I honestly think the whole demise of customer service is the result of this. People feel in a double bind because they aren't allowed and aren't supposed to help customers. Or if they can, they aren't rewarded for it and take a greater risk by doing it. People can do much greater things, be more helpful, be more friendly, and generally add value - if their employer would allow and reward it. But most are just looking at profit, and speed from entry to exit, and a lot of customers are too.
If you play was "we can provide a worse service for less" then yes, you're going to get steamrolled by automation. If your business is run around adding value (like informative parent of yore in the ticket booth), then your value is going to increase until strong AI (if that ever happens).
Assuming people like talking to humans. Sometimes I wonder about the HN crowd...
Some people like talking to humans, some don't. It often changes as well. But for incredibly basic mundane transactions, I'd lean on the "I don't like talking to humans." But it's also slower to talk to humans, and generally there is a line, making it again slower. If I have to add travel time in there, that's a factor. So if the person at the end doesn't add at least some positive value (other than just doing what I need done), I'd rather go the faster way.
Also, if a company is squeezing the workers and not the market, that probably means that company is having trouble no matter what the workers are doing.
The point being that lots of independent and service focused restaurants have died, and automation, consistency and efficiency has decimated the alternative.
Imho, McD and the first wave of franchisee stores leveraged price and consistency as their advantage. Their logistic chains were more efficient, and they could standardize their operation (benefit to efficiency and customer).
The market did decide that their prices (which were nationally set afaik) and consistency won over the qualities independent chains brought to the picture.
However, I think in the intervening years there have been a few developments.
Firstly, Sysco and the national food suppliers as intermediaries. So aside from volume discounts, everyone's sitting on the same logistics backing now.
Secondly, consistency as a commodity. Whereas before this was a competitive advantage (because it distinguished them from Local Dairy Freeze 283), now it's the market average.
I see it as, as you noted, McD's and the like put everyone else out of business... but we're now in the future past that where they have become the model that's ripe for disruption.
Maybe that looks like Chipotle and Five Guys (limited menu, better product, slightly higher price), or maybe it looks like a return to local service, now backed by automation and turnkey logistics chains.
I can't see a future with McD's where it isn't a fully-automated, human-less burger factory though. Unless they basically toss out their existing business model.
So it's true now, then.
> If you've lost sight of the value of basic human interaction with anyone not baked into your caste, I pity you, even if you are in the majority.
This seems a bit extreme. I assume you don't use ATMs, auto-bill pay, or automatic check deposit then either? Because you clearly value human interaction at all possible avenues?
Perhaps people's "need" for interaction as they go about their day is somewhere in the middle.
If that's a service that makes sense to have theaters can always keep it. One staffed line for people that want to chit chat and automated kiosks for people like me who just want to buy a ticket.
For what it's worth, I didn't infer any value judgement about caste in the comment.
Yeah I do like interacting with people. Even "minimum wage workers" who last time I checked were still people.
Some people (myself included) appreciate minimum wage workers as humans and still want the efficiency that comes with automation. It's a mixed bag. When I'm at CVS I would rather have actual cashiers. At a movie theater I'd rather have a ticket machine.
Survivorship bias. They always have been.
Movies today are much more likely to be high budget, rehashed/sequels, most common denominator, etc.
TV, on the other hand, has been in a golden era for the past decade. Netflix/HBO/etc. has allowed lots of interesting more niche pieces to get produced.
No, there are periods that are artistically more fruitful and interesting that others, and the history of art knows and documents several of them.
Sure, but the claim was just that there have always been bad movies.
Here's a test: If there's some year you know of where bad movies were exceptionally rare, let us know. Then we'll see if we can provide counterexamples.
But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective. The original Transformers move is a great example. I didn't like it. but i believe 14 year old me would have absolutely loved it.
It's similar to the statistics about Word users only use 5% of the functionality of Word. But everybody uses a different 5%.
I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939. I'd guess about $18,000,000 in production expenses, and about $240,000,000 in box. [1] (arbitrarily assigning 1,000,000 to the unlisted numbers, but keeping the box at $0 for unlisted numbers) Seems like a pretty good ROI. (although i think of, Gone with the wind, Mr Smith goes to washington, and the Wizard of Oz as subjectively good. 25% is a pretty good percentage)
Kind of a fun exercise poking through the years. 1997 was a standout, but everything i looked at had memorable and fun movies. I don't think any year would hit that 25% mark though.
Very funny.
> I guess if you want to go by money, i'm going to pick 1939.
You listed several great films, but I'm not disputing there were years with several great films, that's a completely separate point.
> But really, how do you quantify good? Taste is subjective.
I will concede that if we adopt a radical skepticism towards all aesthetic values then the claim "every year has bad films" collapses.
However, if we agree to make that move... the original claim that "everything in the theater now is terrible" is also false. Or "there's something special (and bad) about the quality of film at this very moment" also collapses.
So I'm good with this move. I accept the gambit.
That's why I don't use random individual tastes as a measure, but informed (from decades of studying movies and moviemaking) and argued critiques (by movie critics, other directors, and everyone with similar expertise).
The same way most will agree that Citizen Kane is a great movie, even if 16 year old John, from Buffalo, Indiana finds it "boring and gay".
That said, I also don't believe that just because something is fuzzy (like "what's a good work of art") and can't be defined with numerical precision, it's also impossible to reason about at all. So, in that sense, I'm satisfied with a general "expert consensus" on whether a movie's great and don't expect to have some absolute quantification of that.
So, to agree with my opinion, one should probably also be OK with fuzzy, not totally quantified inquiries (incidentally the inverse is something the climate deniers use for their advantage: they say that because the scientific community can explicitly give a specific number on the impact of human activity on the climate, it is bogus: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/157823678756/tucker-carlson-ind... ).
It used to take a lot more resources and know how to make a movie. Today, any hack can do so. Gawd.
Which makes filtering all the more critical.
Herbert Simon. Alvin Toffler. James Gleick. Ted Sturgeon.
Your smartphone gives you all of these answers now.
I'm not sure how I can learn to interpret something that's been manipulated by people with vested interest to promote their product or put down a competitor's.
The value from these sites stem from actual consumer ratings, not bots or the services themselves changing ratings.
Many movies are polarizing. In aggregate, they're OK. Talking to a single person whose opinion I trust is much more helpful than getting an average from 1,000s. Look at Yelp ratings - everything is pretty good by now, and the recommendations are mostly meaningless. They don't fit my needs, if my needs go beyond "I need edible food in a certain price category".
It turns out experts trump the crowd when it comes to opinions, because the opinion of a crowd is almost always indifferent.
> Talking to a single person whose opinion I trust
Why should we trust the person at the ticket counter?
They have no special knowledge or insight. It seems likely to me they will have below average insight otherwise they wouldn't be working an easy to automate job.
I can't calibrate for the averaged-together soup of opinions on online forums. Because everything is average, nothing matters.
If a consideration in employing someone at the ticket counter is that they have well-founded opinions or suggestions to offer on films, then, by way of their expert status, you've cause to believe them.
Otherwise, this collapses to a general critique of the upstream assertion: that "low-value" positions, such as box-office worker, see no labour value add, whilst simultaneously a certain set of positions, say, white-linens restaurant waiter and/or somnlier, do.
I don't see both arguments being valid simultaneously.
Their opinions as to what constitutes a good movie are almost certainly wildly at variance with my own.
That said, Yelp-type reviews aren't much better.
About the best you can do is find a professional movie or restaurant reviewer whose opinions match yours and go with that.
That doesn't address the case where the condition is satisfied.
"If a consideration in employing someone at the ticket counter is that they have well-founded opinions or suggestions to offer on films, then, by way of their expert status, you've cause to believe them."
I'm disregarding it because it's observably not true.
People are employed at theatre ticket offices because they are teens who are willing to work nights and weekends for minimum wage, not because they're film experts.
Expecting a ticket booth employee to be Roger Ebert is about as reasonable as expecting a Radio Shack employee to be a qualified electrical engineer.
The person behind the counter, for example, has likely seen the movie given the folks I've known who work these jobs. As well, they might tell you something like "the people leaving the movie are always talking animatedly" or some other insight that a random movie-goer likely couldn't assert themselves.
I was just pointing out that people have different preferences and that there are many reasons one might trust a single person behind the ticket counter over whatever information they might derive from their smartphone.
That this is so controversial is amusing to me.
You argument is much stronger as "Why trust the waiter over meaningful online reviews?"
That argument is much stronger and I can only attack in niche markets like very high end restaurants.
Talk to some locals and you'll quickly learn the atmospheres of various locations, times to go, where to avoid, etc. As long as their preferences are fairly similar to your own the suggestions will always trump what a generic review site will offer. This also sidesteps the problem of paid reviews and the like.
That dive down the road may not be as terrible as it seems. Provided you're looking for a specific type of experience. Avoid the food, stay for the local brew, sweaty 20 somethings and stumbling down alleys with some new friends.
>Worked in the restaurant industry for a few years
Could be both
So that theory that people will get new opportunities which are as good, or they can transition into is not valid.
Now if the service sector jobs go too?
50% of minimum wage workers are under the age of 24
25% of minimum wage workers are under the age of 19
* being on time
* attention to detail
* how to work with others
* how to follow instructions ...
High minimum wages price many entry level workers right out of the market making it difficult for them to gain these entry level skills which are important for subsequent jobs.
[1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/09/08/who-makes-mi...
As a rule, the only skill entry level jobs teach anymore that apply to future jobs is how to eat shit and keep going. Every single habit you would learn would need to be unlearned to be valuable in skilled labor. You need to be independent and able to think of novel solutions to provide value at higher skilled jobs. Entry level jobs will grind you up and fire you under some made up offense so you can't even get unemployment. You succeed by being as close to a robot as possible.
Eh, I've had this experience at well-salaried jobs too. It's a job thing, not a minimum wage thing.
1. Workers whose contributions are undervalued.
2. Workers who cannot be trained or educated to provide high-value labour.
These are both issues.
(There are other categories: parents, caregivers, the disabled, sick, or handicapped, etc. But the two classifications above represent a major part of systemic failure of labour markets.)
If you think the class gaps and problems of lack of cross-socioeconomic empathy are an issue now, wait until a middle class worker can go 24 hours without ever having to interact with anyone making less than them.
"Raise taxes to fund foodstamps? Crazy! I hear the poor are doing just fine eating their insect protein cubes. I saw a report about it on the TV last night!"
Hell is other people.
The incompassioante charge made by the gp is still fair, I think: Saying these workers provide "no value" is too business-focused and incompassioante. Yes, these workers provide little value in terms of profit to the business, but looking at societal value at a larger scales, these jobs do have value (to the workers, to their families, to the local businesses and landlords they can now make business with using their wages, to homelessness, crime, hunger, etc.). Simply replacing these workers with technology is a net negative for society if we don't do what you suggested.
The free market thinking that the poor deserve to be fired because their skills are no longer competitive, can be, I think, a privileged and incompassioante position.
By creating the minimum wage floor the government enforces the notion of value creation. With hypothetical example of minimum wage set at $10 an hour everyone producing $10.01 worth of value within a 60-minute period gets to stay, everyone producing $9.99 and below gets to leave.
Compare that to Asian societies where some companies have an [usually older] tea and coffee lady in the break room. The pay is usually next to non-existent - the lady is usually retired and has a variety of savings and a safety net. She doesn't do it for a paycheck, but she craves human contact, so helping out with tea and coffee while chatting to younger employees is fulfilling her social (but never financial) needs at that age.
Such a position is impossible in US corporate environment within the current framework of labor laws, so we deny older people gigs with simple communication opportunities. Not necessarily because US companies are generally more evil and stingy.
When I used to live in Singapore I saw a lot of miserable looking hunchbacked old ladies and men cleaning food courts and they were for sure doing it for financial reasons:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-06/what-reti...
The worst part is the excuse - the country is staggeringly wealthy, vastly unequal and yet excuses itself with "we can't afford these pensions any more" because "we have fewer children and higher life expectancy", presuming that GDP growth has obviously been zero for the last 40 years and we just haven't noticed that the money actually is there.
We could be talking about automation or outsourcing, and it would be the same - labor (especially unskilled) is generally getting cheaper. For outsourcing, there is different labor than us that is benefiting, and that's good. That allows them to prosper and buy food and have a life. We also have robots, which are basically virtual slaves that only benefit their owners.
Overall, you could say that there would be an overabundance of labor then. And we hit this before, with the industrial revolution, and new waves of technology in general. What about all the human telephone operators? Or the candle makers? Maybe it really is different this time. Maybe it's not. Nobody really knows for sure.
It sounds uncompassionate, but these are the same forces that drive down prices so everyone can shop happy at walmart (which I do too). Providing cheaper living is great for everyone as well, and nobody remembers that when talking about fewer people working.
So you want an order of magnitude more competition for your own job?
Maybe we should be doing what we did in the 1930s when there was a similar 'surplus of labor' - creating jobs which create valuable public works like LaGuardia or the Lincoln Tunnel instead of pretending that if aggregate demand is weak, it's because everybody already has everything that they need.
I visit the great places created by CCC, WPA type efforts and value them, even in their often current state of disrepair.
More please. Worth it.
That said, they can pay someone $1+ mil a year to let the people under him do all the work. Give executives raises. Pay for meetings in expensive hotels that could happen over the phone. Buy lavish furnishings for their buildings. So on and so forth. Don't buy into the idea that most of these companies are ultra-rational actors investing only what they need for the benefit of the company. Lots of politics, gaming the numbers, and people on top trying to move more money their way in most of them.
B) them would never compete with those that were on an "educated" job at an earlier age and can bring years experience to a company
C) will drive fields to regulation and red taping because noone likes a massive influx of lower waged competition
It's sad how this socially destructive mindset has washed first over the US and then over the rest of the globe. The money religion has won.
I'm lucky to live in the French countryside, where solidarity is still a guiding principle for social interaction. The cinema in the closest town is run by a not-for-profit organisation, and the people who work there are volunteers (and tickets cost 3€ for adults). Likewise, our village feasts, meant to raise money for our small primary school, are organised by volunteers. Everyone contributes according to their abilities for the common good.
I'm not French and have only recently moved here, and I'm really impressed with the way people here take matters in their own hands and create social and economic value by volunteering.
If not, you're wondering why the starving don't eat cake.
This may not be substantive enough for HN guidelines, but you know what? Ewwwww!
I don't see the distinction. With all due respect to waitstaff (it's a tough job), the function is just begging for automation. An order-and-payment-taking tablet embedded into the table would be so much more efficient:
1. No need to wait for staff to come by, and then do the whole "drinks then wait, then food then wait" dance. Instead, just present a full page description of the food plus a picture, and an "order" button that you tap. You can even order more later if you'd like, without having to summon a waiter. Done.
2. No need to wait for staff to notice you're done eating and need the check. The total is right on the tablet, and it has a card reader.
That would be great. Would probably cut the entire time suck that is restaurant dining by at least 1/2.
Pei-wei is another example. These are all the rage because of the efficiency (less wait staff) but still good food and a sit down environment.
The distinction is in expectation. Certain places you expect a waiter, to be seated, brought everything ("fine dining"). The difference between casual dining is mostly the atmosphere (usually better furniture, tablecloth, cutlery, etc) and a waiter (who may or may not be formally dressed).
The fancy waiter is adding value in the second case, because you're looking for that fine dining atmosphere. If it wasn't, they'd probably be going toward iPads too. Instead they have dress codes.
The difference is the waiter doesn't add much to an everyday meal. The waiter could be terrible though. So in terms of a business cost, that's something casual places can skimp on. For a more "fine dining" feel, you need great waitstaff, so that's harder to automate.
Having a wine expert or a unique expert chef as part of the experience is part of high end dining. Consider one of those mid to high end Japanese steak houses where there they throw shrimp across the room into someone's mouth. Or a more midwestern steakhouse where you can talk with a person who butchered the steak. Or one of the new microbreweries where can can talk with the brewer about some new experiment has has and look at the brewing equipment right there. None of these make sense to automate, until we get strong AI.
The "expert" is there to sell you a story. Not that there's anything wrong with that - the story is a part of the experience that many people like - but let's not pretend it's a technical problem that's difficult to solve.
I know a bunch of people who work in that buisines (my brother is a chef, gradeschool friend as well, ex. is a restaurant waiter, met a bunch of their co-workers, all worked in Michelin star restaurants etc.) what actually goes on vs what the customer hears ...
Then why do Spotify and Netflix et al persist in identifying artists and songs I've heard of (because of obvious similarities to stuff I like) but have actively ignored (because of any of a number of reasons that don't boil down well into an algorithm), over and over and over again?
I still don't want to watch The Office, Netflix. I won't in another six months, either.
But I could tell a person why not, and they could factor that into their recommendations. It's like the difference between trusting Waze and trusting a local that says "even though the app says go another half mile then turn right, turning right here is way easier, since if you wait you'll have to then quickly make your way across three lanes of traffic in a hundred yards to make your left, and making the right here gives you more time to get over."
Though, as someone who has had a credit card stolen via gas pump several times, I'm really hesitant to use a card at one of these devices. They're probably not very secure to begin with and then you couple that with the fact that anyone can sit with one of them for an hour or so with no scrutiny, it's just ripe for exploit.
You order entirely on the iPad. You do have to pay at the desk on your way out, but they just type in your table number you pay with Square. No tipping allowed so it feels so smooth and simple.
Often it is too hard to get a waiters attention to make multiple small additions after they have been around to take orders. With the tablet there is no barrier to you adding an extra drink or side.
Is it rough when (for example) shipping crates put a bunch of longshoremen out of a job, when they are in their 50s and too old to easily retrain? Sure. But how many people now not only enjoy (as customers) the benefits that Amazon provides, but also enjoy the employment benefits of a massively expanded global market?
On the other hand, the alternatives are harsher: as the population grows and people resist the very innovation that could create new markets, unemployment will grow. For all the problems we have in the US, providing low unemployment is not one.
Those newly opened industries have less people in them than the industries they replace. Mostly because our consumption doesn't increase as much as our efficiency does.
Funny you mention Amazon. We enjoy their services, and they enjoy that expanded global market. And they do this by killing local businesses with their ruthless efficiency. (Remember we're supposed to be competitive. There will be winners and there will be losers.) They don't create nearly enough jobs to compensate for the unemployment they cause.
There's also the problem of skill. For instance, in 20 years, truck drivers will be gone. Instead, we'll have an operator managing a fleet of 50 trucks from some control centre. The rest will have to find something else. But what exactly? The low skill jobs will be even scarcer than they are now, and the high skill jobs will be taken up by people who enjoyed a higher education in the first place, as they are now. You could still raise the level of education, but that will be too late for those drivers.
Keep this up to its logical (and absurd) conclusion, and half the population will starve to death in the streets. They're useless, why the market would support them? Of course, we'll have cleaner robots wipe it all away, cleansing the stench of death —those who still have value will be able to enjoy their walk in the park undisturbed.
More realistically though, we'll have a revolution before we get to this point. Or, the rich and powerful will see it coming, and start giving bread and games to the people. Come to think of it, they already do it to some extent.
I'm not saying that people who are displaced will easily be able to retrain to a new job. They will have a rough time, and that's something we need to address as a society.
But assuming that number of "jobs" for humans will decrease to zero is a big stretch. I think that even if we had robots that could take care of all our needs for us, humans would come up with jobs to occupy their time.
It seems to me the amount of available work is steadily decreasing right now. Perhaps not towards zero, but we don't have to lose that much to need substantial reform. Once you reach over 30% unemployment, you have a big problem already.
There's an easy way to increase the number of jobs though: share the existing ones by reducing the work-week. We could start by shaving off a few hours, perhaps as much as a full day (for a 4 day work-week). Then decrease it further to match progress in automation. Of course, we should keep the salaries at the same levels, lest machine owners will just get a bigger and bigger share of the pie, just because they had starting capital the other workers didn't.
We've already essentially phased out the useful work that people under IQ 70 can do. It's likely that it's creeped up to 75 or 80, even. As these are automated, let's creep it up to 90.
It also takes out those who are poor and have no branch on which to gain experience for their first job. If we have eliminated the first jobs for all but the most talented and those with connections, what does a somewhat bright poor student do?
Well, it used to be they got a job, proved themselves, and worked their way up. Now, what do they do when they don't have the social capital to get to the point where they can work up?
What are these newly opened industries that will work with these people?
As far as I can tell, it's "magic future ones" and the evidence for these statements is "because I hope that's what happens".
If that really is the best answer then it's time to invest in guillotine manufacturers.
The scary part is it looks like wealth will be increasingly concentrated, and more and more people will fall to a level where what we consider basic needs in modern society (food, shelter, education and health care) will no longer be attainable. As the author points out, "it will be messy": Those societies usually don't end well.
A diminishing pool of people to pay for stuff, not only hurts businesses profits, but also diminishes the pool of rich people (who make their money off of selling products, houses, services, etc to the masses).
The fancy waiter will recommend whatever the owner of the restaurant wants him to recommend, because that is his actual job. He is employed to maximize the dollar value of food and liquor sold.
Now, there are limits to this. A good restauranteur isn't going to sell you inedible crap, and a good waiter isn't going to recommend it, because that will hurt the restaurant's long-term profitability (and in the short term, probably result in a bad tip for the waiter).
Nonetheless, it's wise to keep in mind that the waiter is working for the restaurant, not you.
If you have any friends who've worked in fancy restaurants, ask them about some of the strategies waiters use to encourage a large bill (and thus, a large tip).
This is a limited way of looking at the value of a waiter — I think this is a common misconception. A good waiter knows to listen to what you want and make recommendations based on that. Anytime a waiter recommends mostly or only the most expensive things, I trust them less and they lose the potential to be a great waiter even if the service is otherwise good.
The waiter is not really working for the restaurant because the amount of their pay that comes from the restaurant directly is very low. In a restaurant with tips that comprises most of the waiter's income, and since the amount you tip is voluntary, really the server is working for the customer to earn a good tip.
I only need the waiter to tell me this because I have no idea what the food with end up looking like. Just put pictures of items on the menu. Problem solved. Now it get to order what looks best.
To put it another way, when you walked into the restaurant you committed to paying a premium for one sensory experience or another. Why not the visual?
This has not been my experience at all. People who work at theaters get discounted, if not free, tickets to movies and have often watched the featured movies themselves. They get to see how often people walk out, ask for a refund or praise a film. They can relate to your tastes and make recommendations based off of them. They can tell you if a movie isn't a great date flick and suggest another.
> Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc.
Speak for yourself. There is nothing more aggravating to me than self-checkout, it is slow, it is often buggy and I don't like having to scan, punch in codes and bag things myself. I hate having to wait for a manager's approval to apply a coupon or finish checkout because the machine decided I did something wrong and won't let me fix it.
Hell is having $20 a machine won't accept.
I prefer being able to speak with the people who are going to submit or prepare my order, because I can ask questions or customize what I want. I cannot do that with an app or touch screen menu.
> Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job
Again, speak for your own experiences.
Oh, man. I never use the self-checkout. It's part of the invisible work movement--stuff someone used to be paid to do for you, now you do yourself. Same thing with pumping your own gas. I miss Oregon, for how there was always someone to pump your gas for you. Is gas cheaper here in Washington, where you have to do it yourself? Nope. Invisible work. Screw that.
The only reason I'm a Co-op member? Customer service. They pump my gas, are helpful in store, the workers are paid fairly and members of my community, managers understanding even do grocery delivery at a loss. Hell my buddy can manage a store and provide for his family as opposed to scraping by.
Kind of tangential to OPs post, but I'm getting disillusioned and sick of watching community funds get transferred away to accounts somewhere else. Fuck that, I'll pay the slight premium.
FWIW it matches my experience. I can't think of a time I've gone to the cinema not already knowing which film I'm there to see, so it wouldn't cross my mind to ask for recommendations.
Most cashiers can't be bothered to puts things like eggs anywhere except directly under gallons of juice. I am not trying to beat them up, most are clearly hard working and decent people. But they are people who are being replaced by more efficient, cheaper an more reliable machines. Except for the part where I have to bag my own eggs, but I won't crush them, because I paid for them.
Obviously not everybody will be like that (I suspect I'm turning into one of those "old people" for whom they manage to keep the bank teller windows open for a few hours a day...) But I just want to point out that this isn't as straight forward as it seems. And, if my suspicion is true, with an ageing population society may actually swing in the direction where they prefer more human contact than less in their every day lives.
You're naive if you think this will only impact minimum wage jobs. Paying humans is usually about 30-50% of a companies operating expenses. With less humans you can shave even more percentages off by reducing office space or insurance premiums of applicable.
This might be starting with robot barista arms manipulating coffee machines, but it's really quickly going to make it to lab workers manipulating samples. Where it goes from there depends more on the software than the hardware, but it's really not a stretch to assume that shortly after we replace truckers, we're going to replace pilots and sea captains as well.
We're racing towards a decision. We can allow the automated cargo ships that will soon manage all global trade to be owned by a small cabal, or we can nationalize these systems and use the value they create to support our most disadvantaged populations.
You make an interesting point, and I want to remark to it - this is why I don't think the problem is just automation, but in fact social inequality. You can always employ people to take care of a small, privileged class of people.
The extent to which society does this is completely cultural choice. I heard of comparison, in Brazil, several procents of households have a maid (or multiple), where in Sweden, less than half percent of households have one.
Well that's true, where they don't add value. What's the difference between the case of getting movie tickets and your waiter at a fancy restaurant? One of them is practically a useless annoyance, and the other one is part of the experience.
Someone in a movie box isn't going to tell you about the movie, or have a conversation about it with you. They are there to take the most basic info (movie, time) and money, and give you a ticket. It's also always done thru a thick bit of glass that makes communication sometimes difficult if not painful.
On the other hand, the fancy waiter will make recommendations. Will tell you about other things, and is generally part of the ambiance and experience of eating out.
Honestly, do we really like interacting with the people with minimum wage jobs? Not really. Most people seem to prefer the automated checkout, ordering on their phone, etc. While sometimes the person doing the job can be interesting, or friendly, even if the person is amazing, generally these jobs are pretty repetitive, and could be done easier, faster, and cheaper with automation. Not only for the employer, but the customer. Most of these people also are not thrilled about their jobs and be lazy, or do a bad job (I can't blame them really, you get what you pay for). The only thing keeping employees around was that automation was more expensive (and more unreliable). Now it's the flip - labor is much more expensive and unreliable than automation. Now people in those jobs have to prove where they add value, if it's only to watch over the machines.