Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
Bezos doesn't make the stuff on amazon, so your question is moot.
Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
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Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#202Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
The point wasn't really that workers should be the primary clientele, just that the average worker should be able to afford it, and if that wasn't the case the price of the goods should be lowered, or a trend started for higher worker compensation.
Robotic workers lower operational costs and can make goods more accessible, and it's common for various manual labour jobs to be lost when industries change - the labour shifts elsewhere, and generally higher.
(If this wasn't true, unemployment would have constantly grown worldwide since the first automaton replaced a human job or government outlawed certain manual industries, which isn't the case. Workforces do and must adapt to needs and trends.)
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
Henry Ford just wanted to be rich and said something that sounded good and inspired people to work for him. Bezos does similar things for his workers.
Didn't he pay more than his competitors and get sued by his competitors for not acting in the the best interest of his shareholders (by wanting to pay his workers even more)?
Kind of but it was moreso that he wanted to invest in expansion and R&D while driving prices down for consumers
See: Dodge vs Ford
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#204Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
We're more automated than we've ever been & unemployment is close to all-time lows. Why don't you get back to us with this when it's at least 6 or 7 percent...
> unemployment is close to all-time lows.
Job quality is deteriorating, more people are holding more than one job, part time jobs are increasingly common, almost half of US workers are in low-wage jobs, wages have stagnated... It's a nice statistic, but unemployment rates don't tell much of the story on the ground, in people's lived experiences. That side of the story is overwhelmingly getting worse.
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#205Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
>Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars.
Amazing how that bit of PR is still being quoted over 100 years later. In reality, Ford had huge turnover problems with his workers - one estimate is over 370% annual turnover. One way to help prevent turnover is to pay more, and it solved the problem. (Even so, the base pay was still actually $2.30 and to get the extra $2.70 you had to abstain from alcohol, keep your home clean, etc.)
https://www.cbsnews.com/detroit/news/henry-ford-implements-5...
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
Didn't he pay more than his competitors and get sued by his competitors for not acting in the the best interest of his shareholders (by wanting to pay his workers even more)?
Kind of but it was moreso that he wanted to invest in expansion and R&D while driving prices down for consumers See: Dodge vs Ford
Fascinating read especially when viewed from the strategic angling to make Ford less profitable and cut off the minority shareholders the Dodge brothers from the dividend revenue stream they were using to build a rival company. So ironically, while the court held that the board had to prioritize shareholder profits, he would have realized greater shareholder profits by stifling the competition in its crib.
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
sounds like you are saying that "people should just" stop making that argument and that "people should just" pass legislation. Most of what you said can be applied reflexively. Humans will and agency is the foundation of society. It is required to pass legislation or taxes as well.
Well, no, when I say "people should just" arguments, I'm referring to arguments that talk about society at large. I think those are bad arguments. I didn't say "people should stop", I just think it's a bad argument, they're obviously free to make bad arguments. I wouldn't take that right away from them even if I could. "People should just" pass legislation would be specific to congress, so not quite the same thing, o…
>People should just" pass legislation would be specific to congress, so not quite the same thing, or at least not the kind of argument that I was referring to.
Isn't that even worse? In that case it's entirely externalizing the problem.
I think I take the opposite position to you. I think that arguments (or discussions) about society at large are the most important and critical.
I think there is a common trend to ignore and dismiss the importance of decentralized social values and individual choice, instead only focusing on concrete policy proposals.
The latter is almost never productive without consensus on the former. If 90% of people want disposable crap, it will be difficult to shove a law down their throat preventing them from getting it.
Either way, as a result of being triggered by social opinions, you seems to miss the point of the parent post, namely, that right to repair only addresses a tiny fraction of consumerism, nor is it a prerequisite to buy less garbage in general.
The solution to people buying single use toys and inflatable Jacuzzis on Amazon is not to mandate their repairability.
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#208Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
Post-human Capitalism: androids are the new consumer.
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#209Great they can stop killing people. Only place I ever worked where the ambulances came 1-5 times a day to save the old people they abuse
Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans
#210This is good news actually, while you have less jobs, hopefully new ones are created, people in the future don't have the option to work slave like jobs.
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