Automation and the future of work.

Leo

Well-known member
You can add AirBnB and pretty much any bank to the shitlist. Clever to let the actual costumers do lots of administrative work and call it all "convenience"

i don't think they deserve to be on a shitlist, though. for example, i much prefer banking via ATM or online from home than having to somehow get to a bank between 9:00 am-3:30 pm, stand in line and then have to deal with a slow, grumpy bank teller. also, isn't it much better to be able to research and book a place to stay online in minutes as opposed to wasting time making an appointment at a travel agent and having them book the (always more expensive) room?

yes, i agree it sucks that amazon kills small brick-and-mortar retail stores, but lots of tech firms have disrupted and improved industries that were historically overpriced, non-competitive and not customer friendly.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
i don't think they deserve to be on a shitlist, though. for example, i much prefer banking via ATM or online from home than having to somehow get to a bank between 9:00 am-3:30 pm, stand in line and then have to deal with a slow, grumpy bank teller. also, isn't it much better to be able to research and book a place to stay online in minutes as opposed to wasting time making an appointment at a travel agent and having them book the (always more expensive) room?

yes, i agree it sucks that amazon kills small brick-and-mortar retail stores, but lots of tech firms have disrupted and improved industries that were historically overpriced, non-competitive and not customer friendly.

There are pros and cons of course, and if it's an "improvement" to have a new monopoly (which amazon pretty much is) is debatable (I don't think it's great but that's what the oh-so-praised digital economy is: winner takes it all, you have a monopoly within a very short time). I haven't dealt with a bank clerk face 2 face for a decade now, yet I pay more and more friggin fees just to have a darn bank account (which has always been way in the plus) despite the promises of "internet banking cutting costs".

Well, I am a grumpy soon-to-be middle aged man who suspects the evil capitalist cunts ripping off people behind the shiny happy walls of "progress" and "disruption". That's just how I roll ....
 

Leo

Well-known member
plenty of evil capitalist cunts at all those old disrupted companies too, probably worse ones in many cases. maybe the driver isn't so much the technology part as it is the capitalism part.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
maybe the driver isn't so much the technology part as it is the capitalism part.

The driver is the lazyness of people. If you haven't your services optimized for smartphone usage, you'll go down soon (or are already history). Lazyness, of course, is just another word for dependence.
 

droid

Well-known member
i don't think they deserve to be on a shitlist, though. for example, i much prefer banking via ATM or online from home than having to somehow get to a bank between 9:00 am-3:30 pm, stand in line and then have to deal with a slow, grumpy bank teller. also, isn't it much better to be able to research and book a place to stay online in minutes as opposed to wasting time making an appointment at a travel agent and having them book the (always more expensive) room?

yes, i agree it sucks that amazon kills small brick-and-mortar retail stores, but lots of tech firms have disrupted and improved industries that were historically overpriced, non-competitive and not customer friendly.

Fuck no. Air BnB are a disaster. Apart from the usual lack of regulation, accountability etc, they are devastating housing markets in cities all over the world.
 

Leo

Well-known member
fair enough, i was thinking more of the consumer experience of getting a place to stay. that being said, "devastating" is a bit of an exaggeration: they have a negative effect but don't (yet) have anywhere near the critical mass to wreak mass havoc on global housing markets.
 
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luka

Well-known member

Douglas collected data from more than a hundred large British businesses and found that in nearly every case, except that of companies becoming bankrupt, the sums paid out in salaries, wages and dividends were always less than the total costs of goods and services produced each week: consumers did not have enough income to buy back what they had made. He published his observations and conclusions in an article in the magazine The English Review, where he suggested: "That we are living under a system of accountancy which renders the delivery of the nation's goods and services to itself a technical impossibility."[5] He later formalized this observation in his A+B theorem. Douglas proposed to eliminate this difference between total prices and total incomes by augmenting consumers' purchasing power through a National Dividend and a Compensated Price Mechanism.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
This is the whole point of surplus value / profit tho.

Also when I worked in a cheese factory I did not want to buy a weeks worth cheddar.

And what about delivery drivers and accountants and people in retail.

And why did he hate Jews?
 

john eden

male pale and stale
No worries. I think UBI or increasing the minimum wage is better personally.

With the social credit stuff you get into all kinds of horrors around who is productive and who isn't.
 
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