The future of jobs
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I happened to read an article similar to this one about Walmart closing a bunch of stores. Some other retailers are on their way to doing the same thing this year.
mangolassi.it/topic/7580/wal-mart-to-close-269-stores
A family member and I had a discussion about certain jobs and their dubious futures. It seems McDonalds could cut their workforce in half by implementing tablets for dine in customers and drive through customers to eliminate ordering from a human completely. We also see this capability in restaurants such as Chilli's which uses tablets at every table. You can order and pay already if you want anything while your server is unavailable.
It also seems that brick and motor stores such as Walmart are going to continue to struggle. Walmart has been increasing its wages through the past 2 years creating even more of a gap between their competitor Amazon. Depending on how the drone industry evolves we could see near instant delivery with online retailers such as amazon. Drones would also put shipping companies in a bad place.
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
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From the title: He's dead, what more do you want?
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@IRJ said:
I happened to read an article similar to this one about Walmart closing a bunch of stores. Some other retailers are on their way to doing the same thing this year.
mangolassi.it/topic/7580/wal-mart-to-close-269-stores
A family member and I had a discussion about certain jobs and their dubious futures. It seems McDonalds could cut their workforce in half by implementing tablets for dine in customers and drive through customers to eliminate ordering from a human completely. We also see this capability in restaurants such as Chilli's which uses tablets at every table. You can order and pay already if you want anything while your server is unavailable.
It also seems that brick and motor stores such as Walmart are going to continue to struggle. Walmart has been increasing its wages through the past 2 years creating even more of a gap between their competitor Amazon. Depending on how the drone industry evolves we could see near instant delivery with online retailers such as amazon. Drones would also put shipping companies in a bad place.
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
Yes. a smaller workforce for mundane things should be a given as we learn how to automate them. That has always been how things work.
First people ground grain by hand. Then we learned how to use windmills and waterwheels.
First people had to build every part of a car by hand. Then we learned how to program a robot arm to do most of it.
The examples can go on and on. I did try to use one ancient concept and one modern to highlight that this is not a new thing.
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Amazon already has one hour deliver in Houston. We can get them to deliver faster than we can get the kids in the car and get our butts to the local store!
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@scottalanmiller said:
Amazon already has one hour deliver in Houston. We can get them to deliver faster than we can get the kids in the car and get our butts to the local store!
wow, how much is that?
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@IRJ said:
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
No, I think that that is the wrong way to look at it. We are simply having fewer and fewer people doing "busy work" that has no benefit to having a human doing it and freeing them up to do valuable work where having a brain is a benefit rather than a deficit. The idea that it is beneficial to make humans replace machines is a weird one from the industrial age. It's the same one that made Americans upset that we were sending jobs to China: yeah, crappy jobs that pay nothing and no one wants to do! Freeing Americans up to do thinking and creative jobs instead.
The world doesn't have enough workers for everything that it would like to do. And the workers that are available are often tied up picking oranges, milking cows, handing out fries, taking orders... all things that simple machines can do faster, better, safer, cheaper and more accurately. In reality, McDonald's has long functioned as a form of welfare voluntarily paying useless people to do a job poorly that a touch screen would do far better. I learned how true this system was when working for BK, we wanted to fire 80% of our workforce because the remaining 20% could do the same job for a fraction of the cost while being faster, but the goal wasn't to make profits as much as it was to employ lots of people. Sure profits mattered, but employing the unemployable was a huge mandate. Jobs just for the sake of jobs. When people are cheap, that can work. When they demand $15/hr, you stop that and put in machines for better customer service.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Amazon already has one hour deliver in Houston. We can get them to deliver faster than we can get the kids in the car and get our butts to the local store!
wow, how much is that?
Don't know, next day is "free" for me because I am Prime so I just use that, I'm not that impatient
But I know a friend in NJ used it last week for a cable. So it can only be so much. She just didn't feel like running down the street to pick up a DVI to HDMI cable so did the one hour deliver instead. -
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
Freeing Americans up to do thinking and creative jobs instead.
The problem is there just aren't that many jobs for thinking and creative types.
... Jobs just for the sake of jobs.
And this is the situation for those that aren't thinking/creative types.
We haven't reached a point in technology or altruism where most people can be like the people in Wall-E.
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
Freeing Americans up to do thinking and creative jobs instead.
The problem is there just aren't that many jobs for thinking and creative types.
But there are... just not enough people to fill them. Few industries are overwhelmed with candidates for those jobs. There are exceptions, like nursing, but that's rare. Engineering, IT, software development, business, logistics, science, teaching, all lacking the pool of talent that they need.
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@Dashrender said:
... Jobs just for the sake of jobs.
And this is the situation for those that aren't thinking/creative types.
Humans are thinking / creative types. All of them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@IRJ said:
Are we looking at a continually smaller human workforce moving forward?
Freeing Americans up to do thinking and creative jobs instead.
The problem is there just aren't that many jobs for thinking and creative types.
But there are... just not enough people to fill them. Few industries are overwhelmed with candidates for those jobs. There are exceptions, like nursing, but that's rare. Engineering, IT, software development, business, logistics, science, teaching, all lacking the pool of talent that they need.
Do you think that people are wasting their talents doing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs instead of trying to be a nurse, etc? And if you do, do you think removing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs from their reach will make them go toward them?
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@Dashrender said:
Do you think that people are wasting their talents doing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs instead of trying to be a nurse, etc? And if you do, do you think removing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs from their reach will make them go toward them?
Yes, and yes. People doing robotic jobs poorly is not good for anyone. It is not good for companies, not good for customers and not good for the workers. Their values are completely wasted - literally they are paid the "leftovers" from the profits they have not squandered. Instead of costing everyone money, imagine how much they could earn and how happy they might be if they did something that wasn't painfully boring and actually made them feel pride and provide value. Not only would they at least have a chance of aiding the economy, but they would be able to feel pride in themselves and could bring home more money.
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@Dashrender said:
Do you think that people are wasting their talents doing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs instead of trying to be a nurse, etc?
Yes.
@Dashrender said:
And if you do, do you think removing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs from their reach will make them go toward them?
Yes, but not in the short term. In the short term it will be a mess because society also has to change., and societal change happens slower.
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@JaredBusch said:
@Dashrender said:
Do you think that people are wasting their talents doing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs instead of trying to be a nurse, etc?
Yes.
@Dashrender said:
And if you do, do you think removing the walmart/mcdonalds jobs from their reach will make them go toward them?
Yes, but not in the short term. In the short term it will be a mess because society also has to change., and societal change happens slower.
I totally agree. This could never be an overnight transition. How people think about education, working, life values, raising kids, homemaking, art, welfare, food, healthcare would all have to change and not just be mandated but become part of how society thinks.
