Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 314 posts

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#101

Post by ajross »

acd wrote: post #87

The Question is if Robots should pay income tax? Robots replaced humans that paid tax. The society still needs income. Tax wise do you replace the replaced workers with zero tax robots or do you tax robot workers? When a company do not pay tax or pay lower tax they do not pay for schools and roads. That is not cool. We still need roads and schools to build a future society. Ie the bigger question is that of income di…

> Robots replaced humans that paid tax. The society still needs income.

Robots should pay tax in exactly the same way that the wheel, internal combustion engine, fire, chemical fertilizer, electric motor or stone axe paid tax.

You're trying to do macroeconomics (calculate tax revenue) with a microeconomic analysis (looking at one task/job in isolation). What happens in practice is that the people displaced by productivity gains (shoemakers, maybe) eventually find work in the broader economy doing jobs (like programming computers) that were previously infeasible due to labor costs but now have access to cheaper labor.

Obviously there are social aspects about distribution and justice inherent to rapid change like this. But they have nothing to do with tax revenue.

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#102

Post by romwell »

saas_sam wrote: post #24
sharkweek wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lower class gets bigger and bigger, and is either kept just happy enough to not revolt or... At some point this boils over and the ultra wealthy are forced to redistribute wealth either through new political policy or by violent force.

What if the lower class is getting simultaneously bigger and also better off? Do you think the bottom 10% is living as bad as they were in 1940? 1980? Things that used to be luxuries are now normal across all income brackets... That's a good thing. :-)

> What if the lower class is getting simultaneously bigger and also better off? Do you think the bottom 10% is living as bad as they were in 1940? 1980? Things that used to be luxuries are now normal across all income brackets... That's a good thing. :-)

Ah yeas, the good ole "TV's and refrigerators" argument[0]. They have luxuries! Even homeless people have cell phones, what a world!

Now how about things that actually matter:

* Housing

* Healthcare

* Education

* Transportation

* Income security

All these things are less accessible now than they used to be.

As for the "luxuries": when everyone is expected to have something, it's not a luxury anymore, it's a necessity.

Before most people had a fridge and a car, daily grocery delivery and grocery stores a walk away were the norm. It isn't now because cars and fridges changed the infrastructure. You are screwed without either in most places (and yes, relying on McFoods instead of a fridge is "being screwed").

Public bathhouses aren't the norm because most people aren't homeless and have access to those at home. In that regard, the very poor are worse off than a hundred years ago when a lot of tenements didn't have showers/bathtubs[1].

Before everyone had a cell phone or a computer, people weren't expected to find jobs online. Now this is a requirement to be a member of the society in most cases.

And so on, and so on.

In short, "Poor people now have ________, so we're better off!" is a bad argument. If these people had good lives, you wouldn't call them poor. Their lives suck. Yes, in a different way than a 100 years ago.

But back then, nobody would be out of job because they couldn't answer recruiters' email either.

[0]https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/02/poor-people-having-nice...

[1]https://journals.ku.edu/amerstud/article/download/2244/2203

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#103

Post by cycrutchfield »

brycehamrick wrote: post #69
liquidise wrote: post #3

Modern societies are going to have a very real problem to grapple with as this replacement goes from newsworthy to the norm. This could result in significant worker displacement with massive bottom-line ROI for companies in the next decade or two, particularly as minimum wages rise. I'm not of the opinion that this automation will create an equal number of jobs for the ones they replace. Even if they do, it is unlike…

The "job" as a foundation of modern life is the result of the industrialized revolution and, while it served its purposed, is something we need to abandon as quickly as possible. Corporations don't have a monopoly on economic value creation. We should be, as a government and society, encouraging independent tradesmen/women, entrepreneurship, and artisanry. If we can manage that, job loss due to automation is no longe…

You realize that "cottage industry" is not necessarily an aspirational concept, right?

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#104

Post by stale2002 »

knieveltech wrote: post #98
ColanR wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other thing they don't teach you in Econ 101 is that treating corporations as obligated to keep and preserve jobs prevents them from creating societal value, and treating workers as entitled to a job disincentivises the invention of new methods of creating societal value. It causes stagnation of the economy.

And what is Econ 201's solution to pervasive unemployment, or lack of spending power due to underemployment? Is that also classified as "societal value"?

I'm not sure if you have noticed, but unemployment is at a multi decade low.

We are not seeing pervasive unemployment, we are seeing the opposite. A situation where there are too many jobs, and not enough workers to fill them

So econ 201 would say that there isn't any societial problem right now.

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#105

Post by mschuster91 »

zawerf wrote: post #67

I've heard the argument that this situation is unique to japan due to their aging population and low birthrate. They don't have cheap teenagers to exploit at minimum wages which is why automation is even financially worth it. The amount they are spending ($887 million) can hire 60,000 years of labor at $15,000/yr.

The point is, it's introduced there because it's profitable even if the robots suck but are more productive as a human. The experiences gained, though, will lead to the robots becoming cheaper and cheaper until the robots are on par with Western wages, and then hell will break loose.

Japanese society right now is paying the R&D and the western countries, especially the US, will suck up all the profits.

The one question that remains, though: who will buy all the products when large swaths of the population don't have a job to feed themselves?

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#106

Post by DrNuke »

stickfigure wrote: post #96
nerdponx wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source of the problem is simple. Real societal value is generated through this activity, but it is reaped entirely by Uniqlo and its stakeholders. Yes, consumers are also a stakeholder, but your typical consumer will receive very little or no direct benefit from this change. Eventually, yes, the profits will be reinvested, but the impact will be so diluted as to be a noticeable. Some small fraction of it will pro…

your typical consumer will receive very little or no direct benefit from this change Eh? I've shopped at Uniqlo in SF. Compared to buying clothes at hipster boutiques, it was shockingly affordable. I'd say whatever they are doing is unquestionably offering a direct benefit to the consumer.

Which is very silly, in the end: I am thrilled while thinking how many iPhones Apple will sell worldwide once we have 6.9 billion people unemployed.

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#107

Post by logfromblammo »

darkstar999 wrote: post #32
x220 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>move to another job And when that job gets automated?

We used to be 90%+ farmers. We'll find a way.

In that changeover, farmers remained farmers, while their children trained to work other jobs. The attrition happened on a generational scale. There are only so many times you can ask a single individual to change careers during their lifetime.

Our ancestors, all the way up to our grandparents, changed careers zero times. Our parents changed careers once. In the acceleration of technological development, we may be required to consider changing two or more times, even as the market cost of retraining and education increases. Nobody will have time to become an expert, because the domains old enough to have any of them will become obsolete too quickly.

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#108

Post by eli_gottlieb »

stale2002 wrote: post #104
knieveltech wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what is Econ 201's solution to pervasive unemployment, or lack of spending power due to underemployment? Is that also classified as "societal value"?

I'm not sure if you have noticed, but unemployment is at a multi decade low. We are not seeing pervasive unemployment, we are seeing the opposite. A situation where there are too many jobs, and not enough workers to fill them So econ 201 would say that there isn't any societial problem right now.

Then why are wages so stagnant?

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#109

Post by delecti »

acd wrote: post #87

The Question is if Robots should pay income tax? Robots replaced humans that paid tax. The society still needs income. Tax wise do you replace the replaced workers with zero tax robots or do you tax robot workers? When a company do not pay tax or pay lower tax they do not pay for schools and roads. That is not cool. We still need roads and schools to build a future society. Ie the bigger question is that of income di…

> The Question is if Robots should pay income tax? Robots replaced humans that paid tax. The society still needs income.

That's not a sensible question. Every tool or piece of hardware is an efficiency multiplier for the human benefiting from it. You wouldn't charge income tax to a carpenter's table saw, even though they're suddenly not having to use a handsaw that takes 10 times as long. There's no rational way to implement an income tax on efficiency boosting tools.

Re: Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots

#110

Post by dgzl »

acd wrote: post #87

The Question is if Robots should pay income tax? Robots replaced humans that paid tax. The society still needs income. Tax wise do you replace the replaced workers with zero tax robots or do you tax robot workers? When a company do not pay tax or pay lower tax they do not pay for schools and roads. That is not cool. We still need roads and schools to build a future society. Ie the bigger question is that of income di…

From an initial speculation on the subject, I don't believe we should tax robot workers, on the basis that it would be too difficult to logically create legislation for, especially considering the tech-knowledge of our legislators.

How would we measure? If it's per-robot, businesses would just figure a way of linking the computers together and calling them 'one'. If it's per-output, then what is a 'robot' vs computer/software, that exists in virtually every business already? Would it be fair giving small businesses another tax, for investing in computers and technology instead of human manpower?

Post reply on HN