[xenocratus]

> plus, if you see somebody stealing food, no, you didn't

Don't tell me, in your view the cost of shoplifting is begrudgingly covered by those evil rich people who own everything, right? It's not passed down to customers, and therefore affects those who obey rules, and especially those who are in a precarious financial situation to begin with, right?

[ryandrake]

I don't understand why we'd defend a megacorporation. Both the corporation and the shoplifter can be wrong.

[lotsofpulp]

The business is not wrong for choosing to use automation. Everyone does it every day, and it is not considered "wrong".

[jrm4]

"Everyone does it every day"

That makes it okay?

"It is not considered wrong"

By WHOM? I go out of my way to avoid self-checkout when I can, because I consider it 'wrong.'

[lotsofpulp]

By everyone who uses any tool invented in human history. You are drawing an arbitrary line at self checkouts for some reason, but I am sure you have no problem with the millions of other ways automation has benefited you, obviously including using a computer to express your ideas on a forum hosted by a business that invests in other businesses that use automation as their springboard to success.

[jrm4]

Reductio ad absurdum big time.

But let's see if I can explain it in a capitalism friendly way, I guess.

I have a preference for cashiers checking my stuff out for me, so that's how I select. Partly because I like the convenience, partly because I like knowing more people are having jobs.

And here's the important part; I personally actually have significant control over this, which makes it different from your silly argument.

[lotsofpulp]

I have no idea how to interpret your comment.

GuinansEyebrows's opinion was that businesses are wrong for implementing self checkouts. Presumably, ryandrake agreed with GuinansEyebrows.

I do not think that a business's decision to use self checkouts is wrong, and in fact the business is consistent with all of us, as we all choose to use automation/technology how we see fit.

Maybe it is suboptimal for some people, but why would a business be wrong for trying something that reduces their costs? I try to reduce my costs all the time. For example, I like restaurants where you order at the counter or on a device and self bus. I don't like waiting for a waiter. Is that business wrong?

[lamasery]

Self-checkouts aren’t automation. They just change who does the work (to someone not being paid for it).

[recursive]

I've heard this argument, and I just don't get it. I've never heard anyone complain about having to push their own shopping carts. No one pays you to push the cart. Should they? If you want the cart pushed, you push the cart. If you want to check out, you check out. If either one of those is a hardship for you, go elsewhere.

[lamasery]

This was an actual thing (complaining about this) when super-markets started to take over from general stores and butcher shops et c. Having to go get your bag of sugar off the warehouse shelf yourself rather than a clerk fetching it for you is unpaid labor on the part of the shopper (and is also not automation).

[recursive]

Oregon recently eliminated their mandatory gas station pump attendants. It seems most people considered that a good thing. For those that prefer the premium experience of having a human cashier, it seems that for now, they're still easy to find. For establishments that regularly expect to have large orders with dozens of items, they'll probably continue. It seems there's less to gain for large complicated orders.

Or perhaps it will go the way of smoking in restaurants. Some people definitely preferred it, but in the US anyway, it's pretty hard to find, if it's even legal anywhere.

[ButlerianJihad]

Two thousand years ago, most authors didn't know how to read or write. The erudite author would dictate their words verbally to a scribe, who had learned these specialized skills. Then other scribes and copyists could copy out the manuscript. When Gutenberg made the printing press, more specialized skills emerged: that of typesetting and publishing and printing and all that.

These separations endured well into the 1960s, as secretaries were trained women who could type and take dictation, and their bosses would generally shout into their ears and/or a tape recording device to get their work done. "Diane, take a letter!" was a common trope in the office of yesterday.

When home computing, personal word-processing, and desktop publishing came on the scene, suddenly we had to learn how to type. Suddenly every high school student who needed to write a paper, we all needed to know how to type in order to produce research papers. This was unprecedented. Then with word processing and WYSIWYG, we needed to know fonts, and bold/underline/italic conventions, and this was also unprecdented, because previously this was done for us, behind the scenes, by professionals.

Ultimately all that page layout, and design and visual aesthetics, even finding clipart and adding it appropriately and tastefully, all of that skilled knowledge and labor fell upon the shoulders of the one who was writing a newsletter for a non-profit, or writing technical documentation, or designing an album/CD cover or something.

Eventually those specializations and skills became so democratized that everyone knew them but we all knew them badly. We could do a half-assed job of desktop publishing, whereas a Gutenberg publication in the 18th century could have been a true work of art that was replicated many times.

Now even the em-dash is vilified as a signifier of low-skill slop, when some of us actually took the time to read manuals of style and understand when/how to properly use hyphens, en-dash, and em-dash. But never mind that; elegant grammar and perfect spelling are now the hallmarks of a shitty LLM prompt and HN commenters can just tear down any article by falsely claiming it was AI-written, and you can sic your fake "AI-writing detectors" on anything and 99% tear it down because of your stupid faulty em-dash hueristics.

[lamasery]

I’m not sure whether this is a bit of a joke about the broader thrust of my post, but I actually do think tons of the “automation” computers have given us is fake, for many of the reasons you suggest. I think it’s part of why the benefits of all this alleged automation have been more muted than one might expect (though not trivial, to be clear) and that it’s imposed costs in a bunch of ways that aren’t tracked on a P&L sheet but do make life less pleasant.

[colechristensen]

The delusional thing is they think the cost is distributed to the owners.

They just cut worker hours and raise prices. The owners don't see a difference.

The richest person they're hurting is the store manager earning $200k missing some of their bonus.

[nilamo]

Don't tell me, you think the store actually expects to sell all that milk before it goes bad?

[xenocratus]

Yes, I'm sure milk is all people steal. And I'm sure it's better for it to be stolen than given to food banks and charities.

F off