Uniqlo cut 90% of staff at one warehouse by replacing them with robots • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

ColanR wrote: post #88

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…

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.

Also, clothing is a commodity. Whatever benefit Uniqlo shareholders get from this will be short-lived as clothing prices drop around the world, benefiting all clothes buyers (everyone) at the expense of a textile workers, who -- at least for the time being -- can easily find a job elsewhere.

At some point, automation might be a cause for concern. But I really don't think this is that type of headline...

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

#162

Post by tathougies » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:11 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #160

tathougies wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Notice I said 'neighborhood business'. I feel comparing ICOs -- which usually consist of a team you've never met asking you for money for a product you've never seen -- to an established neighborhood business interested in raising capital for expansion of a proven business model is comparing apples to oranges.

Won't take long for the crooks though. Most government regulations are introduced in response to abuse and everywhere they've been rolled back, the abuses come back. No matter if in finance, in taxis (e.g. Uber's surge pricing), net neutrality, whatever.

It is also possible for regulation to be exceedingly onerous, like Prohibition.

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

#163

Post by lamarpye » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #133

manigandham wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns don't do anything without bullets. Bullets don't do anything if they don't hit a target. Disable power and communications and most people become immediately useless at living, let alone mounting an assault. The days of sheer numbers being useful are long past in the era of modern warfare.

I’d say the recent experience in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan runs counter to your claims.

Not really. The US followed certain rules of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan that a truly ruthless military would not.

For example the Battle of Fallujah was fought with Vietnam level tactics. There were about 100 KIA for the US side. The battle could have been fought differently with zero US losses.

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

#164

Post by antoinette_ » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:17 PM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #124

cgag wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you honestly believe this isn't going to be a problem?

People have predicted that it would be a problem every year for the last hundred years. And those people were all proven false. How many times do the same predictions have to be proven false before we don't take them seriously anymore? People won't do that though. We will continue to hear the same predictions for another hundred years, and every time the people making will say "but this time it's different!"

No, they weren't proven false, it's just that the effects of automation aren't felt evenly across the whole population at once. If you aren't in the groups it was affecting, you likely didn't see it beyond a newspaper article here and there, and maybe it didn't really register. There are entire towns filled with people who are suffering from poverty and all its knock-on effects because they were single-industry towns and that industry went through automation that eliminated those jobs en masse.

Everyone always says that these people are just suffering from a skills shortage and need to retrain into a different career and move to where the jobs are. But which careers should they choose to retrain into? Retraining represents several years of time investment and at least tens of thousands of dollars in money investment, money which they don't even have in the bank, so choosing wrong will often be the last nail in the coffin. When I was entering school I was told that going into CS was too risky because everyone was offshoring these days. Instead the most recommended "safe" jobs were: lawyer, pharmacist, welder. Of those three choices, only one was still in demand by the time the entering cohort had graduated. The other two had such a glut of entering workers that many new grads were being advised to retrain again. When industry demand is changing faster than people can reasonably retrain and pay off their student loans, "skills shortage" is just another way to say "let them eat cake", and the pace of automation is absolutely contributing to this issue.

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

#165

Post by neffy » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:23 PM UTC

krrrh wrote: post #123

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"?

They teach you economic history and show that predictions of pervasive unemployment and lack of spending power caused by technical innovation have been made every decade and never been borne out as new ways of delivering societal value are constantly being invented. In Econ 301 they teach you to never say never. Whether this time is different than the previous rounds of automation or will have larger dislocative effe…

I think we're definitely looking at, at the minimum, another day off the working week - similar to the shift from the early 20th century from 6 to 5 days, as combine harvesters triggered a movement of something like 90% of agricultural workers into cities.

Beyond that, it's hard to say. There is lots of work that needs to be done - picking up plastics anybody? - but the money is in the wrong places to pay for it, and at some point the flows in the system become so disrupted by wealth accumulation, that the only solutions is to press the reset button in any case.

...such interesting, interesting times.

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

#166

Post by teslaberry » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

i cannot wait until better robots replace these shitty lazy robots that are now coming in.

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

#167

Post by prostoalex » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #108

stale2002 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Because wages are a small part of the total compensation package - leaving out bonuses, health, dental, vision insurance policies, 401k (with matching), employee stock purchase plans, stock options or stock units awards, access to food and on-site services, company cars, etc.

They’re also not stagnant https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wage-growth

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

#168

Post by endtime » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:29 PM UTC

zjaffee wrote: post #97

endtime wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The gun owners are typically on the other side of the aisle from those who support redistribution of wealth. Not saying that couldn't change or that desperation can't trump principle, of course.

This isn't true, most democrats do not support redistribution of wealth, where leftists who do support the redistribution of wealth are generally in favor of gun rights.

Which Democrats don't support redistribution of wealth? I didn't know any such Democrats existed.

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

#169

Post by chii » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

tathougies wrote: post #148

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could create a moral hazard, where businesses court mom & pop investors, who don't have the means to pursue legal action against the company should they do something less than scrupulous with their investments, instead of investors with the means to hold them accountable.

I certainly don't disagree, but the idea that someone like me, who has no debt, and who is in no danger of losing my lifestyle should not be allowed to invest because I don't have 'enough' is absurd. I would be in support of requirements where you have to show to the government that investing will not cause you to lose your livelihood, but most people do not need $1million in the bank in order to achieve that goal. F…

It's more insidious than that.

Most investment opportunities aren't available to the unconnected, even if they have some semblance of wealth (e.g., RSU grants for an employee).

Private investment opportunities seems to only flow from the connected to their friends. I wish this weren't the case. I wish that even a small time investor (in the order of 1k-10k) can participate in these private deals that often payout with 10%-20%/p.a, but other than govt regulations, the biggest barrier is knowing they exist.

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

#170

Post by keerthiko » Wed, Oct 10, 2018, 11:31 PM UTC

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…

Modern societies need to figure out distribution of economic power that isn't based on employment. Of all the things corporations should be held responsible for, directly propping up low-skill labor employment opportunities shouldn't be one of them. Employment and jobs should stop being used as fundamental economic indicators.

The naive approach would be to just increase overall corporate taxes, reduce payroll taxes (so companies are mildly incentivized to pay humans) and more effectively redistribute tax income to society. The problem with this is the geographic inflexibility of this approach, as Amazon could be sucking up tons of resources from Florida and no amount of taxation on Amazon really pays back to Florida.

Surely we can eventually come up with a better system to let companies optimize their business practices (net value++) and redistributing those improvements across society?