Originally published at: Watch: Fox's Steve Doocy tries to own the libs but, like son Peter, gets schooled instead | Boing Boing
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The Doocy boys: Prime example of folks that should not breed.
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Not to mention that “Chippy” was introduced to the public years ago.
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It wasn’t really a bad question, and I don’t think it was an “own the libs” one since all the media is talking about prices and lack of workers. He didn’t really answer the question, and his answer basically said it is about cost, and more than likely about lack of workers. A good interviewer would have jumped all over that answer.
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It’s not a bad question. However, while he did imply that it is about cost, he did not say it is about a lack of workers. Automation to reduce labor requirements have been going on for quite some time now. We didn’t start using email because there was a shortage of postal workers.
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And, let’s be serious here: automation isn’t new. I have a 1928 power hammer that replaced a couple of smithing apprentices for the smith who originally bought it – the nickname for a smithing power hammer common even today is “the dumb apprentice,” with “dumb” drawing upon its archaic meaning of “silent.” As a modern craftsman, I can make things that would have taken a master, a couple of journeymen, and a gaggle of apprentices to make a few generations ago, as well as the things no shop at the time could make without outsourcing to another trade.
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Next time you hear someone talk about rich people as “job creators” remember this clip. They are not interested in creating jobs for people and would prefer to own robots where it is financially possible.
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You really have to go back to the end of the 18th century, where the stocking frame mechanized textile production, displacing specialized workers… which led to an early 19th century luddite uprising…
It’s Faux news… their whole reason for existing is owning the libs… A decent question now and again doesn’t change that.
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“We found a cheap and convenient way to automate this process” does not necessarily imply that the company was unable to find humans willing and able to do the work.
The rise of ATMs in the 1980s didn’t happen because banks couldn’t find anyone willing to work as bank tellers anymore, it happened because they were cheaper and more convenient for the financial institutions than employing a bunch of extra people would have been.
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What he is saying is this it not about increasing labour costs it is about the opportunity to decrease his spending on labour by owning a machine instead. If the cost of operating the machine were 1 cent per hour then he would choose that option over an employee but that would not mean the problem is that labour costs are too high. Labour is the biggest expense that Chipotle have and companies want to avoid spending money on labour as much as possible.
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I swear to God, some people don’t realize that capital machinery is about force multiplication. So like we don’t magically reduce the number of workers in a restaurant like Chipotle because they put in a machine to handle the frying of chips. It just means the same employees do more complicate things which deal with customers directly which in turn means more people served and thus more revenue. Conservatives just don’t grasp the basics of how capitalist firms operate and it’s funny to me because they’re suppose to be the folks that go all in on capitalism. Seriously, this isn’t rocket science since Ricardo and company solved this issue in their time centuries ago.
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But this isn’t how firms operate. They buy capital equipment if and only if gives a positive return on revenue. So in this case, they can keep labor costs the same but generate more with the same labor. There’s no labor reduction, just that you move your labor around to parts of your business that make the most of it. Like how folks lied about automation replacing autoworkers in factories when at most they replaced them in the least productive areas such as welding and painting which if you know anyone who’s worked in the specific areas of automaking will tell you that they sucked.
Labor reductions only ever happen when the given firm is failing or the industry in question is phasing out (see vacuum tube manufacturing). At most, you see firms move overseas to avoid paying labor its full value. And thus, they’re only reducing the cost of labor by finding capital friendly regions with little or no labor laws or solidarity but the same amount of labor is constant in the production processes in question.
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A smarter right-wing populist would take this opportunity to criticise the librul elites for taking jobs away from hard-working, white Americans. This former weather idiot can’t even do a good job at that.
For other Faux hosts I’d assume it was because they were too wrapped up in billionaire worship. Doocy, as we can see from this clip, is just a dumb-dumb.
That applies to Libertarians more than conservatives, a true example of the latter being harder and harder to find on Murdoch’s outlets. As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t trust most “free” market fundies to operate a child’s lemonade stand without running it into bankruptcy.
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Fast food restaurant’s output is limited by the number of people who walk in the door. They don’t export and they can’t take market share from imported products so they can’t just produce more. They’ll hire fewer people. Consultants in the fast food sector predicted 2 years ago that 82% of fast food jobs would be eliminated by automation.
Yeah but that stat is based entirely on the same bullshit Fox is pushing here, Aaron Allen & Associates assumed that since unemployment was high post pandemic and there was reported reluctance to reenter the labor market that companies would seek to fully automate their fast food chains. That’s literally where the figure comes from. Not only was it immediately proven to be a bad take, saying “industry consultants said” is pretty close to saying “the court sorcerers read the entrails of a cow” in terms of accuracy in predicting future events.
Automation will always continue to grow, but unless it removes a highly repetitive job that offers a significant margin it’s going to be a hard capital investment. Chipotle chips might be the perfect example of something automation is perfect for.
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See that’s the problem with your argument. Consultants have been saying this for more than two years, more like decades and it hasn’t happened. The same number of people at a McDonald’s location corporate or franchise is about the same as it was in the 1960s. There might be one or two fewer people but probably due to refinement of the workflows in fastfood and nothing to do with technology. A robot has to be directed, prepped, cleaned, maintained, and inspected. They’re not going to call in the specialists to do that work, they’re going to farm it back onto the existing staff. This is true in all fields. Labor is the base unit of productive capacity in all economies (capitalist, feudalist, communist, etc). You never can get away from it just like you can’t get away from physical forces in physics. Labor is the background/basis of economy.
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Anyone who’s done real-world business planning quickly discovers this about the staff headcount line. Automation can put a small dent in it but ultimately not enough to make a difference. As you say, its main purpose ends up being to enhance human productivity.
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Yeah this is the point that I always come back to when people say stuff like “if those burger-flippers keep demanding a living wage then they’re just going to see their jobs outsourced to robots!” If a machine can do your job just as well as you can then sooner or later one likely will, and selling yourself short by offering to work for lower wages is a loser’s game.
John Henry might have been a folk hero for out-working that steam hammer but the fact remains that he worked himself to death in the process.
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I understand that, but we know that employers are having problems finding workers. That’s a fact right now. People are tired of the bullshit, so companies have to automate some stuff, because of that.
