I suppose the hope is that such eliminations come gradually enough that displaced workers are able to find other accommodations without too much difficulty, maybe with a little extra up-skill that gradually increases the necessary skill level for the average job. I think the doom & gloom "automation is killing jobs" narrative presupposes a sudden shift from manual to automation, which really hasn't been the norm.
Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
451–460 of 511 posts
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#452Earlier quoted context omitted.
Curiously, what does the homelessness & (true, ie not unemployment) jobless rate look like in that graph? Of course though, they're tough metrics. More importantly though, we're on the cusp of some pretty hairy water. Imagine we drop all of the truck drivers, taxi drivers, Uber and Lift drivers tomorrow. How many millions of people will that be - where can they go? I'm not against automation in the slightest, but to…
> I don't think the past 100 years even remotely indicates how we'll handle this as a society. We aren't talking about taking away one job. We're talking about taking away a skill category. We did it with farmers. 80% of jobs in early 1800's, close to 40% in 1900, 20% by 1930, 5% by 1965, and 1.7% now. A whole "skill category" like driving doesn't even come close to farming. Automation, and even displacing drivers, i…
So I take it your view is we should not plan / discuss how to handle it? Take it on good faith that it'll be fine?
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#453Anyone parading around like this is bad news has never worked in an assembly line or warehouse job. This might reduce the workforce overall long-term, but honestly this is hard back-breaking long-workday labor. Anything that improves the livelihood of the warehouse workers is a win in my book.
On the contrary, this feels like a response of someone who maybe worked part time or had a summer job in a warehouse or factory, but knew they'd have opportunity for better options later on.
If the best job you can get is a factory job, and new technology comes along that can eliminate your job, you are definitely not going to be so happy that your kind corporate overlords have freed you from the drudgery of work.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tax on labour (or housing) is quite weird if you look at it with fresh eyes. Don't we want to support people working and living in a house? Then why tax those? Is it a relic from the past? Thought experiment: what if we (only) tax pollution? All taxes end up being paid by the consumer anyway. But this get the incentive straight to deliver products/services "cleanly". Just a thought...
"Taxing housing" isn't weird at all. We don't tax housing. If you rent, you pay rent to your landlord and that's it. You don't also pay taxes on that rent to the government. I'm guessing what you actually mean is that we tax property. This seems inherently fair to me. Why should you get to squat on a piece of land for free in perpetuity, especially when for most land, the value of the land is inherently improved by g…
Most paces have some tax for living there, usually related to the worth of the house. Weather that's collected at the owner or at the rent-payer, that's not the point as "all taxes are transferred to the consumer" anyway.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked for Amazon in what was then a brand new warehouse for a few months in 2015. I worked 10 hour shifts, from 20:00 to 07:00 (the extra hour was for lunch and breaks). My job was picking orders. It seemed easy at first (and it was, but mentally, not so much). All I had to do was stand in one place while robots brought me pod after endless pod of products. There was nothing to it, and that was the problem. The po…
> I was literally just a robot arm with a human brain attached to it, and for what? This is how I felt as an undergrad working in a research lab. Endless, annoying pipetting. Labeling tubes. Bitchwork that the postdoc didn't want to do. I kept thinking... there's no way they can't come up with a robot to do this. My guess is the technology to do it is there but the motivation isn't - most undergrads (me included) wor…
Since I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, are you aware of what residency is?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours
You may enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#456Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mentioned two processes that have been in place with Amazon Vendors/Manufacturers for many years. 1. Amazon Direct Fulfillment (dropship): Order is shipped directly from the manufacturer to the customer. Amazon pays for the shipping label and contractually "own" the item once it leaves the MFR doors. Amazon incentivizes Manufacturers by paying the freight and loosening shipment deadlines. [1] 2. Ships In Own Cont…
> Ships In Own Container (Amazon SIOC) certification puts the responsibility on the manufacturer to certify their products can be shipped without extra packaging. Sorry, but how can this be a good idea? I'd hate if I ordered something expensive, for example a digital camera, and every porch pirate (or shady parcel delivery subcontractor) immediately sees "this thing is worth a couple grand", compared with the usual A…
Its already the reality for most TVs and furniture (at least from Target), child car seats/strollers are the other big one that's always ship-alone
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was literally just a robot arm with a human brain attached to it, and for what? This is how I felt as an undergrad working in a research lab. Endless, annoying pipetting. Labeling tubes. Bitchwork that the postdoc didn't want to do. I kept thinking... there's no way they can't come up with a robot to do this. My guess is the technology to do it is there but the motivation isn't - most undergrads (me included) wor…
Since I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, are you aware of what residency is? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours You may enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God
That's why I was careful in my wording. I said I wouldn't be taken advantage of "in that way"
And yeah residency is kinda of bullshit. Not looking forward to it :(
I don't think anyone goes into medical school these days without knowing about residency, though. At least, I would hope not.
At least I won't feel like a robot could be doing better than me, though? Although that might soon change with AI advancements, depending on what I specialize in.
Overall, if I could do it over again, I would have just gotten a CS degree. I'm afraid to read House of God because I feel jaded enough as it is.
Are you a physician btw?
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay that's a good point. Also I love the DF reference, DF is my all-time favorite game. My original comment somewhat lacked empathy, perhaps because I don't suffer from problems with free time fragmentation because I'm always possessed by a Strange Mood. I still think my point stands though. I meet a lot of people with what I know to be fairly large chunks of time that don't do anything with them anyway, not because…
You might have too high of an expectation what it means to lead a good life given your own drive. That itself is a part of "work or other productive endeavors define worth of people" culture I think. This is a good stance (consequentially) to have in society when unproductive members are a drag on everybody else. But the main premise of UBI is that you just don't need economic output from all the people you have. So…
Interesting. I don't think in the current society unproductive people are necessarily more of a drag on everyone else than they would be under UBI. We still have to fund UBI. And if UBI doesn't fund good things, that's a lot of other people's work that's being wasted paying out UBI. Also, who knows how much of the workforce we'd lose without the necessity to hold jobs, and how much economic output would be damaged, which in turn could make UBI untenable.
Keep in mind that (quoting a random UBI plan that seems fairly representative), a universal payment of $12,000 per year to each adult U.S. resident over age 18 would cost roughly $3 trillion per year... And according to the IRS, in 2016 people payed a total of $1.4 trillion in taxes[1] meaning we'd have to triple current taxes. Even taxing the top 1% at 100% income tax wouldn't pay for that.
[1]: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-...
Also, there are some studies recently started concerning UBI, so we'll see.
The other thing is that that money isn't free, it has to be taken from someone, and given to someone else... So the question is, why do the people receiving that money deserve it? If UBI is an almost entirely good force, and isn't mostly just wasted, then maybe it's worth considering, but even then the amount of money needed and morality of it is iffy. Without the garuntee that it would do anything good, I'm even more dubious of it.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#459Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not, are you aware of what residency is? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_resident_work_hours You may enjoy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_House_of_God
That's why I was careful in my wording. I said I wouldn't be taken advantage of "in that way" And yeah residency is kinda of bullshit. Not looking forward to it :( I don't think anyone goes into medical school these days without knowing about residency, though. At least, I would hope not. At least I won't feel like a robot could be doing better than me, though? Although that might soon change with AI advancements, de…
Spouse is a mid-level provider, so I pick up some of it via proxy.
While engineers (like myself) want to deal in absolutes, that is not the nature of disease and people. As such, AI may become a tool, but don't expect an AI in the near future to take over diagnostics. Additionally an AI isn't going to bring compassion to patients situation. To that point, learn the difference between empathy and compassion.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#460Anyone parading around like this is bad news has never worked in an assembly line or warehouse job. This might reduce the workforce overall long-term, but honestly this is hard back-breaking long-workday labor. Anything that improves the livelihood of the warehouse workers is a win in my book.
I worked for Amazon in what was then a brand new warehouse for a few months in 2015. I worked 10 hour shifts, from 20:00 to 07:00 (the extra hour was for lunch and breaks). My job was picking orders. It seemed easy at first (and it was, but mentally, not so much). All I had to do was stand in one place while robots brought me pod after endless pod of products. There was nothing to it, and that was the problem. The po…
I did this exact work as well in 2014. Mind numbing task. Seeing the robots and the overall warehouse system work was fascinating. But fuck that place, worse job I've ever had.