Tuesday, December 6, 2016

There ought to be a law.......doncha think?

Amazon introduces next major job killer to face Americans 

 New York Post By James Covert, Linda Massarella & Bruce Golding Dec 5, 2016

Amazon on Monday unveiled the latest plan to automate American workers out of existence — a futuristic grocery store without any cashiers.
High-tech sensors and artificial intelligence are allowing shoppers at the Seattle food market to swipe an app when they enter, then roam the aisles and grab staples like bread and milk, artisanal cheeses and chocolates and ready-made meals.
Customers can watch as the items they pluck off the shelves get added to a virtual cart on the app — and subtracted if they put them back — with receipts emailed to them once they leave, according to the company.


Amazon will also test out “large, multifunction stores with curbside pickup capability” and “drive-through prototype locations,” sources told the Wall Street Journal (paywall).The 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go store is currently open only to employees of the online retail giant, but the company plans to start letting the public in next year.
(Amazon has come to dominate an overwhelming portion of the marketplace. They control everything. Their fingers are into everything. Do you think this is a good idea? I mean I realize it is new technology. But should  we allow it? To  get the asshole who owns the Washington Post more money? Think of all the people who will be put out of work. Think of the economic dislocation. Now I know you will say that you can't stop progress. But just because you can do something doesn't mean that we have to allow it. I mean they can clone a baby but that doesn't mean we can allow it. They can do a head transplant like they are doing in Russia but that doesn't mean they should do it. They can chop your dick off and make you into a broad but that doesn't mean that they.....err .....well you get the idea. Just because it is possible it doesn't mean that we should allow it. All of those people who work in CVS or Publix or Target or Walmart could be out of a job.

The God Emperor can not allow his people to be destroyed by the evil Bezos the pagan idol and intimate of Cthulhu. So let it be written.....so let it be done.)

16 comments:

Trooper York said...

I am into Biblical imagery because I watched an episode of "Time Tunnel" on Hulu last night were they went back to Joshua and the siege of Jericho. It was totally cheesy but very interesting. Especially how they handled religion and the handiwork of the Lord.

edutcher said...

Well, so much for that $15 minimum wage.

bagoh20 said...

Yea, we should have never allowed the damned cotton gin, the printing press, or indoor plumbing. Imagine all the jobs lost.

I'm all for this. Checking out groceries is not a fulfilling job, nor a good use of a sentient being's capabilities - worker or customer. It's nobody's dream to do that, and it adds few useful skills to a new person's career. Besides, I love Amazon. I wish they ran the DMV, health insurance, and even health care and prescriptions too. Shopping for groceries is one of the few drudgeries left in life because it has employed so few improvements at the consumer level. Nobody likes it, yet we still do it the same way our parents did. Time for some progress.

Trooper York said...

See that is where we differ. Big time.

You want to destroy millions of jobs that keep peoples dignity for your yuppie convenience.

You want to put those low educated mentally limited folks on welfare instead of letting them go to work to cheerfully stock shelves and check out your groceries.

Everyday on my way home I stop at CVS to pick something up. They did away with the cashiers and have self check out. But they still have people there to help you check out and find stuff. Nice young girls. Single moms and the working poor. Lets throw them out on the street and let them live off the dole. Good plan there chief.

Not all progress is good. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that we should.

Amazon is the devil. I deal with them as a seller not just as a consumer and they are the worst. Bezo's is a master criminal and the anti-trust department needs to look at him and bring him down.

rhhardin said...

I've used the U-Scan for years and years. The lines are much faster, and I pack it the way it has to be for loading on a bicycle.

This includes especially cold stuff together, so that milk survives the hour bike ride without aging prematurely.

And of course the right number of packages (3) loaded deep.

ampersand said...

Checking out groceries is not a fulfilling job, nor a good use of a sentient being's capabilities

Yes really, they'll all be more useful pondering man's relationship to the Universe. Or hiring themselves out as carriers carting your newly brought groceries home for you Bwana.

Trooper York said...

But RH that is only because you eschew all human contact.

Some of us like people and want them to have jobs. Just sayn'

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Troop: This is for you...

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Troop and RH captured on film...

Trooper York said...

I like rh.

It is just the only human interaction he has is with the jogger he has chained in his basement. Just sayn'

bagoh20 said...

OK, lets rant some, shall we?

Avoiding innovation for the sake of saving some obsolete job is just dumb. You really think there is nothing else those checkers could do? That's pretty insulting. They don't deserve to be stuck in that obsolete job anymore than people should be forced to carry buckets of water on their heads by government mandate . This is the kind of genius idea the great murderer Mao Tse Tung employed to starve millions, and hold back his nation for a generation. If we had followed this thinking in the past, we would have buggy whip companies with 3 employees instead of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler: the greatest suppliers of good American jobs in history. Everyone would be doing brainless tedious toiling, and living in huts. What job would you have right now? You'd be worn out, and would be living in a hell of poor health, low expectations, and an early death. We could get Trump to start building his buildings like the ancient Egyptians did. That provided a lot of jobs. We need to smash all that heavy equipment and get those guys some shovels - hand-made shovels. Maybe just have a few thousand people dig holes and fill them back in. Jobs,Jobs,Jobs. Grocery checker will be like the livery stable hand that nobody misses, and they will be better off for it when they get a job of the future instead of the past.

bagoh20 said...

"Yes really, they'll all be more useful pondering man's relationship to the Universe. Or hiring themselves out as carriers carting your newly brought groceries home for you Bwana."

Great! I don't know why that's worse than sliding them past a scanner and putting them in bags, but I hope human imagination can do better like: building, servicing, and managing drones, working in logistics to get you what you want no matter how obscure within minutes, or handling customer service problems, purchasing and negotiating with suppliers, or working in nursing, teaching, policing, infrastructure or other jobs that are experiencing employment shortages. You can't see the possibilities if you don't take your nose off the grindstone.

It reminds me of people who thought Blacks could not survive without slavery. What will they do?

ampersand said...

"Are there no workhouses, are there no prisons?"
"There are no more workhouses Mr Scrooge, it's all done by robots nowadays. And your tax bill is going up 964% for prison maintenance."


It reminds me of people who thought Blacks could not survive without slavery. What will they do?

Gee Bags you must be a lot older than i imagined. There are of course many blacks who survive without slavery and lots survive without work for that matter.

XRay said...

What a whacked out world. Like that old show, 7.5 billion people, and 7.5 billion opinions.

And we're losing the ability to discern as there is just too damn many options.

Not for me... I mean. I know, I have it all figured out. LOL!

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Yea, we should have never allowed the damned cotton gin...

The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As a result, the region became even more dependent on plantations and slavery, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy.[15] While it took a single slave about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day.[16] The number of slaves rose in concert with the increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850.[17] By 1860, black slave labor from the American South was providing two-thirds of the world’s supply of cotton, and up to 80% of the crucial British market.[18] The cotton gin thus “transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse, and – according to many historians – was the start of the Industrial Revolution".[19]


An 1896 advertisement for the Lummus cotton gin.
According to the Eli Whitney Museum website:

Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave.[20]

Because of its inadvertent effect on American slavery, and on its ensuring that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of the American Civil War.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

One inadvertent result of the cotton gin’s success, however, was that it helped strengthen slavery in the South. Although the cotton gin made cotton processing less labor-intensive, it helped planters earn greater profits, prompting them to grow larger crops, which in turn required more people. Because slavery was the cheapest form of labor, cotton farmers simply acquired more slaves.