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The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the cause of him losing his job due to automation: >Just about every job in my sortation

by vore 7y ago

The author seems to very much worry that negative press is going to be the cause of him losing his job due to automation: >Just about every job in my sortation center could probably be done by a robot. In fact, it amazes me that Amazon hasn’t simply automated the entire facility. [...] If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-class people, the company creates more customers. >If Amazon is going to be castigated publicly every time one of its 650,000 employees has a bad day, it may well decide to automate as many positions as possible and do away with most of its human workforce. >But if John Oliver and his ilk keep harping away at how inhumanely Amazon treats its workers, Bezos might decide to completely automate his operation and people like me will be out of a job. It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction.

anigbrowl 7y ago
About what I'd expect from Quillette, which publishes articles on phrenology and calls it science.
- toasterlovin 7y ago
  Citation needed.
  - lionsdan 7y ago
    Probably referring to the contents of this: https://quillette.com/2019/06/05/superior-the-return-of-race-science-a-review/ https://quillette.com/2019/06/05/superior-the-return-of-race...
    - toasterlovin 7y ago
      Searching for “phrenology” doesn’t return a single result until the comments. And the article seems to be a fairly balanced review. It starts by crediting the author of the book they are reviewing for several things before making a reasoned argument against her conclusions. What am I missing?
      - DanBC 7y ago
        > What am I missing? That Quillette is a festering shithole?
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        I'm using the word pejoratively, but I was specifically referring to the handwavey discussion of skull measurement as a synecdoche for the whole article.
        fastball 7y ago
        Neither do I see a discussion of skull measurement.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
        Then you should read it again because it's in there.
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        From the article: > In fact, researchers can classify human variation by continent quite accurately using only data from the human skull. (They are able to correctly classify human skulls into black and white Americans with about 80% accuracy, using only two variables.) That is the only mention of the word "skull" in the entire article. They link to an article from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology to support this claim. What is the problem with citing peer reviewed research to back a statement about empirical fact?
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction. Be that as it may, agitating for rules that make it more expensive to employ people can make the scale tip the other way sooner. It's not unreasonable to prefer a $15 job to a "$25 job" that promptly gets automated away because the automation threshold is currently e.g. $22 (and will be $19 in five years).
- vore 7y ago
  That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation, then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The problem isn't actually automation. If a job gets automated, now the thing being produced costs less. At scale it means you can have the same standard of living with a lower salary -- a boon for the poor. The real problem is when some of the things have artificial scarcity. If we have zoning laws that prevent new housing from being built, the poor can't afford housing. If we have restrictions on the number of new doctors and regulations that create high compliance costs and barriers to competition in medical services, the poor can't afford medicine. You can't make a robot to build housing for people in a place where there is effectively a law against building new housing. So that's where we get into trouble -- people building moats around stuff that make it more expensive, to prevent its cost from staying in line (i.e. declining) along with everything else, until those things are unaffordable. The real problem is the high cost of housing and medicine and education.
    - c0vfefe 7y ago
sct202 7y ago
A large part of the reason a lot of companies keep jobs only partially automated, is so that they can flex capacity up and down with demand. With automation you have to buy all that capacity upfront and pay for it if you're using it or not. With labor, you can send people home early or cut hours if you don't need them.
lonelappde 7y ago
The author is a libertarian think-tank shill, not actually worried about his job.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
nerdponx 7y ago
Yep. These lines made me squirm. Amazon probably isn't a bad employer even by warehouse standards. But these kinds of statements are paternalistic propaganda on behalf of capital.
gdulli 7y ago
> If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-class people, the company creates more customers I've never accused a piece of content like this of being a shill, but it's taking some mental gymnastics to convince myself that a person could really believe this.
- autokad 7y ago
  why, its not far from the philosophy of Henry Ford, thus completely plausible.

by vore 7y ago

anigbrowl 7y ago

About what I'd expect from Quillette, which publishes articles on phrenology and calls it science.

toasterlovin 7y ago
Citation needed.
- lionsdan 7y ago
  Probably referring to the contents of this: https://quillette.com/2019/06/05/superior-the-return-of-race-science-a-review/ https://quillette.com/2019/06/05/superior-the-return-of-race...
  - toasterlovin 7y ago
    Searching for “phrenology” doesn’t return a single result until the comments. And the article seems to be a fairly balanced review. It starts by crediting the author of the book they are reviewing for several things before making a reasoned argument against her conclusions. What am I missing?
    - DanBC 7y ago
      > What am I missing? That Quillette is a festering shithole?
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      I'm using the word pejoratively, but I was specifically referring to the handwavey discussion of skull measurement as a synecdoche for the whole article.
      - fastball 7y ago
        Neither do I see a discussion of skull measurement.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
        Then you should read it again because it's in there.
        toasterlovin 7y ago
        From the article: > In fact, researchers can classify human variation by continent quite accurately using only data from the human skull. (They are able to correctly classify human skulls into black and white Americans with about 80% accuracy, using only two variables.) That is the only mention of the word "skull" in the entire article. They link to an article from the American Journal of Physical Anthropology to support this claim. What is the problem with citing peer reviewed research to back a statement about empirical fact?

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> It's as plain as day that Amazon isn't keeping manual labor around out of the goodness of their hearts. There is no bottom line calculation other than the cost of manual labor vs the cost of automation, and no amount of deflection about the working conditions of warehouse work (whether better than Home Depot or not) is going to keep your job once the scale tips in the other direction. Be that as it may, agitating for rules that make it more expensive to employ people can make the scale tip the other way sooner. It's not unreasonable to prefer a $15 job to a "$25 job" that promptly gets automated away because the automation threshold is currently e.g. $22 (and will be $19 in five years).

vore 7y ago
That's a valid concern and I think there's no really great path forward, aside from broad structural changes that will blunt the negative consequences of automation: how do you balance good working conditions with the specter of automation? If human labor forever has to undercut the cost of automation, then we can't discount the human cost of doing so.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  The problem isn't actually automation. If a job gets automated, now the thing being produced costs less. At scale it means you can have the same standard of living with a lower salary -- a boon for the poor. The real problem is when some of the things have artificial scarcity. If we have zoning laws that prevent new housing from being built, the poor can't afford housing. If we have restrictions on the number of new doctors and regulations that create high compliance costs and barriers to competition in medical services, the poor can't afford medicine. You can't make a robot to build housing for people in a place where there is effectively a law against building new housing. So that's where we get into trouble -- people building moats around stuff that make it more expensive, to prevent its cost from staying in line (i.e. declining) along with everything else, until those things are unaffordable. The real problem is the high cost of housing and medicine and education.
  - c0vfefe 7y ago

sct202 7y ago

A large part of the reason a lot of companies keep jobs only partially automated, is so that they can flex capacity up and down with demand. With automation you have to buy all that capacity upfront and pay for it if you're using it or not. With labor, you can send people home early or cut hours if you don't need them.

lonelappde 7y ago

The author is a libertarian think-tank shill, not actually worried about his job.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

nerdponx 7y ago

Yep. These lines made me squirm. Amazon probably isn't a bad employer even by warehouse standards. But these kinds of statements are paternalistic propaganda on behalf of capital.

gdulli 7y ago

> If I had to guess, I’d say that Amazon continues to employ lots of human beings because, by putting money into the pockets of working-class people, the company creates more customers I've never accused a piece of content like this of being a shill, but it's taking some mental gymnastics to convince myself that a person could really believe this.

autokad 7y ago
why, its not far from the philosophy of Henry Ford, thus completely plausible.