Wasn’t whole foods supposed to have workerless stores where you just pick stuff off the shelf and it credits your account? What happened to that?
Oh, did you just figure out profit is derived from surplus value and only labor produces surplus value? And now a virus killed a million Americans and everybody hates Amazon/Whole Foods so you can’t find any workers? Get fucked, cry me a river, hope your company shrivels and dies. I’m gonna shoplift from my local whole foods today because you opened your mouth.
Wasn’t whole foods supposed to have workerless stores where you just pick stuff off the shelf and it credits your account? What happened to that?
Bet the system actually require a massive amount of workers running in the background to function “seamlessly”.
The argument that “if we had to give more to workers, it would become more profitable to automate production and get rid of the workers, so workers mustn’t ask for more” is literally over 100 years old
I don’t remember what company it was, but someone here had posted an article on how one supermarket chain had hired underpaid workers from Central America to do customer assistance via video call on self-serve kiosks.
I once read a comic based on a story of a person working as a collector for those e-scooters. Of course, the company advertises how streamlined and automated the scooters are, just use an app and automatically got yourself a scooter. But in reality it is held together by labor who make sure that the system running, like gathering all the scooters discarded everywhere and putting them back.
The automation of checkout operator work is probably going to happen at some point though. There’s nothing impossible about it , it’s just that so far attempts have failed or not been cost efficient.
The specific company that first stumbles on a particular way to reduce the socially necessary labour time to produce/provide some commodity will profit temporarily until the rest catch up or die out and push towards monopoly. Pursuing ‘automation’ is the only thing they’re capable of doing, trying to find an arrangement of tools and division of labour which uses 10,000 workers to create an output that currently takes 15,000 workers in the best existing solution.
The ‘automation’ part is illusory though. Except at the most simplistic, zoomed in level, there isn’t any replacement of human labour with ‘automated’ labour happening. There is no such thing as automated labour, it’s not a concept that makes sense. What it is is an abstraction that masks a new division of labour where a billion shelf-stackings and a hundred billion customer check-outs are delivered by an unimaginably alienated group of software engineers, service technicians, rare-earth miners, remote customer support officers and a bunch of lawyers. And once the new paradigm takes over, the value of performing those functions will have dropped commensurately with the new necessary labour-time, and the rate of profit will have dropped a little more.
“Younger people aren’t quick to work because they want meaningful work,” Mackey told Reason. “You can’t expect to start with meaningful work. You’re going to have to earn it over time.”
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The thing that confuses me is what is the goal of this kind of complaining? My response to any :grillman: that is upset how people don’t want to work is to tell them to go scream at the wall.
They are not going to convince the masses that they depend on for cheap labor that they are wrong for wanting more. It strikes me as some kind of self circle-jerk coping.
The goal is to convince politicians to further eviscerate social programmes, and increase the reserve army of labour by hiking interest rates.
I know that they think that is a solution, but the idea of trying to squeeze the labor market harder isn’t going to fix the problem. Those are the very actions that have lead to this disenchanted workforce in the first place.
“Maybe if we pour more gasoline on this fire, it will put it out so I can get my $1 big mac again”.
Man that’s fucked on so many levels. First, you have to earn the right to have meaning in your life. Second, that he views most people as doing meaningless work.
Lol, I think the funniest part about that is being almost 70 and one of your concerns is the kids thinking your cool.
Seriously. These assholes had better be on an entirely cocaine and champagne diet behind closed doors because the idea that they have all this wealth and power and are still striving little Calvinist pricks is unbearable.
I remember this asshole said something about shoppers have the freedom to shop wherever they want because there are no monopolies. Big dick Richard Wolff said “you know you sold your company to a monopoly right”. One of the best owns I’ve ever seen.
Imagine starting out as a vegan/vegetarian commune/co-op resident and turning into this massive piece of shit…
It’s not that surprising. If you’re invested in veganism or being a hippie as an individual lifestyle with no greater critique of the economy and the system why wouldn’t you turn in to a massively entitled piece of shit once wealth and fame start eroding your basic humanity?
