Bernie Sanders is more than just a politician. To an entire generation he's the personification of the general idea that all of these values that we've been told of in our childhood are something that we shouldn't have to toss aside as soon as we grow up. I mean, you raise an entire generation on Disney movies and now you're wondering when they all want some of that fairness and equality?
Wal Mart's been using the government's welfare program to subsidize the paychecks they give out for a long time. It's not totally their fault since the minimum wage is ridiculous, but they totally abused it to suck up more money
And now that Walmart is basically halving their work force, there's no reason to either A) Lower prices on shit or B) Pay people a fucking livable wage. My walmart replaced most cashiers with self checkouts and got rid of the greeters. The only people who work there now are those who stock shelves and a few cashiers
"I like Sanders but I think I'll still vote Biden"
average american non trump voter
What's funny is I'll hear rural folk out here in Oklahoma complaining about how long the lines are for cashiers, because all the boomers+ refuse to use self-checkout.
Mines been like that for years, and by 9-10pm the only human cashier on duty is in the smokes aisle. And they have to bounce between that and monitoring the selfchecks.
Good. Fuck the self checkout. It's putting workers out of work.
That's because they think them refusing to use self-checkout will stop self-checkout from spreading. They don't understand that their smug 'I'm justifying you keeping these employees by choosing to shop in an attended checkout aisle' attitude just tells Wal-Mart 'since automation saves us a percentage of all cashier operation costs, the more cashier operations there are the more money we save by switching to self-checkout'.
They think self-checkout is a huge expense that the stores don't want because they fail to understand that it has a large initial cost -- but it saves them tons of money going forward. It's also too late to go 'but I hate self-checkout' as well because the pilot programs of self-checkout were to determine what people generally thought about self-checkout and, now that the things work decently and shrinkage isn't a huge issue, they know people will use self-checkout even if they're grumpy about it at first. The only real barrier is the value of the store and the focus on rolling it out in cities first because that's where they're spending the most money.
They think of the problem like Trump thinks of the problem. "If I give you more money to hire more employees, you'll hire more employees, because the problem was that the employees were costing too much money" failing to understand that the end result would be "Thanks for the money, these automated systems are expensive; we can really save a lot of money moving forward now because employees were expensive."
Their thinking is 2-dimensional in a 3-dimensional world.
Welcome to Oklahoma.
Those that aren't depressed low-income workers fancy themselves as the spiritual inheritors of the "cowboy spirit." They think any problem can be solved with grit and simple thinking.
I'm still working on a good expressive argument to this line of thinking. It's difficult to get that mindset to wrap their heads around our current economic climate, especially when they feel that any problem can be solved by trying harder.
It's actually a pretty simple argument -- it's just one they're likely to reject out of hand because it clashes directly against their view of 'how I want the world to work'.
Them choosing or not choosing the self-checkout aisle has no impact on the price of automation. They're trying to cap a water pipe that's spewing water at hurricane force when what's driving that force is a wheel further down the line that's slowly untightening itself. Their frustration point is they 'can't just go tighten down that wheel' because the wheel isn't theirs -- it's the pipe's.
It's actually a pretty simple argument -- it's just one they're likely to reject out of hand because it clashes directly against their view of 'how I want the world to work'.
That's what I'm talking about. Trying to convince someone with that mindset isn't as easy as breaking down the problem or making a simple analogy. At least, that hasn't been my experience. There's a lot of faith in that cowboy mentality.
The problem they were discussing is not that the automation was going to take away jobs. They were annoyed at having to use the machines. It's narcissism. People will take the concept of "help your neighbor" as helping out the person who lives next to them, or their friends. Other folks are out of sight and out of mind.
Yeah, but that's the part that's the most functionally simple and yet most impossible to convince them of. As you correctly note, they're selfish and believe their opinion rules the roost, and the problem is 'it's not about you, your opinion on the individual level is more or less irrelevant here'.
I'm a little confused.
What's wrong with choosing not to use self checkout because you dislike the experience of self checkout?
You're assuming they're making some societal stand but it seems like they just prefer one thing over another and as a result, like every human being in the world, they choose that thing over the other.
Because instead of actively blocking 'progress' which, outside of stockshares basically hurts everyone else, you can't stop it. There's no reason, just suffer.
The American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the greed of some of the largest and most profitable corporations in this country.
Spot on, that shouldn't even be a thing. Why do employees of some of the richest companies in America have to rely on taxpayer money to get by?
Real rich coming from them. If they truly want to increase the minimum wage, they can start by paying their employees that higher wage along with better hours and benefits. Don't stand there and say, "I'll do it only once the government says so. Till then I'll just keep abusing the system."
Be a fucking leader you worthless sacks of shit.
Even that racist POS Henry Ford figured that out by paying double of what the minimum wage was.
But you're acting as if it's all to stop the evil machines
But then talk about how even people who are not using them because they simply prefer the other options are wrong and weird?
They're just choosing from the options available to them, and they're wrong for it?
Walmart doesn't want to put themselves at a competitive disadvantage. No company does. This is why minimum wage and regulation in general is so important.
actually it is their fault they've spent billions on lobbying to keep the minimum wage as low as it is, they've bought politicians, they fund the arkansas GOP, the waltons are royalty in their home state where they pay fuckall in taxes, they as a company oppose unions, refuse to acknowledge their existence, and have gotten quite favorable treatment from all levels of government up to the NLRB thanks to their political connections. Their lobbying arms like ALEC get their bills passed verbatim in state legislatures, and they get state legislatures to bully local municipalities into meeting walmart demands
They have made this problem, they are responsible for the wealth inequality in this country, they are not innocent
I'm drawing from past experience. For some it is a societal stand.
I don't know any way to interpret this other than that people choosing to use self-checkout, simply because they don't want to use the machines (because they don't like the machines, which is an inherently valid opinion) is somehow wrong of them, in your eyes.
Seeing these chain of events like this and the Amazon thing makes me feel like the higher ups are so lost in their greed that all it takes is direct contact breaks that bubble they're in and get a reaction, either out of sudden realization of their actions, or fear that the guillotine is an actual possibility for them(metaphorically or literally) and they're trying to save face.
Guess I'm trying to say they realize they're not as untouchable as they think
It's not "I don't want to use the machines". It's "The machines are going to replace people, so I'll make a show of force with my wallet and refuse to use self-checkout at any cost, I don't care if it takes me an extra 40 minutes to get my groceries".
It's only 'wrong' because their intent is to 'stop self-checkout from being a thing': the 'wrong' part is them thinking that 'making a show of force with their wallet and refusing to use self-checkout at any cost even if it takes them an absurd amount of time to get their groceries' will accomplish the goal of 'stopping self-checkout from being a thing'.
The machines are going to replace people - and the justification for it will be in part them making the attended checkout lines take 20-40 minutes to process the person at the back of the line's transaction because they're demonstrating the inefficiency of it to the company in question. Ultimately it's a numbers game where they feel it's a 'customer preference' game - and that's the wrong way to look at it because that's not the way the company's looking at it.
There's so many Walmart employees on Facebook, reddit and in stores hating on Bernie for even speaking at the shareholder meeting. saying if they pay us more they'll cut our hours even more or they'll lose their jobs or "people are just shitty at their finances to be living paycheck to paycheck and Walmart is paying everyone fairly."
And that's why they bitch. They express how they don't want self checkouts, and they also protest by using the checkout lines. Customers do have a voice. If Walmart got rid of checkouts completely and forced people to use self checkouts, these people might just not use Walmart.
It's the principle of it man. Maybe it doesn't have that much of an impact, perhaps it might even be detrimental, but it demonstrates how much you care about not having people be replaced with machines. Time is an essential currency today, and giving up 20 minutes of it is a lot, but at the end of the day what other option is there? I don't want to use the self checkout line, therefore I'm going to use the checkout line.
i'd like to say that self checkouts don't really remove jobs from Walmart, the cashiers aren't really just cashiers, but multifaceted associates who do a lot more than just check people out
Bernie videos like this makes me legit cry.
This is blatant discrimination of Robotkind. Please omit your post of any anti-automation sentiment and turn yourself in at the nearest Fanuc support center.
Thank you.
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