Re:More Robots, Fewer Jobs: capital vs. labor in production
by j2bax on Monday May 08, 2017 @12:58PM
(#14293394)
>I've seen burger assembly robots that will make, from raw ingredients (including the ground meat) burgers in a handful of minutes.
Exactly this. A machine could make a far superior product in a fraction of the time for less money (at quantity). I worked at McDonalds through college, and I remember people (including myself) letting the pre-cooked hamburgers sit in the warming bins for hours passed the time they were supposed to. Gross! At a minimum, I can't see why everything in the prep-area wouldn't already be automated. I imagine there'd be far less waste as well with everything being stored in a pre-cooked temperature controlled manner until the customer orders it.
I wonder how long it would be before McDonalds followed suit if someone with the capital built a competing shop that automated to the max and made a superior product for a competitive price.
With the rise of the $15 minimum wage movement, a number of chains are experimenting with replacing some or most of their employees with automated kiosks and other devices. As they become less novel, and as wages continue to rise, expect there to be fewer fast food jobs available.
It is a minor inevitability; I've seen burger assembly robots that will make, from raw ingredients (including the ground meat) burgers in a handful of minutes. The only human intervention needed is refilling ingredient hoppers and cleaning. Once people get used to not seeing so many other humans behind the counter, and the capital outlay to buy / rent / install the machines goes down (at least, relative to wages) they are likely to be much more widespread.