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CommieGIR posted:This is a weird way to spin shopping, especially grocery store shopping: you ALREADY go grab the groceries. This just replaces a human helping you checkout. How is it not the same. Do you hop behind the desk at the doctor's office and handle your own billing? Do you go to other businesses and do their accounts receivable for them? How is accounting and billing any different from any of the other bits of running a business that you could theoretically require customers to do also.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:06
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The current lines are entirely arbitrary. A supermarket is just delegating work onto the customer by forcing the customer to retrieve their own groceries from the shelves, when just 100 years ago it would have been done for them by a clerk / shop keeper while the customer stayed behind the counter. Also I refuse to do online banking because it forces me to do the work of a banking clerk, I insist on going to the bank personally and having every single transaction entered and approved by hand. Just a complete nonsense argument.
steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 00:08
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steinrokkan posted:The current lines are entirely arbitrary. A supermarket is just delegating work onto the customer by forcing the customer to retrieve their own groceries from the shelves, when just 100 years ago it would have been done for them by a clerk / shop keeper while the customer stayed behind the counter. Just a complete nonsense argument. If the lines are arbitrary then why aren't you volunteering to wax the floors too
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Mar 14, 2022 00:12
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VitalSigns posted:Maybe we should be questioning why this work was delegated to people who already have tedious full-time jobs instead of justifying everyone doing more free labor for corporations. Frankly this whole argument as I see it boils down to it being below your dignity to scan your own groceries since nothing you say makes any sense other than as a Karenesque rear end in a top hat rant, or whining about how it's unfair that servers getting tips while other workers don't. Ideally we as a society as a whole would drastically cut down on the grotesquely bloated service economy in general, yes, and on working whole days in general, and we should make strides towards it whenever possible, especially when it entails only the most minor "concessions". steinrokkan fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 00:14
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VitalSigns posted:How is it not the same. I feel like this really is not the same thing as waving an item past a scanner. With a cashier: 1) put stuff on belt 2) cashier waves it past a scanner and puts it back on a belt 3) I put it into a bag 4) I wave my card at a machine to pay without: 1) I wave my item past a scanner and put it in a bag 2) I wave my card at a machine to pay There is absolutely circumstances in which a cashier expedites this process (such as a big order, or if you aren't providing your own bags.) VitalSigns posted:If the lines are arbitrary then why aren't you volunteering to wax the floors too But to repeat, yeah, we kind of need UBI because maybe these jobs really don't need to exist.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:17
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steinrokkan posted:Frankly this whole argument as I see it boils down to it being below your dignity to scan your own groceries since nothing you say makes any sense other than as a Karenesque rant I'd say that your argument is nonsense since you keep dodging the question of why shouldn't we all be doing free janitorial work, accounting work, security work, etc for capitalists to save their labor costs. If this were a fantasy world where we were post-capitalist and the community said "ok cashier is an undignified job, everyone will now spend an hour a week ringing up their own purchases everywhere they go, and one hour less a week at their other job, and cashiers will be retrained for other jobs with better social utility" then what you are arguing would make sense, but I hate to break it to ya that's not what's going on here. Oxyclean posted:
I agree, but pretty big difference between being a decent human and not making someone else's job that they're already paid for harder than it has to be, and McDonald's firing that person and making them homeless because they can get you to work for them for free tho
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Mar 14, 2022 00:18
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And, again, the only reason cashiers exist is that their wages can be kept so low as to be cheaper than a loving LCD screen with a scanner. To insist that this sort of labor must be "protected" because it would be unfair to expect me to do any extra "work" is just cruel.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:20
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steinrokkan posted:And, again, the only reason cashiers exist is that their wages can be kept so low as to be cheaper than a loving LCD screen with a scanner. To insist that this sort of labor must be "protected" because it would be unfair to expect me to do any extra "work" is just cruel. I agree, is that person getting a better job with a higher wage, or are they just getting fired and replaced with free labor being done by other people who have jobs too. Not wanting anyone to put in overtime working for Target Corp for free is not the same as being lazy you know.
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Mar 14, 2022 00:21
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Really cashier is a job that shouldn't exist at all, it's a busywork job made up by corporations because they need to make money off transactions. Much like medical insurance billing, nobody should be loving with a bunch of price tags to make some guy rich because we could organize society to make all that unnecessary. But instead of a social order where necessities are provided and profit doesn't exist, I guess we get hellworld where the busywork that corporations made up is fobbed off on everyone and this is defended as radical labor anarchism from famous friend of the workers: the Walton family
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Mar 14, 2022 00:42
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steinrokkan posted:And, again, the only reason cashiers exist is that their wages can be kept so low You have cashiers because completing the transaction, handling money, and other point-of-sale activities have traditionally been viewed as a necessary and essential function of *being a store*. The wages are kept low to increase the profit that goes into the pockets of the owners. steinrokkan posted:as to be cheaper than a loving LCD screen with a scanner. To insist that this sort of labor must be "protected" because it would be unfair to expect me to do any extra "work" is just cruel. It should be protected because the alternative is replacing real people with skills with machinery that does nothing but increase profit for the owner, with the added benefit of shifting a little extra "work" (why is this in quotes? The cashier got a wage, you don't!) onto the consumer, further increasing profit for the owner.
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Mar 14, 2022 02:56
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I'm going to take this discussion on automation and UBI to share one of my favorite examinations of the subject in a speculative fiction called "Manna", by Marshall Brain. I believe someone here on the forums once linked it to me and it's stuck with me ever since.Marshall Brain posted:With half of the jobs eliminated by robots, what happens to all the people who are out of work? The book Manna explores the possibilities and shows two contrasting outcomes, one filled with great hope and the other filled with misery. Essentially, the book follows a hypothetical U.S. society where a tasking AI automates away most jobs, except the citizens are simply immiserated and placed in bare-minimum survival conditions, for (what else) the enrichment of a handful of oligarchs. quote:America was no different from a third world nation. With the arrival of robots, tens of millions of people lost their minimum wage jobs and the wealth concentrated so quickly. Pretty bleak! It also goes on to describe the alternative society, and how eventually it comes to America. It's worth a read, although the hopefulness for that eventual automated society seems misplaced given America's current trends. ex post facho fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 03:34
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steinrokkan posted:The current lines are entirely arbitrary. A supermarket is just delegating work onto the customer by forcing the customer to retrieve their own groceries from the shelves, when just 100 years ago it would have been done for them by a clerk / shop keeper while the customer stayed behind the counter. Also I refuse to do online banking because it forces me to do the work of a banking clerk, I insist on going to the bank personally and having every single transaction entered and approved by hand. Just a complete nonsense argument. This is a very moralistic way to think about labor. The things you're doing would cost the company if you didn't do them and an employee did, it's unpaid labor.
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Mar 14, 2022 03:35
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ex post facho posted:I'm going to take this discussion on automation and UBI to share one of my favorite examinations of the subject in a speculative fiction called "Manna", by Marshall Brain. I believe someone here on the forums once linked it to me and it's stuck with me ever since. Manna was a good story, but pretty unrealistic in that there is actually public housing. The more realistic ending would be the main character gets invited to the Australia Project, but cannot go, as they were imprisoned for their poverty, and to be released have to pay for the time incarcerated.
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Mar 14, 2022 03:49
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Gumball Gumption posted:The things you're doing would cost the company if you didn't do them and an employee did, it's unpaid labor. The problem with this standard is that it can be applied to literally any action someone might do in a store. Is it unpaid labor when I grab a box of cereal myself while shopping? A store could have employees standing in every aisle waiting to hand customers what they want, so according to your definition I'm doing labor by grabbing some cheerios myself. It's a meaningless distinction. Seph fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 04:10
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Seph posted:The problem with this standard is that it can be applied to literally any action someone might do in a store. Is it unpaid labor when I grab a box of cereal myself while shopping? A store could have employees standing in every aisle waiting to hand customers what they want, so according to your definition I'm doing labor by grabbing some cheerios myself. It's a meaningless distinction. I would guess that many or most of us are old enough to remember when self-checkout wasn't a thing, so within our lifetimes most businesses decided to make customers do some unpaid labor that we did not have to do before. Its no different than Uber figuring out how to turn employees into contractors and make the employee responsible for equipment costs. If a business can offload costs onto the public while convincing most people that its a good thing, they're doing it in a heartbeat.
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Mar 14, 2022 04:29
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steinrokkan posted:Thank you for admitting you have no argument Your entire argument is predicated on that idea that these jobs are being obsoleted for the dream world scenario where these workers now live in utopia and not the reality of what happens when Walmart cuts a bunch of jobs. We weren't talking about high ideals and theory, we're talking about real people and real jobs and what this change means for them. CommieGIR posted:Its really only useful as an argument for UBI. Cashier jobs, and most retail jobs in general, are terrible and abusive. It makes more sense to automate the jobs and provide UBI to people who lost those jobs and lets them go do something they actually want to do. See also this. This is not ever going to happen in modern America so pretending that self check out is a step towards anything but more poverty is just lying about the reality of the situation. Self checkouts are a step towards further capitalism hell.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:22
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That clip from the Beverly Hillbillies had this unsourced claim in it. That an average family had to work 37 hours to pay for a month's worth of groceries. A quick Google search says it costs about $355 per person per month to pay for food. For a family of four that would be $1424. Dividing that by 37 means you'd have to make $38.46 an hour to pay for a month's worth of food for the average family. Somehow we're earning less, working more, getting poorer while corporation's profits go up up up! 
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Mar 14, 2022 05:36
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As a society we should be moving to eliminate as many jobs as possible and move people to UBI.Bottom Liner posted:This is not ever going to happen in modern America so pretending that self check out is a step towards anything but more poverty is just lying about the reality of the situation. Self checkouts are a step towards further capitalism hell. Automating as many jobs as possible will cause capitalism to fail and make an alternative system mandatory.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:45
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To put it into six simple, beautiful words,
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Mar 14, 2022 05:49
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Fart Amplifier posted:Automating as many jobs as possible will cause capitalism to fail and make an alternative system mandatory. Any proof?
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Mar 14, 2022 05:50
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Fart Amplifier posted:As a society we should be moving to eliminate as many jobs as possible and move people to UBI. I do find it funny that SA forum posters think they should be paid money to do nothing but sit around and post all day.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:53
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Fart Amplifier posted:Automating as many jobs as possible will cause capitalism to fail and make an alternative system mandatory. Ah yes if we accelerate the thing that is hurting people something good is bound to happen.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:54
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You say that like the ruling class is going to look at all those people whose labour they don't need anymore and say 'pay them' rather than 'exterminate them'.
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Mar 14, 2022 05:57
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Bottom Liner posted:Any proof? Capitalism requires that corporations have consumers. Consumers require money. Mass automation removes the flow of cash to the consumers, eliminating their capacity to consume. The consumers starve and the corporations fail. What's your proof that UBI is somehow impossible in the USA?
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Mar 14, 2022 05:59
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PeterCat posted:I do find it funny that SA forum posters think they should be paid money to do nothing but sit around and post all day. I find it funny that SA forum posters think that poor people should be able to survive only by doing something they don't want to do and nobody needs them to do. People actually should just be able to survive and enjoy life without doing anything for anyone else. The fact that you want someone to stand there scanning groceries for hours per day even though there's a perfectly good alternative that might let them actually have a decent life loving sucks. Jaxyon posted:Ah yes if we accelerate the thing that is hurting people something good is bound to happen. Calling "automation" "the thing that is hurting people" is just wrong. Capitalism is hurting people.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:05
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Fart Amplifier posted:Capitalism requires that corporations have consumers. Consumers require money. Mass automation removes the flow of cash to the consumers, eliminating their capacity to consume. The consumers starve and the corporations fail. Because the ruling class does not believe money should go anywhere but into their pockets.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:05
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Ghost Leviathan posted:You say that like the ruling class is going to look at all those people whose labour they don't need anymore and say 'pay them' rather than 'exterminate them'. Yeah, look at all the skullduggery and effort they put in just to avoid being taxed. There is no way on earth they'd allow UBI without being forced into it, and if you have enough power to do that, why wouldn't you just seize their wealth and call it a day.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:05
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Fart Amplifier posted:
automation is how they remove labor from the equation entirely.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:09
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Ghost Leviathan posted:You say that like the ruling class is going to look at all those people whose labour they don't need anymore and say 'pay them' rather than 'exterminate them'. This is dumb and hyperbolic. If what you were saying was correct they'd just be exterminating cashiers right now, and they will continue doing that to others are jobs are automated away.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:10
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Fart Amplifier posted:I find it funny that SA forum posters think that poor people should be able to survive only by doing something they don't want to do and nobody needs them to do. People actually should just be able to survive and enjoy life without doing anything for anyone else. I don't see why I should have to work to support someone who is able to work and doesn't want to. I work as an ambulance driver, I suppose you'd rather I not work and have people just drive themselves to the hospital when they've had a stroke.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:12
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Ghost Leviathan posted:You say that like the ruling class is going to look at all those people whose labour they don't need anymore and say 'pay them' rather than 'exterminate them'. Exterminating costs a lot of money. Why not hook them up to the
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Mar 14, 2022 06:13
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PeterCat posted:I don't see why I should have to work to support someone who is able to work and doesn't want to. I don't see why people should have to suffer so that you feel better about your job. PeterCat posted:I work as an ambulance driver, I suppose you'd rather I not work and have people just drive themselves to the hospital when they've had a stroke. No, that's a dumb thing to suppose.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:16
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Fart Amplifier posted:As a society we should be moving to eliminate as many jobs as possible and move people to UBI. Nah the way things are going they'll just automate the military and use the robot armies to imprison poor people E: oh weird I just noticed someone gave me my old avatar back, thanks kind stranger!!
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Mar 14, 2022 06:16
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PeterCat posted:I work as an ambulance driver, I suppose you'd rather I not work and have people just drive themselves to the hospital when they've had a stroke. If your ambulance driver job became fully automated tomorrow by some miracle, would you prefer to be compensated for your job being eliminated or not?
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Mar 14, 2022 06:16
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Fart Amplifier posted:The fact that you want someone to stand there scanning groceries for hours per day even though there's a perfectly good alternative that might let them actually have a decent life loving sucks. Please cite the perfectly good alternative.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:18
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PeterCat posted:I don't see why I should have to work to support someone who is able to work and doesn't want to. This is how a lot of people would react to the idea of having a bunch of people supported by a UBI. Society would literally become divided between people who contribute to the functioning of society and those who don't, and none of these technocratic plans have any way to deal with the resentment this would create. Jizz Festival fucked around with this message at 06:21 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 06:19
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Fister Roboto posted:If your ambulance driver job became fully automated tomorrow by some miracle, would you prefer to be compensated for your job being eliminated or not? Compensated by who?
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Mar 14, 2022 06:19
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PeterCat posted:Compensated by who? What difference does it make?
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Mar 14, 2022 06:20
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Fart Amplifier posted:I find it funny that SA forum posters think that poor people should be able to survive only by doing something they don't want to do and nobody needs them to do. People actually should just be able to survive and enjoy life without doing anything for anyone else. Firing someone from their job and saying "well you shouldn't have to do that to live, off you go now" isn't helping them in our society. Do you think Wal Mart is pensioning off these laid-off cashiers or something. Because they are not, they get added to the reserve pool of unemployed labor where they are immiserated and everyone else's livelihood gets a little more precarious as employers have more power to bargain down wages
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Mar 14, 2022 06:21
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some plague rats posted:What difference does it make? The taxpayers don't owe me anything in that circumstance, why would they?
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Mar 14, 2022 06:24
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