andrew yang 2020. no brainer. Surprised why more candidates are not discussing the automation gorilla in the room. there are not enough low-skilled, difficult to automate jobs that can sustain the population.
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Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
191–200 of 511 posts
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, it's good news, just not for the people you're thinking of. Think about people who work in Amazon warehouses despite those conditions. Why do they do that? Because the alternatives are worse. This just removes these jobs and leaves them to face those alternatives.
I think HN's tune would be quite different if someone came up with a technology that eliminated half of all programming jobs. Not quite so many people would be saying, "This is great! I for one look forward to technological advancement." I do think the future should involve more automation, I just think we should be -- I dunno, a little less gleeful about it and think about the people it's impacting.
We are about due for a new generation of CASE tools to make just that promise.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And all those middle age workers will, what? They will be fired, yes. This cruel world, where people should care about competitiveness of their skills. It starts right after the school.
> It starts right after the school. I'd argue that the competition start before the child is even born in the modern world. Wealth of one's family, their connections play a major role in the success of the child (admission scandals come to mind)
I wrote about skills competition, not competition between persons. In our cruel world it's absolutely possible to get new skills, and you don't even need huge money to get skills you could sell later.
> Wealth of one's family, their connections play a major role in the success of the child
And it's perfectly fine. Somebody's parents were working hard or smart and created some legacy - it is absolutely, 100% fine that their offsprings have some advantage - it was the goal of their parents' life.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#194It's awesome that the boxing machine is not patented by Amazon but is owned by an independent (? for now?) company. It means that others can access this tech and that Amazon won't close it before competitors. If it works, I believe Amazon won't wait for long with the takeover though. It's great because Google et al tend to keep a lot to themselves, not offering hardware on the market (for example full version of the…
I would like to remind you such machines are not built because it requires some genius touch in design, they are not built because there is little demand for them. But yeah, tool being not locked under some patent by some monopoly or the other is a good thing.
Do you have any pointers for articles stating that this is the case? I'd love to read more about such solutions - I thought that machines stealing our real jobs is still a matter of tech not being good enough.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having one third of the value created by everyone pooled together to distribute to everyone sounds completely fine to me. I'd say the society as a whole plays a role that is on average greater than 1/3 on your success.
Would that be on top of the over 1/3rd that I already pay to the US Treasury?
It would overlap with a lot of what you are already paying. It completely overlaps with social security and partially overlaps with the taxes that goes to social welfare.
For the rest of your tax money, there are concrete places that those are going to and if you don't like them, we can altogether as a society do something about it. And guess what, with UBI people will have a lot more time and freedom to spend on actually participating in politics.
Sure, in the end it might bumps it up from 1/3 to 1/2 maybe, but you are getting a lot of that back anyway as UBI to yourself. Even at 1/2 I don't think its unfair.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think HN's tune would be quite different if someone came up with a technology that eliminated half of all programming jobs. Not quite so many people would be saying, "This is great! I for one look forward to technological advancement." I do think the future should involve more automation, I just think we should be -- I dunno, a little less gleeful about it and think about the people it's impacting.
UBI. Then we can be gleeful about more automation.
UBI is a social security measure, not a way of maintaining a fair society. If one's job is automated, they get pushed to the lowest class of the society. UBI just guarantees that their life will be a bit less miserable.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#197This sounds like good news. I've read lots of negative stories about the working conditions in Amazon warehouses. It would be great if all the jobs could be automated.
Sure, it's good news, just not for the people you're thinking of. Think about people who work in Amazon warehouses despite those conditions. Why do they do that? Because the alternatives are worse. This just removes these jobs and leaves them to face those alternatives.
I mean, it's like the people automated toll booths displaced. I'm sure sitting in a small box all day doing a menial task is not good for you, yet people still lament when those "jobs" go away.
Unemployment is still pretty low, so hopefully they were able to find something a little more fulfilling.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#198I'm surprised that Amazon still uses boxes. They have the market power to insist manufacturers comply with amazon-specific packaging requirements. Why not just insist that all products be packaged in postal-compatible packaging? Then the amazon warehouse robot need only slap a label on the product and throw it in the shipping bin. Another answer would be to have products packaged in standard, or at lease square, boxe…
The vast majority (95%, including lots of oddball pcbs, fasteners, etc) of my recent Amazon deliveries have come from an Amazon van. I'm almost surprised they don't offer a reusable bin or something of that nature. It feels wasteful to throw away so many boxes.
When I was in Seattle for an internship about a decade ago, I would get books and other sortable items thrown in with my Amazon Fresh deliveries— they would show up in the same rugged plastic tote as the pantry items, and the tote would be picked up again the next day. It was a great system.
Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#199This sounds like good news. I've read lots of negative stories about the working conditions in Amazon warehouses. It would be great if all the jobs could be automated.
That's certainly one way of looking at it but I would worry if your answer to "those workers are being abused!" is always "make them redundant via automation". Amazon's warehouse workers were abused because Amazon , not because those jobs should have been automated. They could have had more break time. They could have had lower targets. Pay them more. Paternity leave. So many things you can do to improve working cond…
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Re: Amazon rolls out machines that pack orders and replace jobs
#200I'm surprised that Amazon still uses boxes. They have the market power to insist manufacturers comply with amazon-specific packaging requirements. Why not just insist that all products be packaged in postal-compatible packaging? Then the amazon warehouse robot need only slap a label on the product and throw it in the shipping bin. Another answer would be to have products packaged in standard, or at lease square, boxe…
The vast majority (95%, including lots of oddball pcbs, fasteners, etc) of my recent Amazon deliveries have come from an Amazon van. I'm almost surprised they don't offer a reusable bin or something of that nature. It feels wasteful to throw away so many boxes.
Especially with the recent news that a lot of what we thought was recyclable really isn't. I presume that clean brown corrugated is still OK, but I don't know that for sure.