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Somebody will need to stand watch over the machine though and repair it... for now.

I'd say this is a draw between the Meatbags and our future Robot Overlords.

 n0t_u wrote:
Well they've been inventing new jobs for the growing market, obviously some will be phased out by innovation, but for each phased out a new one potentially opens. Someone has to build the machines, fill the machines, maintain the machines for now. The drawback though is they need less people to do those jobs. Such as with self serve checkouts at supermarkets, generally I see one person there to provide help to customers, overseeing 8 checkouts basically.

I know who can do it! Other machines.

What we need is a machine that scans you, takes your optimal order based of your body scans.

For many of us, that would be a small salad, then.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'd rather buy from a machine then deal with another McDonalds or Burger King employee.

Or Wendy's. I have yet to get the correct order from that place.

I think it'd just scan your wallet instead.

Sheets MTO touchpad ordering is amazing. Not only is it accurate and easy, but it solves the whole multi-lingual issue by allowing it to be coded for multiple languages... and you got pictures of the food for illiterate people.

I would be fine if every employee in a mcDonalds was replaced by robots and a single person to keep the machines working.

It is like that scene from Willy Wonka, where Charlie's dad gets fired from the toothpaste factory, but then gets hired to be the machine repair dude. Jobs move and people gotta move with them, ideally they can be replaced with better jobs and people grow with society.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
What about smaller chains? My work is a School Cafeteria and there is no way they will buy this, nor the burger joint down the street. This could be worse, seeing a machine make your burger could be disgusting

so we see the machine pick its nose, improperly wash its hands, wipe its hands on its but/sleeve/pants and go back to making food, inconsistantly, always with the possibility of adding some sneeze/spit/ect...


get real, plenty of our food is already made by robots... they do it better then people in terms of FAST food...

it takes a real chef to out perform robots in terms of food (and its not fast food then, its fine dining, very different) I was a suez chef for some time at a fancy resteraunt, and while the tech isnt there YET to replace that kind of cooking, it will be eventually.


same thing happened with the auto industry, and manufacturing, why pay a human 10-15$ an hour to do something a robot can do for much cheaper/faster/reliably ect.

this will be one of the unintended consequences of making minimum wage workers even more expensive to hire, as more and more places, even smaller food outlets like school cafeterias are run by huge corporations for the most part.

these corporations WILL make the investment of a few extra G's now, to save even more $ over the long run, even "mom and pop" stores will have to eventually adapt... if they can buy washing machines for dishes, they can buy cooking machines for food.


no more sick days, no more turnover of employees, no more vacation pay, no more benifits to pay ect

just have one maintenece come in weekly guy instead of 20+ employees every day

The franchise owners are going to get hit with the costs to upgrade to robotics, including any remodeling of the back area to facilitate automation. Initial franchise start up costs may be higher as well, though the lowered hiring and personnel costs ought to even that out over time.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and how much the big corps will subsidize franchise upgrades.

 azazel the cat wrote:
Well, it goes one of two ways: the full death of the commodity-based economy which heralds a utopian society of pure leisure time dedicated to the pursuit of science and art, completely devoid of Calvinism a la Star Trek; or else a fearsome amalgamation of Battle Royal, The Running Man and The Road Warrior.

Honestly, I think either one will be pretty neat.

When in doubt, go for the version with more dead highschool kids, more Schwarzenegger and more assless chaps.

On a more serious note, the issue with the utopian dream is that it assumes with the end of manual labour we will also have complete material luxury. The issue is that while labour may no longer be needed because of robots, the pool of other resources (mineral and more importantly energy) will still be finite. It's possible that 1 billion people or even 100 million people will have no problem using machines to use all available resources to build their luxury items, while everyone else ends up gak out of luck.


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 Ouze wrote:
This would be a good premise for the next Terminator movies - instead of hunting all the humans down, Skynet just takes over Mcdonalds and cuts prices, and waits for everyone to die of heart attacks.

Does that mean the real John Conner is actually Jamie Oliver?


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 n0t_u wrote:
Well they've been inventing new jobs for the growing market, obviously some will be phased out by innovation, but for each phased out a new one potentially opens. Someone has to build the machines, fill the machines, maintain the machines for now. The drawback though is they need less people to do those jobs. Such as with self serve checkouts at supermarkets, generally I see one person there to provide help to customers, overseeing 8 checkouts basically.

That's always been the argument and historically it's worked pretty well. The idea being that yes you need less people building and maintaining the machines that previously worked at making the burgers (otherwise there's no efficiency) but that surplus labour then moves on to new industries. The classic example is the enclosing of the farms, allowing agriculture to produce as much with much less labour, that labour then moved to cities and began working in factories.

The problem with that theory is that it assumes the only limiting factor is labour, that there is an infinite supply of resources out there for the unemployed to move in to. And the reality is new energy production and mineral extraction is now facing really steep cost increases. The supply of natural resources supplying the economy is reaching a technological plateau, while the replacement of labour with automation is likely to gather pace. It is entirely likely that in the not too distant future we'll have not a great deal more natural resources input in to the economy, with very few people needed to process this in to material goods. Exactly how we deal with this will be a big question.

Them robots took our jerbs!

This is a good idea, eventually most jobs will be taken over by machinery and we will live in a post-scarcity society.

The ideal end result that needs to happen as a result is lower working hours and higher pay, all generated by the increased efficiency that the robot workers offer.

In our current capitalist system, it will of course result in the $9 billion estimated savings per year going straight into the pockets of wealthy shareholders rather than being expressed as lower pricing on the food itself, or better wages for the much-reduced workforce.

 scarletsquig wrote:

In our current capitalist system, it will of course result in the $9 billion estimated savings per year going straight into the pockets of wealthy shareholders rather than being expressed as lower pricing on the food itself, or better wages for the much-reduced workforce.

Which will eventually lead to a genuine resurgence of socialism and quite possibly a rebellion as the downtrodden poor rise up (again). People (especially educated people) will only be pushed so far.

I'm starting to think that Elysium was a documentary from the future.

Perfect, then we just need to develop a self service cashier (steal one from ASDA or Tesco or somewhere) and bolt it in a McD's. Then you can pay for your meal, wait for a bit and it will pop out in front of you. Who needs smelly humans when machines can run the world!

Well considering McDonalds isn't really food, it fits with the artificial experience.

I wonder if Stop N Robs could stick one in the back and replace their hotdogs and burritoes of death with it. Totally obviate fast food joints altogether...

It's technically confectionery due to the HFCS content in everything.

 scarletsquig wrote:
This is a good idea, eventually most jobs will be taken over by machinery and we will live in a post-scarcity society.

As I already said, that conclusion relies on the assumption that the only limiting factor on production is scarcity of labour. But if we factor in resource scarcity then it becomes likely that we will have product scarcity, and no means for wokring people to contribute to production and claim a share of the material production.

 greenskin lynn wrote:
see, i was thinking more black suv's, wearing sunglasses, and everyone who is able to, having grown a massive kc style beard

My mates and I once did that in a petrol station.
Pull up at the central pump when there's on-one else there, and get out MIB-style.
The look on the bloke at the till, watching it all happen was priceless.
And we didn't even plan it.
A pity none of us had proper beards.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
www.thelibertarianrepublic.com/meet-robotic-minimum-wage-kiler/#axzz2qJwZ264w

And that as they say is that, the burger machine has been born.

But, I can't scream obscenities at it like I can a 16 year old when it serves me a regular coke instead of a diet coke with my super sized fries and double big mac.

Won't someone think of the man-children?

nkelsch wrote:
It is like that scene from Willy Wonka, where Charlie's dad gets fired from the toothpaste factory, but then gets hired to be the machine repair dude. Jobs move and people gotta move with them, ideally they can be replaced with better jobs and people grow with society.

Yes, it is inspiring that one guy from an entire factory gets a job that probably pays the same, while the rest of the former employees are still jobless.

I always hated that scene.


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 sebster wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:
This is a good idea, eventually most jobs will be taken over by machinery and we will live in a post-scarcity society.

As I already said, that conclusion relies on the assumption that the only limiting factor on production is scarcity of labour. But if we factor in resource scarcity then it becomes likely that we will have product scarcity, and no means for wokring people to contribute to production and claim a share of the material production.

Yes, I was always under the impression that to reacha scarcity economy you needed unlimited energy and unlimited labor for it to truly work. The intersting part will be what happens when we don;t have both, and how society will react/change to that new reality.

I vote for Azazel's second option.

As someone who is doing instrumentation and control at college, I say bring it on. lots of PLCs and sensors to program and monitor

My biggest problem with the "IT will make more jobs, people have to repair it, maintain it and so forth" Is that those jobs are made for people who where not made for the ones displaced. Lets say I have a factory level job, decent and so forth for 15-20 years. It is all I know. Then a robot kicks me out of it. I dont have the skills to repair it, I dont work on computers well and i dont have a licenses to ship them. im SOL.

Thou shall not make a machine in the image of the working poor.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Japan is the world's test centre for automated lavatories. The modern home loo raises its seat for you as you enter, spritzes your nether regions with a variety of douches, flushes automatically as you stand up and lowers its seat as you exit. All can be controlled by IR remote!

That's like three jobs gone right there!

 Ouze wrote:
Skynet just takes over Mcdonalds and cuts prices

I feel pretty confident that McPrices will not be cut if meatbag employees are replaced by our Robotic Friends.

 Frazzled wrote:
I'd rather buy from a machine then deal with another McDonalds or Burger King employee.

Remember that when the machines process you into slurry to lubricate their mechanicsms. The McFrazzled!

 sebster wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
Well, it goes one of two ways: the full death of the commodity-based economy which heralds a utopian society of pure leisure time dedicated to the pursuit of science and art, completely devoid of Calvinism a la Star Trek; or else a fearsome amalgamation of Battle Royal, The Running Man and The Road Warrior.

Honestly, I think either one will be pretty neat.

When in doubt, go for the version with more dead highschool kids, more Schwarzenegger and more assless chaps.

On a more serious note, the issue with the utopian dream is that it assumes with the end of manual labour we will also have complete material luxury. The issue is that while labour may no longer be needed because of robots, the pool of other resources (mineral and more importantly energy) will still be finite. It's possible that 1 billion people or even 100 million people will have no problem using machines to use all available resources to build their luxury items, while everyone else ends up gak out of luck.

There are enough resources out there floating about in our solar system to sustain a post-scarcity society for millennia, and that's assuming our population and energy needs continue to grow at the current rate and our recycling efficiency remains the same. Realistically, by the time automation technology reaches the level of sophistication and ubiquity required to actually force the collapse of capitalism, other sectors of science and technology should also have advanced to the point that exploiting those resources and energy reserves is actually practical.

Star Trek had a nuclear war followed by first contact with peaceful aliens to change the course of humanity, they -chose- to move towards a more egalitarian model long before they had all the technology necessary to support a truly post-scarcity society, I doubt we'll be that lucky; our world is going to get a whole lot more unequal before technology forces a change in direction, enough wealth is already concentrated in the hands of a powerful few to ensure that the wealthiest can ensure the system remains stacked in their favour for a long time to come - it will take either a global natural disaster or several years of global mass unemployment before the desire for change reaches a critical mass.

 Palindrome wrote:

 scarletsquig wrote:

In our current capitalist system, it will of course result in the $9 billion estimated savings per year going straight into the pockets of wealthy shareholders rather than being expressed as lower pricing on the food itself, or better wages for the much-reduced workforce.

Which will eventually lead to a genuine resurgence of socialism and quite possibly a rebellion as the downtrodden poor rise up (again). People (especially educated people) will only be pushed so far.

I'm starting to think that Elysium was a documentary from the future.

Maybe the downtrodden poor have always needed robots for socialism to properly work. Capatilism will be crushed with the iron fist of our Socialist Robot Comrades as they lead us all to glory and a bright new age for mankind...

I'd like to see that future. Slightly better than the typical Robot based future.

Wikipedia on Robots wrote:The word robota means literally "corvée", "serf labor", and figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech and also (more general) "work", "labor" in many Slavic languages (e.g.: Bulgarian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Polish, Macedonian, Ukrainian, archaic Czech). Traditionally the robota was the work period a serf (corvée) had to give for his lord, typically 6 months of the year. The origin of the word is the Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian) rabota "servitude" ("work" in contemporary Bulgarian and Russian), which in turn comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *orbh-. Robot is cognate with the German root Arbeit (work).[43][44]

Until the dudes who invent, improve, and maintain the robots decide they want some of that pay for not working and the system goes tits up as the only producers stop producing.

 Easy E wrote:
Yes, I was always under the impression that to reacha scarcity economy you needed unlimited energy and unlimited labor for it to truly work. The intersting part will be what happens when we don;t have both, and how society will react/change to that new reality.

Yep, and it looks like we'll reach a point where machine labour has replaced most manual labour (and likely a lot of white collar labour) before we've come close to producing massively more energy on anything near a sustainable level. So it could be multiple generations where we have finite products, and a majority of the population with no value to their labour to barter for some portion of those finite materials.


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 Yodhrin wrote:
There are enough resources out there floating about in our solar system to sustain a post-scarcity society for millennia, and that's assuming our population and energy needs continue to grow at the current rate and our recycling efficiency remains the same. Realistically, by the time automation technology reaches the level of sophistication and ubiquity required to actually force the collapse of capitalism, other sectors of science and technology should also have advanced to the point that exploiting those resources and energy reserves is actually practical.

There's enough resources and production out there to sustain a post-scarcity society right now. We could keep everyone well fed, clothed and sheltered, but we do not. Instead, almost every person with the ability to command greater material wealth does so and then spends almost all that material wealth on themselves and their family (larger homes, nicer cars, bigger TVs and all the rest). Not singling out 'the 1%', but talking about the developed world in general.

That isn't a guilt trip or anything like that, it's just a basic description of human nature, and if we accept that isn't going to change, there's absolutely no reason that the people with great wealth (through owning the robots) won't extract the vast majority of the resources, leaving a shortage for the rest.

The only way to break that is to assume that in the future there is so much productive capacity that everyone can every material thing they could ever want, and that's what plenty of utopian sci-fi has assumed. But the problem with that is energy supply. Without near infinite energy you don't get near infinite production, and so you still have scarce resources, and then you have the issue of billions of people who have no useful skill to trade for some portion of those scarce resources.

our world is going to get a whole lot more unequal before technology forces a change in direction, enough wealth is already concentrated in the hands of a powerful few to ensure that the wealthiest can ensure the system remains stacked in their favour for a long time to come

That's all I'm saying. Though I question your implied assumption that at some point after having reached that state, some massive event will change it. Its entirely likely that nothing will change that state of affairs - great wealth disparity is a common factor of human existance, the relative equality enjoyed by some parts of the world in the 20th century was something of a happy variation, and there's no reason to assume we'll ever have anything like that again without massive political effort to make it so.


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 hotsauceman1 wrote:
My biggest problem with the "IT will make more jobs, people have to repair it, maintain it and so forth" Is that those jobs are made for people who where not made for the ones displaced. Lets say I have a factory level job, decent and so forth for 15-20 years. It is all I know. Then a robot kicks me out of it. I dont have the skills to repair it, I dont work on computers well and i dont have a licenses to ship them. im SOL.

The bigger issue is that by definition for the robot to be a viable technology, it must by definition result in a net loss of jobs. Just running through the simple maths of it, say the robot requires 1 person to maintain it, and it replaces replaces 1 person in the hamburger store... you've saved no money. What you saved in labour you're now spending on labour. No-one is going to buy that machine.

The very point of robots or any new technology is that they require less human labour - a smaller workforce producing the same amount of output. Which was great under the economic conditions that were common in the 19th and 20th centuries, where the primary shortage was labour. But the problem now is that the limiting factor on the economy is increasingly raw materials, particularly energy. So each robot that takes a new job is theoretically opening up potential for that person to work some place else, but that other place is not likely to exist...


Oh, and the issue isn't that the person might not have the skills to repair the machine that used to do his job. There is never an expectation of a one for one swap - burger cooks becoming machine repairers. The anecdote is more of a general kind of thought experiment - one worker is replaced by a machine, and some other worker gets a job repairing that machine (while the original worker goes off to find employment in some other field).

 CptJake wrote:
Until the dudes who invent, improve, and maintain the robots decide they want some of that pay for not working and the system goes tits up as the only producers stop producing.

Only if you assume that the material wealth for building, improving and maintaining the robots is the same as the pay for not working. Which is a bizarre assumption to make.

I like human hands on my burgers. Gives em that home grown taste. What does a robot offer? Metal shaving? Oil? That would totally ruin it for me.

 sebster wrote:

 CptJake wrote:
Until the dudes who invent, improve, and maintain the robots decide they want some of that pay for not working and the system goes tits up as the only producers stop producing.

Only if you assume that the material wealth for building, improving and maintaining the robots is the same as the pay for not working. Which is a bizarre assumption to make.

Not bizarre at all. We already see folks leaving the work force. In fact we see folks refusing to flip burgers for above current minimum wage because they do good enough without a job-provided income....

 sebster wrote:
-snip-

Hmm, not sure I agree. "Human nature" gets thrown around a lot, particularly to justify capitalism, but the reality is that humans, in common with many primates, have an instinctual understanding of the value of generosity and reciprocity, and recent experiments have shown that understanding extends to a grasp of equality as well - lower primates are capable of recognizing and objecting when one member of the group receives disproportionate rewards, even if the tasks being performed are not identical.

Capitalism does not, as those who argue it is an inevitability would claim, harness "greed"(on which point, it was originally supposed to harness greed for the benefit of all, not merely the capital class, and the fact that it has proven incapable of doing so would seem to me to be a fundamental indictment of the whole construct), rather it revolves around displays of status; "peacocking" essentially. Studies have shown that once someone has enough money that money ceases to be a concern in their day-to-day life, further monetary reward can not merely fail to improve job performance, but actually can make performance worse and encourage poor decision making. Once people have "enough", they begin looking for opportunities to exercise and improve their skills and abilities in order to gain social standing, our problem is that we've created a system that ties social standing to raw wealth, but in which the system can only be changed by the wealthy(short of a full-scale revolution whether that be technological or a mass uprising).

I don't buy the "infinite energy problem", it relies on too many assumptions some of which are demonstrably incorrect; that exponential population growth will continue even after we're capable of eliminating scarcity(a notion disabused by declining birth rates in developed nations which can be correlated almost entirely within those populations against relative wealth - abundance removes the necessity to reproduce in large numbers to ensure security in old age), that consumption(and so production) patterns would mirror those seen in developed capitalistic economies(which rely on continual growth of consumption to function), that our technology doesn't become significantly more energy efficient, and that we don't become more capable in regards extracting energy from the environment at lower ecological cost. Most of our current energy needs, even assuming global consumption on the same level as the developed world, could be supplied by renewable energy(here in Scotland, a hydro project in just one large Loch will, when the final phase is complete, provide enough power for 1/3 of the country's homes, and if we tapped all available wind, wave, tide, and hydro power we would be able to supply enough electricity for the whole of the British isles and much of northern Europe, and we're just one wee country); fusion power is only a few decades away from practical widespread implementation, in the short term fuelled by Deuterium extracted from seawater, in the long term by Helium-3 extracted first from the moon, then eventually from the gas giants; among more speculative energy technologies there are many possibilities - orbital solar collectors, Dyson rings, even vacuum energy or antimatter. And hell, if we're really desperate in the medium term, Thorium-based fission reactors can output a massive amount of energy with little risk compared to Plutonium or Uranium reactors.

We can never truly eradicate scarcity in a universe in which entropy is a fundamental property of reality, but the functional elimination of scarcity is entirely possible over a time period that goes far beyond our ability to reliably foresee.