Amazon Go

If that's true, then you have nothing to fear. People will pay extra to shop at stores with human cashiers, and the machine-driven stores will not be able to compete.

However, I suspect that when presented with the choice, people will take the machine store in exchange for lower prices. And I suspect that you suspect the same thing, otherwise you wouldn't be concerned.

Yep, this is a case of a minority view being concerned that its the minority view.

Taking an authoritarian approach is really a shameful way to handle it.

Yes, I think you're right and that's why I think this is bad.

Economically it makes more sense to buy cheaper and faster. But this eats into the fabric of society and offers nothing in exchange.

And what are all these people supposed to do then ? Sleep all day ? They will fight back with their votes at first, which they are already doing in the US and Europe..

Then there's the centralisation, control and privacy part - amazon gets to decide what products your area will be supplied with, it gets to know your eating habits, your walking habits, etc. Will pretty much own you and the neighbourhood.

But then again, I don't really see an alternative - it seems that we're being 'innovated' by force into the future and there's nothing we can do to stop it.

I don't actually think it'll be a difference in monetary value. I suspect machine run markets will feel cold and lifeless, while human run ones will feel warm and welcoming.

I've been to restaurants where you order from a terminal and your only human contact is someone who delivers your food without a word. There were a bunch of them at one point and they all closed down, and I don't remember thinking they were cheaper or more expensive at the time. I just remember feeling like the experience of going out with friends to a restaurant felt diminished.

Also at one point, Home Depot and Lowes switched to a majority of self checkout lines, but all that did was move everyone over to the "old fashioned" lines that ended up taking 3x as long to check out, but people continue to do this.

Your logic doesn't hold.

The unstated assumption is that the people using the stores have sufficient capital to value interaction with people over lower prices.

You can imagine that if the shoppers also worked in jobs where their humanity was valued, they might have this capital, but that's not the case for most of us because we work in systems that trade humanity for efficiency and the value extracted is captured by a tiny elite.

If you look at what that elite spends money on, it is exactly more personalized human interaction.

The problem is an artifact of people making choices in a system that concentrates wealth in the hands of a tiny few, and nothing to do with what people in general prefer.

How about those people go teach their local kids about science? Or volunteer to take care of the homeless or the elderly? That seems like it would benefit society much more than talking to a few bored people in a checkout line.

What is cheapest in the short term is often not the best in the long run. Economics assumes that the long-term consequences are priced into all decisions, but those consequences may not be clear and people with limited means have to make some very hard trade-offs. The costs may also be put on society as a whole and not borne by the individual. It can be helpful to limit those options as a society.

My best guess at the risks is that we may lose something valuable as a society or damage mental health if we push people away from social interaction. Many people will remain healthy, but those who are in difficult circumstances may find themselves on a downward spiral as they are further isolated from their communities. What if your community doesn't have a large supermarket? We talk about food deserts in the US right now, what if we have social deserts?

A simple example of short-term v long-term, look at soda and sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages. They're extremely cheap. Often less expensive than bottles of water in the US. This encourages many people to buy them as they are a cheap source of calories and sweetness. However, it's only many decades later that we've discovered the damage they can do when consumed for long periods of time. Many people consuming them don't have better food options. A few cities are starting to tax them to make the costs more evident.

Gasoline is another good example. The US is addicted to cheap gasoline and doesn't know how to stop even though we are now aware of the potentially catastrophic consequences.

Well, they have sufficient capital to use those stores now. Are you proposing that the problem with improved efficiency is that it gives the elite more room to take from the population, so you end up worse off than before? I can see where you're coming from if so, just want to make sure I understand what you're saying.

Walmartification continues, except with Amazon. Amazonification I guess

That's a good point. It seemed to me that they were making the case that people consciously valued the experience, but maybe it's a hidden value.

It seems to me that there must be better ways to give people social interaction besides making some people sit at a cash register for eight hours a day and making a bunch of other people wait in lines to be served. But that's a tougher argument to make.

The self-checkout lines are popular in most of the stores I've been in. (I personally like having both options available.)

I think you're incorrectly separating the 'fabric of society' from the economy. The economy describes all things that are valuable to us as a society and that includes interactions with the staff at our local grocery shops. When you say "Economically it makes more sense to buy cheaper and faster" that is obviously not true for you and probably many others who are prepared to pay for the social interactions that local shops provide.

There will still remain room for shops with cashiers in the market just as there is still room for restaurants with waiters, tables and chairs despite the innovation of drive throughs and fast food.

As long as you are part of a large enough group who is willing to pay for traditional style shops then they will continue to exist.

    Economically it makes more sense to buy cheaper and faster. But this eats into the fabric of society and offers nothing in exchange.

The same could be said of many previous innovations going back to the industrial revolution. We've always found new jobs for people and generally raised the quality of living.

    Then there's the centralisation, control and privacy part - amazon gets to decide what products your area will be supplied with, it gets to know your eating habits, your walking habits, etc. Will pretty much own you and the neighbourhood.

This is true of many grocery chains though already. They can track that information based off rewards cards and purchase history. I'm pretty sure Amazon won't be the only company to do this technology will either be replicated by other companies or turned into a service for other companies to leverage.

Improved efficiency is a subjective term.

If your goal is to create a society where relaxed human interaction is prioritized, then it would be deeply inefficient to accrue the majority of surplus resources to a tiny few.

If on the other hand, you are a member of elite whose interest is in competing with other members over resources, you would define efficiency in a way that minimizes the value captured lower down the hierarchy.

So yes, I am essentially saying that, but I don't want us to fall into the trap of using a single definition of 'efficiency' based on the assumptions of a particular system, but recognize that it depends on what is being optimized for.

I don't think that relaxed human interactions work against the elite's goals per-se - they just don't contribute directly to their goal and so are optimized away wherever possible.

I would also argue that any store I've been to with a self checkout line tends to have a majority of the use. I find them faster. My wife was hesitant the first few times she used them, now she prefers them as well. I would argue that odds are you & the people in front of you, who often are in a hurry, will be faster than the person who checks out people all day & is suffering from fatigue & boredom. I would also argue that most people in a checkout line want to get out of the checkout line as soon as possible & with no errors.

Except they won't, because nobody will pay for that. It's easy to find an alternative occupation - it's much more difficult to propose one that's reachable when you consider the starting point and economic reality (living costs money; retraining costs money; people low on the ladder usually don't have cash to burn).

No, I think GP is totally correct. Economy does not describe "all things that are valuable to us", nor does it describe relative value between things when considering the whole picture of one's life. Economy is a system of powerful feedback loops; it amplifies momentary relative value differentials. People like the human contact, but due to financial situation prefer cheaper groceries? If shops can save on cutting nice clerks out of the loop (or working them down into zombiefication), they'll outcompete ones that try to stick to "old model", but guess what - another part of the economy is right there to take away the marginal savings you as a customer just "made", and thus you're no better than before in terms of spending money, but you've just lost another nice aspect of the society.

The economy often gives us good solutions, but it also often gives us bad ones. The economy doesn't care either way.

C.f. http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/.

There are two points being made here by you and the original commenter:

1. Social interactions at commercial centres are valuable and Amazon and others who follow will be unable to offer such value.

2. Social interactions at commercial centres are more valuable than the beneficiaries are conscious of.

#1 I think we all agree on. #2 is the critical point and the degree of which is arguable and would swing Amazon's innovations between good and bad.

Let's imagine that on average, whenever someone goes into a shop and interacts with another human they are gaining 50% of their social wellbeing (i.e. a lot). Let's also imagine that on average whenever someone goes into a shop and interacts with a human they leave believing they have gained only 1% of their social wellbeing (i.e. not much). Such a person is likely to stop shopping at a shop with tills and cashiers in favour of a humanless shop such as Amazon Go. However that would likely be a mistake because they would lose half of their social wellbeing without even realising. This in my opinion would put automated shops into the category of a socially 'bad' thing.

Now imagine the actual social benefit of traditional shops is 5% (not huge but not insignificant) and the perceived social benefit is also 5% (i.e. we're fully aware of this benefit). In that case, people should be able to make the choice of which kind of shop is best for them based on a complete set of information. This in my opinion would put automated shops into the category of a socially 'good' thing. They offer more choice coupled with the relevant information to make that choice.

The discrepancy of perceived vs actual benefits can explain why we make the wrong choices with regards to a lot of market decisions from driving a gasoline car to eating at a restaurant. The best way to determine whether a market option is socially good or bad is to try to measure this discrepancy, see if it exists and if so, is it significantly large?

Well, right now the U.S. has spent about $4 TRILLION on bombing countries in the Middle East... Maybe we could use some of that money for a better purpose.

The world has enough money to do these things, it's just a question of priorities and replacing greed with compassion.

Right. The money is there. But the economy is structured around money being spent only when you absolutely have to - so it doesn't reach those nice things while there are more directly profitable things like bombing the shit out of Middle East...

Maybe I am incorrectly conflating Economics with the Economy. I understand your point about economic forces producing an outcome that is less optimal due to our failure to consider present and future effects of our decisions.

My point is that if you look at this from an economic point of view, you should be able to figure out whether or not it is good or bad (or at least know what information you need to figure out if it's good or bad). See my other comment on this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108119

Well, there's always church.

Religious institutions provide avenues for nominally non-commercial social interactions. Mutiple variants are available to account for taste (e.g. Christianity, some forms of yoga).

In my experience, it's hard to judge the popularity these days as there tend to be more self-checkout kiosks than traditional checkout lines that are actually manned.

We could, as you say, analyze and figure out whether or not any given market "innovation" is good or bad, but the big problem is - we can't meaningfully act on such information. Coordination is superhard[0], and in the meantime we all make individual choices based on momentary value differentials - choices which the market will happily aggregate and amplify, whether we like it or not.

You're spot-on in splitting the problem into two in your other comment.

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[0] - especially if you frown at one of its most powerful form in a large society - government regulations.