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When it comes to UBI, there's an interesting psychological phenomenon. I believe that McDonald's and similar establishments could have automated away the vast
by fpgaminer 9y ago
When it comes to UBI, there's an interesting psychological phenomenon.
I believe that McDonald's and similar establishments could have automated away the vast majority of their work force years, maybe even decades ago. And yet there are still people working there. In fact, McDonald's is often viewed as many people's first entrance into the work force, and as a safety blanket if anything goes south (well worst case at least I can go work at McDonald's or something).
In other words, I believe McDonald's and its kin are a form of social welfare.
We see this elsewhere, in less subtle ways. Tons of jobs that shouldn't exist, but which are kept afloat by regulation designed specifically to preserve those jobs.
We pay either higher taxes or higher pries to achieve both of these forms of social welfare.
And yet, support for these jobs and social actions is generally quite strong. Hence why restaurants haven't fully automated themselves; the market would vomit at the idea of those thousands of jobs being replaced by machines. Regardless of whether that would save people an incredible amount of money, they are willing to accept those sacrifices in exchange for those jobs being available.
In that light, what's the difference between what we have today versus UBI? Either you're paying someone to do functionally meaningless work, or you're paying them to do "nothing". Under the former, their work is _truly_ meaningless. Under the latter they at least have the chance to do something beneficial for either themselves or others.
Personally I haven't formed a real opinion of UBI. Even in light of the above arguments, the complexities make it a problem not so easily reasoned through. But I suppose my point is that UBI isn't as drastic a step as many imagine it to be. It would be more of an evolution of our existing, de-facto social welfare programs.
EDIT: Addendum: When I use the term meaningless here I'm really just using it for the sake of argument. Obviously no one's work is meaningless. Just because a machine could do the exact same job that a human can do, doesn't mean that the task, as performed by a human, is meaningless. The true thrust of my argument is that a human performing the task subtracts value from the economy relative to a machine doing the job. It's sub-optimal.
- the-dude 9y agoIn the US, the army is the social welfare. Your argument about McD's fails because they are automating away their workforce with their self checkout systems.
- skybrian 9y agoOr possibly, service jobs are harder to automate than it appears? What evidence do you have that it's easy to automate? In theory, you could replace a McDonalds with a vending machine, but it's not the same thing.
- mcguire 9y agoAutomats predate McDonald's by a considerable time.
- fpgaminer 9y agoPossibly. Customer facing service is certainly difficult to automate away. But I believe behind the counter workforce should be relatively simple. It's hard to fathom that the unskilled masses who end up working there can't be automated away. It's not like we don't already have automated cooking lines. All the precooked foods at stores are from automated cooking lines. Just replicate that in the back of a McDonald's. I don't find that hard to fathom. Some will say that "Well if McD's could have automated away those jobs already they would have." Market optimization and whatnot. But the market is always optimal from a _human_ perspective. Case-in-point: McD's switching away from their "pink goo" because of the backlash against it. Using pink goo was cheaper, but the uproar threatened demand, so they have to use more expensive alternatives. In the same way that I believe many, many jobs have not been automated away simply because the public backlash would destroy any business that tried.
- skybrian 9y agoIf you have a store that sells food without people making it for you on demand, I believe that's called a 7-Eleven. They have lots of vending machines and prepackaged food. To the extent that people are okay with eating that way, they'll stop going to McDonald's. There was a great article about the sandwich industry in the UK that goes into this [1]. And yet, even for sandwiches, Subway does well making them on demand; selling prepackaged sandwiches is an enormous and growing market but it's not the entire market. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/24/how-the-sandwich-consumed-britain https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/24/how-the-sandwic...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- rev_bird 9y ago>I believe McDonald's and its kin are a form of social welfare. If anything, I'd argue the current state of affairs is a form of corporate welfare. McDonald's profits by paying its workers as little as possible; because McDonald's employees typically don't have a ton of negotiating power, that amount is usually very little. Paying someone the minimum wage is a company basically saying "I want to pay you less but it's literally illegal." When McDonald's refuses to pay their employees a living wage, the rest of us pick up the slack in the form of ACTUAL social welfare programs—food stamps, subsidized housing, tax credits, etc. The reason McDonald's workers can be so poor but McDonald's the company can be so successful is because the taxpayer is funding their payroll. They are not our friends.