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Comment by cobookman | Hacker News Reader

You assume the store wouldn't replace the grocery clerk with self-checkout machines or install an amazon go like-system.

Robots & specialized technology solutions are year-over-year going down in cost. If labor continues the upwards cost trajectory we'd simply be accelerating the replacement of unskilled labor with robots.

Great example is Knightscope. It's able to meet security guard compliance & insurance needs at an hourly rate cheaper than humans. And given enough time, I'm sure it'll end up more reliable. https://www.knightscope.com/

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Indeed, this is a great argument for UBI, since it will not be possible to maintain a job supply which can provide everyone with a life. :)

That's a pretty terrible reason for UBI imo. If UBI is built to offset the lack of jobs, more people will choose not to work. If people choose not to work, the price of labor will go up. If the price of labor goes up, more and more labor will be outsourced to countries without UBI. It will create an underclass of non-citizens who don't get the luxury of UBI but live in an economy built for people who do.

People just choosing not to work in a thread about about ever-increasing numbers of workers with multiple jobs. Really??

If you're working 3 jobs to pay the bills, and then someone starts paying the bills for you, you're probably not going to continue working those 3 jobs. I don't see anything remotely controversial about that logic.

The reason people work minimum wage jobs is because they require that minimum wage to live.

The incremental cost of labor is not going to slow the arrival of a robotic Aldi. Fortunately, I have other grocery stores in the area and can spend my money at the one with the best quality AND service.

> The incremental cost of labor is not going to slow the arrival of a robotic Aldi.

No but it could speed it up. I'm certain plenty of big enough retail operation has a spreadsheet somewhere tracking the ROI on potential automation endeavors.

> Fortunately, I have other grocery stores in the area and can spend my money at the one with the best quality AND service.

Agreed, but are you in the majority with that? There's people who don't care about the long term impacts of, say, buying from an online retailer versus a local bike shop, but there's also a decent portion who's incomes mean it's either take the choice that's a little destructive to society, or not have any even-close-to-nice things for yourself.

If you want to know what a race to the bottom looks like in the US grocery biz, just ask Tesco.[0] At the end, they were practically giving food away with ridiculous coupons and it still wasn't enough to keep people coming to their "fresh & sleazy" stores.

[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-did-tesco-fail-in-the-us/

The automation in ordering at fast food places was visible immediately after several cities uped the minimum wage. Hurt the workers but my orders accuracy has gone up compared to the previous human system

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