Self checkout meme

I love self-checkout. When Albertson's bought out my local Safeway they got rid of the self checkout machines and I really miss them. I really believe that the purpose of machines is to free humans from mindless tasks. I think we should support automation rather than try to "save jobs".

So many things are done now by machines which used to be done by people and this is actually a good thing. There used to be switch-board operators and people who took down phone messages. Now we have answering machines and computers. There even used to be a man whose job it was to operate the elevators. The list of obsolete jobs is vast. Should we bring them back? Should we move backwards for the sake of "jobs"?

I don't like the idea of another human standing on that hard concrete floor 8 hours a day ringing up groceries when such a thing can easily be done by a machine. Humans are so much more valuable and creative than this.






Bring back the elevator man too!! And the "switch board operator". Get rid of your answering machine or voicemail app on your phone so that we can all hire some worker to write down our messages for us. Bring back the pony express. So many jobs have already been automated. Automation is a long process, not an event. Why choose this particular step in the process to be against and ignore the






Seriously though. I absolutely hate going to a register and having someone stand there serving me, asking how my day is. They don't care about me, they ask because of MONEY. They are paid to smile, paid to bag the food that I will eat. Am I a child? Am I a prince to be served? Surely a human has not evolved on this planet for millions of years to stand 8 hours at a stretch to scan products, going "Beep Beep Beep". To think that labor for income, for the right to exist, is some thing to perpetuate and defend until the indefinite future... this is a sad result of brainwashing.






Unions should be embracing automation rather than inhibiting it. The gains from automation could be something that is dispersed among the people (call them union members if you like). If unions cannot adapt to new technologies, if they cling to the protestant work ethic then perhaps they belong on the dust bin of history where they have been headed. Where are the Union Members who face modern reality?






Joe Biden is a great example of a fossil who lives in the past when it comes to the issue of work and automation, telling stories of how his father and grandfather viewed the subject. "A job is about so much more than a paycheck, its about having dignity, its about being able to come home and tell your kids its going to be ok." -Biden says.


Well, WHY does a job allow you to go home and tell your kids 'its ok'? Because of the PAYCHECK. Circular logic. So why not just get the paycheck without the job? Have the machines do the work and we the people collectively benefit via UBI? This is the old fashioned thinking disconnect. As for a job giving "dignity"? The fact is that for the majority of us, the paycheck IS the only dignity involved in our jobs. Jobs with intrinsic dignity and a sense of meaning do exist but those are not the kind of jobs most of us have.

10/11/2019

So, I read the book "In Sam We Trust" about a year ago. It is an exhaustively detailed book about the history of Walmart. It is so detailed in fact that the writer also researched the histories of retail in general, Sears, Target, Kmart, Kroger and a bunch of other retail giants you never heard of.


One of the interesting points in the book to me relates to the complaints about self-checkout. 100 years ago a similar change took place and some people also complained but history forgot and we don't really care about it anymore. In fact we assume the way shopping is done now, is how it always has been done, but it isn't. You know, walking around the store, pushing a cart, putting items in the cart, pushing the cart to the front of the store where a clerk rings up your items and you pay them, then you push the cart to your car and load them in and drive off.


100 years ago, you would walk into a general store, and order items from the clerk at the front. He would send the "bag boy" into the back and the boy would put your order together. Then you would leave. You had no business wandering around in the back of the store. Later that day if you were lucky, the "boy" would deliver the groceries to your house or farm. They would send you the bill or it would be added to your tab.


Larger Department Stores were the only places you might wander around in where the items were kept. But they had clerks standing at counters in each separate "department" to help you and take your orders. You didn't walk out with the items right then. Your order was put together form the various departments and sent to your house or farm after you left.


My point is that the system we have now is not the way it has always been. It has changed and it will change again. When the system we have now came into practice it was called the new "self-service" shopping store. Some people claimed it got rid of jobs, but here we are used to it and not remembering or caring about the obsolete ways of the past. And so it will be again.