Posted on 12/06/2013 8:24:56 AM PST by Kaslin
After you heard President Obama's call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?
But just in case the question didn't occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee's announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili's already made this move earlier this year.
With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won't be changing their staffing levels, but if you've read any science fiction, you know that's what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: "We're here to help. We're not a threat."
But the fact is, the tablets are a threat. In 2011, Annie Lowrey wrote about the burgeoning tablet-as-waiter business. She focused on a startup firm called E La Carte, which makes a table tablet called Presto. "Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table -- making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn't forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either."
Applebee's is using the Presto. Are we really supposed to believe that the chain will keep thousands of redundant human staffers on the payroll forever?
People don't go into business to create jobs; they go into business to make money. Labor is a cost. The more expensive labor is, the more attractive nonhuman replacements for labor become. The minimum wage makes labor more expensive. Obama knows this, which is why he so often demonizes ATM machine as job-killers.
Just a few days before Obama's big speech on income inequality, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a media frenzy by revealing on "60 Minutes" that he's working on the idea of having a fleet of robot drones deliver products straight to your door. I can only imagine the discomfort this caused for any UPS or FedEx delivery guys watching the show. There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, but does anyone doubt that this is coming?
You might take solace in the fact that there will still be a need for truck drivers to deliver the really big stuff and to supply the warehouses where the drones come and go like worker bees. The only hitch is that technology for driverless cars is already here, it just hasn't been deployed -- yet.
None of this is necessarily bad. Machines make us a more productive society, and a more productive society is a richer society. They also free us up for more rewarding work. As Wired's Kevin Kelly notes, "Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines."
While some hippies and agrarian poets may disagree, most people wouldn't say we'd be better off if 7 out of 10 people still did back-breaking labor on farms.
That doesn't mean the transition to a society fueled by robot slaves won't be painful. The Luddites destroyed cotton mills for a reason. Figuring out ways to get the young and the poor into the job market really is a vital political, economic and moral challenge. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis, argues that one partial solution might have to be wage subsidies that defray the costs of labor, tipping the calculus in favor of humans at least for a while.
"Of course," Pethokoukis notes, "wage subsidies are an on-budget, transparent cost -- which politicians hate -- while the costs of the minimum wage are shifted onto business and hidden. But the costs exist just the same."
The robot future is coming no matter what, and it will require some truly creative responses by policymakers. I don't know what those are, but I'm pretty sure antiquated ideas that were bad policy 100 years ago aren't going to be of much use. Maybe the answers will come when artificial intelligence finally comes online and we can replace the policymakers with machines, too.
"Would like another order of our *BIG ASS FRIES*?"
IBTOSP (In Before The Obligatory Skynet Picture)
Productivity increase is the natural and inevitable result of the operation of the free market. Those operations which do not keep up with the rate of increase disappear.
So if we are agreed that the inevitable result of automation in a free market is growing structural unemployment, the questions becomes what, if anything, to do about it? And I don’t see any free market mechanism that will handle it. The State would have to get involved.
I think this is a major reason conservatives don’t like to discuss the issue. Quite possibly 200+ years of the market being a mechanism for the improvement of human well-being is approaching its end. At that point do you abandon faith in the market, or just accept its destruction of your society?
I believe you are making unjustified assumptions about autistic people, specifically those on the mild end of the spectrum.
The major factor in autism is an inability to “read” others and respond to emotional cues appropriately. I don’t think it means autistic people don’t feel emotions themselves or have the potential to believe in or feel loyalty to something greater than themselves.
I think that’s more on the socio/psychopath spectrum.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051202637_3.html
Above is Tyler Cohen talking about autism and his autistic tendencies...
As far as what you said about autism in general.... You are probably right. The word autism is used in a colloquial way these days. You are using it in the more exact conventional way. “Half of Silicon Valley is autistic”-— you can make what you want of this but there is truth to this statement that I came across
One solution is to give poor unemployable city dwellers + their families incentives and subsidies to move to the stix and grow what they eat in cooperation with others. This would have to be done in a very large way in the future as robots and computerization of service sector and industry gets worse. I have no details on this but what good are armies of unemployed in cities? We pay welfare people to sit on their asses, watch flat screen TVS and eat junk food. Their children don’t turn out any better. I would find a way to get them up and out and doing useful labor. As in growing food so they can eat and not starve.
People always need to be doing something useful for themselves and others. The rock bottom minimum is to grow what you eat and barter with others in the same boat. Since their labor is not needed to make stuff or in service industries then send them to the countryside.
You make an interesting point.
But the guys growing food these days (at least the ones under 40) all have degrees from Purdue, Michigan St, Nebraska, etc.
I don’t believe anybody is going to starve in the world run by machines. They just won’t have anything to do.
But I don't think I'm quite so oblivious to emotional cues.
BTW, recently watched an excellent movie about Temple Grandin, one of the more famous classically autistic people out there. Called, oddly enough, Temple Grandin.
Panera Bread has four of these near the counter in their restaurant in Lexington, MA. They work well. You put in your order and swipe your credit card. Then you go to the pickup window. There is a large monitor turned in portrait mode with your name (read off credit card track 1) and your order status. When your order is ready, you pick it up and leave.
Faxes schmaxes! Everyone knows pneumatic tubes are the way to pass paper work around. From the late 1890s to the early fifties, NYC had a network of 27 miles of tubes connecting Brooklyn and Upper and Lower Manhattan. Reportedly, some of the unused tubes later proved useful for routing fiber optic cables.
bkmk
Sushi restaurants in Japan already deliver food by conveyor belt. You just pluck off whatever you want and the bill is reckoned by the number of color-coded plates that are accumulated in the course of the meal.
I come from four generations of small business owners.
Farming, horses, blacksmiths, pharmacy, law, publishing, decorative brickwork, coal yard, hotels, and bookstores.
Our number one problem for the last 100 years?
Finding, training, managing, and retaining low skill labor, of course.
I think there will be an explosion of highly customized self-employment when robots, financial software, and Internet marketing allow highly motivated individuals to literally go into business for themselves without the chronic stress created by human employees.
RE: “What about the psychological benefits of working? What will replace it?”
We can try the Detroit solution - crack pipes and manufacturing fatherless babies.
If your analogy was correct, then requiring school children to wear a uniform blazer with "flair" (ie: the school emblem) on it would also be evil and by no reasonable standards is it so.
So lighten up and let's don't be looking for a boogy-man behind every bush.
If your analogy was correct, then requiring school children to wear a uniform blazer with "flair" (ie: the school emblem) on it would also be evil and by no reasonable standards is it so.
So lighten up and let's don't be looking for a boogy-man behind every bush.
What I wrote was in quotes. It was a quote from the movie you referenced. So, you should lighten up.
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