Posted on 12/06/2013 8:54:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?
But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year.
With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won’t be changing their staffing levels, but if you’ve read any science fiction, you know that’s what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: “We’re here to help. We’re not a threat.”
But the fact is, the tablets are a threat. In 2011, Annie Lowrey wrote about the burgeoning tablet-as-waiter business. She focused on a startup firm called E La Carte, which makes a table tablet called Presto. “Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table — making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn’t forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either.”
Applebee’s is using the Presto. Are we really supposed to believe that the chain will keep thousands of redundant human staffers on the payroll forever?
People don’t go into business to create jobs; they go into business to make money. Labor is a cost. The more expensive labor is, the more attractive nonhuman replacements for labor become. The minimum wage makes labor more expensive. Obama knows this, which is why he so often demonizes ATM machines as job-killers.
Just a few days before Obama’s big speech on income inequality, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a media frenzy by revealing on 60 Minutes that he’s working on the idea of having a fleet of robot drones deliver products straight to your door. I can only imagine the discomfort this caused for any UPS or FedEx delivery guys watching the show. There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, but does anyone doubt that this is coming?
You might take solace in the fact that there will still be a need for truck drivers to deliver the really big stuff and to supply the warehouses where the drones come and go like worker bees. The only hitch is that technology for driverless cars is already here, it just hasn’t been deployed — yet.
None of this is necessarily bad. Machines make us a more productive society, and a more productive society is a richer society. They also free us up for more rewarding work. As Wired’s Kevin Kelly notes, “Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines.”
While some hippies and agrarian poets may disagree, most people wouldn’t say we’d be better off if seven out of ten people still did backbreaking labor on farms.
That doesn’t mean the transition to a society fueled by robot slaves won’t be painful. The Luddites destroyed cotton mills for a reason. Figuring out ways to get the young and the poor into the job market really is a vital political, economic, and moral challenge. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis, argues that one partial solution might have to be wage subsidies that defray the costs of labor, tipping the calculus in favor of humans at least for a while.
“Of course,” Pethokoukis notes, “wage subsidies are an on-budget, transparent cost — which politicians hate — while the costs of the minimum wage are shifted onto business and hidden. But the costs exist just the same.”
The robot future is coming no matter what, and it will require some truly creative responses by policymakers. I don’t know what those are, but I’m pretty sure antiquated ideas that were bad policy 100 years ago aren’t going to be of much use. Maybe the answers will come when artificial intelligence finally comes online and we can replace the policymakers with machines, too.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of The Tyranny of Clichés, now on sale in paperback. Y
Humans would still make decisions, set directions, negotiate, educate, design and build. As for jobs requiring few skills, there is a point where automation is more expensive than human labor -- unless government continues to raise wages by law.
Only government can create what you fear.
Think of what they can do now with drones. That’s frightening enough.
Only if you define ‘fit’ as intelligence only.
Beware that definition. As I said in my previous comment, Nature has a much broader definition.
It isn’t that they’re having babies in excess of their ‘place’ and therefore it’s our place to stop them from that. Or set up a system that forces them to starve. Even the bible tells the farmer not to gather up all the wheat that falls on the ground. He’s to leave it to allow the gleaners to have something too.
The problem is that intelligent people are deselecting themselves from the evolutionary island by having ‘other’ pursuits and placing greater importance on those.
And as I said in my reply to trisham, the elites view ALL of us as ‘those other people’. Robots will allow them to eliminate us with little everyday pain to their lifestyles.
Again, the problem isn’t less intelligent people having too many kids. The problem is intelligent people voluntarily deselecting themselves to pursue online gaming, sci-fi conferences, expensive high tech hobbies and just ‘me’ time to ‘think about stuff’. These habits are the true evolutionary defects.
From a long term nature standpoint, having a great immune system is far more important than being simply intelligent. Even with all the smart people working in great teaching and research institutions now, one pandemic could still wipe most of us out. And along with it, most of the smart people. Only those with a great immune system would survive.
I’m pretty sure allowing humans to select themselves and using only IQ as that selection mechanism will be a spectacularly bad idea, long term. Nature’s been doing this for billions of years. Starving the poor (by eliminating even their very ability to grow their own food by moving them forceably to the cities), and other eugenic methods are just that. Eugenics. No different than Margaret Sangar.
I get a strong vibe of that in this thread. The ‘yay robots, those stupid low iq denizens will starve to death! Special US will not because we’re smart! yay us!’.
What do you do with the majority of the population that doesn’t take care of the bots? Starve them? Feed them for free? Turn the bots on them?
In a free society, like the early Republic of Rome, suddenly gets flooded with cheap labor (in that case, slaves from Germany) that the free man can’t make a living, you have a situation that will either lead to revolution, or to the State caring for most people in order to keep them happy. In Rome, it led to both. Massive welfare and a revolution from a Republic to an Empire.
We are trending to the same place.
“You just swipe and go.”
How do you pay in cash?
Not a very good example since waiters and waiteresses in most states aren’t even paid the minimum wage. They get a fraction of the minimum wage plus tips. Obama’s raise won’t change that.
” there is now a motorized sign waving device that mimics a person waving around a sandwich board sign.”
A friend of mine has a barber shop that bought one andfor 2 weeks it brought in twice the business that his lazy person wavers did.
The only problem was after 2 weeks the city code enforcement cited him and he can’t use it any longer!
You and me both. Even now, people with no real skills or education cannot perform most jobs.Back in the day, they could do something, and at least make some money. But, those days are gone forever.
And what was that saying about the Devil and Idle hands?
“Increase SNAP, extend unemployment benefits, and tax the robots to pay for it.”
GO TO HELL!!!!
Eliminate snap, welfare and unemployment!
If you can’t figure out a way to make a living lie down and croak!
Not sure why you think only androids would be a problem. Robotic delivery systems probably could navigate easily.
“the wars of the future will not be fought like today, on land or sea. they will be fought by robots, in space, or on the tops of very tall mountains. and you soldiers will be there, doing your duty as we’ve trained you, to maintain and service these robots.”
- the simpsons
Easy to say. Till the mob turns on you and yours.
If there is nothing for people to do, and the situation becomes hopeless, revolutions happen.
That’s the reason to be well armed!
You don’t. It’s for those using a debit card or credit card.
They’ve already got that figured out. Go to Walmart and take a look at how the self-service checkout works.
uhhh....I was being sarcastic. Or illustrating how the “creative bureaucrats” really WOULD deal with this situation.
It’s time for Obama to pass an Executive Order making The Americans With No Abilities Act the law of the land!
They will not only be fewer - but - a HUGE AMOUNT FEWER! You’re probably talking about knocking over 90% of the workforce permanently out of work. And in that scenario (without a completely and radically different economic system) - that translate into being DEAD.
“After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage,”
Pelosi already hiked the min wage in 2007 and it was one of the reasons for the exponential increase in the UE rate. But hey, it feels good to the little guy, so let’s do it again!
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