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A comment on Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes. Parent comment

Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by kelnos on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @02:54AM (#34500749)
I'm sympathetic to this argument because people can't retrain for a different job instantly, and there's mostly no safety net that allows people to take the time to retrain and still be able to provide for themselves and family while they do it.

But in the grand scheme of things, low-skill jobs should be automated to the greatest degree possible, freeing up people to work on more worthwhile things. And as automation gets better and better, even medium-skill and eventually high-skill jobs should also be automated.

In my version of utopia, people won't even have to work if they don't want to, but, due the to abundance afforded by all this automation, will still be able to live a very comfortable life. I suspect humanity will destroy itself before we get there, though.

(Of course, that utopia will be fragile if enough people don't know how to maintain the automation.)

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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by harvey9 on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @03:29AM (#34501009)
The OP is running a distinctive coffee shop. Interacting with human staff is a feature. If I literally just want to drink a coffee then coffee vending machines already exist.
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by kelnos on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @03:57AM (#34501244)
Sure, and people should certainly be allowed to run businesses like that. But a barista job shouldn't be one that someone has to take in order to make ends meet.
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by forgetfreeman on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @03:22AM (#34500952)
The notion of retraining implies a waiting pool of unfilled jobs. The only industries in the US that are chronically understaffed and desperate for talent are construction and unskilled agricultural labor, neither of which (separately or together) are prepared to absorb the roughly 22 million individuals who work in the service industry in the US. You want automation, you then also have to choose between luxury space communism or open air refugee camps and massive civil unrest.
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by bee_rider on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @04:04AM (#34501299)
Well on the bright side we’d have to be incredibly stupid to pick the latter, right?
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by forgetfreeman on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @03:25AM (#34515791)
It says quite a bit about the world we find ourselves in that I can't tell if this is a masterwork of sarcasm or if you're being earnest.
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by bee_rider on Wednesday January 25, 2023 @05:08PM (#34524837)
I don’t even know if I was being sarcastic, hahaha. I mean I was playing with the fact that obviously the latter is a terrible pick, but I’m really worried that we won’t so much pick it as default into it.
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Re:Is tipping getting out of control? Many consumers say yes by monkeydust on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @05:34AM (#34501941)
You should read Mana if you haven't already.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Manna-Two-Visions-Humanitys-Future-...

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