J 611 posted:Guitarmike posted:Big_Boy_4005 posted:J 611 posted:Byrdie posted:Just a thought provoking question - how many of you use the self checkout at the many, many stores that are now implementing them?
I use it all the time. If you only have a few items with bar codes its much faster and more convenient than waiting for a cashier. Automation is coming. What we have to figure out is how to take care of the millions that will be out of their current jobs. Truck drivers are on the front lines here in my opinion. It will be interesting to see how society will react. How governments will react. This will be a much larger change than when we went from a mostly agrarian work force to an industrialized one. The next 50 to 100 years will be very interesting.
Well, when things get screwed up at the self checkout, guess what, the human comes over to fix it.
Same for trains and just about everything else.
Just wait, the self checkout in the McDonald's in the train station will get screwed up and the autopilot trains will crash through the bumpers at the end of the tracks in the station while asking you if you want your receipt.....
I take your response as tongue in cheek. But, people did have similar fears when the new technology of the "horseless carriage" made its initial debut. Those fears turned out to be baseless. However, that new technology did put people out of work. How many farrier's and carriage makers do you see around today? Over our heads right now there are thousands of airplanes flying themselves. It's only a matter of time before automation takes over more and more aspects of our lives and the labor force. What needs to happen now are discussions about how we take care of people that currently have jobs that simply wont exist in the future. If machines do the labor of a large low skilled work force, what do those millions of people do now? Do governments allow this automation? If they do allow automation on a mass scale do we implement a universal basic income? The list of questions goes on and on.
Universal Basic Income = Unemployment Benefit.
As usual, we are simply resorting to calling it something else to make more, ahem, palatable. My father, in all his years in Hollywood, never once took unemployment. The Greatest Generation saw it as a handout (although, to be fair, it really wasn't).
