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Technical feasability aside, I really cringed when the founder started talking about how this gives their employees time to do more meaningful things, like read

Technical feasability aside, I really cringed when the founder started talking about how this gives their employees time to do more meaningful things, like reading books. Just face it - you're automating a job. If your company succeeds, more people will become unemployed. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but call it what it is and take responsibility.

asfasgasg 8y ago
Unemployment is really low right now, and burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment.
- wavefunction 8y ago
  >full employment We have folks living in tent cities. 12.8% is "on disability" Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5.
  - adventured 8y ago
    Fortunately, disability applications are declining soundly. June, 2018: "Disability Applications Plunge as the Economy Strengthens" "The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-security-applications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-s...
  - verylittlemeat 8y ago
    How many of those people in tent cities would even take a job if you offered them one? How many are drug addicted or mentally ill to the point of being unemployable? Society shouldn't pretend these people don't exist but they're rightfully a different class of unemployed.
    - jaggederest 8y ago
      Those folks don't deserve to have meaningful work, if they want it? Which percentage of society should be permanently alienated from ownership and engagement, and who decides?
      - throwawayjava 8y ago
        I think the point was that people who currently choose not to work are not harmed by automation of low-barrier-to-entry jobs that they are already choosing not to take. And it's a valid point! If people really are choosing not to take jobs that are readily available, then automating those jobs is a net benefit. Now, we should not ignore the fact that this is stated as a hypothetical! Are there a mass of unemployed who are choosing not to work? And would all of the people who lose their jobs due to burger flipping automation be able to find new jobs or be happy with no job? Those seem like the more relevant questions.
    - ta1234567890 8y ago
      A lot of those people are actually employed but can't afford housing. This is a problem with no good solution in sight so far and it's going to get exacerbated with job automation.
      - briandear 8y ago
        Were we not making these same vapid arguments in the 1800s regarding automation and machines? The Luddites were an entire movement opposed to machines for exactly the same reasons, yet living standards are vastly higher than in those times — even the poor have air conditioners, TV and refrigerators. If we would have listened to the Luddites, we’d still be riding horses and using outhouses with a life expectancy of 45.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        Sure, maybe 200 years from now everyone in the world "on average" might be doing better. That still doesn't mean people whose jobs get automated today wont suffer, or that the Luddites didn't suffer when their jobs got taken away back in the day. In any case, very few technologies (relative to everything that's created) actually make living standards better, mostly just things in healthcare. Almost everything else is pretty much a rats race fueled by business and profit, not by intentions of improving people's lives.
  - asfasgasg 8y ago
    Anyone with a pulse can have a job flipping burgers TODAY if they want it. Same with various other categories of work (farm labor, etc.). The folks living in tent cities who are not flipping burgers are choosing not to do that work. A reasonable choice, I'd say, depending on your circumstances, but it's a choice.
    - i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
      I remember thinking this until McDonald's turned me down for a job. True story.
  - rory096 8y ago
    >Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5. U5 is at 4.6%... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm It is also, by definition, lower than U6.
- ranci 8y ago
  More than 37% of the country does not have a job according to labor participation rate. The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded.
  - rory096 8y ago
    You're spouting a conspiracy theory. U6 unemployment is at historic lows and has at no point diverged from the trend in U3. Unless you plan on conscripting children, students, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and the elderly into jobs (like Steve King[0]), we're at the long run full employment rate. [0] https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104 https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104
    - ranci 8y ago
      What I said is backed up by facts. How is it a conspiracy? The labor participation rate is 62.x. That means that 37% of the US is not employed. Fact, not a conspiracy. The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Again, fact, not a conspiracy.
      - rory096 8y ago
        >How is it a conspiracy? >The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded. >The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Uh huh. In any case, you might want to take a look at the 25-54 LFP. It currently sits at 82%, the same as the rate during the 2000s and two points shy of the all-time high during the height of the dot-com bubble. Prior to 1986 it had never reached this level. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
- Amygaz 8y ago
  Hey! Sometime I think about taking a 6 months leave to go flip burgers a the local gourmet burger place. Blacksmithing would be a close second. As for peat I wouldn't do it, because I do not see the point. Peats are very important ecosystems that we're wasting. Golf-quality front-yard aren't useful or important. And people should compost.
  - asfasgasg 8y ago
    That is a very privileged point of view. You want to think the grass is at least more interesting on the other side, but I've done a stint in fast food. It is hard, smelly, nasty, poorly compensated labor. It is not at all like home cooking, which I love. I've never worked harder than the summer I did at Wendy's in high school, and I've never been paid less. As for blacksmithing, yeah, the artisanship side of that would be cool. However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If that seems like fun to you, well, you still probably couldn't get that work, because there's just not very much demand for blacksmiths these days. :)
    - jimmywanger 8y ago
      > That is a very privileged point of view. What's privileged about it? He said he wanted to do something different, and these were things that interested him. > ...I've done a stint in fast food. He specifically mentioned a gourmet burger place. > However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If you're doing blacksmithing for a living, most likely you're a farrier. Demand for custom ironwork is very low.
      - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
        Oddly enough... The only farrier I know isn't a blacksmith. Actually I don't remember what her full time job is. And the only person I've ever known who did custom ironwork was a software tester. Go figure!
    - toomanybeersies 8y ago
      They are more likely to spend 6 months shovelling coal into a fire and sweeping the floor at a blacksmiths. Blacksmiths don't make horseshoes either, that's a farrier's job (who still buy them off the shelf and finish them by hand). Being a farrier is also not an easy job, take a 3 or 4 apprenticeship to become one. There seems to be this viewpoint I see a lot on Hacker News that blue collar jobs are unskilled jobs. Most skilled trades require a 3 or 4 year apprenticeship, you can't just learn how to be a fitter and turner, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith/farrier in a couple of weekends. It's this kind of arrogant attitude that causes the tradies to have no respect for the book-learned engineers straight out of university that think because they have a degree they know how to build a road.
- ta1234567890 8y ago
  Employment stats are very misleading. There are lots of people with full time jobs who can't even afford housing. Sure they have jobs, but they are still in a really bad situation.
  - asfasgasg 8y ago
    I am not commenting on the well-being of people working in fast food. Just on the availability of work. Whether such individuals can afford housing is totally beside the point of my comment.
    - ta1234567890 8y ago
      And I'm highlighting how that type of argument contributes to the misunderstanding that job availability and high employment rates are a good thing just by themselves. What good is for people to dedicate their lives to shitty jobs (which are the only ones they can get), just so they can scrape by and live on the streets?
      - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
        The answer to that’s isn’t more shitty jobs though. It’s adjustments to our system of capital distribution and ultimately what the minimum standards of living we are prepared to accept is as a society.
        ta1234567890 8y ago
        You are right about shitty jobs not being the solution. About the last part of your statement though: society has already implicitly accepted the crappy minimum living standards (at least in the US) that it's willing to accept. That doesn't make it right for the people stuck having to live according to that minimum.
    - ende 8y ago
      Unemployment numbers also aren’t low because the economy is producing tons of new jobs; notice the record numbers of homeless on the streets? It’s the labor participation rate. People are only counted towards unemployment stats while they are actively seeking employment; after awhile they give up and drop out of the labor force completely. Of course much of that drop is also demographics; the baby boomers are starting to retire en masse. Still, the illusion of job abundance does not hold.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. It's not even close, which is why it is easy to keep burger flipping jobs find without high wages even when unemployment is relatively low. > This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment. Because “full employment” is a decreasing-over-time share of the population that is actually working (and an even smaller decreasing share actually self-sufficient from work, as a large portion of the working population is dependent on public aid.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a problem that people point to “near full employment” with advancing automation as an excuse to argue against the continued advance of social support structures necessary to make the declining share of the population working (and also the declining share self-sufficient from work) both nearly “full employment” and anywhere close to tolerate conditions.
bassman9000 8y ago
more people will be relocated to higher value jobs FTFY
- hawkice 8y ago
  I mean, the value of the job goes down when it is automated, so the phrasing can be a little tricky to navigate, but yes.
skybrian 8y ago
It's not my area, but this seems like a pretty good article about issues facing the restaurant industry: "Some operators even say Uber is taking its toll. 'We have seen a number of our line cooks leave and say that they can make more money driving for Uber,' says Stacy Jed, co-owner of San Francisco’s Bluestem Brasserie. 'And if you think about it, the barrier to entry for Uber is much lower. All you have to do is know how to drive a car. And they can make more money and work less.'" https://medium.com/@foodrepublic/how-can-restaurants-fix-the-kitchen-staffing-crisis-64609d6c3959 https://medium.com/@foodrepublic/how-can-restaurants-fix-the...
- GordonS 8y ago
  > All you have to do is know how to drive a car Don't you need to own a decent car too?
miles_matthias 8y ago
My company works in the restaurant industry and the common theme for restaurants v2 is providing better hospitality, which is only feasible with high prices (think fine dining) or by freeing up production costs to be spent on hospitality, which is exactly what this does. Imagine an employee at the burger place offering event planning services, not just catering. Or knowing that you have family coming in town next weekend for a baseball game and the gamw gets delayed and you're starving after the game, and the employee texts you "Hey, saw your game got delayed, hungry? I can have some burgers sent to the house for the whole family!" It is automating a job, but I prefer to word it as reallocating resources to improve the experience.
- megaman22 8y ago
  That sounds really awful, and I don't want McDonalds to have visibility into whether my kid's little league game had a rain delay...
asn0 8y ago
I think what he calls "5% time" (24 min of an 8-hour day) is what most burger places call "break time" (15 min every 4 hours)
- isoskeles 8y ago
  Break time is mandated, no? I assumed he was referring to time at work outside of break time, because otherwise it would be completely pointless to say, if not illegal to dictate what employees do during break time.
csomar 8y ago
> Just face it - you're automating a job. If your company succeeds, more people will become unemployed. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but call it what it is and take responsibility. I agree that the founder should be more straightforward. But take responsibility for what? As a business you don't have any moral or legal requirements to employ x people. Getting rid of this menial jobs will push people to look to do other stuff. It's good for them and for the society. Flipping burgers like a machine all day long is not healthy.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  >> As a business you don't have any moral or legal requirements to employ x people. But the founder, Vardakostas, is a person- not a business. A person ccan always consider the morality of the likely outcome of their decisions.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
    If I build a business that is 100% automated and requires no employees and is wildly profitable, is it immoral of me to not hire people I don't need?
- Angostura 8y ago
  > But take responsibility for what? Being truthful.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Truthfully, it also seems to have other advantages. Compared to traditional restaurant kitchens ... this looked pretty damn good. Even pretty damn good to work in (I mean compared to [1]). No grease, no dirty hair, no ruined clothes ... And of course advantages for the restaurant owner, but also a bit for the employees : more space, generally. The whole kitchen seems to be the size of a small car. That's pretty good. [1] https://bestlifeqatar.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/20171031_1838421746584588.jpg https://bestlifeqatar.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/20171031_1...
- 8y ago
zerostar07 8y ago
Or, let's just do some specialization of labor, the entrepreneur's job is not to preserve obsolete jobs, there are other institutions where this question should be addressed to.
tom_mellior 8y ago
> I really cringed when the founder started talking about how this gives their employees time to do more meaningful things, like reading books. To be fair, the whole quote (in the article, not the video) is: “We’re playing around with education programs for the staff. Five percent of the time they’re paid just to read. We’re already doing that. There’s a book budget. We’re paying $16 an hour. As opportunities come up to fix the machine, there’s a path we’re going to offer people as repair or maintenance people to get paid even more.” That is quite different from "when I make these people redundant, they will have time to read".

asfasgasg 8y ago

Unemployment is really low right now, and burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment.

wavefunction 8y ago
>full employment We have folks living in tent cities. 12.8% is "on disability" Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5.
- adventured 8y ago
  Fortunately, disability applications are declining soundly. June, 2018: "Disability Applications Plunge as the Economy Strengthens" "The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-security-applications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-s...
- verylittlemeat 8y ago
  How many of those people in tent cities would even take a job if you offered them one? How many are drug addicted or mentally ill to the point of being unemployable? Society shouldn't pretend these people don't exist but they're rightfully a different class of unemployed.
  - jaggederest 8y ago
    Those folks don't deserve to have meaningful work, if they want it? Which percentage of society should be permanently alienated from ownership and engagement, and who decides?
    - throwawayjava 8y ago
      I think the point was that people who currently choose not to work are not harmed by automation of low-barrier-to-entry jobs that they are already choosing not to take. And it's a valid point! If people really are choosing not to take jobs that are readily available, then automating those jobs is a net benefit. Now, we should not ignore the fact that this is stated as a hypothetical! Are there a mass of unemployed who are choosing not to work? And would all of the people who lose their jobs due to burger flipping automation be able to find new jobs or be happy with no job? Those seem like the more relevant questions.
  - ta1234567890 8y ago
    A lot of those people are actually employed but can't afford housing. This is a problem with no good solution in sight so far and it's going to get exacerbated with job automation.
    - briandear 8y ago
      Were we not making these same vapid arguments in the 1800s regarding automation and machines? The Luddites were an entire movement opposed to machines for exactly the same reasons, yet living standards are vastly higher than in those times — even the poor have air conditioners, TV and refrigerators. If we would have listened to the Luddites, we’d still be riding horses and using outhouses with a life expectancy of 45.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        Sure, maybe 200 years from now everyone in the world "on average" might be doing better. That still doesn't mean people whose jobs get automated today wont suffer, or that the Luddites didn't suffer when their jobs got taken away back in the day. In any case, very few technologies (relative to everything that's created) actually make living standards better, mostly just things in healthcare. Almost everything else is pretty much a rats race fueled by business and profit, not by intentions of improving people's lives.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  Anyone with a pulse can have a job flipping burgers TODAY if they want it. Same with various other categories of work (farm labor, etc.). The folks living in tent cities who are not flipping burgers are choosing not to do that work. A reasonable choice, I'd say, depending on your circumstances, but it's a choice.
  - i_made_a_booboo 8y ago
    I remember thinking this until McDonald's turned me down for a job. True story.
- rory096 8y ago
  >Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5. U5 is at 4.6%... https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm It is also, by definition, lower than U6.
ranci 8y ago
More than 37% of the country does not have a job according to labor participation rate. The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded.
- rory096 8y ago
  You're spouting a conspiracy theory. U6 unemployment is at historic lows and has at no point diverged from the trend in U3. Unless you plan on conscripting children, students, the disabled, stay-at-home parents, and the elderly into jobs (like Steve King[0]), we're at the long run full employment rate. [0] https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104 https://twitter.com/stevekingia/status/967477703011119104
  - ranci 8y ago
    What I said is backed up by facts. How is it a conspiracy? The labor participation rate is 62.x. That means that 37% of the US is not employed. Fact, not a conspiracy. The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Again, fact, not a conspiracy.
    - rory096 8y ago
      >How is it a conspiracy? >The unemployment rate has been massaged and manipulated to the point where you need to stop citing it as a serious measurement of anything other than the scope to which otherwise intelligent people can be deluded. >The unemployment rate has been manipulated for various reasons and in various ways for years by politicians whos reputation is directly linked to the number. Uh huh. In any case, you might want to take a look at the 25-54 LFP. It currently sits at 82%, the same as the rate during the 2000s and two points shy of the all-time high during the height of the dot-com bubble. Prior to 1986 it had never reached this level. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Amygaz 8y ago
Hey! Sometime I think about taking a 6 months leave to go flip burgers a the local gourmet burger place. Blacksmithing would be a close second. As for peat I wouldn't do it, because I do not see the point. Peats are very important ecosystems that we're wasting. Golf-quality front-yard aren't useful or important. And people should compost.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  That is a very privileged point of view. You want to think the grass is at least more interesting on the other side, but I've done a stint in fast food. It is hard, smelly, nasty, poorly compensated labor. It is not at all like home cooking, which I love. I've never worked harder than the summer I did at Wendy's in high school, and I've never been paid less. As for blacksmithing, yeah, the artisanship side of that would be cool. However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If that seems like fun to you, well, you still probably couldn't get that work, because there's just not very much demand for blacksmiths these days. :)
  - jimmywanger 8y ago
    > That is a very privileged point of view. What's privileged about it? He said he wanted to do something different, and these were things that interested him. > ...I've done a stint in fast food. He specifically mentioned a gourmet burger place. > However, considering you have no skill, you'd probably spend six months making horse shoes. If you're doing blacksmithing for a living, most likely you're a farrier. Demand for custom ironwork is very low.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
      Oddly enough... The only farrier I know isn't a blacksmith. Actually I don't remember what her full time job is. And the only person I've ever known who did custom ironwork was a software tester. Go figure!
  - toomanybeersies 8y ago
    They are more likely to spend 6 months shovelling coal into a fire and sweeping the floor at a blacksmiths. Blacksmiths don't make horseshoes either, that's a farrier's job (who still buy them off the shelf and finish them by hand). Being a farrier is also not an easy job, take a 3 or 4 apprenticeship to become one. There seems to be this viewpoint I see a lot on Hacker News that blue collar jobs are unskilled jobs. Most skilled trades require a 3 or 4 year apprenticeship, you can't just learn how to be a fitter and turner, or a carpenter, or a blacksmith/farrier in a couple of weekends. It's this kind of arrogant attitude that causes the tradies to have no respect for the book-learned engineers straight out of university that think because they have a degree they know how to build a road.
ta1234567890 8y ago
Employment stats are very misleading. There are lots of people with full time jobs who can't even afford housing. Sure they have jobs, but they are still in a really bad situation.
- asfasgasg 8y ago
  I am not commenting on the well-being of people working in fast food. Just on the availability of work. Whether such individuals can afford housing is totally beside the point of my comment.
  - ta1234567890 8y ago
    And I'm highlighting how that type of argument contributes to the misunderstanding that job availability and high employment rates are a good thing just by themselves. What good is for people to dedicate their lives to shitty jobs (which are the only ones they can get), just so they can scrape by and live on the streets?
    - albertgoeswoof 8y ago
      The answer to that’s isn’t more shitty jobs though. It’s adjustments to our system of capital distribution and ultimately what the minimum standards of living we are prepared to accept is as a society.
      - ta1234567890 8y ago
        You are right about shitty jobs not being the solution. About the last part of your statement though: society has already implicitly accepted the crappy minimum living standards (at least in the US) that it's willing to accept. That doesn't make it right for the people stuck having to live according to that minimum.
  - ende 8y ago
    Unemployment numbers also aren’t low because the economy is producing tons of new jobs; notice the record numbers of homeless on the streets? It’s the labor participation rate. People are only counted towards unemployment stats while they are actively seeking employment; after awhile they give up and drop out of the labor force completely. Of course much of that drop is also demographics; the baby boomers are starting to retire en masse. Still, the illusion of job abundance does not hold.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. It's not even close, which is why it is easy to keep burger flipping jobs find without high wages even when unemployment is relatively low. > This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment. Because “full employment” is a decreasing-over-time share of the population that is actually working (and an even smaller decreasing share actually self-sufficient from work, as a large portion of the working population is dependent on public aid.) This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is a problem that people point to “near full employment” with advancing automation as an excuse to argue against the continued advance of social support structures necessary to make the declining share of the population working (and also the declining share self-sufficient from work) both nearly “full employment” and anywhere close to tolerate conditions.

bassman9000 8y ago

more people will be relocated to higher value jobs FTFY

hawkice 8y ago
I mean, the value of the job goes down when it is automated, so the phrasing can be a little tricky to navigate, but yes.

skybrian 8y ago

It's not my area, but this seems like a pretty good article about issues facing the restaurant industry: "Some operators even say Uber is taking its toll. 'We have seen a number of our line cooks leave and say that they can make more money driving for Uber,' says Stacy Jed, co-owner of San Francisco’s Bluestem Brasserie. 'And if you think about it, the barrier to entry for Uber is much lower. All you have to do is know how to drive a car. And they can make more money and work less.'" https://medium.com/@foodrepublic/how-can-restaurants-fix-the-kitchen-staffing-crisis-64609d6c3959 https://medium.com/@foodrepublic/how-can-restaurants-fix-the...

GordonS 8y ago
> All you have to do is know how to drive a car Don't you need to own a decent car too?

miles_matthias 8y ago

My company works in the restaurant industry and the common theme for restaurants v2 is providing better hospitality, which is only feasible with high prices (think fine dining) or by freeing up production costs to be spent on hospitality, which is exactly what this does. Imagine an employee at the burger place offering event planning services, not just catering. Or knowing that you have family coming in town next weekend for a baseball game and the gamw gets delayed and you're starving after the game, and the employee texts you "Hey, saw your game got delayed, hungry? I can have some burgers sent to the house for the whole family!" It is automating a job, but I prefer to word it as reallocating resources to improve the experience.

megaman22 8y ago
That sounds really awful, and I don't want McDonalds to have visibility into whether my kid's little league game had a rain delay...

asn0 8y ago

I think what he calls "5% time" (24 min of an 8-hour day) is what most burger places call "break time" (15 min every 4 hours)

isoskeles 8y ago
Break time is mandated, no? I assumed he was referring to time at work outside of break time, because otherwise it would be completely pointless to say, if not illegal to dictate what employees do during break time.

csomar 8y ago

> Just face it - you're automating a job. If your company succeeds, more people will become unemployed. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but call it what it is and take responsibility. I agree that the founder should be more straightforward. But take responsibility for what? As a business you don't have any moral or legal requirements to employ x people. Getting rid of this menial jobs will push people to look to do other stuff. It's good for them and for the society. Flipping burgers like a machine all day long is not healthy.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> As a business you don't have any moral or legal requirements to employ x people. But the founder, Vardakostas, is a person- not a business. A person ccan always consider the morality of the likely outcome of their decisions.
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  If I build a business that is 100% automated and requires no employees and is wildly profitable, is it immoral of me to not hire people I don't need?
Angostura 8y ago
> But take responsibility for what? Being truthful.
- candiodari 8y ago
  Truthfully, it also seems to have other advantages. Compared to traditional restaurant kitchens ... this looked pretty damn good. Even pretty damn good to work in (I mean compared to [1]). No grease, no dirty hair, no ruined clothes ... And of course advantages for the restaurant owner, but also a bit for the employees : more space, generally. The whole kitchen seems to be the size of a small car. That's pretty good. [1] https://bestlifeqatar.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/20171031_1838421746584588.jpg https://bestlifeqatar.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/20171031_1...
8y ago

zerostar07 8y ago

Or, let's just do some specialization of labor, the entrepreneur's job is not to preserve obsolete jobs, there are other institutions where this question should be addressed to.

tom_mellior 8y ago

> I really cringed when the founder started talking about how this gives their employees time to do more meaningful things, like reading books. To be fair, the whole quote (in the article, not the video) is: “We’re playing around with education programs for the staff. Five percent of the time they’re paid just to read. We’re already doing that. There’s a book budget. We’re paying $16 an hour. As opportunities come up to fix the machine, there’s a path we’re going to offer people as repair or maintenance people to get paid even more.” That is quite different from "when I make these people redundant, they will have time to read".