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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

#251

Post by pixelready »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #229
thisisnotauser wrote: post #138

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?

New types of jobs are created every year. When I was young, there was no such thing as streaming video games and getting paid for it. Now, young kids and adults are making bank by playing video games and letting the whole world watch

I’m all for creative disruption, but what worries me is when I see a pattern of stable employment being displaced by algorithmically mediated gig work and viral entertainer lotto tickets. This is a dangerous trend in general, but the US is especially poorly positioned because of its lack of strong safety nets. When the foundation of your economy is hollowed out to make it ever more top-heavy, you’re destined for collapse.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#252

Post by mattigames »

rendang wrote: post #234
mattigames wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unemployment being at all time lows means nothing if those employed with the minimum wage cannot afford the same quality of life than people did in the past earning the minimum wage of their time, because it means you aren't really comparing the same thing.

The minimum wage is not relevant as very few people make it. Wage earners at the top, bottom, and middle can afford a better (materially speaking) quality of life in the USA than at any time in the past: https://data.epi.org/wages/hourly_wage_percentiles/line/year...

This doesn't seem to take into account the price of land or the price of education or the price of healthcare, therefore claiming that they can afford a better quality of life it's highly misleading, if this is taking such things into account I would like to know exactly how.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#253

Post by bmitc »

guhidalg wrote: post #226
myself248 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pray tell, what jobs can't be automated soon?

The ones where human interaction is the point. Education, bar tenders, nursing, tourism, for example.

The unfortunate reality is that humans seem to have this innate desire to get rid of ourselves. I see us trying to automated everything. To what end, I do not know.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#254

Post by apercu »

sydbarrett74 wrote: post #249
tw04 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ultimate endgame is either a significant reduction in global population, or UBI. You can’t just keep automating every non-knowledge job away and just hope people find something else to do. All those jobs in Detroit that went away were replaced by…? As best I can tell they were replaced by poverty and crime.

Judging from efforts in the US to make health care harder and harder to obtain, I'm betting on the former, especially if other countries follow suit. Slowly letting people die from untreated chronic diseases may be seen as more humane than outright mass slaughter.

I don’t understand the endgame. If everyone is poor and dying who is buying all the useless/social credit shit until there are 100m “wealthy” people left? And if “they” (whoever they are, I think we all give “wealthy” people far too much credit, many that I’ve known are pretty empty, insecure people lacking any real self awareness) want everyone else dead, why are all “developed” countries pushing for higher birthrates and encouraging immigration from less developed countries?

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#256

Post by kajumix »

pixl97 wrote: post #182
kajumix wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you may not need to buy a box of cereal or a vacuum cleaner, but maybe a flight to moon, or a humanoid companion? products move up a level

And what labor are you going to be doing to afford those upleveled products?

it's a good question. what would true abundance look like? I can't wait to find out

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#257

Post by SR2Z »

tw04 wrote: post #197
dan-robertson wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people who don’t work for Amazon already buy stuff from there. I guess I mostly see the jobs as exchanging labour for something that society values and so by automating, there is more labour available to do things society values and so society gets more of what it values. And if you think working for Amazon is bad for people then you should be happy if automation is decreasing the number of people suffering…

The ultimate endgame is either a significant reduction in global population, or UBI. You can’t just keep automating every non-knowledge job away and just hope people find something else to do. All those jobs in Detroit that went away were replaced by…? As best I can tell they were replaced by poverty and crime.

> You can’t just keep automating every non-knowledge job away and just hope people find something else to do.

[citation needed]

We've been at it for more than a century now and it seems to be working pretty well for nearly everyone!

Our goal is not to preserve jobs. Our goal is to be more productive for fewer resources.

Jobs in Detroit went away - but so did the people, who found new jobs in other cities. There has been no lasting unemployment from automation, ever.

Human beings are good for more than pulling levers and carrying heavy objects and we do each other a disservice by pretending otherwise.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#258

Post by cryptonector »

thisisnotauser wrote: post #138

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?

As long as the pace of automation does not exceed some max rate that people can't figure out what to do with the excess labor, we should be ok.

Though I suppose it's always possible that we'll reach something of a "singularity" where we enter the realm of The Phools, by Stanislaw Lem. I can't find a copy of it online, so you might just have to buy the book in which that short story appears.

Briefly and to spoil it: In the story there is a planet with human-like people called Phools and a very stratified, hyper-capitalistic society with three classes, workers, priests, and owners, and someone invents computer that fully automates all factories which then causes 100% unemployment among the workers who then start starving to death. In the story the owners and priests ask the inventor to ask the computer to come up with a solution. You can imagine what the computer came up with... At the end the traveler screams at them something like "Phools! All you had to do was redistribute your income!".

Today -and on this planet- there are certainly a few people today who speak of "useless eaters" and who would like the outcome from that short story. And I can imagine that happening almost naturally. Already fertility rates are crashing worldwide, and we're on a path towards a crashing human population worldwide, and if that happens naturally then I think it means that humans respond to price and other signals and adjust their family planning accordingly, and that would not be a bad thing. Pray though that it's not like in The Phools where the population crashed in a much more dramatic and speedy way, and not at all naturally.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#259

Post by tombert »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #242
tombert wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think religion is stupid. I think it’s harmful. If I said “people should just stop being religious” and acted like that in itself was in any way insightful, you would consider that a dumb argument. To be clear, this isn’t to say community outreach is bad or a waste of time. I think getting the larger populous onboard with the narrative that you think is going to make the world best is a good thing, please don’t let…

The people were going to church and getting harmed and someone proposed a 5 cent wafer tax as a solution, a response that "no, people actually just need to stop going" is useful and insightful. It points out that the tax doesn't solve the actual problem. It points out that any solution will require people not wanting to go to church. It is not a complete instructions set. I think you are confusing use in normative st…

Just to be clear, I think the act of being religious is harmful even if you were to get rid of every single church. Pedantic, yes, but the point is that this is purely a behavioral thing, not a specific action. I have tax-free ideas on the best ways to go about getting people to stop believing in dumb things but those are far beyond the scope of this conversation.

I am not “confusing” anything. In the case of teenage pregnancy, I have seen the conversation start and stop with “teenagers just shouldn’t have sex”.

If you’re just saying “I wish the world were X”, then sure you can make a declarative statement about what people are doing. That’s not what I have an issue with.

My issue is when people make a statement like “people should just…” without engaging in any meaningful way for that to happen.

Taxes on harmful behavior is one possible way we can curve it. It’s not the only way, and I am not claiming as such, but clearly righteous indignation telling people to stop using single-use plastics has not worked. We can wax philosophical as to why it hasn’t worked, and there might be value in that, but I just don’t think it’s particularly useful to begin an argument with “people should just stop buying single use plastic” as if that by itself is a meaningful thing to say.

Re: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

#260

Post by rendang »

mattigames wrote: post #252
rendang wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The minimum wage is not relevant as very few people make it. Wage earners at the top, bottom, and middle can afford a better (materially speaking) quality of life in the USA than at any time in the past: https://data.epi.org/wages/hourly_wage_percentiles/line/year...

This doesn't seem to take into account the price of land or the price of education or the price of healthcare, therefore claiming that they can afford a better quality of life it's highly misleading, if this is taking such things into account I would like to know exactly how.

All of those are part of the basket of goods and services tracked in the Consumer Price Index
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