Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult

Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by malandrew on Saturday October 05, 2013 @01:55PM (#6501422)

TBH, of all the different companies out there, McDonald's is the one that I am shocked has not become far more automated. They operate on a scale that no other food industry business operates, yet many of the tasks are still done by people. Why don't we have fully automatic fry machines by now for example?

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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by brownbat on Sunday October 06, 2013 @11:01AM (#6504266)

They do some of it:

1. Automatic drink maker: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgiT5b8Z5UE

2. Automated drive through machine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxz6DSwL17s

3. Electronic order terminal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UB4wqyVRn7o

4. Full on vending machine convenience stores: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/13/us/vending-machines-don-t-... (Failed, or were reduced to Redbox?)

Some projects take off, some fail. I like the automated order machines, but maybe they confuse too many people.

They probably don't roll all this out super fast, because being as large as they are, there's enormous risk in changing everything over night. I'm not sure, they may have to balance the shiny new methods against the interests against franchisees, who don't want to constantly retrain employees. But probably (hopefully) most of the good ideas are being tried out in some McDonald's somewhere.

They probably don't yet have "the robot that makes 360 gourmet burgers an hour," http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/meet-the-robot-that-makes-3...

But maybe it's easier to experiment with things on the margin at that size, so replacing your entire burger process probably lags a few years behind the technology.

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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by jrs99 on Saturday October 05, 2013 @09:53PM (#6502773)

Inertia and bureaucracy. Things stay the same because there aren't enough people that are going to make it a mission to automate these processes. They're making enough money the way things are.

You can say the same for any corporation or institution out there. Why are colleges still teaching the same way since 1850?

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Re:Swiss to vote on 2,500 franc basic income for every adult by greedo on Saturday October 05, 2013 @09:59PM (#6502782)

If you compare the McDonalds of 1980 to today's, there has been a lot of automation.

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