> Humans are agressively being eliminated from as many business models as possible.
Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.
Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful.
On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.
Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc. While sometimes the person doing the job can be interesting, or friendly, even if the person is amazing, generally these jobs are pretty repetitive, and could be done easier, faster, and cheaper with automation. Not only for the employer, but the customer. Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job (I can't blame them really, you get what you pay for). The only thing keeping employees around was that automation was more expensive (and more unreliable). Now it's the flip - labor is much more expensive and unreliable than automation. Now people in those jobs have to prove where they add value, if it's only to watch over the machines.
When I worked in the movie box, that was not at all true. People would come in and ask about the movie. How long was it, whether it was any good, should they see another one instead? We gave them real answers. Just because you have a minimum wage job doesn't mean you're a bump on a log. If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in the majority. Also, 99% of movies today are crap, so there's not much to talk about.
You write as though you've never held a minimum wage job. Have some compassion for those people who are working hard for almost nothing. Sometimes, it isn't their first choice, or it's their only choice. I would suggest a better experience is had when you give respect to the (say) service industry worker you engage in a transaction with.
> Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really.
It's sad how this socially destructive mindset has washed first over the US and then over the rest of the globe. The money religion has won.
I'm lucky to live in the French countryside, where solidarity is still a guiding principle for social interaction. The cinema in the closest town is run by a not-for-profit organisation, and the people who work there are volunteers (and tickets cost 3€ for adults). Likewise, our village feasts, meant to raise money for our small primary school, are organised by volunteers. Everyone contributes according to their abilities for the common good.
I'm not French and have only recently moved here, and I'm really impressed with the way people here take matters in their own hands and create social and economic value by volunteering.
> Someone in a movie box [...] is practically a useless annoyance
> Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really.
This may not be substantive enough for HN guidelines, but you know what? Ewwwww!
> On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.
I don't see the distinction. With all due respect to waitstaff (it's a tough job), the function is just begging for automation. An order-and-payment-taking tablet embedded into the table would be so much more efficient:
1. No need to wait for staff to come by, and then do the whole "drinks then wait, then food then wait" dance. Instead, just present a full page description of the food plus a picture, and an "order" button that you tap. You can even order more later if you'd like, without having to summon a waiter. Done.
2. No need to wait for staff to notice you're done eating and need the check. The total is right on the tablet, and it has a card reader.
That would be great. Would probably cut the entire time suck that is restaurant dining by at least 1/2.
You kinda missed the whole point of the OP, which was, if people don't add value to a business, how will said valueless people put food on the table and participate in society?
"On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. "
The fancy waiter will recommend whatever the owner of the restaurant wants him to recommend, because that is his actual job. He is employed to maximize the dollar value of food and liquor sold.
Now, there are limits to this. A good restauranteur isn't going to sell you inedible crap, and a good waiter isn't going to recommend it, because that will hurt the restaurant's long-term profitability (and in the short term, probably result in a bad tip for the waiter).
Nonetheless, it's wise to keep in mind that the waiter is working for the restaurant, not you.
If you have any friends who've worked in fancy restaurants, ask them about some of the strategies waiters use to encourage a large bill (and thus, a large tip).
> On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.
I only need the waiter to tell me this because I have no idea what the food with end up looking like. Just put pictures of items on the menu. Problem solved. Now it get to order what looks best.
> Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful.
This has not been my experience at all. People who work at theaters get discounted, if not free, tickets to movies and have often watched the featured movies themselves. They get to see how often people walk out, ask for a refund or praise a film. They can relate to your tastes and make recommendations based off of them. They can tell you if a movie isn't a great date flick and suggest another.
> Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc.
Speak for yourself. There is nothing more aggravating to me than self-checkout, it is slow, it is often buggy and I don't like having to scan, punch in codes and bag things myself. I hate having to wait for a manager's approval to apply a coupon or finish checkout because the machine decided I did something wrong and won't let me fix it.
Hell is having $20 a machine won't accept.
I prefer being able to speak with the people who are going to submit or prepare my order, because I can ask questions or customize what I want. I cannot do that with an app or touch screen menu.
> Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job
On the other hand, I live in Japan -- land of vending machines. I often have a choice between going to a convenience store or getting the exact same thing from a vending machine. I go to the convenience store and I do enjoy talking to the person there if they aren't too busy.
Obviously not everybody will be like that (I suspect I'm turning into one of those "old people" for whom they manage to keep the bank teller windows open for a few hours a day...) But I just want to point out that this isn't as straight forward as it seems. And, if my suspicion is true, with an ageing population society may actually swing in the direction where they prefer more human contact than less in their every day lives.
>Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs?
You're naive if you think this will only impact minimum wage jobs. Paying humans is usually about 30-50% of a companies operating expenses. With less humans you can shave even more percentages off by reducing office space or insurance premiums of applicable.
This might be starting with robot barista arms manipulating coffee machines, but it's really quickly going to make it to lab workers manipulating samples. Where it goes from there depends more on the software than the hardware, but it's really not a stretch to assume that shortly after we replace truckers, we're going to replace pilots and sea captains as well.
We're racing towards a decision. We can allow the automated cargo ships that will soon manage all global trade to be owned by a small cabal, or we can nationalize these systems and use the value they create to support our most disadvantaged populations.
> One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.
You make an interesting point, and I want to remark to it - this is why I don't think the problem is just automation, but in fact social inequality. You can always employ people to take care of a small, privileged class of people.
The extent to which society does this is completely cultural choice. I heard of comparison, in Brazil, several procents of households have a maid (or multiple), where in Sweden, less than half percent of households have one.
While I agree with your statement on the movie theatre ticket counter, I would say that I enjoy talking to the cashier at walmart. I usually ask how they are doing, I might ask about their name if it is an interesting name, or complement them on something. Some cashiers end up being short and don't seem to want to talk, but I often have great interactions. Granted, Walmart pays more than minimum wage, but I don't think it matters.
I realize that UBI is a very popular position on HN, so I am hoping someone here has given this more thought and can comment.
My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly.
Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, etc).
If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.
Anyway, it would be nice if it worked, but I've seen no evidence that it will in a large system. Comments appreciated.
Why would you expect inflation? All sane UBI proposals don't create money, they just move money from rich people to poor people. If you're a Friedman disciple, then "inflation is a monetary phenomenon" and we can stop there.
If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up.
The vast majority of stuff poor people buy is demand limited, not supply limited, so if poor people start buying more PS4's, Sony will just make more.
I'll also assert that food is demand limited, we have lots more capacity to increase production than people think. It doesn't matter though; the problem with poor people in the United States is that they eat too much, not that they eat too little.
The only thing that might see price movement is housing. That's definitely supply limited in many places. But maybe UBI will encourage people to move from high cost areas where UBI isn't sufficient to live on to low cost areas where it is. And movement will only happen in the margins -- most of the poor in the States already have a place to live, so demand shouldn't increase that much.
Most western social democracies already have an overlapping network of benefit systems that are essentially a patchwork UBI in disguise. The system is designed not to go without food and shelter, but the exact mechanism varies depending on what population group you belong to. There's assistance for the temporary unemployed, for students, for people with disabilities, people with long-term illnesses, etc. There's pensions for those that have aged out of the workforce, there's assistance for children. And this is only scratching the surface. Even working people get a fixed basic tax deduction under most taxation systems.
I'm not convinced that the sum total of all these benefits plus the current infrastructure that is needed to maintain, dispense and detect/punish abuse on them is significantly larger than the total expenditure on UBI.
Of course, all the people that you let go from the benefits departments initially will end up on UBI, so that's not really a big win. But eventually they will find employment elsewhere, hopefully.
The best explanations I've heard effectively make the assertion that a country's land is collectively owned by its citizens. Its citizens can then charge rent (via taxation) to individuals or corporations using the land. UBI is the distribution of that rent.
I think one of the biggest problems in the world right now is how much money is simply captured and not moving through the economy. A huge amount of money is sitting around adding very little economic value. Redistribute that money to people who will use it to consume products and services and you get a much more active economy.
You know, trillions are raided from communities and stashed offshore untouched instead of being reinvested locally, this makes entire continents poorer; on the other hand, it is common sense today to give people the basic to survive instead of having them fleeing, migrating and becoming criminals. You may even avoid paper money, just give all a credit card to buy the minimum daily dietary without withdrawal allowance. Otherwise history says that there will be wars.
But sometimes that scarce resource is time. You pay a person for their time doing a service. For instance, waiting tables. Cleaning. Staffing a counter. Driving a truck. Nothing (or very little) is constructed there, it is just a service rendered.
And you can therefore consider financing UBI by virtue of the time saved by automating these tasks. You take that time saved and hand it back as dollars instead of translating it into additional profit.
You're absolutely right, but theres no other solution that's feasible. If we don't have some form of UBI, I'm willing to bet in 20-30 years we're looking at another French revolution.
I think the best solution is instead of handing out liquid cash that can be used/abused in any way (and contribute to inflation as you say), the better option is to provide basic accommodations for every citizen in a given country. This means, basic housing / basic education / basic means of transportation (either car or ride sharing credits) / basic forms of entertainment / basic access to some vacation spots. That way no one needs to work anymore but you could keep the general citizen's happiness to a stable level.
The only problem with this solution is that the government has to pay for this by either borrowing money from private creditors or to tax the rich heavily. The rich are only rich because they're good at keeping their money, so it's a good solution, but incredibly hard to pull off.
UBI generally has the implication attached to it that creating a proper safety net allows for savings in other areas, simplifies other social services, and reduces costs through net social benefit - not just the upfront costs.
So health care savings, the ability to quit your job and go back to school (or other kinds of re-training, generally a diversified workforce is a beneficial one), reducing the need for shelters, etc.
This is aside from the fact that a reduced engagement in the workforce doesn't have to be a negative thing - plenty of money is being made, it's just not being distributed very well :) UBI just intends to right that inequality in a productive way.
UBI isnt the solution, there just isnt a better response that has even slight chance of being implemented.
There needs to be a radical shift in how we look at our economic systems and culture in the medium term. However, if the currently proposed health care replacement is evidence of current thinking, U I is a pipe dream.
I don't usually make predictions, but it is going to get very ugly in the next 10 years if nothing changes.
Inflation or deflation is basically driven by the balance of goods and services available against money being spent. If your hairdresser say is full all the time you raise prices, if it's empty you give discounts.
At the moment if you handed everyone more cash without an increase in output you would get inflation.
If you took the money from the rich and gave it to the poor you might get some inflation in basic goods as the poor tend to spend their money while the rich invest it. Also possibly deflation in luxury condos. This probably isn't going to happen in a hurry due to politics.
If robots start producing a lot of goods and services then giving more money to people would not necessarily be inflationary and there would be more money spent but more goods and services also. Your hairdresser would have twice the customers but employ robo-haircutters rather than raise prices as it were. I could see something along these lines being gradually rolled out with the amount of basic income increasing as human labour became less necessary.
As others said, UBI doesn't necessitate increasing the stock of money, it's a system of redistribution. The types of goods being consumed by the economy as a whole would change, you correctly predict (if they didn't, UBI could hardly be called a success in redistributing money to the poor, could it?). Luckily, one thing capitalism does have going for it if nothing else is that it encourages a rapid response to changing demand. There may be a period of time where the grocery store aisles are leaner than usual, so to speak, but I don't see why we wouldn't see our usual swift return to equilibrium.
we're so sophisticated now that we abstract the idea of work away from the idea of making a living (as in being able to be alive, as opposed to dead) and come up with concepts like UBI where we can simply not work, without realizing that not working correlates with not living.
work is not some thing apart from ourselves. work is not something apart from play or recreation or relaxation or any such things. we move and create and change and destroy all the same. we value these things as part of our social fabric of keeping a community of us humans alive. money lets us abstract away the need to trade immediate goods for that purpose, but it also lets us abstract out the fairness of it all. those who seem to contribute more to the general welfare might deserve a little more in return, whether it be in goods or esteem or respect. but we're all expected to put in along with taking out.
UBI would tear up that implicit social contract and unmoor us from our democratic underpinnings. while well-intended, UBI suffers from the same idealism as libertarianism by failing to grasp even a basic modicum of the human condition.
despite automation, people will create ways to make a living. lives are literally depending on it. that's not to advocate long-term suffering, but our social responsibility should be focused on using our natural craftiness to help others help themselves (and leveling the playing field), not providing handouts.
Look at Alaska which has a long-term state-run form of UBI. It's about $100 per person per month. Even at such a low amount, to your point, it creates some measurable inflation and other distortions in the market. UBI may only work as a low, supplemental amount to start, so it could be a fair analog. The idea that we'll start with UBI that's enough for each individual to rent a studio, cover transportation costs, and put food on the table seems improbable.
We can draw an interesting historical parallel from the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE. Expansion had greatly enriched the Senatorial class (and the Equites). Meanwhile, middle class Romans (I use the term technically to refer those in the middle property classes able to serve in the military) had been the soldiers who fought in the campaigns the senators had used to get rich.
The soldiers' farms fell into disrepair while they were away campaigning and were bought by the wealthy senators when the soldiers realised they could not work them anymore. The Senators then used the slaves they had brought back from overseas to work those farms thereby eliminating the need for hired labour from the dispossessed. The now landless soldiers lived off the grain dole until popularist leaders came along and offered to pay them directly to fight for them. This was a key factor in the breakdown of Roman democracy and the rise of the emperors (princeps).
The early adopters will be the largest companies with the most to gain from improvements in efficiency.
This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies.
I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out over the last few decades. Now the middle tier company is going to get killed cause they can't change fast enough.
I hate to say this, and this is in no way a troll, but I believe the solution for this will eventually be to kill the poor.
Not directly, at least I don't think, but through lack of health care, lack of shelter, lack of education, poor diet, use in waging war, incarceration, and probably once they get desperate and try and get theirs, being labelled terrorists.
People who have money, and therefore power, in the United States are not going to give it up so someone down the economic scale can have a modicum of comfort and dignity and purpose. They will, carefully and covertly, and maybe even inadvertently, remove them.
From Henry Hazlitts 1946 classic "Economics in One Lesson":
You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.
One thing that might cushion the displacement of workers by automation is if the workers themselves had an ownership interest in the automation technology. Yes, they would lose their jobs, but having an ownership interest would allow them to generate income.
Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership interest in productive property.
One naive way to implement that is to just grant shares in an index fund that tracks the robotics/automation sector, such as the ROBO Global Index (http://www.roboglobal.com).
Obviously, that's not the best way to do it, because if I've just been laid off and have to pay my mortgage, I'm going to turn all my shares into cash.
But there might be some more sophisticated way to grant ownership of productive property that would both generate income and also give influence to the very workers who are most affected by the technology's success.
I have no idea why this is getting upvoted. A blog post that simply observes a bunch of self-serve kiosk machines, has a bait title, and is used on HN for an uninformative rehash of a UBI discussion that has taken place here over and over. I was hoping at least for a piece that made an argument or said something informative, not for some photos of a movie theater lobby and a restaurant.
I really don't understand why ideas like the Negative Income Tax aren't being considered before Universal Basic Income. In that scenario, the government just sets an income floor and pays the difference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax).
UBI makes little sense whenever someone making 500K a year still gets it unconditionally. The marginal utility of that is nil, but its tax implications are massive (how do you even fund something like that in today's economy).
> My best guess is that we’re not going to resolve these challenges in any intentional comprehensive logical manner. At least not at first. Instead circumstances are going to overwhelm us until enough of the population is miserable enough to demand real change. That’s been the historical model and it tends to be messy.
This is why I think we need to accelerate the pace of automation as much as possible. That's the only way of creating enough governmental pressure fast enough to reduce the suffering time of the first waves hit by automation. Counter-intuitive, but the faster we get there the less suffering in the transition and the faster society wakes up to the fact that we have to take care of our own.
The right to subsistence has been conveniently tied to the ability to work because that's easy to understand, but it's always been an artificial link.
Right now, in the U.S., I'd settle for guaranteed basic/effective health care.
If you aren't going to outright kill people, and if you expect them to "bootstrap" and move on to the next job, you should put some effort into making sure they are healthy enough to do so.
Not to mention basic morality.
Nor that problems treated early are smaller and cost less. And that society pays that cost, whether through cost spreading by private healthcare (hospital critical care -- the last line of defense); Medicaid and government programs; or prison.
Unless you really are going to just bury them, and spring for a pauper's grave.
Sounds rhetorical? Look at Jeff Sessions' latest mandate to prosecutors: 'Lock them up! For as long as possible!'
I always feel we will just scale larger and larger. We automate farming and move onto industry. We automate industry and move onto service. Now we are automating service and we will move onto something else, perhaps tech.
We are a long ways off from programs programming themselves. NLP and machine learning are still in their infancy. Program analysis and automated bug patching is still young tech. There is still a lot of work to be done and I am confident we will find ways to provide value to each other.
"There will always be a need for someone to wipe down the tables, mop the floors, and take out the trash so a few minimum wage level positions will linger on."
Hah, yeah right. Boy is the author gonna be surprised when those jobs get automated too.
That is a pretty well presented argument for mass unemployment. But it suffers from all such arguments in that is extrapolates "today" into "tomorrow" without acknowledging that there are literally billions of variables at work.
A simple example of the challenges this sort of reasoning present; assume you're a being that perceives time very slowly, perhaps your lifetime is a mere 100 milliseconds rather than 100 years. But your perception is fairly good and you can observe and measure things several yards away in all direction. And you're living in seawater near the beach. Through out your entire life, and for several generations, the amount of seawater above your head has been growing and growing. You believe that eventually there will be sea water "as far as you can observe" above your head.
As an outside observer with a different time scale and perception, we "see" that this being is part of an ocean wave that once the mass of water above the center of gravity moves ahead of it because of water below being slowed by the the beach, the wave will 'crash' and fall into foam.
Now if we could explain this to the creature in the wave, or if the creatures there had some sort of stored history, they might know that in the past there have been waves and the waves have crashed and that the seawater never extended so far into the sky. And there might be debates because some waves reached a height that was higher than any other wave in recorded history and so maybe this time, this time the wave would grow forever.
Except from our time spanning view we realize that all of those fears and understandings arise from the the short lifetimes of the creatures versus the longer time of a wave cycle, and so few creatures will ever encounter another who has experienced "the crash".
These unemployment doomsday articles suffer from a similar myopia. Yes, technology does advance, and yes, it changes how people are employed and what it takes to be employed. Technology shifts however have not resulted in a 'net loss' of employment opportunities when looked at in the full view, ever.
So rather than focus on the 'loss of jobs' let us focus on "transition" support. I point out to people all of the time that we have tremendous gaps between supply and demand in what have historically been called "the trades."
The reality of that was brought home to me when I started a bathroom remodeling project in Las Vegas. For that project I need a plumber, an electrician, and a mason. Three classic 'trades'. I cannot find three people that I can schedule who are licensed contractors, any sooner than 6 months from now. They are all booked up, and as a result leaving money on the table from unfilled demand.
What is more, Las Vegas has very affordable housing. It was hit hard by the mortgage crisis and house prices have still not recovered in large parts of the city. So it isn't like a plumber can't afford to live in the city.
I really think we need to stop stressing out that the number of retail cashier jobs are going away and start figuring out why people aren't able to train for the jobs that are available and going unfilled.
In the barista example, the robot clearly will be able to make a more consistent cup. Maybe the solution then is to make the barista experience more elaborate and enjoyable, sort of like performance art? Flair bartending is a good example of that, aesthetic differences aside. Humans, when properly trained in the creative arts, are still the best entertainers of other humans.
I wonder how this will impact the world of fine dining and establishments that have a great reputation with their community. Just yesterday I was watching a Japanese show about a restaurant owner in Louisiana who would spend all night in his store going between the customers and the kitchen, coming up with new menu items on the fly with his friends(customers), introducing people to each other, going to the neighboring bars to visit and try out their new drinks/food, and just really combining the best aspects of a chef, host, and wait staff. I doubt his store will be severely impacted by automation since you're not just buying food or a drink, you're there to be a part of something you really love and supporting a man and his business in keeping something beautiful alive.
Maybe this whole automation issue will give the big box retailers and chain restaurants a kick in the butt to up add a deeper human element to their experiences? Or maybe the space will be filled in by people who can make spaces for people to just have a good time and connect with their community, instead of being walked along like dogs through a programmed conveyor belt experience.
Actually I would argue to social systems and people arguing like this blog post we already have some slowing that process and its effect. We are actually already doing "better" than nature in this regard, because of culture (if you consider sacrificing survivability in exchange for social benefits better).
In general this is just normal evolution, something more efficient replaces something less effecient. And it's not completely stopabble. Let's say you can create laws that force McDonalds to keep staff and not use robots. Then at some point McDonalds will get bankrupt and another company will take its place. Maybe you can make the laws that forces all companies in your country to employ people despite not needing them any more. Then at some point your country will be too poor and gets replaced by another country, either through invasion, or revolution, or both.
There isn't enough 'high value' work to be done. We don't 'need' so many people to feed or house or even entertain the planet. We have a distribution problem of affluence, not a production problem. Even much of our current value 'work' only exist because we are externalizing the disastrous impact it has on the planet and its inhabitants. Maybe VR will offer a way out. Keeping the masses 'occupied' with virtual labor that has less of an ecological impact. Grinding lvl 863 mining in an MMO, not for fun, but for life.
People have it tough. To compound to this the cost of things like food, housing and energy are sky rocketing, at least the have been in Toronto where I live.
I don't know if UBI is the answer, or even if the problems are tied to mechanization. But certainly I think we hit the nail on the head when we realize that things are glib and something needs to be done. If not UBI, than something big to ensure that everyone can share in the wealth our society produces and that people are not scrounging, fighting and drowning in debt just to barely get by.
[+] [-] cbanek|8 years ago|reply
Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.
Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful.
On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.
Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc. While sometimes the person doing the job can be interesting, or friendly, even if the person is amazing, generally these jobs are pretty repetitive, and could be done easier, faster, and cheaper with automation. Not only for the employer, but the customer. Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job (I can't blame them really, you get what you pay for). The only thing keeping employees around was that automation was more expensive (and more unreliable). Now it's the flip - labor is much more expensive and unreliable than automation. Now people in those jobs have to prove where they add value, if it's only to watch over the machines.
[+] [-] e_d_e_v|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinator|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ciconia|8 years ago|reply
It's sad how this socially destructive mindset has washed first over the US and then over the rest of the globe. The money religion has won.
I'm lucky to live in the French countryside, where solidarity is still a guiding principle for social interaction. The cinema in the closest town is run by a not-for-profit organisation, and the people who work there are volunteers (and tickets cost 3€ for adults). Likewise, our village feasts, meant to raise money for our small primary school, are organised by volunteers. Everyone contributes according to their abilities for the common good.
I'm not French and have only recently moved here, and I'm really impressed with the way people here take matters in their own hands and create social and economic value by volunteering.
[+] [-] contras1970|8 years ago|reply
This may not be substantive enough for HN guidelines, but you know what? Ewwwww!
[+] [-] ryandrake|8 years ago|reply
I don't see the distinction. With all due respect to waitstaff (it's a tough job), the function is just begging for automation. An order-and-payment-taking tablet embedded into the table would be so much more efficient:
1. No need to wait for staff to come by, and then do the whole "drinks then wait, then food then wait" dance. Instead, just present a full page description of the food plus a picture, and an "order" button that you tap. You can even order more later if you'd like, without having to summon a waiter. Done.
2. No need to wait for staff to notice you're done eating and need the check. The total is right on the tablet, and it has a card reader.
That would be great. Would probably cut the entire time suck that is restaurant dining by at least 1/2.
[+] [-] adamsea|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Turing_Machine|8 years ago|reply
The fancy waiter will recommend whatever the owner of the restaurant wants him to recommend, because that is his actual job. He is employed to maximize the dollar value of food and liquor sold.
Now, there are limits to this. A good restauranteur isn't going to sell you inedible crap, and a good waiter isn't going to recommend it, because that will hurt the restaurant's long-term profitability (and in the short term, probably result in a bad tip for the waiter).
Nonetheless, it's wise to keep in mind that the waiter is working for the restaurant, not you.
If you have any friends who've worked in fancy restaurants, ask them about some of the strategies waiters use to encourage a large bill (and thus, a large tip).
[+] [-] choward|8 years ago|reply
I only need the waiter to tell me this because I have no idea what the food with end up looking like. Just put pictures of items on the menu. Problem solved. Now it get to order what looks best.
[+] [-] darpa_escapee|8 years ago|reply
This has not been my experience at all. People who work at theaters get discounted, if not free, tickets to movies and have often watched the featured movies themselves. They get to see how often people walk out, ask for a refund or praise a film. They can relate to your tastes and make recommendations based off of them. They can tell you if a movie isn't a great date flick and suggest another.
> Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc.
Speak for yourself. There is nothing more aggravating to me than self-checkout, it is slow, it is often buggy and I don't like having to scan, punch in codes and bag things myself. I hate having to wait for a manager's approval to apply a coupon or finish checkout because the machine decided I did something wrong and won't let me fix it.
Hell is having $20 a machine won't accept.
I prefer being able to speak with the people who are going to submit or prepare my order, because I can ask questions or customize what I want. I cannot do that with an app or touch screen menu.
> Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job
Again, speak for your own experiences.
[+] [-] mikekchar|8 years ago|reply
Obviously not everybody will be like that (I suspect I'm turning into one of those "old people" for whom they manage to keep the bank teller windows open for a few hours a day...) But I just want to point out that this isn't as straight forward as it seems. And, if my suspicion is true, with an ageing population society may actually swing in the direction where they prefer more human contact than less in their every day lives.
[+] [-] irrational|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sir_Substance|8 years ago|reply
You're naive if you think this will only impact minimum wage jobs. Paying humans is usually about 30-50% of a companies operating expenses. With less humans you can shave even more percentages off by reducing office space or insurance premiums of applicable.
This might be starting with robot barista arms manipulating coffee machines, but it's really quickly going to make it to lab workers manipulating samples. Where it goes from there depends more on the software than the hardware, but it's really not a stretch to assume that shortly after we replace truckers, we're going to replace pilots and sea captains as well.
We're racing towards a decision. We can allow the automated cargo ships that will soon manage all global trade to be owned by a small cabal, or we can nationalize these systems and use the value they create to support our most disadvantaged populations.
[+] [-] js8|8 years ago|reply
You make an interesting point, and I want to remark to it - this is why I don't think the problem is just automation, but in fact social inequality. You can always employ people to take care of a small, privileged class of people.
The extent to which society does this is completely cultural choice. I heard of comparison, in Brazil, several procents of households have a maid (or multiple), where in Sweden, less than half percent of households have one.
[+] [-] ensignavenger|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] chris_va|8 years ago|reply
My problem with UBI is that all tests to date look great, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue I would like addressed is the macro scale inflation you would expect when redistributing trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being created directly.
Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, etc).
If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.
Anyway, it would be nice if it worked, but I've seen no evidence that it will in a large system. Comments appreciated.
[+] [-] bryanlarsen|8 years ago|reply
If we're moving money from rich people to poor people, perhaps we'll see the prices of stuff rich people buy go down and the prices of stuff poor people buy go up.
The vast majority of stuff poor people buy is demand limited, not supply limited, so if poor people start buying more PS4's, Sony will just make more.
I'll also assert that food is demand limited, we have lots more capacity to increase production than people think. It doesn't matter though; the problem with poor people in the United States is that they eat too much, not that they eat too little.
The only thing that might see price movement is housing. That's definitely supply limited in many places. But maybe UBI will encourage people to move from high cost areas where UBI isn't sufficient to live on to low cost areas where it is. And movement will only happen in the margins -- most of the poor in the States already have a place to live, so demand shouldn't increase that much.
[+] [-] drxzcl|8 years ago|reply
I'm not convinced that the sum total of all these benefits plus the current infrastructure that is needed to maintain, dispense and detect/punish abuse on them is significantly larger than the total expenditure on UBI.
Of course, all the people that you let go from the benefits departments initially will end up on UBI, so that's not really a big win. But eventually they will find employment elsewhere, hopefully.
[+] [-] the_gastropod|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wvenable|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrNuke|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rpearl|8 years ago|reply
And you can therefore consider financing UBI by virtue of the time saved by automating these tasks. You take that time saved and hand it back as dollars instead of translating it into additional profit.
[+] [-] omot|8 years ago|reply
I think the best solution is instead of handing out liquid cash that can be used/abused in any way (and contribute to inflation as you say), the better option is to provide basic accommodations for every citizen in a given country. This means, basic housing / basic education / basic means of transportation (either car or ride sharing credits) / basic forms of entertainment / basic access to some vacation spots. That way no one needs to work anymore but you could keep the general citizen's happiness to a stable level.
The only problem with this solution is that the government has to pay for this by either borrowing money from private creditors or to tax the rich heavily. The rich are only rich because they're good at keeping their money, so it's a good solution, but incredibly hard to pull off.
[+] [-] bluehazed|8 years ago|reply
So health care savings, the ability to quit your job and go back to school (or other kinds of re-training, generally a diversified workforce is a beneficial one), reducing the need for shelters, etc.
This is aside from the fact that a reduced engagement in the workforce doesn't have to be a negative thing - plenty of money is being made, it's just not being distributed very well :) UBI just intends to right that inequality in a productive way.
[+] [-] FullMtlAlcoholc|8 years ago|reply
There needs to be a radical shift in how we look at our economic systems and culture in the medium term. However, if the currently proposed health care replacement is evidence of current thinking, U I is a pipe dream.
I don't usually make predictions, but it is going to get very ugly in the next 10 years if nothing changes.
[+] [-] tim333|8 years ago|reply
At the moment if you handed everyone more cash without an increase in output you would get inflation.
If you took the money from the rich and gave it to the poor you might get some inflation in basic goods as the poor tend to spend their money while the rich invest it. Also possibly deflation in luxury condos. This probably isn't going to happen in a hurry due to politics.
If robots start producing a lot of goods and services then giving more money to people would not necessarily be inflationary and there would be more money spent but more goods and services also. Your hairdresser would have twice the customers but employ robo-haircutters rather than raise prices as it were. I could see something along these lines being gradually rolled out with the amount of basic income increasing as human labour became less necessary.
[+] [-] savanaly|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clairity|8 years ago|reply
work is not some thing apart from ourselves. work is not something apart from play or recreation or relaxation or any such things. we move and create and change and destroy all the same. we value these things as part of our social fabric of keeping a community of us humans alive. money lets us abstract away the need to trade immediate goods for that purpose, but it also lets us abstract out the fairness of it all. those who seem to contribute more to the general welfare might deserve a little more in return, whether it be in goods or esteem or respect. but we're all expected to put in along with taking out.
UBI would tear up that implicit social contract and unmoor us from our democratic underpinnings. while well-intended, UBI suffers from the same idealism as libertarianism by failing to grasp even a basic modicum of the human condition.
despite automation, people will create ways to make a living. lives are literally depending on it. that's not to advocate long-term suffering, but our social responsibility should be focused on using our natural craftiness to help others help themselves (and leveling the playing field), not providing handouts.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nugget|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] funkyy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimmywinestock|8 years ago|reply
The soldiers' farms fell into disrepair while they were away campaigning and were bought by the wealthy senators when the soldiers realised they could not work them anymore. The Senators then used the slaves they had brought back from overseas to work those farms thereby eliminating the need for hired labour from the dispossessed. The now landless soldiers lived off the grain dole until popularist leaders came along and offered to pay them directly to fight for them. This was a key factor in the breakdown of Roman democracy and the rise of the emperors (princeps).
[+] [-] AndrewKemendo|8 years ago|reply
This pattern is actually the one I'm worried about the most. New tech is giving outsize advantage to the major players across almost every industry, who can afford to invest in creating internal teams for these big new technologies.
I see this in every industry I encounter. The middle class worker lost out over the last few decades. Now the middle tier company is going to get killed cause they can't change fast enough.
[+] [-] redleggedfrog|8 years ago|reply
Not directly, at least I don't think, but through lack of health care, lack of shelter, lack of education, poor diet, use in waging war, incarceration, and probably once they get desperate and try and get theirs, being labelled terrorists.
People who have money, and therefore power, in the United States are not going to give it up so someone down the economic scale can have a modicum of comfort and dignity and purpose. They will, carefully and covertly, and maybe even inadvertently, remove them.
[+] [-] bluedino|8 years ago|reply
They're tablets, from Ziosk. iPad is the Kleenex of this generation.
I rather like those, nothing like paying (and leaving) when I want instead of trying to track down the waiter for 20 minutes
[+] [-] sparkling|8 years ago|reply
You cannot make a man worth a given amount by making it illegal for anyone to offer him anything less. You merely deprive him of the right to earn the amount that his abilities and situation would permit him to earn, while you deprive the community even of the moderate services that he is capable of rendering. In brief, for a low wage you substitute unemployment. You do harm all around, with no comparable compensation.
[+] [-] jawns|8 years ago|reply
Maybe instead of UBI, we should consider a scheme where we grant an ownership interest in productive property.
One naive way to implement that is to just grant shares in an index fund that tracks the robotics/automation sector, such as the ROBO Global Index (http://www.roboglobal.com).
Obviously, that's not the best way to do it, because if I've just been laid off and have to pay my mortgage, I'm going to turn all my shares into cash.
But there might be some more sophisticated way to grant ownership of productive property that would both generate income and also give influence to the very workers who are most affected by the technology's success.
[+] [-] RangerScience|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] massysett|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SirensOfTitan|8 years ago|reply
UBI makes little sense whenever someone making 500K a year still gets it unconditionally. The marginal utility of that is nil, but its tax implications are massive (how do you even fund something like that in today's economy).
[+] [-] lux|8 years ago|reply
This is why I think we need to accelerate the pace of automation as much as possible. That's the only way of creating enough governmental pressure fast enough to reduce the suffering time of the first waves hit by automation. Counter-intuitive, but the faster we get there the less suffering in the transition and the faster society wakes up to the fact that we have to take care of our own.
The right to subsistence has been conveniently tied to the ability to work because that's easy to understand, but it's always been an artificial link.
[+] [-] pasbesoin|8 years ago|reply
If you aren't going to outright kill people, and if you expect them to "bootstrap" and move on to the next job, you should put some effort into making sure they are healthy enough to do so.
Not to mention basic morality.
Nor that problems treated early are smaller and cost less. And that society pays that cost, whether through cost spreading by private healthcare (hospital critical care -- the last line of defense); Medicaid and government programs; or prison.
Unless you really are going to just bury them, and spring for a pauper's grave.
Sounds rhetorical? Look at Jeff Sessions' latest mandate to prosecutors: 'Lock them up! For as long as possible!'
Look at the widening gaps in longevity.
Follow the money (to the top).
[+] [-] TACIXAT|8 years ago|reply
We are a long ways off from programs programming themselves. NLP and machine learning are still in their infancy. Program analysis and automated bug patching is still young tech. There is still a lot of work to be done and I am confident we will find ways to provide value to each other.
[+] [-] etskinner|8 years ago|reply
Hah, yeah right. Boy is the author gonna be surprised when those jobs get automated too.
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
A simple example of the challenges this sort of reasoning present; assume you're a being that perceives time very slowly, perhaps your lifetime is a mere 100 milliseconds rather than 100 years. But your perception is fairly good and you can observe and measure things several yards away in all direction. And you're living in seawater near the beach. Through out your entire life, and for several generations, the amount of seawater above your head has been growing and growing. You believe that eventually there will be sea water "as far as you can observe" above your head.
As an outside observer with a different time scale and perception, we "see" that this being is part of an ocean wave that once the mass of water above the center of gravity moves ahead of it because of water below being slowed by the the beach, the wave will 'crash' and fall into foam.
Now if we could explain this to the creature in the wave, or if the creatures there had some sort of stored history, they might know that in the past there have been waves and the waves have crashed and that the seawater never extended so far into the sky. And there might be debates because some waves reached a height that was higher than any other wave in recorded history and so maybe this time, this time the wave would grow forever.
Except from our time spanning view we realize that all of those fears and understandings arise from the the short lifetimes of the creatures versus the longer time of a wave cycle, and so few creatures will ever encounter another who has experienced "the crash".
These unemployment doomsday articles suffer from a similar myopia. Yes, technology does advance, and yes, it changes how people are employed and what it takes to be employed. Technology shifts however have not resulted in a 'net loss' of employment opportunities when looked at in the full view, ever.
So rather than focus on the 'loss of jobs' let us focus on "transition" support. I point out to people all of the time that we have tremendous gaps between supply and demand in what have historically been called "the trades."
The reality of that was brought home to me when I started a bathroom remodeling project in Las Vegas. For that project I need a plumber, an electrician, and a mason. Three classic 'trades'. I cannot find three people that I can schedule who are licensed contractors, any sooner than 6 months from now. They are all booked up, and as a result leaving money on the table from unfilled demand.
What is more, Las Vegas has very affordable housing. It was hit hard by the mortgage crisis and house prices have still not recovered in large parts of the city. So it isn't like a plumber can't afford to live in the city.
I really think we need to stop stressing out that the number of retail cashier jobs are going away and start figuring out why people aren't able to train for the jobs that are available and going unfilled.
[+] [-] grblovrflowerrr|8 years ago|reply
I wonder how this will impact the world of fine dining and establishments that have a great reputation with their community. Just yesterday I was watching a Japanese show about a restaurant owner in Louisiana who would spend all night in his store going between the customers and the kitchen, coming up with new menu items on the fly with his friends(customers), introducing people to each other, going to the neighboring bars to visit and try out their new drinks/food, and just really combining the best aspects of a chef, host, and wait staff. I doubt his store will be severely impacted by automation since you're not just buying food or a drink, you're there to be a part of something you really love and supporting a man and his business in keeping something beautiful alive.
Maybe this whole automation issue will give the big box retailers and chain restaurants a kick in the butt to up add a deeper human element to their experiences? Or maybe the space will be filled in by people who can make spaces for people to just have a good time and connect with their community, instead of being walked along like dogs through a programmed conveyor belt experience.
[+] [-] erikb|8 years ago|reply
In general this is just normal evolution, something more efficient replaces something less effecient. And it's not completely stopabble. Let's say you can create laws that force McDonalds to keep staff and not use robots. Then at some point McDonalds will get bankrupt and another company will take its place. Maybe you can make the laws that forces all companies in your country to employ people despite not needing them any more. Then at some point your country will be too poor and gets replaced by another country, either through invasion, or revolution, or both.
[+] [-] PeterStuer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vivekd|8 years ago|reply
I don't know if UBI is the answer, or even if the problems are tied to mechanization. But certainly I think we hit the nail on the head when we realize that things are glib and something needs to be done. If not UBI, than something big to ensure that everyone can share in the wealth our society produces and that people are not scrounging, fighting and drowning in debt just to barely get by.