My grandfather was from a town in Missouri and told me a story that when he was a kid, his little town had the biggest factory in the world to make a certain item. That item was stirrups and of course there aren't many horse riders and we don't need so many horse product factories. Today his town has no factories and there's basically no town left anymore, just an old building that was the schoolhouse.
In retrospect a better argument may have been the millions of people killed... according to Wikipedia there have been 3,740,769 motor vehicle fatalities in the US in the past century.
The per capita death rate from horses and horse drawn vehicles in NYC in 1900 was higher than the per capita death rate from cars in 2003. Same for Chicago comparing horses in 1916 to cars in 1997 [1].
Horse related deaths in early 20th century England and Wales were close to late 20th century rates for cars [2]. That article does point out that we are better at treating people nowadays, so it is possible that many of the horse related fatalities could be people that would have been saved nowadays.
A few accounts of the dangers in the pre-car days [3].
There's a few articles floating around that say shoplifting is greater at self checkouts[1], but apparently its not enough to keep these jobs around without regulatory distortion.
One way of thinking about it is that the store shifts responsibility to both the shopper and the police (in the case of shoplifting) but the police might not agree to the additional workload [2]
The price of goods is a function of all of the costs associated with selling, so I think the cost in additional theft is ultimately put on the honest customers. That may not be such a terrible result though, since self checkout reduces cost in the first place. Since many customers prefer to save time / avoid human interaction by self checkout, it's probably a net gain either way you cut it.
>>additional theft is ultimately put on the honest customers.
That's true up until a certain point, but eventually the business is no longer profitable. I think this explains many 'food deserts' in low income areas
I purposely checkout with human cashiers despite the fact that self-checkout is almost always faster.
Sometimes technology provides so much benefit that it's a no-brainer to adopt. I don't think that's the case for self-checkout stations. They're marginally better but come at a cost that I don't believe is worth it.
A single self-checkout station probably replaces 2 cashiers. Not to mention they take up less space. It makes a lot of sense for the store owners but I don't think it makes much sense for the community.
There are some unintended side effects of self checkout lines you’re not considering that in my experience make them considerably (>2x) faster. They self select for people who have fewer items, are competent at using the machine, and are incentivized to be quick. Check outs manned with people are always slammed with customers with piles of groceries and even the express lane is staffed with a person who has no incentive to scan quickly.
I agree there's a lot of benefits to self checkout and I think that's the future we're headed towards --- and I don't think that's a bad thing.
I was only trying to say that technology impacts people in good and bad ways and we should have a holistic view of it when we think about how we, as a society, adopt and legislate it.
> A single self-checkout station probably replaces 2 cashiers. Not to mention they take up less space. It makes a lot of sense for the store owners but I don't think it makes much sense for the community.
That's not a reasonable position. The same could be said about many technological changes. Replacing jobs with technology, especially unskilled jobs, is always a win for society as a whole.
I don't understand how stating that the interests of store owners and the community may not be aligned is not reasonable.
There's many examples of things which are a win for society as a whole that we look back and realize were terrible ideas --- aparthied, slavery, gender discrimination, etc. The common theme typically being that a marginalized population is further marginalized for the benefit of another part of the population.
Do you live in Oregon or NJ? Was wondering if your opinion applies to self serve gas stations also (it's ok if it does or doesn't, just more food for thought). This can also extend to changing your own oil, or doing your own landscape work, cleaning house, etc.
Personally I hate having to use the self checkout (typically stores lately have only had one cashier open, with 20 people in line). Especially if I have a larger cart of groceries. A handful of items is fine, as it strikes a balance of (in)convenience and speed of checkout.
In fact, there are many things I hate about shopping -- you have to first put items in your cart, then take them out of the cart and put them on a belt, then put the bags back in the cart, take them out again to put them in your car, then take them out again at home, and finally put everything away. This is why I now shop at a local grocery store that doesn't use the conveyor belt, instead the cart goes right up to the cashier and they take it directly out of the cart, then put bagged items directly in another cart lined up on the other side.
I don't think my opinion applies to self serve gas stations. Pumping your own gas happened a while ago and I imagine at a slower pace which allowed society as a whole to adapt to this change.
I think self checkout, while similar, is being adopted at a faster rate and at a different time when other jobs are also being similarly impacted.
I'm not saying self checkout is bad. I'm only saying we need to think about the overall impact (both positive and negative) on society and proceed accordingly.
You are only delaying the inevitable. You are also tying someone to a job that provides no value other than a paycheck. I would rather go with Andrew Yang’s plan.
I don't disagree that it's inevitable. But I think there's value in slowing down this type of progress so society has more time to adapt.
That's why I called out that the value added by self checkout stations is only marginal.
Self driving cars, for example, will also disrupt many people's jobs but perhaps the upside of safety (if that turns out to be true) may be a reasonable trade-off to expedite its adoption.
I don't know Andrew Yang's plan but it maybe just as reasonable.
I've often wondered about how to deal with a future where there is a lack of lower skilled work. After all, half the population is below the median when it comes to skill, IQ, or self motivation.
I'm thinking that future education will need to focus more on teaching kids self motivation skills, and coping skills for picking up whatever is needed for the future workplace. Some people have no problem with learning new things, but for others it is a major chore.
I'm not convinced it is that easy for someone working as a cashier to find another job. Especially if low skill work is being replaced by robots.
Also given that cashiers are already at or near the poverty level they're likely going to be more impacted by job interruption.
Your response makes sense in theory but does not take into account the fact that these are real people with families and rent to pay who likely don't have many options or much financial padding.
As it is, grocers typically have to have a single person at the helm of each bank of four to six machines. The machines are prone to requiring manual overrides, and often the single machine-herder is overwhelmed trying to keep up; I hear their grumbles. I find myself examining my basket while heading towards checkout and considering whether I think that a human cashier would give a smoother experience.
Moreover, whether grocers have these machines is usually a function of their size. Smaller grocers in Oregon, like Green Zebra, don't have the machines, while larger grocers do, like Safeway and Walmart. I have had conversations with employees at the latter stores. The machines were ordained, installed, and configured by corporate order, with only a small amount of local training.
Oregonian voters have immense power to alter the law, and so many independent groups aim to refer decisions directly to the voters, rather than trying to work within the bipartisan legislature. In this case, the group will have to successfully convince tens of thousands of us to petition the State to put it on the ballot. I will probably sign the petition.
I read the text. It's not bad. There's an exemption for stores which sell only alcohol or only cannabis; liquor stores and dispensaries are a thing in Oregon, but I haven't seen any which have automated checkout robots. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that the liquor law requires humans in that checkout process. While a union is lobbying for this, the union does not stand to directly benefit; its members certainly will, but there's nothing that privileges the union, and both anti-union Walmart and employee-owned Winco will have to obey this law.
> As it is, grocers typically have to have a single person at the helm of each bank of four to six machines. The machines are prone to requiring manual overrides, and often the single machine-herder is overwhelmed trying to keep up; I hear their grumbles. I find myself examining my basket while heading towards checkout and considering whether I think that a human cashier would give a smoother experience.
I simply cannot understand why this means that there needs to be _legislation_ to limit the amount of self service machines. Presumably if it's really as bad as you describe, there's a strong business case to fix it? Since the situation you describe makes it sound like it has the potential to hurt business.
If you are going to legislate for anything, legislate for installing machines which work. They exist - I use them all the time without any issues.
> I have had conversations with employees at the latter stores. The machines were ordained, installed, and configured by corporate order, with only a small amount of local training.
If the machines somehow failed to operate properly in Oregon but worked elsewhere, this would be a fair point... but presumably they are liable to break down in the same manner, causing the same issues?
The machines often can't come in quantities of only one or two stations, so this actually would have the immediate effect of banning most stations, and requiring retrofitting. So keep in mind that we're actually slapping the businesses in question a bit harder than you might think.
And yeah, cry me a river for Walmart. In Oregon, we're capable of prioritizing the good of the community over business interests. Several of the findings orient around the fact that senior citizens have trouble using the machines to purchase groceries. Heck, I have trouble using the machines to purchase groceries; I can empathize and sympathize.
The quality of self-checkout varies a lot from store to store. The ones Walmart put in at their stores up here (Western Washington) a few years ago have been fantastic. I have none of the problems with them that had me avoiding self-checkout for years at other stores.
They have 9 on the side of the store the groceries are on, and 5 on the other side, with the regular checkout lines between them. One attendant at each set.
The self-checkout is almost always way faster than the regular checkout. Most of the time at the 9 unit side there is either no wait or a one person wait.
If the law were changed here to limit them to two units, I'd probably switch to doing most of my Walmart shopping in their app, and paying there, for store pickup just to avoid the regular checkouts.
A straightforward reading of http://oregonvotes.org/irr/2020/041text.pdf suggests that any Amazon Go location would be restricted to two checkout lanes, both automated. Amazon would likely argue that they have only one checkout lane per location, but that it is quite a speedy lane. The text uses the undefined word "station"; Amazon might well argue that they don't have any stations for their process. Amazon Go is partially affected by the findings, as well, but we already know that Go is obviously a tantalizing shoplifting target.
As somebody who might sign the petition for, vote for, and be affected by this law, this all seems reasonable. Amazon presumably wants their Go locations to have no grocer staff whatsoever, and only a token of security staff and restocking robots. Outlawing that seems difficult and not worthwhile. I think that we should be sympathetic towards automated bodegas; they won't be able to replace Plaid Pantry and 7-Eleven anytime soon in Oregon, unless they can sell tobacco, booze, lottery tickets, Hop cards, hot food, or any of those other things that the law requires a live human employee behind the counter to vend.
> they won't be able to replace Plaid Pantry and 7-Eleven anytime soon in Oregon, unless they can sell tobacco, booze, lottery tickets, Hop cards, hot food, or any of those other things that the law requires a live human employee behind the counter to vend.
I've been to a regular grocery store that had a store-within-a-store that sold alcohol. That seems like a reasonable solution if Amazon wanted to sell tobacco, booze, lottery tickets or hop cards. All of those products are high margin, low shelf space requirements and are shelf stable.
Various European countries have high unemployment rates in youths which doesn’t do anyone any good at all. That’s where the US is headed as these retail checkout jobs cement societal norms in generations of children. Take them away and who knows how it’ll break down.
