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Who's ready for $15 an hour?

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As convenient as it may be, don't use these things. If people still go to the cash, then that may send a message to these companies to not lay off all their workers. Of course they might do it anyway.

I think no matter what though, it's going to happen. But on the other hand, banks still have tellers. There is a certain part of the population that still prefer to go to a teller than an ATM. So they need to keep those people around.

For fast food, I can see it where fast food joints will basically just be a big vending machine. Every couple weeks a transport will come in, insert ingredient "cartridges" in the back and take the empties out, and drive off. The inside would basically be an automated assembly line that keeps the stuff cool and takes it out as needed to make food items. Heck, that truck could be a self driving truck at some point. There would be cameras to make sure people don't vandalize or cause trouble, and there would be a guy somewhere monitoring these, and a person who is on call 24/7 to go tend to all the restaurants in a city should it be needed. At that point all fast food chains will probably be owned by a single large company, like Monsanto or something. Capitalism.
 
Red Squirrel said:
I think no matter what though, it's going to happen. But on the other hand, banks still have tellers. There is a certain part of the population that still prefer to go to a teller than an ATM. So they need to keep those people around.
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the inside of a modern chase bank - ability to service 3 customers with 1 teller and 3 machines. They're not going to be able to replace everyone, but they sure as fuck are trying to reduce labor costs as much as possible.

os-virtual-bank-teller-chase-jpg-20150630
 
On the fence about this one. $15/hr would have been amazing in college. I had 3 jobs at one point to pay for everything & kept up 2 jobs (weeknight & weekend) most of the time to make ends meet (even on cheap rent, cheap car, etc.). Also, there are people who mentally & physically will never get out of stuff like the fast-food business, and I don't think they should be condemned to a life of poverty just because they don't happen to be as skilled as other people. I'm all for people becoming millionaires & billionaires because society works great when financial incentives are there for you to make new products, start businesses, and hire people, I just think we should take care of people less fortunate. The difficult thing is that it's like welfare...there's a lot of abuse in the system. Difficult to balance that out & filter things 100% properly when you're facing millions of people in that situation.
 
Craig234 said:
You've never been called a moral person by anyone sane, have you.
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On the contrary, sane people are the ones I agree with most. Intelligent people too. That explains why you're always on the outside looking in.

Since I use this place primarily for entertainment, you can be the person I laugh at today. Please explain to me why a business that has a legal responsibility to look out for its shareholders somehow has a moral imperative to overpay unskilled workers who can be replaced by a machine.

If you can be replaced by a kiosk rather than paid minimum wage and the company financially benefits from getting rid of you, buh-bye, you have no value in the workplace. That's neither moral nor immoral, it's simply fact.
 
John Connor said:
That looks like it made a big damn mess.

I seen on the History Channel I think it was back in the 50's or 60's they had like places that served meals though what looked like cuby holes.
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The first two spins are to warm up and cook the noodles, so the liquid needs to be dispensed. It looked like a mess, but it's not.
 
I think more automation is good but there will always be human work since a good portion of the population can't figure out how to press buttons with giant pictures in order to select their meal.

If jobs are useless, they should disappear. If you follow the same logic, should we also get rid of farm automation and employ 90% of the population to produce food like 350 years ago?
 
Good. At $15 an hour all but highly skilled type jobs with very narrow and specialized skill sets will become obsolete. As the ever expanding masses of blue collar Americans becoming continuously displaced widens eventually governments will need to realize a world and economy in which not every person that breaths needs to work to sustain an economy. And if that doesn't do it then the advent of a true AI decades down the road will cement it. The economy and way of doing business as it has for millennia simply is not sustainable in its current form indefinitely.

Better to crash the old and begin building the new sooner rather than later.
 
The problem with that thought is that there are only so many specialized jobs to go around, so even if everyone was smart enough to work them, there would still be a job shortage. You only need so many engineers and other specialized positions. Can always sue more doctors I suppose but even then, at some point, there would be more than enough.

And there's always the argument that someone needs to fix the automation machines, but that might create like 1 job... if that. Repairs will probably be outsourced to some company in India that will fly a guy down once a month to do maintenance on all the machines in a given sector.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
After watching a bunch of clearly retarded people fumbling their way through the self-checkout aisles at my local grocery store for the last few years, I suspect that while Walmart and McDonald's might stick with self-ordering kiosks, most "fast casual" places like Chipotle, and even Subway, will probably revert to humans who actually know which buttons to press, and can do so quickly.

Even a 5% drop in order entry speed during a lunch rush is costing you a LOT of money.
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When I'm in charge, there will be a self-checkout pre-test. It will be something along the lines of the candidate being presented with two buttons; say, red and blue. They will then be prompted to press one of the colors. If they do not press the correct color button within 4 seconds, then they are not qualified to do self-checkout and they must go to a manned checkout.

Things will be better when I'm in charge.
 
Sonikku said:
Good. At $15 an hour all but highly skilled type jobs with very narrow and specialized skill sets will become obsolete. As the ever expanding masses of blue collar Americans becoming continuously displaced widens eventually governments will need to realize a world and economy in which not every person that breaths needs to work to sustain an economy. And if that doesn't do it then the advent of a true AI decades down the road will cement it. The economy and way of doing business as it has for millennia simply is not sustainable in its current form indefinitely.

Better to crash the old and begin building the new sooner rather than later.
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See, I don't believe in the future that Star Trek advertises. If people don't HAVE to work, make food, etc., we're not going to become an enlightened society of people who are freed up to pursue the arts & intellectual pursuits, we're going to become a national of addicts. Just look at what happens to the majority of celebrities after they make it big...actors, actresses, musicians, etc. Drugs, alcohol, and often overdoses, rinse, repeat.

On a tangent, I really enjoyed the cgi cartoon Megamind because it illustrated a problem I always had with bad guys...once you win, then what do you do? Once everyone is doing what you want, what's the point? Part of life's fun comes from living in a society of contributors...people making new food dishes for restaurants, new music, new stories for movies, new books, building cool new cars, etc. I always over-thought about the super villains from Saturday morning cartoons because if they ever did end up winning, then what? Because like you said, eventually we'll get to AI. Automated mining. 3D printing (which we already do with cement, gold, titanium, chocolate, sugar, transparent plastic, wax, you name it...just go check out the Shapeways material list for availability!). 3D food printing! Completely automated farming, especially indoor container farming with LED growlights & hydroponics/aquaponics systems. And then what will you do? We all turn into the people from Wall-E in the future, haha.
 
Red Squirrel said:
As convenient as it may be, don't use these things. If people still go to the cash, then that may send a message to these companies to not lay off all their workers. Of course they might do it anyway.

I think no matter what though, it's going to happen. But on the other hand, banks still have tellers. There is a certain part of the population that still prefer to go to a teller than an ATM. So they need to keep those people around.
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Except these people are incompetent. The fact that you can't give a simple order and have them convey it into a machine is absolutely insane. It's one thing to have to say "Can you please repeat that part about the toppings?" but things never go that way. They just punch some buttons and you hope and pray that they didn't fuck it up TOO badly.

It's downright unacceptable and incompetent. If you can't do a job as simple as McDonalds, you're useless to society. You have no future, you will never get any further in your career (or life) and it's best to never start it.

Also, banks still have tellers because there are still people too stupid (mostly old people) to realize you can just scan a damn check with your smartphone. Or deposit it into ANY atm.
 
s0me0nesmind1 said:
Except these people are incompetent. The fact that you can't give a simple order and have them convey it into a machine is absolutely insane. It's one thing to have to say "Can you please repeat that part about the toppings?" but things never go that way.
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I love Tesla's model of ordering a car...hop on their webpage, add what you want, hit the order button, ta-da! Same with ordering a pizza from Domino's online. I have yet to have them screw up an online order, vs. it's happened semi-often with phone orders.
 
Kaido said:
Completely automated farming, especially indoor container farming with LED growlights & hydroponics/aquaponics systems. And then what will you do? We all turn into the people from Wall-E in the future, haha.
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still need someone to trim the marijuana, machines aren't good enough yet. women with tiny hands = best.
 
John Connor said:
Beats socialism. Not perfect, has it flaws, but this country hasn't grown to be what it is without it. And despite the dollar shrinking to nothing, countries all around the world have reserve USDs.
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Not really, socialism is better, it's fairer for everyone, though it does become an issue if it's too extreme, there needs to be a balance. With capitalism everybody loses except for the 1%. And in the end, you still pay as much taxes as if it was a socialist country but get less from it.
 
The fear I read here about automation is analogous to the fear with people a century ago who all farmed. Well, farms still exist folks. The machines that work farms might be the only variable, but we still have farms. Just like there will still be jobs. So long as there isn't a lopsided trade of course.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Not really, socialism is better, it's fairer for everyone, though it does become an issue if it's too extreme, there needs to be a balance. With capitalism everybody loses except for the 1%. And in the end, you still pay as much taxes as if it was a socialist country but get less from it.
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We are going to have to agree to disagree because I couldn't disagree with you more. I encourage you to visit New York, Chicago, San Fransisco, Silicon Valley, etc, etc, etc.
 
As odd as it may seem, there's a certain since of pride when I hear and see this music video. WE MADE THINGS! WE were big and built things!


 
Okay, who here goes self-checkout instead of going to a cashier at the grocery store?

I personally never go to self-checkout if I can help it.
 
desura said:
Okay, who here goes self-checkout instead of going to a cashier at the grocery store?

I personally never go to self-checkout if I can help it.
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I try to avoid it as well, only place that has them here is Home Depot. I sometimes do use them if there is a line up at the main cash and all I have is like one item. They only have like 2 normal cashes and rest is self check out though. For stuff like lumber or really heavy stuff like bags of cement it's kinda awkward to use the self check out so I usually go to cash either way.
 
z1ggy said:
In all fairness, CA is expensive af. Here in NJ, rent for even a total dump is like $1600 a month. I don't know how anybody could live here just off min wage without having to give a few truck stop handies or something...
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Where do you live in NJ? I'm in South Jersey and my rent is pretty cheap. Granted it's just me and a small 2 rooms.
 
Red Squirrel said:
Not really, socialism is better, it's fairer for everyone, though it does become an issue if it's too extreme, there needs to be a balance. With capitalism everybody loses except for the 1%. And in the end, you still pay as much taxes as if it was a socialist country but get less from it.
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I'm not in the 1% and capitalism works great for me.
You think socialism is better because its fairer? Wow... You believe the world owes you something.

Capitalism is simply natural selection.
 
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