Slashdot Mirror
Jack In the Box CEO Says 'It Just Makes Sense' To Replace Workers With Robots (grubstreet.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Grub Street: Per Business Insider, Jack in the Box CEO Leonard Comma told an industry crowd that "it just makes sense" to swap cashiers for inanimate machines in the year 2018. Not because he thinks 2018 will be the year that fast food gets technologized so much as it's the year that Jack in the Box's home state of California increases the minimum wage to $11. In fact, wage bumps hit 18 states this year, with California on pace to become the first $15-wage state in coming years -- a prospect that terrifies industry executives. Jack in the Box has flirted with the idea of installing automated kiosks before. As early as 2009, it tested them out, and apparently found that they increase store efficiency and average check totals -- not bad at all if money's your bottom line. But according to Comma, the chain's executives balked because the upfront cost of converting from people to machines was still too great. What a difference a dollar an hour apparently makes: He told the crowd that with "the rising costs of labor," it's time to start thinking about automating restaurants.
This is *exactly* what you should expect when you attempt to socially engineer a solution that violates the rules of business, in this case, artificially raising the cost of labor beyond the market value. One hundred percent entirely predictable, and predicted.
This is *exactly* what you should expect when you allow corporations to socially engineer a solution that puts greed above society's well-being, in this case by anthropomorphizing, hallucinating intelligence and purpose in, and then outright conferring godhood upon, "the market". One hundred percent entirely magical thinking, and getting old and stale really fucking fast.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Those jobs shouldn't exist in the first place. We don't need fast food - it's a cancer on society.
>they will do whatever it takes to survive regardless of your politics.
Including vote Liberal. That way they get all their lifetime welfare freebies, no questions asked. You and your disgusting ilk are more than happy to punish successful people to pay for the lazy and indolent.