https://www.inc.com/thomas-koulopoulos/100-years-ago-we-fear...
"It wasn't until the middle of the twentieth century that the tipping point came along for the driverless elevator as the result of a strike by the elevator operators' union in New York City in 1945.
The strike was devastating, costing the city an estimated one hundred million dollars. Suddenly, there was an economic incentive to go back to the automatic elevator. Over the next decade there was a massive effort to build trust in automatic elevators, which resulted in the elimination of tens of thousands of elevator operator jobs."
If Amazon is close enough to automating these jobs, then it will likely just automate it and fire whoever it can. If not, then you're likely making the path towards that faster.
I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond buying a bit more time. Unless the employees, the government, and Amazon, find a way for them to get a profession in which they have more leverage thanks to the *high individual value* they provide, rather than being a temp for future robots.
One solution can be for a union, government, Amazon etc, is to put aside money for a fund that will invest in training these employees so they could one day not depend on these kind of low-leverage jobs.
While everyone was predicting that the dirty jobs would get automated, instead its a lot of midlevel jobs are getting automated, but we still don't have a robot that can take out the trash.
I am willing to bet my house thay we can automate away the CEO but not the janitor, and it will be hilarious.
Management is just analysis of data, we can do that. But the physical works requires dexterity and robotics that still escapes us.
Because it's hard to justify the $$$ on a robot to automate a job that takes 30 seconds once a week.
Modern people don't realize it, but an awful lot of household drudgery has been automated. I'm old enough to remember life before the microwave. What a marvelous time saver that is! You can even buy one from the thrift store for $10. I remember them being $1000, and that was back when a dollar was worth something.
My first encounter with a microwave was at far Bob's in Pasadena. Finals had just ended at Cal Tech and I walked to far Bob's to decompress. I had no knowledge of microwave ovens.
I ordered a piece of cherry pie. Waitress decided to warm it without telling me, using their then-new microwave oven.
The plate was ice cold when she passed it to me. When I bit into a piece of the pie, I burned the bejesus out of my mouth. I yelped and the waitress came running.
She showed me this magic box, which made sense as I'd just finished E&M. She comped me the pie and since it was a slow night (around 2am), we spent an hour testing different foods in the microwave. Bacon layered in paper towels was the clear winner.
The fastest tech revolution I ever saw was in the fall of '75, when I was a frosh. At the beginning of the semester, the Caltech bookstore had slide rules for $125. By December, they were on closeout for $5. Never saw them again. The calculators had arrived!
(Showing my age again. Kids today don't ride bikes to school. All you gotta do is look at the lonely single bike rack at elementary schools. In my day there were lots of racks festooned with bikes. These days when I pass a school, there's a long line of moms in SUVs with the motor running talking on their phones.)
In the USA. But in plenty of other places they do. In fact, at the bike rack of my sons school there is too little place, so some of them overflow onto the school yard.
There are the mothers of kitchen automation:
1. refrigerator
2. garbage disposal
3. dishwasher
4. electric / gas stove and oven
These are really marvelous inventions. It seems I spent half my childhood washing dishes by hand. Ugh.
The latter does not exist in Europe so I haven't ever thought it would be an important step in reducing chores. We have bio waste bins for food leftovers which seems pretty efficient already.
In my opinion they provide basically zero value but lots of trouble. They encourage putting all kinds of nastiness down your pipes and in my experience tend to break and leak. But they are virtually ubiquitous here.
But perhaps not as much fun, particularly if you forget to put the lid on?
> It seems I spent half my childhood washing dishes by hand. Ugh.
Yes, I remember that when I left home to go to university, the very first thing my parents did was to buy a dishwasher.
Mind you, I don't have one today - kitchen too small, and I don't like bending down to fill/empty it.
I'm really wondering about the garbage disposal thing and I'll go Google about them.
Pneumatic waste collection is a thing, and has been for quite some time.
See
- https://www.wired.com/2010/08/trash-sucking-island/
- https://untappedcities.com/2020/04/09/inside-roosevelt-islan...
- https://qz.com/1909600/the-future-of-garbage-collection-is-p...
What I think will happen is CEOs will be glorified actors that are tasked with delivering the decisions some ML system has made. It'll be like the "white guy in a suit" role that some Chinese companies have.
Whereas things humans have developed over millions of years and think are easy, like vision, dexterity, etc might be quite hard and the last things to be automated.
I feel like a lot of comments about what ML will do start with a misunderstanding of what ML actually is.
Saying ML will make a CEO’s decisions is like saying Excel will make CEO’s decisions. Neither is anything more than a system for keeping track of correlations.
I regularly consult management about technical decisions and the always chose something else than the best option. Based on feelings, opinions and kickback rates.
Well, right there's your problem.
Also, the vacuum now empties itself
Have you found those working? All my friends that have one just end up storing them somewhere never to be used again.
My apartment in Europe is suitable for it, as I do not have many rooms, so that it does a decent job on cleaning. I do not use the regular vacuum very often.
2) The CEO, and CEO pay, is already more of political action.
Have you ever seen a robot unclog a toiler? Get into a greasy kitchen vent to clean it? Clean out the molt between the tiles?
Of fuck that, there is no cleaning robot that can even recognise a stain a scrub it off with a brush.
Do you know there are different kinds of cleaning products and brushes for different surfaces?
Cleaning is a very complex process made up of hundreds of little actions, each fairly complex. They require loads of dexterity
I have seen a plunger-bot. I have never seen a commercial plunger-bot. I think I've also seen a mold scrubber bot. I'm not trying to minimize the skill involved. I'm trying to say that the labor it replaces (assuming the time value of money and minimum wage increases cancel out) is worth 362,500 over 25 years. That's a lot of money, but it's also not for a robot that can do all those things assuming it was as efficient as replacing a whole person. And less if the robot has to be replaced more frequently.
If the market supported a robot that cost a few orders of magnitude more than that, I can see a fleet of robots. Not 100% "let 'er rip" L-5 autonomy, but where one person managed a fleet of specialized robots. Mapping out the surfaces ahead of time, etc.
I will say, I was responding to a "janitor" in the office environment doing routine tasks emptying trash. Not a kitchen vent cleaner. There are a lot of deep cleaning actions that would be harder to automate, and given their rareness and extra difficulty are likely the last to go.
Unions have negotiated with companies that outsource or automate its members' jobs to secure compensation for the workers who were affected.
However, I think this is a problem that requires a larger solution. There needs to be compensation plans for workers as they're automated away or outsourced. Perhaps it can be a buyout, or a shared ownership scheme where workers get shares in the company or the automation itself that pay dividends. Or a tax on automation or outsourcing that gets returned to workers.
We're heading towards a world where most work is done by machines, and only a handful of people will own, control and profit from them. I think a tax and a shared ownership model would help prevent a world where workers and their progeny are relegated to peasantry.
People keep saying that but we are no closer than we were 50 years ago. A lot of jobs have been replaced but new jobs have been created and society has absorbed the increased productivity (cheaper goods, foods, and much more complex high end goods (iPhone, airplanes, etc).
Not in every case. You can look at workers in the Rust Belt. Their well paying jobs with benefits were "replaced" and new jobs never came, unless you think working at Walmart for close to minimum wage is one of those new jobs.
Even when, say, manufacturers come back and produce domestically, they've reduced what used to be a 1,000+ person job to one that requires 40 engineers and a handful of maintenance people. It's not like any of those factory workers who were laid off in the past were later rehired as engineers, either.
It isn't "society" that's absorbed absorbed increased worker productivity, but employers and those who own the automation. Worker productivity in the US increased dramatically over the last 20 years, and even more over the last 40. Despite that, worker compensation hasn't increased, and has roughly remained the same over those same 40 years[1].
And the old coal mining towns in Northern England (and South Wales).
With wages the minimum wage in 1980 was $3.10, while the last increase from 2009 rose from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour
What society has "absorbed" is an expectation that stock markets will continue rising at a pace that significantly outstrips inflation and (related) wage increases. Pension funds and individual retirement savings (401k, RRSP) heavily rely on employers pocketing the bulk of productivity increases for themselves and continuing to exploit labour. It'd be interesting to see the chaos that would arise if governments decided at some point that workers should get an equal share of that.
Yes it has. Food is way cheaper now. Clothes are way cheaper. Transportation is way cheaper. Housing is way better (and cheaper if you want what passed for housing in the 40s).
It's important because wealth is essentially power, so concentration of wealth inevitably changes the balance of power in society. And that in turn creates a feedback loop where the wealth and powerful can undermine thelaws and regulations intended to keep the distribution of wealth and power from becoming too lopsided.
This is why I view the current everything-as-a-service model that takes things people used to own and turns them into things people rent pretty skeptically.
Really I think it’s a balancing act. Since we can’t just get rid of the concept of power, we try to regulate its use. This is pretty difficult.
It’s why these wage debates get so heated - they threaten the core social power of people.
And it absolutely is a feedback loop. Something about absolute power corrupting absolutely.
People have been saying it for far longer than 50 years:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
The trouble is, both sides of the argument are correct. When disruption occurs, many people are badly disadvantaged even if society as a whole moves forward. It would be best to find ways to reduce the impact on the affected people without holding up automation and other improvements which have been shown to be beneficial to productivity in the long term.
They will do this anyway. The reason it mattered for elevator operators is that you had to convince a bunch of end users that it was reasonable to self-operate the elevator after they had been trained for years to have an attendant, and you probably had to modify the deployed elevators all over the city--which weren't owned by and one party but had been installed by various buildings--to have additional safety features. Amazon can replace out how Amazon works internally and I would have no clue.
it's hard to make this argument when you apply it to the industrial revolution which has already happened, and people aren't completely destitute because of it. In fact, people, on average, are wealthier because of it!
Automation means wealth, and this new-found wealth means more demand for goods/services - of which may not yet exist today. How many people would have guessed that a youtube content-creator is going to be a thing?
> I don't see any way for the employees to win this beyond buying a bit more time.
Why can't the government increase minimum wages? If those jobs are likely to get automated away then that's going to happen either way At least let them make decent wages _while_ they have a job.
I get my groceries from Ocado in the UK. Their warehouses are almost entirely automated, including increasingly picking and packing groceries that often include soft or easily breakable products into bags.
They're moved from focusing on growing their own direct sales to increasingly licensing that platform globally.
Yeah a big part of the work is automated. But these warehouses still need people.
E.g. a few years ago the packing into bags was still done by people across the board from trays brought by robots. They've systematically automated more and more of it at a pretty astounding pace.
It should be done today and held in escrow for when it happens.
They're always pushing for automation as fast as they possibly can.
Cool story about the elevator. :)
I sometimes fantasize about what it would be like to live in a mild-to-moderately isolated community - moving to Hawaii, northern Alaska, some random island. It's fascinating reading blogs by people who live there, and many of them have a "So You Want to Move to _____" type of post. In virtually all of them, there is some comment along the lines of "It's really hard to find all the things you're used to buying out here, but at least Amazon delivers to us." One of those that I was reading about Hawaii said the big island only has a few big box stores but Amazon can deliver in two to three days.
Just thought that was an interesting tidbit.
Source: Grew up in one of those shitholes, actively rooting for sea level rise wipe it off the map, there is nothing of value there.
There is only 185k people living on the "big island". I'm not sure why people would expect something other than a rural America level of services, when it is really just a small city of people effectively in the middle of no where.
Note that smaller cities in rural America service a much larger population than just the city itself. The island does not have a surrounding population that can drive an hour in once a week to make use of a big box stores.
Google maps says there is a Walmart, Kmart, Sears and a number of other well known American brands. It's not like they are being blocked from entering the market.
I think you misunderstood me. Your comment was in response to:
> I was actually very surprised how sparse the retail was. Felt very much like rural America.
You then went on to argue that retail is not more developed because existing retailers are conspiring to keep the bigger retailers out.
I am arguing that there need not be a conspiracy. The real reason is more likely that it is not economical for a lot of big box retailers to serve such a small population.
I was also responding to the great grandparent's comment. They should not be surprised at a rural America level of retail on the big island of Hawaii, as it is pretty much rural America, what with low population density and isolated location.
Of course we ended up at Walmart because the people I was with are suckers. Lovable suckers, but all-day suckers nonetheless.
I'm not an Amazon defender by any means, but doesn't Amazon pay the best in terms of comparable work which is why the warehouse jobs are so competitive to get? Or is that just Amazon PR to stave off regulations
Among all Amazon workers, the median pay is $28,446 a year ($13.68 an hour), a figure the company revealed this year for the first time because of a new regulatory requirement. That’s a worldwide figure that includes full and part-time workers. Glassdoor, an employment site, says average pay at U.S. fulfillment centers has been $13 an hour, according to nearly 900 people who submitted their data to the site.
Amazon’s pay is significantly above the $10.28 an hour that the typical retail worker makes, but it’s less than the $15.53 that a median warehouse employee is paid, according to Labor Department data.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/amazons-15-m...
Article is from 2018, but is about a wage increase to $15/hr.
>Amazon’s pay is significantly above the $10.28 an hour that the typical retail worker makes, but it’s less than the $15.53 that a median warehouse employee is paid, according to Labor Department data.
It might be tempting to conclude from that amazon is under-paying for that, but it's unknown what the median "warehouse job" at amazon entails compared to the median "warehouse job" elsewhere. If the jobs at amazon is mostly low skill (comparable with retail), then it wouldn't be fair to compare to the median warehouse job that has higher proportion of skilled labor like forklift drivers.
I'm sure the competitiveness varies wildly in different areas though.
The downside, especially for the managers, is that they bring their toxic attitudes with them. Diluted of course, but removing it entirely would be a huge effort.
Generally the conveyor doesn't go faster when you get faster. The warehouse robots are just working on queuing theory. However fast you go, they'll just schedule more shit to come to you.
Is it? Amazon employees (presumably) have the same options as everyone else. Many of those options are, generally speaking, cheaper than Amazon. Whatever your feelings about Amazon in general, fact that Amazon’s supposedly cash-strapped employees choose to pay a premium for convenience is not evidence of Amazon’s malevolence.
No it’s not. Your point was completely the opposite (factory towns had shitty prices due to exclusivity).
> Amazon is forcing competitors out of business. And once they have a monopoly
They are forcing little shitty stores that have nothing to add over ordering online out of business.
They aren’t anywhere near a monopoly in any segment of the world. They aren’t even on a path to it. It’s so trivial for people to sell things online that they will never be anything close to one unless they get online sales banned for the rest of the Internet.
My aunt went to be a manager at the Walmart while everything else in town slowly went out of business. They carried sewing supplies until Franklin's went under and then they got rid of that section.
It's the same story with louder music.
This arrangement is a transfer of wealth between the middle class and Walmart regardless of whether they opt to shop at Walmart.
But in a world where Walmart posted that much profit on it's $559 billion 2020 revenues[2], somehow Walmart is being allowed to tax me, not a Walmart shopper, via my taxes, and transfer it to Walmart's owners and shareholders, by forcing me to pay for part of their employees wages.
Which they clearly have the money to actually pay for.
Unless Walmart is a break-even business, there is no excuse, period, for them to not be paying a living wage and getting sponsored by the government for it.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/269414/gross-profit-marg...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2021/02/18/walmart...
How is it a transfer to walmart? The people who get paid the benefit are eligible for it regardless of whether they're employed by walmart or not. Suppose walmart automated their jobs and replaced them with robots, you'll still be on the hook for paying those benefits.
I'm skeptical of this. If anything amazon's push for minimum wage makes me think they're better able to afford the increased cost of labor than their competitors.
You need to look at an operating income figure to make such a conclusion. (Or another financial measure that’s “after” labor, but OI is probably the standard one.)
They are literally taking your tax dollars to do this.
This is the simplest possible economic calculus: a business that doesn't pay full time employees a living wage is getting sponsored by your tax dollars for its profits.
This is all bullshit. Walmart is still the cheaper price for groceries and most general goods (at least in my experience living somewhere rural). Amazon is purely convenience at an OK price.
There's a huge useful area between giving Amazon less power and giving them no power. Amazon is always the 4th place I look for something. Most of the time I never even have to go there. And things like their little tantrum where they stopped selling a bunch of Apple products just made that easier for me.
Also remember the audience. Most of the people who can't afford to shop anywhere but Amazon also can't afford to hang out on hacker news. Most of the people here can do better.
I also ask that Because I think humans are losing. The big one will be autonomous trucking. Once that hits, I think we’re going to see massive layoffs and unemployment, as robotics replaces humans.
They've become the new Walmart, they killed off all other options so now its the only place left for a lot of people.
Is it that difficult to imagine the amount of value it created for those communities, too?
"Value creation" generally reveals itself through a rightward shift in the distribution of household incomes, increased standards of living, and resilient supply chains. At least that's what Adam Smith had in mind when he wrote "The Wealth of Nations".
If the only "value creation" KPI that ticks up is corporate earnings in offshore tax havens, the system starts to look like a non-governmental tax authority.
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on this point.
This is a problem inherent to neoliberalism, you’re right, I’m just not sure I’d agree that it requires a nation state level shift in politics to make Amazon pay their fare share in taxes and wages.
So, Amazon shows billions and billions of dollars of revenue, but relatively little profit. And it’s only profit that would get taxed at the federal level.
Yes, so that’s not profit anymore. What’s the problem?
Would you prefer that businesses be taxed on revenue and not profit?
Just because a company buys and owns something doesn't automatically make it an investment that shouldn't be taxed as profit.
well you'll be glad to know that these are not what's being spent on - because if they did, it'd be an open and shut case from the IRS.
But
> boosting stock prices they already own
that is not considered investment, and i do not believe a company can avoid paying tax on profits used to perform this action.
That’s not even a thing. We’re not living in an Austin Powers movie.
> or boosting stock prices they already own
Who is “they” in that sentence? Do you know how public traded companies work?
The "just stop buying amazon" arguments never made sense to me in the first place, because most people who use it are the ones budget-stretched in the first place. A lot of rural communities have no other viable options for some items as well.
It will take massive government action and that's it. There's no other way we can fix this problem. Wages are suppressed because it's _legal enough_ to suppress them. Labor fines basically become a cost of doing business.
After the union busting that went on during the Alabama Amazon unionization votes, after all of these labor complaints against Amazon coming under media attention and not a single thing being done about it, it's clear that there is truly nothing that will stop it except a general strike.