmark, Hong Kong, South Korea, Norway, United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden. These are all prosperous countries. The bottom ten are: Haiti, Angola, Afghanistan, Congo, Central African Republic, South Sudan, Venezuela, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia. These countries are, economically and politically, the worst of the worst.
If you look at measures of social tolerance, and rule of law, such as the Human Freedom Index, you see the same pattern. Free countries are prosperous. Repressive countries are dirt poor.
Clearly we need regulation for things that have no market solution, such as pollution and enforcing contracts, but if you build a system where the government is "picking winners", handing out subsidies and tax breaks, controlling prices, and building "national champions", then you are going to end up with a corrupt and inefficient system.
Here is your statistial analysis: every country that tried communism/totalitarianism went to shit. *Every* *single* *time*. Enough statistic for ya ?
In essence it comes down to this: you fly with your regulated airline, go to your regulated doctor, and let yourself be regulated rectally by big gov 3 times a day. No problem m8, ask for permission to wee if you want to. Just let me go to my unregulated doctor, let me fly with my unregulated plane and as much as possible let me do wtf i think is best for me, mkay ?
What do we need so much effort for? To produce more crap? For essentials, there's more people than there is work to do...
Somehow I expected to see an attempt to shift the burden of proof, and I wasn't disappointed.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
A friend has opened three (under contract to open three) "specialty" fast food restaurants. His biggest problem by far & he has a lot of problems, is the difficulty in hiring people. If he does get a good worker, he can find himself in bidding wars with other restaurants. All of his stores are in more affluent areas so local kids are not interested. He can't get away with paying any employee minimum wage. It seems that unless a employer is based in a low income, high unemployment area, minimum wage means nothing, they gotta pay more, sometimes a LOT more.
Them lines go out the door but he is not making any money so far because of his labor costs as they are a lot higher than his business model forecasts predicted. But damn does he work his ass off!
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Smog and pollution would exist only up to a threshold number of deaths due to pollution.
That's how it is now - there are thresholds mandated by law and regulation. That they are measurement thresholds for certain substances rather than death rate thresholds doesn't change that.
Tradeoffs exist, whether you imagine that you can outlaw them or not.
"Enforce" being the key word there of-course. Obviously you believe that the 'benefit of all' can be achieved by enforcement, by taking the individual rights away and by putting the collective above the individual. I disagree that the collective has any precedence over an individual.
One single person being oppressed at the behest of some collectivist 'good' is the death of all individuals. Without individuals having rights not to be oppressed by the collective the individuals have the moral responsibility to completely deny the collective and to destroy it.
Of-course this goes directly against one of my previous post where I explained what systems are and what laws guide systems, however there is no contradiction here. The systems want to survive and they are much better at surviving by fighting individuals than individuals are at fighting the systems to protect their own rights against those systems, so it seems to be a fools errand at first glance.
However I did state there as well that if the fundamentals that the systems are basing themselves on are flawed, then by pushing forward based on the flawed fundamentals, the systems will eventually self destruct and AFAIC the fundamentals here are flawed.
It is Individuals who have rights, collectives do not. Collectives have entitlements that the individuals grant them, individuals have the rights not to be oppressed by the collectives, I mentioned it here many times and I will repeat it again. Individual rights are the protections against the collective oppression, collectivist 'rights' are entitlements that require destruction of individual rights. There is no way around this and thus the fundamental ideology of collectivism will always be long term wrong in a number of ways, morally, economically, societally. Destruction of collectivist societies who place themselves above the rights of the individuals is imminent and inevitable.
You can't handle the truth.
Not just wages. Self serve robots don't need transgender washrooms and sick leave.
The other part that is wacky with Libertarian is foreign policy. They are all over the place.
Since I never eat anything that comes out of a machine, this doesn't affect me at all! McDognutz, Booger Thing, Wedny's (=FATASS, look at the CEO), Taco Hell (worked there for 2 weeks before quitting; unbelievably foul), I Love Garbage, etc., etc. It's all substandard shit puked out of gleaming machines for you to consume, consume, consume, consume. Pay no attention to the military-industrial complex behind the na'kin's..
Grow some, and plant a fucking organic garden you fool. Before your skin peels off.
And if your entire family ordered from Fill-A-Chick, it's probably time to come out of the closet.
True, history shows that private industry is corrupt, will break and bend whatever rules it can, and acts against the interests of society. Lack of an arbiter like the government leads to monopolies, low wages, child labor, unsafe workplaces, and so forth.
The problem is that governments are just as prone to corruption (and democide...more people are killed by their own governments than in wars) and worse, and they have a monopoly on the use of violence. There are the same ratios of 'good' and 'bad' people in both government and the private sector. Government and those in it are not any better than corporations and those in the private sector. In fact, I would argue government is far worse.
Walmart isn't going to send a SWAT team to raid my house and shoot my dog because I embarrassed them on twitter or released politically-damaging information I legally obtained and possessed.
When it comes right down to it, it is the people that must take their responsibility seriously to make certain neither government nor business/industry get too powerful (or become indistinguishable from each other per the direction that the current US trend seems to be headed).
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
After using a McD kiosk to order lunch today, I've decided to avoid them when possible because it makes the whole process longer.
First, it takes longer for me to place the order. What takes less than a minute to say now takes more than a minute to do thanks to having to navigate the touchscreen menu. And it's worse if you have special order - "hold the mustard" becomes a bunch more touchscreen tapping,
Second, after you place the order, you're shuffled off to wait for your order to be assembled. The screen nicely shows shows your order number, but there's no indication on how long you will be standing with the rest of the patrons. The queue isn't FIFO, so you can't even guess based upon who just got served.
AFAIC meddling is immoral and unethical even if 'morals' and 'ethics' are used to attempt to justify it. The only moral thing on this planet is not to oppress others, not to use force and brutality of any kind to make people do what you want them to do. Make something people want/need and trade it with them on a voluntary basis, do not force your desires upon them with collectivist force and weapons, that would be moral. The so called 'morality' and 'ethics' of collectivism are no such thing at all, they are necessarily immoral and unethical. They are mistaken for morality and ethics but immediately lose that label at any form of closer examination. What is their go to move? Violent enforcement and oppression by the collective. That's not moral or ethical by any standard.
You can't handle the truth.
Walmart isn't going to send a SWAT team to raid my house and shoot my dog because I embarrassed them on twitter or released politically-damaging information I legally obtained and possessed.
One would think, but you never know. Just ask Karen Silkwood - oh wait, you can't, she's dead and possibly killed by her employer.
As for Walmart, probably depends on if they can get someone cheaply enough, from China.
Just sayin' ...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You're attacking socialism using the word "collectivism" to bring in shades of Stalin/Mao (which everyone fears) so you can side step the issue I raised, which is that if you abandon the unskilled to their fate you'll get dragged down with them one way or another. So I'll be a little more blunt here: Yes or no: when the unskilled become useless are you OK with them starving to death to avoid "stealing" from the skilled? If the answer is 'no' you better figure out some way to get them food/shelter/healthcare/etc. And "making them skilled" is not an answer. If anyone could just become skilled they'd do it. They're unskilled for reasons. Now, if you've got a magic ray or something that makes the unskilled skilled, well, congratulations, you've just flooded the market with skilled labor and learned magic at the same time...
Oh, and you're also assuming that supporting a decent standard of living for the unskilled is morally wrong. In a post scarcity economy it's pretty obvious that's not true. The only thing that you're "stealing" is the power to control people by controlling their access to food/shelter/healthcare/etc. It's kind of an oxymoron that way. Redistributing wealth creates more freedom as the ruling class uses the carrot & stick of survival they've been beating the ruling class with so long.
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How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.
What I meant was more along the lines of "I think X is bad. Ban it!" where X is in "dancing", "drinking", "women voting", "pacifism", "homosexuality", "women's voting rights", and so on.
Morals and ethics are a find thing. They're the only thing which makes society work. Just let's please agree where yours end, mine begin, and what are the ones we agree on.
A friend of mine suffered a fall due to badly maintained security equipment (people who complain that their harnesses are falling apart are shown the door, and one who tried to complain directly to OSHA got fired for a theft he somehow committed while in traction). Because he was unconscious he was driven to the hospital by his supervisor. No accident report was ever filed despite assurances to the contrary "we already sent it out don't worry", and weeks later when he finally got out, his own insurance company came after him for fraud: he'd never fallen at work, and therefore was not covered by the workplace injury policy, and had to refund them the hospital bill immediately.
Companies will do anything and everything they think they can get away with, *AND MORE*. Because they always try to stretch, and can hide from punishment by simply not being "individual people" whenever they'd get thrown in jail.
Others have pointed out the communism/captialism examples. You can also look at the great liberalization and enriching trend which started with the Enlightenment.
Beyond that, I mostly see virtually every political and many personal disputes in my life which seem to come down to someone wanting to tell someone else what to do "for their own good". I barely know what's good for me, I certainly don't know what's good for you.
So to answer your question, no, it's based on a very large number of anecdotes.
You don't have to convince me that some places could do more business by automating the order taking. I'm getting crotchety in my old age and one of the contributors is minimum wage employees who are unable to communicate passably in colloquial English.
Most libertarians I know believe in the sanctity of contracts and support having a government civil court system to enforce those contracts. Of course, there are many different flavors of libertarians and some do believe in anarchy with no laws but I don't believe that is the majority.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
At times we have to value our experience more than what the so-called experts tell us.
This is what the failed war on fats in the US has taught me. So many family/friends with diabetes, and all because of a few assholes abusing scientific publications and putting their spin into the medical programs of the US government for far too long. You can point to "but it's not science" all you damn well want - but "science" just killed millions of people early the past fifty years*. Just about as bad as smoking. Until you can point to actual predictable models that are proven and backed by not-corrupted scientists, it's just more snake oil.
* Yeah, we blame America's poor life expectancy on our "health care system"... and not the government programs which have established the common shelf foods and eating habits of our citizens for decades. Our health costs have soared because our government has made damn sure that we need all the medical care we can get, and we have the technology today such that an enormous amount of healthcare is available for purchase.
Name a society that bases it's entire operations and legal system on hard objective facts, where feelings and opinions never enter the picture. Where is this practiced with perfect consistency? It would have to be some place where humans don't exist.
The McDonald's in Durham, NC had this years ago. It didn't work so well. Too many choices, too many screens, and let's be honest, despite being around a hi-tech research area, most of the clientele were blue collar types who just wanted cheap food fast. A lot of people tried them, but after a couple months they just weren't being used and they got packed up. If there is some incentive to use them, people will. Like discount, or the regular line is long. Forcing people to use it will just piss people off. Good luck to them. But there is a reason they don't sell Rolex at Wal-Mart and Dollar General. Know your customer!
Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement, paternalism, tribalism, fear, and greed.
At this point, I just don't trust anyone who's saying they need to butt in for someone else's good.
So, if you see someone getting mugged, do you call the police?
According to you, the police can't be trusted because they butt it for someone else's good.
Do you wait for the mugger to go away and then steal the victim's clothes?
I don't think most libertarians would argue with that (law enforcement and a court system).
Somehow the government is responsible for what you shove in your pie hole?
Tell that to the lardass mother of 6 in the grocery line ahead of me, buying Twinkies and Doritos with food stamps instead of fruit and bread.
So you did already realize that not everyone is poor, ill or otherwise unable to live by themselves by their own choice. (In many cases even if it may seem so from the outside.) That's a good first step.
You're helping those who arent fortunate enough to get by on their own every once in a while. That's a good, too.
Now what youre missing is that everyone has a right to live a decent life independently on you having or not having a generous day today. If you really care about others, especially unfortunate ones, help make sure that they get along decently independently from the daily whims of more fortunate people like you.
Wasn't that a "fast food" concept from the fifties? You went to a wall put your money in a coin slot slid the door open and got your sammich. Aren't we going back to this concept? Is this progress? Maybe the best concept is to stay home shut off the tv, and cell phones and enjoy a meal with your family. The food will be healthier hopefully. You will actually live longer interacting with people and food not designed to shorten your life. Kids in the back room boiling your meal in a bag with no supervision or hygiene for that matter does not appeal to me all that much anymore.
No, but what happens when someone else's moral and ethical judgement is anathema to yours and to a free society? Would you let the government take your house because someone else said it's not fair that you live in a nice house with a white picket fence while there are homeless people dying? Would you be OK with laws taking away your rights because you belong to ${demographic group} and thus already already have too many privileges? Yeah, thought so.
How far should group morals affect individual circumstances?
Some people find homosexuality morally objectionable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This world is closer, but not realistic as we start with the idea that we must work 40 hours.
Say you have 10 workers, 2 manager and 1 owner. They all work 40 hours. A total of 520 hours. They buy a machine that replaces half of the workers. So 6 people are fired (5+1 manager). And the owner takes that extra money as profit.
Working hours now is 5 workers, 1 manager and 1 owner or 280 hours at 40 hours. What would have been nice would have been to divide the 280 hours over those 13 people. Or almost 22 hours per week per person.
Yes, this is a simplified example where there is no cost for the machine. Now imagine that the machine costs 1 FTE and needs 1 FTE, so instead of 6, 4 people get fired, but the reduction in cost is 3.
Divide the extra free hours over the rest and people will need to work less as well, but will also need to 'pay' for the extra time by dividing the cost of the machine.
So people would work 30 instead of 40, but get paid for 28. And that is a problem for many as we are used to be paid by the hour. They forget that they get 10 hours off extra per week. and what they need to pay is 8% (The machine), not 25% as they hourly wage will go up.
And this is what you see in countries like Germany and France and Scandinavia where people work less hours. There is a downside. You will not be able to pay the CEO 100X what others make. He will not be able to pocket the money he would have used for the rest of the people.
But what you need for that is a government that is by the people and works for the people. Oh well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The loosers pay for the lottery. Hence, a lottery is simply entertainment. You pay to watch someone win a nice sum. Might be you if you're lucky, but you'll make more on average just putting money in a piggy bank.
The piggy bank is boring, the lottery is kind of fun.
WaWa stores have had ordering kiosks for over a decade, at 100% of their stores. I wonder why nobody screamed to the four winds when this happened?
It may sound like a good idea, but if you ever used those kiosks, you might think twice.
I used the kiosk once. It was a major hassle ordering a big mac meal. There are far too many options on the screen. I now order at the counter!
Excluded middle.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Why would I eat somewhere where there is no one to take my order? I don't work there.
So you did already realize that not everyone is poor, ill or otherwise unable to live by themselves by their own choice. (In many cases even if it may seem so from the outside.) That's a good first step.
You're helping those who arent fortunate enough to get by on their own every once in a while. That's a good, too.
Now what youre missing is that everyone has a right to live a decent life independently on you having or not having a generous day today. If you really care about others, especially unfortunate ones, help make sure that they get along decently independently from the daily whims of more fortunate people like you.
So you have noticed we have areas of agreement. That's also a good step.
I don't agree that everyone has a positive right to live a decent life independent of charity. I think that will be a fundamental disagreement I have with lots of people. I don't believe you have a right to any specific outcome in life, only the freedom to make the most of what opportunities you have.
I don't believe this because in order to achieve it, you would have to change from voluntary cooperation and charity to forced cooperation and charity. I don't believe that's good for the victims of the force (that's me, the rich white guy). I suspect there are positive and negative consequences for the recipients of the forced largess (they get immediate relief but there may be unintended consequences like reduced self esteem and poverty traps). And we have a poor history of the forcers staying objective and benevolent. So, from first principles ("Liberty is good") and pragmatics ("Power corrupts"), I do not believe this is a wise path.
"Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others." - Thomas Jefferson
As Jefferson indicates, freedom and rights are always in tension, your rights verses those of others. You live in a society, among others, and as such you have no "right" or "freedom" to do whatever you wish, without regard to the harm to your actions might inflict on others. Hence rules and laws, and thus those that enforce them.
Further, you and I both benefit from a stable, peaceful society that provides public goods and services like roads, clean water, sewage and waste treatment, and so on.
You argue against "collectivist" societies and systems, without providing a good alternative to the benefits they provide. Perhaps you're of a pure libertarian or capitalist bent, but somehow choose to ignore the unchecked power and corruption such systems have historically given to business and corporations, who in turn care nothing for an individual's "rights".
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
A lot of people I talk to seem incredulous when I point out that forced charity is not charity.
They are good people, and they mean well, but they can't see the difference between asking and taking.
You could use Aristotle's function argument to say the can opener "earns" its place in your kitchen drawer because it completes its actions.
Are your qualms with invisible hands (Sartre and Nietchze both accepted freedom/responsibility as athiests) a reflection of your fear that people will start talking about Jesus?
The problem is that, absent corruption, it is not true that private is automatically better then public.
There's your problem, right there! Absent corruption. How many organizations made up of people are absent corruption? Any?
As someone who lives in one of the most corrupt cities in the Nation (Chicago), I can tell you that private enterprise can most certainly do things better than public government.
You're always talking about individual rights as if they were some part of physical reality. What you've never managed to do is respond to simple logic. Government is defined as a monopoly on violence for a given area. Under that formulation, non-coercive government is an oxymoron. I don't know how you've managed to convince yourself that there is some sort of primacy to the rights of the individual and that the collectivists will soon fall, but the entirety of human history speaks against that. Collective action is always stronger than the individual, and trying to pretend otherwise is fairly pure insanity.
I understand why you're a monomaniacal jackass. You did indeed come from an oppressive regime. This is an overcorrection. You have arrived at political principles that are fundamentally at odds with reality. And frankly I don't mind because it's pretty trivial to argue against. That thing where you say that your opponents are flawed and self destructive? That's called projection. Honestly it's kind of entertaining to watch your mental defects interact with each other but maybe next time save yourself the trouble.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The usefulness of looking at the collective good is as a tool to look at individual good -- without actually picking a particular person. The goal is the same -- you want to maximize an individual's happiness. Just "independent of coordinate system". It is impossible to maximize each individual's objective independently, since everyone is competing for shared resources, there will be trade-offs.
"If a community simply predicts the potential damage or harm a company can do, and requires a protective financial bond to cover said risk, it would minimize riisks by factoring in a cost to the companies"
Get libertarians to infiltrate the Republicans and advocate for a carbon tax based on that. We can argue the finer points of regulation after we solve that one
There should be checks and such to minimize corruption but as long as corruption is good for business, you end up with governments like your Chicago example, where private enterprise encourages corruption so they can maximize profits at the taxpayers expanse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Are you arguing for or against libertarianism here? Because the top ten countries listed there have a ton of regulation and government controls and 'meddling' in comparison to the bottom ten. So it would seem that strong government, subsidies and regulations are in fact better for liberty and freedom than a non-existent or weak central government.
and where was the brouhaha then?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
" This modern thing of letting companies and restaurants and other businesses treat you like something to be sheared for maximum profit is anathema to me."
This is capitalism, maximum profit.
Capitalism is the race for most profit.
There is no such thing as being appreciated as a customer in a capitalistic mindset, all is utilitarian, watch out for callousness.
There is only the consumer in the eyes of the capitalist, there is no such thing as a customer.
One things is clear: The automation will not stop, and in the long run, will lead to less demand for unskilled labor. Perhaps less demand for labor overall. The societal change brought brought on by automation started more than a century ago but is likely to accelerate exponentially (technology is finally getting cheap and widely deploy-able), similar to how the dot com boom happened.
I see this leading to two divergent societal paths, and I see us actually picking a perverse mixture of the two.
One path may be a near-Utopian end to drudgery, where production is mostly automated, and people can have whatever they want without spending effort. This, however, requires a re-imagining of the predominant economic systems. We might end up in a Start-Trek like post-scarcity world, but the path going there would require either Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Subsistence (everyone is guaranteed food, housing, healthcare and basic goods -- they work for the rest), or some form of neo-socialism. The problem is that some people (you will see this in rich kids) take well to living a life of leisure, and may even become extremely productive in other types of endeavors (art, music, etc.). Other people _really_ don't take well to idleness and become either suicidally depressed or create trouble for themselves and society (once again, another group of rich kids).
The second, and unfortunately more likely, path is that everyone who is not directly involved in exploiting automation will be squeezed out of the labor market. The only people making money will be the ones driving the automation -- with few people to buy what is produced. You will, of course, see a market created for "artisanal labor" where the rich hipsters buy hand-made goods and eat at non-automated restaurants But this will not be enough to create a labor market. This scenario is likely to lead to resource wars, repression by the rich, and genocides.
Whether out of idleness or desperation, both scenarios are likely to bring religious/political fanaticism fueled by a desperate search for purpose/food in a dangerously idle/desperate world. In either scenario, some people may end up rejecting this new world order and moving to intentional agrarian communes -- but not enough of them to matter.
The elephant in the room of this extrapolation is that most (if not all) economic activity relies on exploiting natural resources -- which (whether you are a global warming skeptic or not) are dwindling. Automated exploitation of resources is NOT going to help things. Imagine what will happen if EVERYONE in the world is able to reach American levels of consumption thanks to the ease of production. Even if you are not an environmentalist, you should still fear the awesome resource conflicts this will cause.
If we want to remain in a livable world, we may need to take a _very sober_ look at what kind of society we want to have in 50 (or even 20) years. I'm not even talking about achieving anyone's idea of Utopia -- it will take SERIOUS WORK to maintain a world which is as livable as it right now. I do not think any of the previously tried -isms is the answer. Finding what _may_ be the answer will itself be work.
No. Doesn't follow. The only reason people should suffer is if they must suffer. If we can make it so that no one suffers, we should do so.
In the above case, I don't want to suffer with a lousy meal; they don't want to suffer without income; neither is a "must", and so that's where I'd prefer we set our goals. Why be the cause of suffering?
I have no objection to ladies getting their tubes tied, or to men getting their tubes tied. That's just a matter of personal, consensual choice on their part. However, I'd want to see the cost-benefit analysis before I got behind paying them to do so. Right now, the wealth imbalance is so incredibly skewed that I don't think we have anything even close to an accurate picture of "how many is too many" people.
Why not? As long as no once forces them to make that choice, again, I have no problem with it. The reason you give people money -- a general medium of exchange -- is so they can do what they feel advances their interests. If you want to give them a house, then just give them a house. But I think this would be a mistake. If they really want to hit the party circuit and follow a path that lands them in an alley, they'll just sell the house anyway, or rent it to like-minded types, etc. Might as well have just given them the money. After all, their tubes are tied, and that was the goal anyway, if I understand your suggestion.
Again, doesn't follow. Either we have too many people, or we don't. Automation of more or less everything means, for those who are taken care of, that the people will be doing things that are not tied to a life of drudge work. The right number is the number that can be healthy and happy. It has nothing inherent to do with the number of drudge work roles available that isn't an artifact of the current situation, which will not be in place that much longer anyway.
Aside from coping with the illusions brought on by some rather silly attitudes that have been inculcated into them, no one actually needs to work. That's just propaganda. For instance, I'm not working for anyone. I'm happy as a clam, and have zero trouble filling my days and nights. This is because I recognize that my self-worth has no inherent connection to drudge work. There's lots of automation in my life, and there will be a lot more as it reaches the market in a form that is practical for my use cases. Bring it on. I definitely don't have enough hours in the day to pursue everything I am interested in doing, and again, that's without having a job to consume eight or more hours of 5/7ths of my days. Or more.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It is not just order takers that will be out of luck. Back of store employees will also be eliminated. The idea that more food can be served with automated order takers is just nonsense. First, very few dinners operate at full capacity. There may be a lunch rush or a supper rush where in theory one could make an extra sale or two with automated servers and order takers. But the fact is that the slow periods in an eatery dominate the day as well as the evening. Spending money to serve a small number of extra patrons during rush hour rarely would make sense. At this time a dinner requires one responsible person to act as a sort of hall monitor to deal with problems and one or two workers to swamp out the toilets, wipe off the glass doors and pick up trash in the parking lots. The only thing holding back automation in fast food are this months expenses. There is an expense issue in making a transfer to more automated services. Being able to take a temporary hit on real income is a bit of a foreign notion to many people invested in the fast food industry. What I expect is that an investor that owns three or four normal dinners to open up a store built from the ground up to be automated and using profits from the normal dinners to support the new operation until it runs smoothly. Or we might see automated eateries operate on college campuses where the college is the investor and can use a long term, highly profitable enterprise which can also be featured as a sort of advertisement to solicit new business from students looking to be included in high technology environments.