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In general, automation removes low-skilled labor first. Now that sure isn’t the most fulfilling work, but there are a lot of dumb people who just can’t really do any job that isn’t dumb work. So what are those people supposed to do when all the dumb work jobs have been automated away?
The most humanitarian solution is probably some form of universal basic income (which will require higher taxes). I think that’s probably what we’ll have to end up doing, but going back to fulfillment: a dumb job is still a job. You’re doing something all day, presumably you can get some satisfaction trying to do it well, or socializing with colleagues… I don’t know if the effects on society are going to be great if we replace that with “we won’t let you starve, but you’re really of no use to anybody. Just go watch TV or something.”
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It’s absolutely WILD to me that this should be controversial.
There are MANY jobs that robots are not going to be able to do, or do better. ALL work is honorable work. How about we stop treating some work as inherently better than others. 
It really is classist bullshit.
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But surely, once we invent utopia…
Oh. Right. I see the problem.
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Point of contention: the jobs are not necessarily low skilled. It takes some amount of talent to assemble a full plate of 12 cheeseburgers and get the fixings on them in a mostly accurate manner. Especially in the middle of the lunch / dinner rush when those burgers and the next plate of 12 are already sold. (Source: I worked at a McDonalds in the mid 90’s between high school and getting my first ‘real’ IT job.)
:: falls out of chair laughing ::
Full time employees at fast food restaurants are normally shift supervisors and above. Wages still suck, the health benefits are worse than state health care for those that qualify (and worse, they pay you just enough that you don’t qualify), retirement savings are non existent for the most part (possibly store managers might be able to buy into a 401(k) if it’s a corporate owned store), etc.
:: hands Elmer a coupon for a frosty beverage of their choosing at the bar in lieu of a Coke ::
Yeah; most of the drive thrus are doing this, and it’s dumb. All that recording really does is tell the person in the car “We know you are there, we are waiting for a human with a headset to take your order” or some such.
Even shutterstock or other stock image sites? Or are they charging robber baron prices for access?
… aaaand I probably just answered my own questions.
THIS. UBI would be a good first step for this, but that’s an entire drum of worms I’d rather not open…
As in “put the order in via the app / web site, then park in a designated spot outside the restaurant, tap a button telling them you are there, and they make the food and bring it out to you” type of operation?
I’ve mostly tried that with What-a-Burger (a chain out in the west US) with mixed results; McDonald’s app was so clogged with marketing malarky (coupons, points, and other BS) before I could even create an account and find the local store that I dumped it. (they have ordering kiosks inside that operate MUCH better)
I’d call that a good start- I operate on the base premise that people want to do something with their lives to the best of their abilities. Throw in health care, and as an able bodied person, I’ll cheerfully pay taxes to support that. (or better, bring back the corporate income taxes from the 1950’s and enforce it, which should bring in a good amount of money to fund all of it. )
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Despite Britain’s charming habit of misleading naming, e.g. the New Forest (quite old-but new when created back in ye olden days, no trees-cos a forest doesn’t actually require trees), the Midlands is actually fairly in the middle.
It’s certainly not the North.
Unless you live south of Watford of course.
No, it’s down South. It was 2/3rds of the way to London for my entire childhood.
OK, If you lived in Carlisle then anything south of Middlesbrough was down south.
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Yes, England is unevenly distributed. There’s definite “North” bits and definite “South” bits. And then there’s a whole bunch of poorly defined bits that no one can agree on
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There’s also the gotcha that, so long as wages are set by market-ish methods(which they largely are, at least in the US; with some labor union attempts to avoid pure commodification on one side; and some corporate collusion to attempt to avoid competition driving up wages on the other side); you likely can’t train your way out of poverty because increasing the supply of qualified people will make qualified people cheaper.
A more qualified labor force can definitely move poverty from effectively mandatory(if you’ve just got really low productivity per-capita across the board the money simply isn’t there; unless there’s a really lucrative extraction industry that’s subsidizing things or the like); to being a question of distribution(with relatively high productivity per-capita the money is absolutely present); but so long as there isn’t anything stopping employers from just offering less for skills that are now more common the question of distribution won’t be markedly changed just by throwing more qualifications at it.
(edit: there do appear to be some capabilities that resist this general “more training just reduces the cost of trained people”; but only because they appear to require some combination of born and made that means you can’t train most people to do them(or at least not very well); which also means that they cannot be more than a tiny slice of any “train people out of poverty” scheme: there’s probably a nonzero supply of people who could be serious number theorists but got pulled out of school by economic pressure, and you could change things for them; but it’s not like the primary obstacle to most people’s success in number theory is just that their natural talent was stifled by lack of access to good math courses.)
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… we’re already living in a society that’s been transformed — humanity didn’t start out equating “fulfillment” with submission to the marketplace and we don’t have to cling to that just because we don’t remember any other concepts of fulfillment
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Fuckin A.
Tell me that some people have unearned privilege without telling me…
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Tell me you’ve never worked fast food/retail without saying so.
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Or they spend their time commenting on message boards.
A very low skilled endeavor.
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We had a doc at my office who said that he could train monkeys to do what our staff did. About our nurses. He doesn’t work here anymore. Left and set up his own practice, hired all part time so he didn’t have to pay benefits, and was absolutely shocked when he had trouble hiring staff. The folks who do hands-on work are not dumb. There are a lot of reasons they are doing what they are doing, but to attribute it to “dumb” is pretty damned offensive.
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I’ve never done fast food, but I’ve worked retail, and I know that’s not dumb work. You have to have pretty thorough knowledge of your inventory, which sometimes involves how to receive and log said products into your inventory system. You have to know how to navigate whatever computer/point-of-sale system your company uses, utilizing whatever coding and filing stuctures they use for inventory, so it’s a good idea to more-or-less memorize that too. If there’s an error in the pre-programmed discounting, you have to catch it and be able to override it in the system, every time. You have to be able to operate the credit card validation/charging equipment, and the alternate procedures when it inevitably goes down, and if you’re a supervisor, you need to be able to find and fix any discrepancies that come up during the nightly closing audit. There’s always paperwork to deal with, and file correctly too. You have to be able to do counts of what you actually have vs. what the system says you have, and that has to be done quickly and accurately. You have to be able to set up product displays, often according to a pre-determined plan, which is no mean feat if you’re dealing with a hundred (or more) different items in that category. Sometimes this means building or assembling shelving units, too, and they have to be kept clean on a regular basis. If you’re dealing with perishables, you have to be able to keep track of (and sometimes decipher) exipration dates, discounting or removing things as needed, rotating the product on the shelves to minimize losses.
On top of all that, communication skills are vital; you have to be able to keep your bosses in the loop of whatever’s going on, and you have to be able to interact with the customers. If there’s a loyalty program or promoted deal, you not only have to be able to quickly explain it, but also try to persuade people to buy, and believe me when I tell you, that takes skill. If someone doesn’t know what exactly what they need, you need to ask the right questions, and then know the inventory well enough to get just the right thing (which feels really good when you get it right.) And, of course, you have to deal with endless complaints (“Why does this cost so much?” “Why can’t I get an extra discount?” "Why can’t I return this <dirty, damaged, un-resellable item>?), verbal abuse from people having a bad day who know the job won’t let you fight back, and oh yeah, if you’re a woman there’s fairly good odds you get hit on by pushy creeps, too, or even stalked.
And because capitalism demands profit and payroll is one of the easiest expenses to control, you do all that on as close to minimum wage as the company can manage, regardless of previous experience or any transportation costs or parking fees incurred. Hours worked are kept to a minimum too, so you’re pretty much expected to work understaffed… yet calling off for any reason is highly discouraged. And if somebody doesn’t come in, you may be expected to pick up the slack, even if that means working from open to close (which can be over twelve hours easy, and then you’ll get some future shift cut so they don’t have to pay you overtime/time-and-a-half.) Closing one night and opening the next day can happen pretty often, so good luck managing any kind of regular sleep schedule. Holidays are for other people, not you. And since one job won’t pay the bills, you’ll probably need two, and there will be scheduling conflicts at some point. Don’t expect raises either, because they’re usually linked to some unattainable store income goal, so even if you work your butt off and exceed every expectation given, you’re lucky if you get an extra dime an hour. (No, I’m not kidding and I’m not lying. Been there, experienced it, all too often.) Having a good manager can make it all a little easier, but if they leave and some incompetent tyrant strolls in, your workplace becomes a fresh, painful slice of hell.
As I said in the meme above: “unskilled labor” is a myth and a lie. All jobs require skills, knowledge, and talent to do well. And that should be rewarded with a living wage, no matter where you work, or what you do. People deserve better.
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I worked fast food during college. It was pretty gruelling.
I worked retail more recently during a break in employment in my area of expertise. It was one of the most valuable work experiences of my career.
Doing either well requires skill and effort. Doing either badly could be considered dumb, I guess - but no more so that being a CEO or real estate agent or architect or particle physicist badly, and there are plenty of examples of the above who are paid way better.
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Never forget: your face tastes as good as anyone else’s, and the leopards are always hungry.
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Oh, wow. Just… wow.
I’m not even going to try to unpack that statement.
Instead I’ll point out that AI progress has been unpredictable. For example, AI has proven time and again better at diagnosing maladies than doctors. On the other hand, AI hasn’t done too well in law where it hallucinates case-law and precedents. And AI has been terrible at tasks that require manual dexterity and critical thinking, such as cleaning surfaces (floors, counters, chairs, etc.) efficiently and effectively.
If you are, as your user name suggests, a cardiologist, it means AI can probably do your job better than you can already and would be a great candidate to replace you. We already have robot assisted surgery, it probably won’t be too long before an AI can be trained to insert stents and perform other operations better than a human. The number of humans needed as cardiologists can be greatly reduced, effecting much cost savings for God Make Line Go Up.
Leopards are ambush hunters. You never know when they will eat your face.
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