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Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

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Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#691
Woolworths in Australia has a solution called Scan and Go. You use the app on your phone to scan barcodes as you take things off the shelves. When you’re done, the app charges your stored credit card and you scan a qr receipt at the door as you leave which opens a little boom gate.

I believe there’s still some AI based visual monitoring in place but it’s much simpler. Instead of needing to identify exactly what you’re picking up, it just needs to flag when it thinks you might have picked something up without scanning it. If that happens, it triggers a staff member to come have look in your bags when you scan your receipt to leave.

It seems like a much more pragmatic way to realise 80% of the value you get with “just walk out”.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

From my point of view, Uber and DD were always going to head in that direction because by any objective measure, they are worse than the solution that already existed. The introduction of a middleman created new costs for drivers, customers, and restaurants alike, yet it's actually worse at delivering food than the conventional "drivers work for the restaurant" model. Sure, you get one website where you can see all t…

> What Amazon is doing is different because they're actually doing something that adds value, and they're solving a problem that actually exists.

This shook a bit of illusion from my eyes, thank you. I never thought of Amazon's efforts in this as solving a real problem or adding real value! This is because for me, it doesn't, and I never thought it through beyond that.

Once again, the human tendency to think that our own situation represents the norm fooled me.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my point of view, Uber and DD were always going to head in that direction because by any objective measure, they are worse than the solution that already existed. The introduction of a middleman created new costs for drivers, customers, and restaurants alike, yet it's actually worse at delivering food than the conventional "drivers work for the restaurant" model. Sure, you get one website where you can see all t…

Thankfully the local pizza place here still has their own drivers and it’s only a two dollar delivery fee. Totally fine with that. And everything always arrives fresh and fast and I know where and who to complain to and I know the drivers are at least somewhat vetted.

I'm with you. After trying a few of those delivery services and finding them poor at best, I've gone back to only ordering delivery from places that do it themselves.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Underpaid" and "fair" is a modern political myth, except in the instances when there is a concerted effort to undermine the semi-natural labor market. Pay will never be enough, as a point of fact. It will always be "underpaid" and "unfair" in discussion. As this is an immortal pressure and negotiating tactic. It is incentivized, and therefore we will get more of it. That works both ways, but at some point there has…

A free market without political intervention is at least as much of a myth. If employees don't engage in politics with concepts like "fair wage" and "underpaid", employers certainly will with concepts such as "bottom quantile wages drive inflation". The Nash equilibrium is for both sides to engage in the market but also in the political context the market is embedded in. So complaining about workers demanding higher…

I noted that there were two sides. Explaining it doesn't advance the conversation.

"...in the political context the market is embedded in" is nonsense, especially when appealing to the "market sorting it out" in the next breath.

Which argument are you recruting? Political intervention or the free market? Both? That's nice hand waving, no offense. Seemingly to make it as if your position is so elevated that it satisfies all political ideals. Instead, choose. Unless you mean to imply that the (free) market is also the political market. But your language should be a lot more precise if that's your point, so as to eliminate the look of vague line straddling as a rhetorical tactic.

Your rebuttal over-simplifies my response and therefore seems like a word dump.

Your view, absent your muddled (imo) rationale described above, is included in my response. The complicating factors were a). the common simultaneous advocacy for importing millions of unskilled workers and b.) the implied fact that increasing wages decreases available jobs.

Those factors are included in my total "complaint" (observation). Which is not a "political conviction".

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specifically what movements and when? It’s a strange claim that globalization was caused (or even accelerated) by environmental movements. Certainly the UN came before the environmental movements of the 60s/70s. The World Bank and IMF were also established soon after the conclusion of WWII. The wiki article for globalization makes just a couple of off hand mentions of environmental issues. I’ve only ever heard of glo…

When Americans clamored for rivers that didn’t catch fire and for smog in LA to go away it became clear to corporations that it would be much cheaper and better for profits if they setup factories in poor countries that didn’t require them to stop egregiously polluting. Thus began the momentum for free trade agreements and breaking down of trade barriers. I used the term “globalization” as a proxy for free trade. Tha…

I can see how environmental policy could accelerate this phenomena, but surely the asymmetry of labor costs and cheaper/faster shipping is reason enough to offshore labor? Economical shipping seems to be the enabler, and miserly humans, as ever, the cause

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#697
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But not having customers right there who can complain and might even get an extra or a replacement gives less incentive to keep quality up. This is a super good point. I didn't think about that.

IMO thats the most important point of delivered food. Just compare the process and you will instantly see the difference. In a restaurant, the waiter will openly serve you your food. You get instant feedback. And see right away if something is off. In the delivery case, you get a closed package at your door, say "Thanks" to the deliverer and close the door again. Only when the guy (who isn't responsible for the quali…

I was thinking about it context of complaing to folks running the ghost kitchen vs say at a pizza hut location. I have gotten free food when they screwed up my order at pizza places, and they did care about resolving my problems.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Underpaid" and "fair" is a modern political myth, except in the instances when there is a concerted effort to undermine the semi-natural labor market. Pay will never be enough, as a point of fact. It will always be "underpaid" and "unfair" in discussion. As this is an immortal pressure and negotiating tactic. It is incentivized, and therefore we will get more of it. That works both ways, but at some point there has…

> Pay will never be enough, as a point of fact can you explain this a bit further please? also, what's the storm that's coming?

It'll "never be enough" in the sense that there is a non-existent potential of higher wages to stop agitation for more money.

Because there is no disincentive for labor to ever-advance the claim that their wages are enough.

In addition, the incentive to ever-claim that wages are not enough is unable to be quneched due to the fact that there is no risk. That logic is what supports my point.

The point can be proofed to economic mechanisms, as well. The exchange of money for goods naturally sets prices via an auction mechanism that, in turn, naturally creates an economic hierarchy in purchasing power.

Which is a verbose way of saying that raising the wages of the working class, while periodically necessary, will always lead to rising prices to create relatively par pourchasing power over time. When speaking of wages, purchasing power is all that matters (assuming lack of debt).

Artificially and dramatically forcing wages up only creates economic churn in job availability, housing equality, and asset ownership. All negative for the working class. If forces them into unemployment, out of urban centers, and creates firesale auctions for assets that wealthy people take advantage of.

To make matters worse, the "forced equality" economics of communism are only feudalism in disguise (which is hidden on the balance sheet of the State and Feudal Lord). The closer that the working class gets to forced economic equality, the closer that they get to slavery.

The storm that's coming is a cyclical return to various feudalists battling it out for workers who are paid the lowest possible wages and who have no labor protection. But on a wider scale than we are used to seeing.

The problem with wage debates is that there is no solution aside from a delicate balance that is easily corruptable. In fact, its natural state is corrupt imbalance.

This problem is unsolveable because it is inherent in the system of money.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#699
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage comes during shopping trips when one is not planning to use a cashier to check out, wherein: You're going to have the weigh the produce yourself, anyway, so you might as well get that done in advance.

> so you might as well get that done in advance There's really no time savings to be had for the individual is there? Both interfaces require you to punch in a product code and weigh the produce.

The advantages:

1. The PLUs are posted on the price signs in the produce section, so it's easy to remember them accurately when I weigh stuff. Entering the 4-digit PLU for starfruit is faster than navigating a list of pictures or searching by name, and is easy when I just saw it a moment ago: Short-term memory is a blessing and a curse, and this process makes good use of it. (I probably won't remember the PLU by the time I finish shopping and reach the self-checkout, except for bananas: That PLU has made it all the way to long-term memory and is 4011.)

2. Stress. The whole time I'm weighing out my produce at one of these fancy scales (I have to weigh it eventually anyway), I am at ease and am free to work at whatever pace I wish. This is not necessarily the case at self-checkout when there is a line of people behind me who simply want me to get done and be out of their way, so they can be done and out of there themselves.

3. The self-checkout line moves faster when my produce is already weighed. This offers me do direct advantage. But unlike some people, I am not a sociopath: Given the choice to make a thing easier or harder for someone else, at about equal cost to me, I try to do the thing that makes it easier for them. So I prefer that the line move faster, even if that doesn't actually save me any of my own time.

tl;Dr, I could behave more like crabs in a bucket, but instead I choose a more-orderly path and weigh my produce in advance.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#700
post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay will never be enough, as a point of fact can you explain this a bit further please? also, what's the storm that's coming?

This isn't what they meant apparently but in a very literal sense, pay can never be enough because it is economically necessary to underpay workers relative to what they contribute because profit by definition can only exist from surplus value, i.e. making more money from selling the product of labor than you pay for that labor. If I pay a worker $20 per hour to make 20 doodads an hour in my doodad factory and then s…

Luckily we live in a society with at least some degree of freedom, enough to where if a worker is convinced that they are entitled to 100% of their self-percieved value of their contribution then they can and should start their own company. As what you are referring to is ownership compensation. Many workers do this.

Unfortunately, much if not most of the time this calculation by the worker will be in error. As they tend to exclude the company scaffolding that they are not responsible for but that enables them to make their contribution.

Either way, its amazing that there is so much legal opportunity today for anyone to build an asset (eg: business) that they own. Asset ownership being the key to legal and ethical economic success in this world. I feel like more children should be taught as much at an early age, with less emphasis on the "nobility of work" that tends to exclude the importance of assets.

If group ownership is important, workers can certainly begin a business with that in mind.

Last, stock is sometimes sold publicly (direct ownership of the asset).

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