“And the elderly, well, it’s just extra money to them, not anything they need to live on!”
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In general, I think you’re right. Direct transfer between phones is becoming more and more popular in developing countries. I had written my comment based on my experience living in Costa Rica for the past 8 months. Even though it’s a relatively wealthy developing country, the majority of people here do not have a bank account and most transactions are done in cash.
There is an effort to send micro (and macro) payments over mobiles, called Bidi. And it’s being implemented in part by a friend of mine. It’s quite a nice way to send payments, and it certainly beats cash, but there is resistance against this payment system from vested interests (mostly the banks and grocery stores) who fear that Bidi would undercut their own, more expensive payment systems.
So, I’m hopeful that Bidi will end up working in the end, but sometimes my cynicism creeps in, hence my previous comment.
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Developing countries have had the advantage of no sunk costs in what were once major projects like stringing phone lines through a country, so they’re not bothering to recreate the old technologies first to try to build from there: cell phone usage in both Africa and Asia stormed ahead very quickly – while the U.S. had barely left the starting gate because most homes and businesses still used land lines – and they’ve figured out a lot of ways to use them to bypass other old-school norms (like banks in an actual physical location).
As you say, it’s the countries where prior options already exist and are controlled by industry leaders that it’s harder to jump into the 21st century. Too much vested interest in the old way of doing things.
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They have no bread…Let them eat cake! 
Seriously though, this will only roll out in places where it makes sense. As this and other similar services spread so will the means of interacting with them in various local economies.
My grandpa used to go on and on about how groceries used to gather and bag all your items and either deliver them or have them waiting at a pickup counter. sometimes new is just the new old… grocery delivery seems to be coming back in.
I was wondering how the store would deal with returning items, or walking in with a bag of previously purchased items to grab that one last item you forgot. I’m sure they’ve considered these scenarios, i’ll be interested in seeing how it all comes together. maybe they’ll have one customer service counter still for dealing with transactions outside the main system.
sadly, today’s non-packaged items are being packaged more and more frequently…avocado halves, peeled bananas, crazy stuff that makes no sense to package. You can almost taste the global warming with every bite…
(also worth noting, those peeled oranges are being sold as “sumo mandarin” is that like a mastiff chihuahua?)
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I was expecting the Amazon equivalent of Poké Balls: ‘60" TV, I choose you!’
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They probably didn’t want to show it in the video, but my guess is that in the store you can get packaged potatoes, packaged bananas, packaged tomatoes, packaged onions… packaged anything! At least, that’s the way things have been going lately.
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So what prevents a group of teens from running in (phones off), stuffing their pockets or backpacks and running right out? Waist high turnstiles? Yea, right. Maybe the few employees in the store can deal with one intruder, but a dozen at the same time? Good luck.
I doubt a conventional store could deal with such a flash mob.
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I had a friend who moved downstate in Illinois for grad school. She was living in a small town, and at first the only place she could find to buy anything was the Walmart. But going there for a few groceries – total time from entering the parking lot to leaving again being at least an hour – was a foolish waste of time, so she investigated further, and discovered there was one family-owned grocery store that was far enough away (closer to her, though, fortunately) that hadn’t been put out of business by Walmart like every store on the main drag. One of the ways they provided higher value was to do things like automatically bring your groceries out to your car (and refuse tips), and had the old “put it on my account” that you paid up once a month or so, which meant you could sent a kid to run get a few items for dinner without trying to figure out if you had enough cash at that moment to give to them.
That was years ago now, but I think that’s what we’re seeing here. Why buy from a local store if I can get it cheaper/tax-free and delivered to my door by Amazon? Just providing knowledge isn’t enough, because many potential customers come in, pick the brains of the staff, then leave to buy the item online instead. The bricks-&-mortar stores that will make it are the ones that provide a customer experience worth coming in for, and worth completing the transaction there.
One example I’ve noticed is that most stores now, if you come in and want something they’re not carrying in that particular location (because they all have to keep their inventories down), you can order exactly what you want and they will ship it to you free of charge. That levels the playing field tremendously.
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I imagine the high ticket items are going to require whatever fob to unlock individual cases.
I can’t think of any that exist beyond local goods.
I think China has a law that businesses of a certain size have to employ a corresponding number of people. You’d walk into a bank and a smartly dressed assistant would be there to press the button and hand you a ticket with your number for the queue. I always felt sorry for them and hoped that there was some kind of rotation of duties - I would not cope well if my job was literally to press one of two buttons (and greet people, I guess)
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Perhaps, but consider this: they are just one step away from implementing the UBI (“look, Smith, your work here is pointless and demeaning. Why don’t you ‘work from home’ tomorrow … and next week … and next year.”) Meanwhile the rest of us continue to be incited to hate on the poors for not being able to find checkout jobs which just got automated.
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So albertsons is removing/removed self checkout stands from their stores. Turns out they may actually encourage theft… whoops.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanpearson/2016/12/06/making-self-checkout-work-learning-from-albertsons/#7f69d4bc779c
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Going to a store that has no self checkout is highly annoying, especially when i’m not buying much and i’m stuck behind a couple of people with a gazillion items and like 2 cashiers. I’m not a thieving asshat and i’d like my self checkout ]: we can’t have nice things i guess.
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I think that everybody are artists and/or scientists. But rather then letting them do that lots of busywork has been created instead, which is basically day-care for adults. Once jobs for the sake of jobs is finished, people will simply do whatever needs to be done. Which means that lots of them will be artists and/or scientists.
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I am reminded of the utopian elements for how society works in Star Trek. Not needing currency, having replicators means that all needs can be instantly met, etc. Real life wouldn’t really work out that way but it does provide food for thought.
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The irony is that economics now has more in common with fiction that it does with real-world resources, so one could just as easily dismiss the currently popular system as being “utopian.”
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