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Amazon's Checkout-Free Stores Are Coming to Three More Cities (reuters.com)
Reuters reports:
Amazon said on Friday it plans to open its checkout-free 'Amazon Go' grocery store in New York, expanding beyond Seattle where it is headquartered. The Amazon Go store, which has no cashiers and allows shoppers to buy things with the help of a smartphone app, is widely seen as a concept that can alter brick-and-mortar retail... Customers have to scan a smartphone app to enter the store. Once inside, cameras and sensors track what they pick up from the shelves and what they put back. Amazon then bills shoppers' credit cards on file after they leave.
CNET adds: The expansion comes after two Amazon Go stores opened in Seattle. The first one debuted in January 2018 and the second opened last month... Amazon confirmed in May that it'll open Amazon Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago, but it didn't say when.
CNET adds: The expansion comes after two Amazon Go stores opened in Seattle. The first one debuted in January 2018 and the second opened last month... Amazon confirmed in May that it'll open Amazon Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago, but it didn't say when.
Does this mean the products inside the store free if you don't have to check out?
other than allow you to buy stuff at one of these stores. Does is: track your location; upload your contacts; ... ie generally abuse your privacy ?
If their system screws up and charges me for something I put back on the shelf how do we prove that I didn't take the item? How do they legally prove that I did take it?
I don't even have a smartphone, nor do I want one. Just like those "no cash, only card" shops here, I just won't shop there. Because I pay cash, and cash only.
Conversely, this methodology would actually encourage Amazon (and others) to expand their robotic workforce so "what it's costing the rest of us" would increase... unless you have reason to believe Amazon is holding these workers back from getting better paying jobs elsewhere?
Looking at it another way, opponents of welfare-type benefits have lobbied variously for implementing drug-testing and community service work to receive these government pittances some call "handouts". Amazon and Walmart, et al, accomplish these two goals, and keep the cheap goods flowing for the nearly poor (middle class).
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Driving the push to automation is not a bug, it's a feature. It's always framed as if higher wages will get rid of jobs, instead of the reality, which is that low wages are holding back technological progress.
Now, the economics of how to transition away from human labor is a bit more complicated, although it mostly just means taxing the rich so they aren't eaten by the jobless peasants.
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> Top athletes and entertainers also make insane amounts. And somehow weâ(TM)re all ok with that.
I'm OK with someone making money. But not at the cost of others who barely earn their lives. Or, as is the case with Amazon, who depend on state help *on top* of having to work full-time. That's when it becomes obscene.
I, for one aren't (and won't be, ever) their customer.
I didn't realize that athletes and entertainers obtained their wealth by employing an army of laborers at third world wages. Damn!
This has nothing to do with Rand or her political theories, and I even advocate for a UBI which should tell you how far off the mark you are. It is simple logic and basic economics. When prices go up, people look for less expensive alternatives. Why do you think Amazon (or Walmart) have so many customers to begin with?
The other is that is costs a certain amount of money for a person to live, even at a subsistence level. If the government (that is our tax dollars) have to pay this amount, will it be more or less if the person has some income of their own? This should be simple math.
I cannot see how low wages holds technology back. Low wages are a consequence of labor that is not valuable. In one hundred years after all of the technological advances there will still be low wage jobs. Not all people are equally skilled and not all jobs are equally valued.
The difference is that technological progress improves productivity and reduces costs. A low wage job in the future may be able to afford a trip to the moon whereas now even most high wage jobs could not imagine doing this.
And somehow we’re all ok with that.
"We" who? Speak for yourself. I don't think it's a sign of a healthy society (and I don't spend money on sports or entertainers).
And even so, what's your point? Something is bad, so something else bad is OK? C'mon, dude.
I don't respond to AC's.
I cannot see how low wages holds technology back.
As long as it's cheaper to hire a human than to develop technology to automate their job, the job doesn't get automated. Thus, useful progress is retarded by making it legal to pay starvation wages.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's simple. By trying to keep the price of human labor low, you discourage proper investment in automation. Why bother automating while its still cheaper to just throw cheap labor at your problems?
The same rationalization is used by opponents of wage increases, saying that increasing wages will lead to jobs being replaced by robots. But works sucks, and jobs that can be replaced by robots should be replaced by robots.
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That's covered by the whole "boss" thing.
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Let's see how long before the Chicago store is picked BARE.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I invite you to watch this.
https://youtu.be/JbyjL9tazxQ
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Cheap labor may not vote early and often, but so far, they're infinitely more important at the ballot box than their robotic replacements.
The Magnus Robot Fighter, human/robot confrontation of the future might more likely develop from displaced lower class workers than an AI attempt at Overlord-ship.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Not to disagree here, but something is important not to forget:
labor that is not valuable
If it wasn't valuable, it wouldn't be paid for at all. Humans can do things and are still useful, even when under educated or untrained.
In the context of some people who make $25,000 per year vs some people who make $100,000 per year, it appears to make sense that the different labor involved could have different levels of value. However, when you then compare with someone making $155k per minute we're talking about societal gaming and barriers to entry not overall societal benefit.
For one thing, compare Jeff Bezo's contribution to society with Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein. Or even just Vint Cerf or Tim Berners-Lee.
Also, at the "nearly useless" value of $35,000 / year in wages, construction workers build the cities we live in and the factories which enrich CEOs.
Face it. The economy is a game and some people are very very good at playing that game.
So what? They have hundreds of thousands or millions of people that want to pay money to see them perform. Would you rather a record company or sports team owner get all of that money instead?
Why should I disparage someone who earns millions of dollars when I haven't had to pay them any of it unless I wanted to. It doesn't cost me anything if Taylor Swift or LeBron James are able to sell their time and talents for millions of dollars and I'm not about to start telling other people what they're allowed to spend their own money on either.
So if we increased the minimum wage to $50 an hour, everything would be great all of a sudden. Wouldn't $100 an hour be better still then? I think the logic breaks down and it's easy to see why.
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless. People are always going to try to find a cheaper way of doing something as long as there's a potential for increased profit that they can realize as a result of doing so. While there are some that don't even need that and are quite happy to work away at some problem for its own sake, they are rare.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true, but the logic still does not hold. One could argue that paying starvation wages to the low skill labor leaves more money available to invest into research and development. That naturally implies that there will be higher wages for researchers if there is more demand for that kind of labor, but it does nothing for the kind of low skill employees whose plight the original poster was bemoaning.
I suppose you can try to play economic god and demand that certain jobs pay more in order to try to drive technological advancement in those areas, but history has shown that the people who try to run planned economies often make an utter mess of things.
Why bother automating while its still cheaper to just throw cheap labor at your problems?
If labor is inexpensive relative to other costs, investments will be made to find ways to reduce those other costs first. After this has been done, labor will be relatively more expensive. At a certain point, it may become the most expensive and then investments will be made in order to reduce labor costs. Technological innovation is going to occur in some area regardless of labor costs and it's likely that driving down the cost of raw material inputs requires automation in a different sector. The labor that is most easy to automate, will generally get replaced before the labor which is more difficult to replace even if you pay both of those people the same wage.
Having cheap labor means that you have more money to throw at your other problems. Couldn't one then argue that by paying your low skill labor the least amount possible means that you have more money to spend on research and development or investing in other areas to improve productivity? I don't believe that low wages have any (or if it does, then it's incredibly small compared to other factors) affect on the rate of automation and technological advancement in the overall scheme of things. Advancement and automation are going to occur somewhere and in a free market, it will tend to occur in the areas where it produces the largest increases in value. People will seek to automate where replacing a minimum wage human laborer results in a cost savings of say $5 and hour over where it only results in a savings of $1 an hour.
When the problem is not wages, but people themselves, then their jobs are going to get automated.
People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
People getting sick, HR issues, theft, strikes, holidays, work hours, labor laws etc. etc. etc.
Now that the cost of automation has come down a LOT, and it's a lot more capable you are going to get jobs automated.
I still remember the look on a woman's face when she realized that the logistics system we were rewriting would automate away her daily job. She was old and sickly, for her to try and get another job was going to be a problem for her. I mean, we do this all the time, but actually sitting in front of her and seeing that look on her face... not something I enjoyed, and since we were actually work friends it was even harder.
That same woman who I was coding out of a job used to get an excel spreadsheet that had each line of data split over two lines in excel (a COBOL thing) it would take her two days to manually remove the page break headers and footers, take the one line and add it to the end of the other so that it could be sorted properly. She used to take it home in the evenings and work on it as well, because it was a big ass report. I wrote a script for her in VBA which took 2 minutes to run and did it all for her. Two days work automated into two minutes, but that she was grateful for, because I automated a lot of tedium from her monthly work duties. But automating her job out of existence, not so much. I also think she never told anyone about the script, I didn't think about it at the time either, it was a personal favor. So I think she had two "days off" every month. Ironically she never lost her job when the system went live, she died from cancer about a year before, as sad as that was I think I would have had a harder time knowing I wrote a program that forced an old lady to live on the streets. I know, we programmers are doing that all the time, but actually knowing the person I was replacing with code... I will never forget that look on her face.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Which has never, ever been part of any argument. The question is not whether or not progress occurs, but the rate at which it occurs.
One would be ignoring how sensible investment works. Why would invest high-cost labor to reduce a minor part of costs? And this is especially true if the CxO structure is oriented around short-term gains.
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I cannot see how low wages holds technology back.
As long as it's cheaper to hire a human than to develop technology to automate their job, the job doesn't get automated. Thus, useful progress is retarded by making it legal to pay starvation wages.
So if we increased the minimum wage to $50 an hour, everything would be great all of a sudden. Wouldn't $100 an hour be better still then? I think the logic breaks down and it's easy to see why.
Yes, yes it is. And the reason why is your logically fallacious ridiculous example. I said that starvation wages were the problem; you responded by asking what would happen if we increased wages to CEO levels. That makes you the reason.
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless.
This time your logical fallacy is moving the goalposts. The issue being addressed is whether low wages retard progress, not halt it completely.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true,
Yes, that's what I said. That you had trouble comprehending it is your failure, not mine.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, you probably do. You might not do it directly, which is what I think you were saying, but their cost is factored into the price of many products under the marketing expense category.
If I see sports bullshit on a product, as in "official sponsor of" then I make an effort to find an alternative product. That goes double for the Olympics. I am actually willing to pay more in order to not sponsor professional sports.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
But did they lose any business because of it? They just put up some nets and the story went away.
The suicide story was fake news anyway. Foxconn employs 800,000 people, so there are going to be some suicides in a population that large. Foxconn's suicide rate is, and has always been, below what demographics would predict.
Interesting factoid: China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds the male rate.
The question is not whether or not progress occurs, but the rate at which it occurs.
If you think that low wages are holding back progress, then raising them should drive progress. Set the minimum wage at $50 and we should progress much faster. Hike it up again to $100 and even more progress, right? That's essentially what you're proposing. Are you proposing this across the board or just singling out Amazon workers because that's where you want to drive progress?
What you're failing to consider is that there isn't just one form of low wage labor. There are hundreds if not thousands of different jobs that pay minimum wage. The ones that get replaced first are where the greatest differential lies between the cost of labor and the savings due to automation.
Why would invest high-cost labor to reduce a minor part of costs?
This assumes that the high-cost labor is focused on reducing the cost of low-cost labor, which isn't necessarily true. Instead it would be invested in reducing whatever had the largest differential between current cost and potential savings. Perhaps that means developing a new material that can used to build a product which costs considerably less, engineering the product to be more reliable so that there are fewer returns of defective units, finding a less expensive way of transporting the products to the consumers, or any number of other areas that might reduce production costs. No company will page more than they have to for low skill labor if there's a pool of willing replacements available, which is why there are a lot of minimum wage jobs. Only when there is a shortage of available labor will companies actually raise wages. However, that just makes the cost of labor a relatively more expensive part of production.
And this is especially true if the CxO structure is oriented around short-term gains.
Which works in the short term, but the more money that a company snatches up in profit, just means the larger opportunity for someone else to undercut them, especially if that company has been neglecting advances and insists on doing things the same old way. Look at retail, which is a perfect example. One hundred years ago Sears Roebuck was quickly replacing companies doing things the old way, and now they're gone. Walmart came in and ate their lunch, and now Amazon is quickly becoming the dominant player. The business of selling goods to consumers has carried on, but the individual companies that were doing it have come and gone, in part because some executive was worried about the next quarter instead of the next two decades. Consumers are not worse off for the folly of executives as long as it's possible for some other company to form and attract their business.
That's ridiculous thinking. We should alter economics to match technological changes, not the other way around. We don't need to work nearly as much. We do need to make sure that people can meet their basic needs. UBI is more sane than banning robots.
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You are strawmanning like someone who's never heard of the concept of diminishing returns. Yes, bigger increases in wages will cause more pressure, but such massive increases will cause other problems on a bigger scale.
Failed to consider? That's practically my thesis statement.
That's a pretty reasonable assumption, given that your hypothetical has roughly the same pressure regardless of wages. Your point would be more relevant if these businesses were operating with virtually no profits, but there is more than enough money available for the big boys to do that kind of research either way.
Companies will raise wages if they have to raise wages. The underlying problem here is that wages have been kept stagnant in order to serve our oligarchs, and because of that, investment in automation has been disincentivized. That doesn't mean that there are no investments.
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Fair enough, but it was still bad publicity, even if it was statistically below average. If a robot dragged it's ass up the side of the building and jumped off it would... probably not make the news.
Did they actually lose business? Not sure, but I am pretty sure their stock price would have been battered, I do know that they had to implement changes to their work environment and work policies. So if it's feasible to replace humans with lower cost (in the long run) machines then it would be silly not to do so. I suspect the slow(ish) adoption is not really a question of if it can be done, but more a question of if there are enough skilled people to do so in a timeous manner. For all we know Siemans etc. have a three year backlog of work scheduled. I am currently working in IoT - relatively new at it in fact - and the work backlog is humongous, and that is relatively simple compared to full automation, so I imagine it's pretty hard to currently find people who can actually do the work.
Of course that will change, supply and demand and all that. When I first studied programming I got a job relatively easily (even as a junior) because programmers were hard to find. Ok, being in the biggest city of the country helped a lot, but about a decade later throwing a beer in a pub would hit 3 programmers. About another decade later and they got scarce again. I know a LOT of programmers who moved into business analysis etc. to get away from the coding. Sure they passed the tests, they made adequate programmers, but they hated the work. It takes a certain mindset to sit all day and build poetry in motion. Add to that the fact that you never actually stop studying as a programmer, if you do stop, well you will no longer be employable, it makes it a difficult long term career compared to most.
The same will happen with automation engineers, there is a shortage now, but not for long. Supply and demand, the current skilled engineers will earn a premium salary, this will in turn make it enticing to get into that career path for people who are not really suited for that. If you think programmers are strange then working with a bunch of electrical engineers will seriously change that viewpoint.
To a large degree programmers have to have at least some social skills. Going to meetings, meeting with clients, dealing with people to handle bug reports etc. etc. all depending on your work environment and your position in the company of course. Electrical engineers, yeah, not so much. At least not yet, but I have been working closely with electrical engineers for a while now, and they are an odd group of people, even by programmer standards. I get along well with them, but then I think I am considered odd in programming circles (which says a lot I suppose) but I do electrical engineering (and mechanical) as hobbies, so I understand their language (most days).
Mass automation is coming, the technology is there, the price point to implement it has come down a lot, the problem is the amount of resources to implement it is lacking. It's pointless implementing mass automation if no company will sign a reasonable SLA for a reasonable price. For that you will still need people and skills, just less people and more skills.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
Let me put it more explicitly. Outside of a few areas like doctors and developers, the wages of people who actually do direct labor has gone down relative to productivity, while profits were diverted to a small minority. Because that labor has been continually undervalued, the incentive structure has underestimated the value in labor-saving, and appropriate amounts of research and manhours have not been put into labor-saving efforts and automation. If we were to start to bring back a stronger correlation between labor productivity and compensation, it would incentivize much healthier levels of automation, which tend to be where the real growth happens.
Cheap labor is an economic crutch. That's why, on top of the moral concerns, slavery and serfdom are not parts of good economic models.
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According to the summary, it's currently done by camera which track whatever the clients are picking-up or putting back on shelves.
Which mean that Amazon will in practice be charging for anything that it saw a client pick-up from the shelve but not put back.
Thus in the case of the parents joke :
I you dirnk your coke before leaving, you can't hope Amazon missing it (unlike if they relied on RFID tags going through a checkout gate) Amazon will charge you one bottle of coke, because it saw you picking one, but didn't saw you putting one back on the shelf.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So if we increased the minimum wage to $50 an hour, everything would be great all of a sudden. Wouldn't $100 an hour be better still then? I think the logic breaks down and it's easy to see why.
It also doesn't make much sense when looking at history. There were no minimum wage laws and people often were paid starvation wages if they were paid at all. And yet useful progress occurred nonetheless. People are always going to try to find a cheaper way of doing something as long as there's a potential for increased profit that they can realize as a result of doing so. While there are some that don't even need that and are quite happy to work away at some problem for its own sake, they are rare.
Perhaps what you're thinking of is that there's less pressure to find a less expensive alternative when the cost of some aspect of production is low relative to the other components and that's certainly true, but the logic still does not hold. One could argue that paying starvation wages to the low skill labor leaves more money available to invest into research and development. That naturally implies that there will be higher wages for researchers if there is more demand for that kind of labor, but it does nothing for the kind of low skill employees whose plight the original poster was bemoaning.
Please try living on minimum wage for a month. Can you survive?
I suppose you can try to play economic god and demand that certain jobs pay more in order to try to drive technological advancement in those areas, but history has shown that the people who try to run planned economies often make an utter mess of things.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
I used to praise Amazon as being the Walmart of the internet for their awesome CS, (Walmart gave me a brand new watch replacement when the battery they put into mine didnt work and ever since my world was rocked!) - even taking used stuff - no questions asked But of late Walmart CS has sucked big time. Bitch in Morrisville, NC store refused to take back my water bottler saying it was used - yes bitch, bcoz I used it, I told the lid keeps falling off when I bicycle. She made me wait for long for a Manager and finally relented when she saw I was unwilling to back off. Needless to say - no more Wamma for moi !!