huge vending machine replaces village shop

[CosPhi]

If there was a shop there, he was just closed because people didn't bought enough stuff there. If enough people would have bought enough stuff the store still would be open.

I also grew up in a small town. The shop in the village is just still open because the village found the shop with tax money. How stupid people are ... instead to really buy things in the shop and bring some money to shop ... the people buy things in the city and pay a bit more tax in the village ... also a way to do (Switzerland).

Anyway ... the thing with the automation did not even really start ...

Why, really why still 1000s of people work in an office and put a peace of paper from the left to the right side? Most people in the big office building in our citys like (banks, insurance ...) Why they have more emplyes than just some software guys. There are several jobs with 10000s of good paid jobs ... The world will change in a few years also for them ... like now allready for the local shop worker.

There are allready the first "just online banks" for example. The traditional banks will have to follow ... That's how the world works.

My only guess why we still have so much paper worker is because the people who would have to setup and buy the system would have no job by themself after it is running.

For my job, I'm not so much worry. Exept it was more fun to change a single part ON the prints on older machines instead of the whole print these days ...

[pickle9000]

I am required by law to pay someone $20/hr and the output is worth only $15/hr  - the law is pointless. I will outsource it or automate it.

 

Exactly the point I was trying to make at the top of this page.

The current US minimum wage is 7.25 USD. I'm not in the US but that's nuts, I'm retired now but did have employees and ran my own show.

[CosPhi]

Sadly a lot of these days high automated machines are not so easy use. "High tech thinking" out of engeneerings minds.

And you have to be able to read. Not all people can...

[zapta]

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.

Not true: A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally, more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.

So, the economy is settled and if we like our jobs we can keep them?

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995

[Zero999]

Fake brick skinning on the metal siding, and very likely it will do automatic request for restocking. CCTV is nice, but unless they also included the most massive battery ever it will not run through a one day power outage ( village means single power line and the chance of the 1 day outage after a storm) unlike the store with clerk, who will be able to either run a generator or have extra stock around to refill shelving.

Here it would be taken apart like the ATM units are, and probably faster, seeing as it only has shatterproof glass on the front, not armoured multilayer bullet proof glass. The internal coin and bank store is also likely just a thin walled metal box, like every other vending machine.

You still need somebody who drives around to refill the machines, and as they likely will have to restock daily this will be expensive as well, not like a larger truck with multizone temperature control who can run a weekly route to service a lot of small stores. Shelves can only hold a limited stock, ,and unless you get the levels right and use multiple bays for the most common items it will be shunned after a while as it will be perceived as " always out of X every time I go there", unlike a human clerk who can go in the back to get one from bulk storage.

In an area though with reliable power ( riggght, I have a bridge if you believe that a remote part will have reliable grid power) and only a few tourists a week it will probably work, though a park ranger will still be needed around for those things like S&R and flat tyres.

This is in the UK not South Africa.

We have reliable power and outages are rare so very few people have backup generators.

The glass doesn't have to be bullet proof because guns are rare.

Any shop needs to have supplies delivered but it also needs someone to server customers as well as replenish the shelves. In this system, the stock can all be loaded at once. It probably also keeps track of sell by dates.

[AF6LJ]

When the cost of having a sales clerk exceeds the cost of a machine, automation is the way to go.

I don't know if there is a minimum wage law in the UK.  In the USA, we have a trend going in raising the minimum wage.  So here in the USA, we would expect more automation and less employment as well.

So I have to ask; What do you do when all the low wage workers are unemployed?

[zapta]

When the cost of having a sales clerk exceeds the cost of a machine, automation is the way to go.

I don't know if there is a minimum wage law in the UK.  In the USA, we have a trend going in raising the minimum wage.  So here in the USA, we would expect more automation and less employment as well.

So I have to ask; What do you do when all the low wage workers are unemployed?

Exactly what we did with the chimney sweepers and watchmakers of the past, nothing. It's up to them to adapt and be marketable.

[lewis]

So I have to ask; What do you do when all the low wage workers are unemployed?

They go on welfare. That's one of the problems with a minimum wage.

[lewis]

The future is one where humans need not apply.

But technological development throughout history has always destroyed jobs but created others.

When the motor car came along I'm sure it put a lot of blacksmiths, carriage makers and stablehands out of work.

But no-one could have foreseen the huge (and not so huge) industries created in roadbuilding, vehicle mechanics, oil refinement, bridge-building, traffic wardens, parking meter manufacturers, speed camera maintainers, delivery drivers, traffic officers, white line painters, raw materials miners, automotive electronics designers, race track engineers, and so on, not to mention car manufacturing itself.

Don't be scared of change, for change creates opportunity. Wachowskian dystopia aside, the technological revolution has not produced the society of leisure we all feared/dreamed of for the past 200 years.

[zapta]

Doing what? Filling the vending machines.

Our economy is much more diverse than that.

[Marco]

It's clearly not a myth. Do a thought experiment - raise the minimum wage to $100,000 an hour. No poverty! No homelessness!

Another thought experiment, libertarian paradise where 1 person owns all the land and machines can supply everything he wants.

PS. not saying minimum wage should be raised, that's just taking the low road. The balance between capital and labour is shifting ever more to capital though, this is an inevitable consequence of automation. Eventually most of us won't have any value to capital, subsistence will be more than what we are worth to them.

[zapta]

Another thought experiment, libertarian paradise where 1 person owns all the land and machines can supply everything he wants.

Let me guess, that notion of 'libertarian paradise' is something you made up, even though you are not libertarian yourself.

[Mechanical Menace]

Let me guess, that notion of 'libertarian paradise' is something you made up, even though you are not libertarian yourself.

Are Ayn Rand's views still the gold standard? <-Serious question btw.

Also which school of libertarianism would you be answering that for?

[Marco]

Let me guess, that notion of 'libertarian paradise' is something you made up, even though you are not libertarian yourself.

It was more referring to the rule of law (ie. absolute property rights) being according to the libertarian ideal.

PS. Rothbard really is more the gold standard for Libertarian thought (NAP as natural law, homesteading as a weird blend between necessary axiom and natural law and a whole lot of semantic bull to pretend a functional ethical framework can be build up from that).

[zapta]

Let me guess, that notion of 'libertarian paradise' is something you made up, even though you are not libertarian yourself.

Are Ayn Rand's views still the gold standard? <-Serious question btw.

To me? No.

My understanding is that she promoted individualism and objectivism.

I care about freedom and it's up to each individual what the do with it, including charity, religion and co-ops if they choose so. It's not my business to tell others how to live their lives.

[Rick Law]

I don't know if there is a minimum wage law in the UK.  In the USA, we have a trend going in raising the minimum wage.  So here in the USA, we would expect more automation and less employment as well.

Minimum Wage Mythbusters
http://www.dol.gov/minwage/mythbuster.htm

Myth: Increasing the minimum wage will cause people to lose their jobs.

Not true: A review of 64 studies on minimum wage increases found no discernable effect on employment. Additionally, more than 600 economists, seven of them Nobel Prize winners in economics, have signed onto a letter in support of raising the minimum wage to $10.10 by 2016.

Come now, did you look at what site that came from?  DOL and you believe that?

[Rick Law]

When the cost of having a sales clerk exceeds the cost of a machine, automation is the way to go.

I don't know if there is a minimum wage law in the UK.  In the USA, we have a trend going in raising the minimum wage.  So here in the USA, we would expect more automation and less employment as well.

So I have to ask; What do you do when all the low wage workers are unemployed?

Training, school, colleges...

[mtdoc]

The key point is "Can we continue to grow forever?" The obvious answer is no. Some estimates already say we consume more rapidly than the Earth can replenish.

We're way past the point of consuming more rapidly than can be replenished - and we have been at an accelerating pace for the last 200 years or so.

Our economic system is based on continual expansion of debt which must be paid back with interest. This means that our economies (and hence civilization) requires continual growth. But infinite growth cannot occur on a finite planet. Ultimately we are subject to the laws of physics.

[EEVblog]

Blah! You can't kick it and tilt it when it jams. Then the whole village is screwed.
Must be the idea of the village idiot 

[NoItAint]

Big vending machines are an old idea


You would think by now they'd have drive through ones by now 
Of course, around here, you just go through the self checkout at the supermarket.   No bags though.
Cameras watching and a big new industry to try to prevent shoplifting from the not so honest.

Progress, get use to it 
https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU

[Mechanical Menace]

To me? No.

My understanding is that she promoted individualism and objectivism.

Which is a big part of a lot of people's definition of libertarianism, though only one of many valid but incompatible definitions. Hence the question tbh.

I care about freedom and it's up to each individual what the do with it, including charity, religion and co-ops if they choose so. It's not my business to tell others how to live their lives.

Which again is one valid definition. One reason I personally find labels like "libertarianism" a bit useless. Too vague, too far apart extremes, too many valid but mutually exclusive definitions that can fall under the one label. It can go from the almost communist to the almost fascist, though I've got to admit I've never understood how it could go to either totalitarian extreme...


Thanks for the answer.

[edavid]

Our economic system is based on continual expansion of debt which must be paid back with interest.

I disagree, there's nothing in our economic system that requires any debt at all. 

How about that demographic transition, though?  Will we see more vending machines when there's a shortage of young people?

[zapta]

Our economic system is based on continual expansion of debt which must be paid back with interest. This means that our economies (and hence civilization) requires continual growth. But infinite growth cannot occur on a finite planet. Ultimately we are subject to the laws of physics.

So you say that our civilization be punished for our sins unless if we will change our sinister ways and adopt your way of life. Hmm, it's sound very familiar. Where did I hear it before?

Anyway, make sure to list it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

[mtdoc]

Our economic system is based on continual expansion of debt which must be paid back with interest.

I disagree, there's nothing in our economic system that requires any debt at all. 

Well, that's unfortunate. This is a topic way outside the scope of this forum, but just a few points. While it may be true that capitalism can exist without debt that is not my point.  My point is that all industrialized economies that currently exist depend on ever increasing amounts of debt.  If you doubt this is true, feel free to point out an example of a country where this is not the case.

The whole topic of debt as it relates to the industrialized economy as it has come to be, is huge.  A simplified explanation can be found here

[mtdoc]

Our economic system is based on continual expansion of debt which must be paid back with interest. This means that our economies (and hence civilization) requires continual growth. But infinite growth cannot occur on a finite planet. Ultimately we are subject to the laws of physics.

So you say that our civilization be punished for our sins unless if we will change our sinister ways and adopt your way of life. Hmm, it's sound very familiar. 

     I said no such thing.  I just stated a few very simple facts - but your response seems to indicate they are threatening to you. If there is a particular point in my post that you disagree with feel free to point it out otherwise this just looks like your usual trolling strawman BS.