Quote:
Originally Posted by Irace86.2.0
(Post 3573532)
This was more of a personal question than an industry question or than a question about if technology exists that could replace your job. Like I said, much of my duties could be replaced, but I don't see it happening for myself based on the rate of adoption. Will you be replaced, and if so, when?
You also say a lot of businesses can't afford automation, but you should be more specific. For instance, why did pizza and other restaurants employ delivery drivers, but Chipotle and many McDonalds didn't? How did that change with Doordash, and how many more customers did the restaurant industry gain who lacked drivers? How would delivery services change with drones, and could a small business use a third party service like a drone-based Doordash to deliver their goods without any investment capital?
A mom and pop store with one person behind the cashier desk may not need a self-checkout, but could a future Atlas stock the shelves, run the register/self-scanner and secure the premises, and would that be cheaper than hiring a person to work for a year? Even at minimum wage of $15.5/hour, at 40 hrs/wk that is $32k/year, so a single robot might be cheaper. Boston Dynamic's spot is $75k, but I would expect robots to drop significantly in price making a future robot not only affordable to the average business/person, but a significant savings.
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the average USA income is $31k(2019).
https://www.businessinsider.com/i-tr...g-a-qr-code-28
a burger machine is currently $30k, and requires a maintenance person to refill supplies and maintain it. so between buying the machine and staffing the person to maintain it, that's a minimum $60k investment for the first year. in my area, many fast food places are getting to be pretty consistently staffed by 2-4 people these days--most will have 50% taking orders, and the other 50% fulfilling.
while the order fulfilment could be automated as well, it doesn't change the formula all that much. places that staff even 4 people will come close to loosing money switching to robots. for arguments sake, lets say they all make minimum wage at $30k/yr with zero benefits. so the restaurant has a fixed $120k/yr in personnel operating costs.
they need to pay for the machine($30k), pay for the order automation($10k setup?), which are both recoverable over time, but need to keep paying 1 minimum wage person($30k) to refill the machine, but then require at least 1 educated/knowledgeable people to maintain and update the ordering system, and 1 person to keep the robots in mechanical shape, in my area that's somewhere nearing $70-100k/yr per person. even using the $70k base, it means $180k operating budget for the first year.
while the order automation system really only needs physical labor to maintain, the robots take parts that wear. eventually those parts need to be replaced. so it means that the $30k initial cost might drop to a yearly $5-10k cost.
we're down to $135k-140k/yr. really close, but at what cost? now there's people with higher education that expect higher cost of living adjustments and benefits, which further skew the equation.
different approach; let's assume it all makes sense and robots take over all the boring easy jobs like making burgers, doing dry cleaning, etc.
we'll then have a large glut of otherwise functional people.
the even bigger question then is "what do we do with all these people?"
do we make the already stressed welfare program bigger despite even less workers paying into it? start a "purge"? ship them to mars?
if anything, the 'make the robots do it' answer is going to end up costing us humans even more money than before with all these restless, jobless people not having anything to do.