Posted on 03/01/2020 12:16:21 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In the 1960s, Milton Friedman reportedly visited a construction site in a foreign country. To his surprise, the canal builders used no heavy machinery and instead armed thousands of men with shovels. He questioned the bureaucrat about this odd choice and the bureaucrat responded that it was a jobs program. “Oh, I thought you were trying to build a canal,” Friedman said. “If it’s jobs you want, then you should give these workers spoons, not shovels.”
Friedman’s absurd proposal illustrates the absurdity of make-work bias—the belief that conserving labor makes us poorer. Make-work bias was particularly popular during the Industrial Revolution, when legions of new machines upended the old way of doing things. No one was more famously upset than the textile workers of the early 19th century—Luddites—who railed against the automatic loom, the “job-killing” machines of their day.
Modern Day Luddites
We in the Information Age have our own Luddites. Among their ranks are Las Vegas culinary workers trying to hold back AI servers and bartenders and teamsters opposing self-driving vehicles and delivery robots. Luddites and their sympathizers heap a particularly large amount of criticism on self-checkouts, probably because their ubiquity makes them an obvious target.
Their apprehension is understandable. The proliferation of self-checkouts touches our daily lives so completely that it’s hard to imagine cashiers not losing their jobs or suffering smaller paychecks. Self-checkouts threaten cashiers as surely as excavators threatened shovel manufacturers. It is no surprise that protests erupted after a French supermarket used self-checkouts to get around labor laws or that the Oregon AFL-CIO backed a petition which limits the number of self-checkouts to two per store. Every supplier hates competition.
(Excerpt) Read more at fee.org ...
Reminds me of the Carlin routine about the supermarket:
Did you ever walk away with someone else’s cart by mistake, man? “Eh- hey! Come here- hey! That’s my stuff!”
Not yet it isn’t. Still belongs to all of us. And if I want to shop out of your cart, I’ll shop out of your cart. Got any scallions?
I rented a car like that!
I almost ripped the little door off before I luckily noticed the latch down on the floor!
No; the glove box did NOT have the drivers manual in it!
In another story about how car designers are 'helping us'; I almost ripped my friends shift lever outta the transmission when I'd loaned him my old van to move stuff.
He let me have his car to drive while he was using the van.
I found out (by accident) that you had to touch the brake to shift out of park. (I had stepped on it to get move leverage!)
Did I tell you I HATE the PICTURES on knobs instead of WORDS; too?
If they that stooped; they DESERVE to have the zombies get 'em!!!
(Yeah; YOU! Snookie!)
Brand new store; on the way home from high school.
I was there when the new automatic doors with photocells were installed. Wow; hi tech!!
I moved up to being the pie baker (oven placed by front door so folks just HAD to smell them as they came in); to stockboy; to cashier. (I called out "Peas; 19¢! Bread - 17 cents")
From there; it was the Air Force.
No barcodes back then; as it was just “ca-CHUNK ca-CHUNK” on the tops of the cans with the adjustable price stamp.
I have an old friend who is a retired Newark, N.J. cop. He lives 20 miles or so outside Boise. He keeps encouraging us to move there. He loves it.
Seems like these pre date celerons based on how slow they are. I’m thinking the original Pentiums from 1993 lol. It’s like thinking back on the days of dial up internet and this is the speed at which these ATMs operate.
The Wal*Mart store I frequent in Aiken, SC has self-checkouts near both entrances and they stay quite busy. To the point the self check line occasionally extends past the self check area and blocks a main aisle in the store.
I always bypass self check and have my bill totaled up by a real live cashier. Sometimes the line at the cashier is much shorter than the self check line.
I have always loved pumped gas and never have thought it was a privilige of any sort to be pumping in myself.
As for damages by the gas attendent, never had that problem, never heard of that problem. A clean windshield and a full tank was a nice outcome of a vist to the gas station.
I go to a full service station each time I can.
Worth every penny.
Used to have some of those.
Not anymore.
I liked life better when there were jobs for folks who needed them, pumping gas, checking out groceries, carrying parcels to cars. Sweeping streets, Opening doors, running elevators, monitoring women’s rest rooms, and on and on.
Ultimately it was called service.
It was a different time.
Miss it.
Good for you!
Ikea manuals love them. As for self-checkout, don't go through it with spray-paint cans. We did that (at Home Depot or Lowes), the self-check beeped for an attendant, who was busy at a couple other self-check stations. Finally, she came over - the spray-paint required a checkout of the customer's age before allowing a sale. She asked me for my birthdate. I said no, I waited too long, make it happen! I'm a senior and way past 21. She typed in an authorization code. Stupid system!
When they ask my BD I say 12/25/0000. Some systems actually accept it, some don’t.
Self checkouts are great if you’re buying something embarrassing, either for yourself or for your spouse.
I still find really old things around the house with the old price tags on them. How we forget! I also forgot about the cashiers calling out the prices. Wow, that must have been tough. I’m sure your fingers were flying without ever looking at the keys.
Great training for the real world, too.
Boise has gotten REAL popular and is growing fast. The locals are all PO’d at the rapid change, growth, congestion, and outsiders bidding up housing prices. But it is a great place to live.
We are a long ways north, just 100 miles to the Canadian border. This area was heavily glaciated in the last Ice Age, so there are natural lakes all over the place and gorgeous mountains. Not as big or rugged as the Colorado Rockies, but beautiful nonetheless. Winter this year was mild and not a lot of snow - only 60 inches (normal is about 90), but there wasn’t much on the ground at any one time because of the daytime highs. But I was able to climb the mountain behind us a couple times, once though 2 to 3 feet of snow (3 or 4 earlier hikers had beaten the trail down a little bit). It’s so peaceful and quiet in the winter with all the summer tourists and snowbirds gone.
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