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Bottom Liner posted:Please cite the perfectly good alternative. Self checkouts are perfectly good start. Jizz Festival posted: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. That implies that the only way to contribute to the functioning of society is to work a job and it's laughably wrong. Plus, someone doing some menial job simply because the government won't let machines do it is not a societal contribution. edit VitalSigns posted:Nobody argued this, they're just describing how the system works in reality. Explaining isn't endorsing. Actually, he was endorsing this. He clearly said he didn't want to be supporting people who don't work.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:25
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| # ? May 16, 2024 07:39 |
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Self-checkout isn't machines doing anyone's job. It's companies making customers do the labor of operating the machine for free instead of paying someone to operate the machine. The scanning machines are decades old, the only new thing is a UI designed for customers rather than employees
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Mar 14, 2022 06:26
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Fart Amplifier posted:Self checkouts are perfectly good start. How does losing their job to a machine "let them actually have a decent life"? What?
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Mar 14, 2022 06:28
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Fart Amplifier posted:Self checkouts are perfectly good start. Why do you look down on people who work "menial" jobs? I enjoy talking with cashiers, you meet some interesting people that way, it's a nice way to have human interaction if you're traveling, you can ask them about the local area if you're staying for a while, and they efficiently ring up and bag your purchases. This adds value to my life. Carrying items from a shelf at Wal-Mart to the self-check out so the Waltons can save money is dystopic by comparison.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:29
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Fart Amplifier posted: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. Have you seen what life expectancies are looking like? The rising prices of healthcare? The concentration camps on the border? The increasingly overarmed, belligerent, unaccountable and psychotically violent police that actively arm and ally with white supremacists? Fart Amplifier posted:That implies that the only way to contribute to the functioning of society is to work a job and it's laughably wrong. And it doesn't matter that it's wrong, because it is the mainstream and universally taught central belief of capitalism, and bought into fully by the ruling class.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:32
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Fart Amplifier posted:
Ha ok I guess he is my bad
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Mar 14, 2022 06:33
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PeterCat posted:Why do you look down on people who work "menial" jobs? Incredibly dishonest to you to suggest this. "People should not be forced to do menial jobs" is not looking down on people who do those jobs. Bottom Liner posted:How does losing their job to a machine "let them actually have a decent life"? What? Because they don't have to be there to do the menial job to survive
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Mar 14, 2022 06:34
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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.  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. Who would do tough-rear end, traumatic jobs like driving an ambulance? People who really wanted to help people, for whatever the job paid. It's possible that in that situation the job (and other tough jobs) would pay even better. And your wages could be invested, or spent and enjoyed, instead of just keeping you alive. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 06:39 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 06:36
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Fart Amplifier posted:Incredibly dishonest to you to suggest this. "People should not be forced to do menial jobs" is not looking down on people who do those jobs. do you actually understand what happens to people in the real world when they lose their jobs
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Mar 14, 2022 06:36
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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. Stores used to work something like that and I'm not sure having the stockboys set everything out in a second stock room that people have to wander through so brands can better market their packaging is an improvement over the stockboys just fetching the customer's list of stuff from the back and bringing it out. But anyway this seems silly, if you believe this, do you also want to grab a mop and a floor waxer and relieve the Waltons of the expense of paying janitorial staff. There has to be a line somewhere right. Ghost Leviathan posted:do you actually understand what happens to people in the real world when they lose their jobs 
VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 06:40
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Fart Amplifier posted:Because they don't have to be there to do the menial job to survive Instead they're free to not survive, that is what happens when that job is eliminated. I'm doing labour for a corporation so that they can throw someone into the street. In an ideal world all food is free and checkouts do not exist and you simply leave the food place with the food you need. This is not an ideal world and instead of a business paying someone to operate the machine that calculates the total for my food, now I have to operate the machine that calculates the total for my food. This is slower than the person doing the job professionally because I am not trained to do this job, while the person who was getting paid for this labour is now getting nothing. The business gets to pick up the difference between the cost of my labour (nothing) and their labour (presumably minimum wage). This is not a good outcome for anyone (except corporate profits). My local store installed self checkouts and then removed them because so much stuff was getting stolen. Good.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:45
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PeterCat posted:The taxpayers don't owe me anything in that circumstance, why would they? It's not about what anybody "owes" anyone, it's about the fact that you've just lost your entire career for reasons beyond your control while your boss profits from it, and as a human being you don't deserve to be left to fend for yourself.
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Mar 14, 2022 06:49
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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. Do you support Medicare For All, or do you believe people need to "earn" healthcare by having a job well-paid and prestigious enough to have good health insurance benefits (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 14, 2022 06:55
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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. its gonna re invent slavery or serfdom
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Mar 14, 2022 07:07
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Gumball Gumption posted: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. And thinking about everything you do as potentially commodified labor somebody else could be doing instead of you is 1) entrenched reactionarism since you are only having that response to the very few tasks that are being "delegated onto you" right now, and pay not a second's thought to the million tasks that either were delegated to the customer before your time or that arbitrarily never were performed by paid labor even though they could be. If anything this strikes me as highly moralistic and patrimonial since it insists on reproducing static labor relations with no view of whether it's socially desirable, out of nothing but a cultural antipathy. 2) antisocial.
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Mar 14, 2022 08:35
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PhazonLink posted:its gonna re invent slavery or serfdom Keeping poverty jobs around just for the sake of jobs is slavery or serfdom. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Mar 14, 2022 08:37
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PhazonLink posted:its gonna re invent slavery or serfdom 're' nothing, that's literally what prison labour is steinrokkan posted:Keeping poverty jobs around just for the sake of jobs is slavery or serfdom. the alternative is that people are not given jobs and not given the money that is required for them to exist in capitalist society
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Mar 14, 2022 09:18
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Bishyaler posted: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. In case people aren't aware of it before the supermarket concept caught on (early 1930s) customers did not go through the store collecting their own items to purchase. They stood at a counter and gave their order to an employee who would retrieve the items.
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Mar 14, 2022 09:45
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I know I've been posting in these threads for way too long for some reason but it's amazing that we keep having to explain the concept of material conditions, that people need money to pay for food, water, shelter and medicine to live, over and over and over again.
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Mar 14, 2022 10:21
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I know I've been posting in these threads for way too long for some reason but it's amazing that we keep having to explain the concept of material conditions, that people need money to pay for food, water, shelter and medicine to live, over and over and over again. If you think the people you're arguing with are too stupid to even realize that people need to eat and drink, why bother? I think it's far more likely that you're not attempting to understand what the people you disagree with are saying, and instead you go with this lazy interpretation that makes them out to be complete morons.
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Mar 14, 2022 10:55
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Fart Amplifier posted:Because they don't have to be there to do the menial job to survive Is your solution to unsatisfying labor widespread unemployment?
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Mar 14, 2022 12:15
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Jizz Festival posted:If you think the people you're arguing with are too stupid to even realize that people need to eat and drink, why bother? I think it's far more likely that you're not attempting to understand what the people you disagree with are saying, and instead you go with this lazy interpretation that makes them out to be complete morons. Multiple users have put forth that it would be better to eliminate a job and provide no alternative to its current workforce for no reason other than to enrich the owners of the enterprise, but are dressing it up as liberating the worker from a cruel, menial job (that was otherwise previously providing for them). What am I failing to understand and how am I being lazy?
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Mar 14, 2022 12:27
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I dunno, it seems more efficient to me to use a self check out machine when i'm just taking a bag or two of groceries rather than wait in line for the three manned checkout lines behind people with a maximally loaded cart.
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Mar 14, 2022 12:29
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Cow Bell posted:Multiple users have put forth that it would be better to eliminate a job and provide no alternative to its current workforce for no reason other than to enrich the owners of the enterprise, but are dressing it up as liberating the worker from a cruel, menial job (that was otherwise previously providing for them). What am I failing to understand and how am I being lazy? It's just full on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyJfOPSS2Uc
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Mar 14, 2022 12:50
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I don't think eliminating some percentage of cashier jobs over the next X years is going to cause widespread unemployment, especially in a market where there are far more job openings for menial labor than there are people willing to do those jobs.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:20
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Dubar posted:I don't think eliminating some percentage of cashier jobs over the next X years is going to cause widespread unemployment, especially in a market where there are far more job openings for menial labor than there are people willing to do those jobs. Do you think I was only applying his statements to cashiers or do you not realize that eliminating wide swathes of "work" (as another user put it, but don't worry, I'm sure they weren't disparaging anyone by downplaying what's in fact a real job that earns wages) for automation with no alternative in mind for the displaced workers will cause widespread unemployment? Like you realize what would happen if the above users got their wish and we eliminated all those "cruel, menial jobs" that are only being done because they're so cheap? (Ignore if they are essential to the functions of the business for this argument) Cow Bell fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 13:29
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Panzeh posted:I dunno, it seems more efficient to me to use a self check out machine when i'm just taking a bag or two of groceries rather than wait in line for the three manned checkout lines behind people with a maximally loaded cart. This isn't a discussion about whether self checkouts should exist as a tool of convenience, this is about replacing the majority of cashiers with them and changing that from labour paid for by the business or labour performed by the customer. 10 items or less lanes exist as well.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:35
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I work at a place with self checkouts and I like it when customers use them because then I don’t have to interact with them.
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Mar 14, 2022 13:45
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Letting transpeople openly serve in the military is the most popular "pro-trans" issue in the country, but it has fallen down in popularity a little bit recently. Interestingly, it is driven entirely by independents and Republicans/Democrats haven't changed at all.  Also, you can kind of see why Republicans have made trans issues entirely about playing sports and bathrooms. Requiring trans athletes to play on teams based on their birth gender is very popular. Every single age, gender, and political demographic - except for self-identified Democrats - supports it by about 2:1. Republicans support it 9:1. 
Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 14:16 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 14:13
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Uncle Boogeyman posted:I work at a place with self checkouts and I like it when customers use them because then I don’t have to interact with them. Seems sensible, imo
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Mar 14, 2022 14:14
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Cow Bell posted:Multiple users have put forth that it would be better to eliminate a job and provide no alternative to its current workforce for no reason other than to enrich the owners of the enterprise, but are dressing it up as liberating the worker from a cruel, menial job (that was otherwise previously providing for them). What am I failing to understand and how am I being lazy? A valid argument, in the same sense as banning coal is robbing grandmas of their source of hearing in the winter.
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Mar 14, 2022 14:16
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I’m going to defer to Mike Rowe on this subject.
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Mar 14, 2022 14:19
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I haven't really weighed in on the "is it good for a person to lose their job to shift some minor labor onto the consumer" thing, because I would rather talk about UBI. It is true that, right now, getting a job approximately as lovely as "grocery store cashier" is very easy, but that's not always the case. Bad jobs are bad, but the biggest injustice is always somebody being unable to support their own existence. Anywho, I think there's a lot of thread-meat on that UBI bone, so I made a thread for it. Join me! https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3996551
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Mar 14, 2022 14:36
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I feel like there's two parallel but different arguments getting their wires crossed here, which are a) People shouldn't have to spend their lives grinding away at a pointless, demeaning and underpaying job just to survive, and b) People do, unfortunately, have to spend their lives grinding away at a pointless, demeaning and underpaying job just to survive These aren't mutually exclusive but are being treated as such for some reason. I don't think anyone's actually arguing that B isn't true, just that it shouldn't(and doesn't have to) be. Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:[charts] When it comes to getting more bodies for the meatgrinder all issues seem to vanish entirely. Gotta keep those war gears properly lubed with blood. Yinlock fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 14:39
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steinrokkan posted:A valid argument, in the same sense as banning coal is robbing grandmas of their source of hearing in the winter. So, you're gonna do what exactly in this hypothetical? Take away grandmas coal fired stove in the middle of winter and say "Look at all this clean air!"?
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Mar 14, 2022 14:59
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Yinlock posted:I feel like there's two parallel but different arguments getting their wires crossed here, which are As the person who kind of started this whole thread, yes, this is it. It would be great to live in a society where automation does lead to more leisure time for the workers, but it does not. It takes away worker power in the current state of things; it makes the workers work for the tools, rather than the workers deciding which tools work best and the best way to complete their tasks. A great example of this is the fight over chairs for cashiers. It makes no sense to not give cashiers chairs. It’s ergonomically much friendlier, but because the cashiers do not have the power to determine their own working conditions, they are made to stand. Tons of chains have decided to keep them standing despite it being harmful to the workers because it costs the company nothing; those workers are replaceable when their knees or hips give out, and it allows them to sort out handicapped or elderly potential employees who just know they can’t win the fight for a chair. In an ideal capitalist society (lol) the workers would have a union and a strong say on what their working conditions are, how many automated checkouts there are, chairs, checkout speed quotas, breaks, benefits, and all of the rest. In an idealist communist society we’d have a food library where you could come and learn to cook and borrow specialty utensils or tools, talk to a dietician, and enjoy time in a large commons in a grocery space that had been redesigned away from consumerist efficiency and keeping customer-customer and customer-employee interactions minimal and controlled by corporate policy that neither the shopper nor the worker designed. That’s a huge part of this equation: every day of our lives we’re having interactions with equals, other workers, the context and content of which is invisibly overseen and determined in a multitude of ways by rich people who aren’t even there. It’s hosed up!
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Mar 14, 2022 15:02
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Cow Bell posted:So, you're gonna do what exactly in this hypothetical? Take away grandmas coal fired stove in the middle of winter and say "Look at all this clean air!"? ...Or just give them a different source of heating?
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Mar 14, 2022 15:05
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Nonsense posted:I’m going to defer to Mike Rowe on this subject. in order to do that you need to post a smug photo of yourself holding a tumbler of whiskey
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Mar 14, 2022 15:08
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Yinlock posted:...Or just give them a different source of heating? I would love for there to be alternatives; however, the user I am quoting has suggested that cashiers only perform "work" that could easily be replaced by automation and that, furthermore, this is itself a reward (ignoring any of the consequences being put out of a job). The equivalent here is taking away grandmas heater and telling her good luck.
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Mar 14, 2022 15:11
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| # ? May 16, 2024 07:39 |
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Lots of people confusing is's and oughts. In the theoretical ought scenario where we take Grandma's stove we can also give her a valid replacement because this is entirely theoretical. No one is proposing that we should actually take away Grandma's stove and give her nothing. Yes the 'is' of reality is different from the 'ought' we are engaging in but everyone engaging in theoretical oughts already knows this, I assure you. Harold Fjord fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Mar 14, 2022 |
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Mar 14, 2022 15:21
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