
Wall Street cheers McDonald's replacement of cashiers with kiosks - utkarshs12
http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/mcdonalds-hits-all-time-high-as-wall-street-cheers-replacement-of-cashiers-with-kiosks.html
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undersuit
We should all be cheering. Human beings have far more potential than being a
trained interface between another human being and a basic assembly line. I
also am cheering for the companies that are trying to remove the humans from
the basic assembly line[1]. Maybe one day the only time a human makes a burger
is because they want to, not because it's required for them to demonstrate
value to the market.

[1]
[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4602682/Robot...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4602682/Robots-
churn-400-burgers-hour-set-over.html)

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mark-r
"self-order kiosks in McDonald's restaurants are not a labor replacement".
Right, and if you believe that I've got a bridge to sell you. I'm sure a lot
of these kiosks will be going into places that have a high minimum wage.

Somehow they think this is going to increase same-store sales. I don't know
how, unless they're counting on more traffic due to the novelty factor. Or
maybe the kiosks are going to automate upselling - "do you want fries with
that? They've automatically been added to your order, hit Delete if you don't
want them."

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pasbesoin
If Wall Street could sell you [1] for parts, they would.

\----

1) I could have said "surplus-ed people" or something more specific, but I
didn't want to imply that I believe these people have any less value than
others. They are just the unfortunate ones at the end of the stick, at this
moment.

But, seriously, if the law allowed Wall Street to chop up and sell not just
decommissioned material capital (e.g. all those manufacturing machines and
lines boxed and sent to China), but also the surplus-ed / terminated
employees, I have no doubt they would.

We need finance and management to make our society work. We shouldn't need to
sell our souls (or, our hearts, kidneys, etc.) for it. But that seems to be
what we are coming to. Witness recent Republican statements that only "people
who have led good lives" (that being demonstrated and defined by their
affluence) deserve health care insurance.

If this change allowed the surplussed cashiers to move on to bigger and better
things, more power to them.

But, Wall Street doesn't give a shit about them, except to the extent they
will no longer be "cutting into" Wall Street's profits.

I'm for progress, but I'm for shared progress. Investment in people and their
abilities.

I find it hard to welcome these signs of technical progress, when they seem to
be inevitably accompanied by societal disinvestment in the people they
supplant.

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anotheryou
Less work is good, capitalism is the problem.

