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A comment on Amazon Go. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Go by mikeash on Monday December 05, 2016 @01:13PM (#13107701)
I totally agree. Getting rid of wasteful jobs is a good thing if you can somehow handle the people who lose those jobs, whether redirecting them to something more productive or pensioning them off or whatever. And that side of things really doesn't seem to get much attention. There's a lot of hand-wavy talk about basic income, some lip service paid to continuing education and retraining, but not a whole lot really being done to prepare.
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Re:Amazon Go by avar on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:37PM (#13111276)
Getting rid of wasteful jobs is a good thing regardless of whether you can handle the people who lose those jobs in the short term.

The job-saving technology will live forever, long after the people who are temporarily displaced die. You're doing an immense amount of good for the untold number of people who aren't even born yet.

Technology is also global, but the political problems associated with eliminating jobs are problems on a state-by-state basis. Is it immoral to develop a technology just because some political systems are incapable of handling the gains in productivity, while other states are?

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Re:Amazon Go by mikeash on Monday December 05, 2016 @08:47PM (#13111611)
I would never say it's immoral to develop the technology. The tough question is how to deploy it.
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Re:Amazon Go by SamBoogieNYC on Monday December 05, 2016 @05:26PM (#13110345)
I have a notion that one of the major ways people will be spending the time they otherwise would be working is by consuming entertainment.

If that notion is correct, moving towards an educational model focused around creating the components needed for general entertainment (video/AR/VR/Music etc) might alleviate the problems we'll face.

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Re:Amazon Go by darpa_escapee on Monday December 05, 2016 @07:51PM (#13111341)
> I have a notion that one of the major ways people will be spending the time they otherwise would be working is by consuming entertainment.

Where are these people getting the money to spend on entertainment if they aren't working? I don't think this will happen.

What I do see happening, however, is that people have less free time between juggling more than 1 job and a side gig with Uber/their ilk.

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