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Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

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209 points Luc | 9 comments | 09 May 25 11:18 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source | bottom
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thisisnotauser ◴[09 May 25 16:14 UTC] No.43938444[source]▶
Henry Ford famously wanted his workers to be able to afford his cars. When Bezos replaces everyone with robots, who will be left to buy his junk?
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dan-robertson ◴[09 May 25 17:45 UTC] No.43939348[source]▶
Plenty of people who don’t work for Amazon already buy stuff from there. I guess I mostly see the jobs as exchanging labour for something that society values and so by automating, there is more labour available to do things society values and so society gets more of what it values. And if you think working for Amazon is bad for people then you should be happy if automation is decreasing the number of people suffering that bad thing (though automation won’t always decrease this, eg see rise in number of bank tellers/branches in the US). But that isn’t really the way that lots of people talk about jobs and so if what you want is for people to have somewhere local where they can exchange their time for money to spend on goods and services then I guess automation and efficiency don’t really matter because the point of the job is to ensure the worker has money coming in rather than to ensure that something useful comes out of it. That latter point of view is pretty popular and I think I’m describing it pretty terribly – I’m sure there is a much more reasonable argument for it.
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1. tw04 ◴[09 May 25 18:35 UTC] No.43939771[source]▶
The ultimate endgame is either a significant reduction in global population, or UBI. You can’t just keep automating every non-knowledge job away and just hope people find something else to do.

All those jobs in Detroit that went away were replaced by…? As best I can tell they were replaced by poverty and crime.

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2. jajuuka ◴[09 May 25 20:05 UTC] No.43940438[source]▶
Detroit is an odd example. You have the cornerstone industry up and leaving the area, followed by race riots which led to white flight and the middle class leaving the city. This led to a vacuum in support and jobs leaving the new majority black population and poor to fend for themselves. Two historically oppressed groups now yolked to a dying city.

It's more an example of how racism and reliance on singular industry can quickly create pits that are largely insurmountable. Similar cases can be found in coal country in Appalachia. The lesson isn't to prop up local industry to maintain job and economic stability. The lesson is to stage out disruption. ILA recently took this on with automation in shipping. The goal isn't to prevent automation but to not give companies a blank check to mass fire workers and replace them with automation.

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3. tw04 ◴[09 May 25 20:49 UTC] No.43940727[source]▶
So ignore Detroit, pick a city that based their economy on literally any manufacturing industry that up and left. What was the replacement work that maintained middle class families at the same numbers?
4. sydbarrett74 ◴[09 May 25 20:50 UTC] No.43940739[source]▶
Judging from efforts in the US to make health care harder and harder to obtain, I'm betting on the former, especially if other countries follow suit. Slowly letting people die from untreated chronic diseases may be seen as more humane than outright mass slaughter.
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5. apercu ◴[09 May 25 21:22 UTC] No.43940991[source]▶
I don’t understand the endgame. If everyone is poor and dying who is buying all the useless/social credit shit until there are 100m “wealthy” people left? And if “they” (whoever they are, I think we all give “wealthy” people far too much credit, many that I’ve known are pretty empty, insecure people lacking any real self awareness) want everyone else dead, why are all “developed” countries pushing for higher birthrates and encouraging immigration from less developed countries?
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6. SR2Z ◴[09 May 25 21:58 UTC] No.43941306[source]▶
> You can’t just keep automating every non-knowledge job away and just hope people find something else to do.

[citation needed]

We've been at it for more than a century now and it seems to be working pretty well for nearly everyone!

Our goal is not to preserve jobs. Our goal is to be more productive for fewer resources.

Jobs in Detroit went away - but so did the people, who found new jobs in other cities. There has been no lasting unemployment from automation, ever.

Human beings are good for more than pulling levers and carrying heavy objects and we do each other a disservice by pretending otherwise.

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7. tw04 ◴[10 May 25 01:09 UTC] No.43942442[source]▶
> Jobs in Detroit went away - but so did the people, who found new jobs in other cities. There has been no lasting unemployment from automation, ever.

Do you have some citations? There’s absolutely no indication they “found new jobs in other cities” but there is plenty of proof they just never found another well paying job and moved into welfare or became homeless.

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8. SR2Z ◴[10 May 25 03:30 UTC] No.43943007{3}[source]▶
The population of Detroit declined from >1M in 1995 to 630k today.

That would not be the case if they "moved into welfare" or became homeless.

You seem to have the idea that welfare systems in US cities can handle 40% of the city becoming jobless. I assure you this is not the case.

Unless you're trying to convince me that several hundred thousand people just died, they very obviously moved out.

I can't prove that Detroiters specifically all found better paying jobs, but there is ample evidence online that shows that the real factor crushing the middle class is the sheer number of Americans being catapulted upwards.

9. numpad0 ◴[10 May 25 08:59 UTC] No.43944232{3}[source]▶
The rich wants maximum survival, the poor less so, or that's how "their" world model looks to me.

Most cutting edge technologies like advanced rocketry are not requirements for a century- to millenium-scale survival at all-around medieval technology level.