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McDonald’s Inevitable Automation
It seems to me that the Ricochet community could use some good news right now. So here it is:
The left tried to unionize McDonald’s and force a higher minimum wage; McDonald’s responded by minimizing the need for wages. I suspect fast food chains were headed in this direction anyway. If so, this was the extra incentive they needed to dive in. Thanks, unions!
Of course, the picture’s not entirely rosy. As someone pointed out on Facebook earlier, this could eliminate many thousands of entry-level jobs. Those jobs help teenagers begin a work history and help adults re-enter the work force, as well as provide assurance of job opportunities in economically depressed areas.
But I have faith that when one economic door closes another opens. The opportunities aren’t always available nearby. They aren’t always well-paying or fulfilling jobs. But — provided the nanny state will get the heck out of the way! — there are always new jobs being created.
Published in Economics
That’s only one pool. You’ve still got pharma reps, medical device reps, heavy equipment reps – not to mention all of the reps involved in service industries like construction, etc.
Think about it – there are a lot of salespeople out there and they won’t all be replaced.
I agree with the assertion that there will continue to be business-to-business sales jobs, many of them challenging and quite lucrative..but would observe a couple factors steering young people away from these jobs:
1) You can’t sell unless you can deal with rejection. And the practice of “self-esteem-building,” aka “everyone gets an award for something,” makes it hard for many kids to ever develop this skill.
2) Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” whatever its merits as literature/drama, has surely caused many to think that if they go into sales they’ll wind up as Willy Loman.
This is the key point others may be missing. In many (most?) industries, labor is the principal cost. If you want to save money, reduce headcount. To paraphrase Willie Sutton, that’s where the money is.
For centuries horses filled new niches as human society evolved. They went from transport and warfare to agriculture. But eventually the jobs never came back for horses. Why? Because they reached the limits of their utility. As machines get better they will exceed the cognitive skills of many humans, at least for specific jobs. A specialized robot that does first-tier medical diagnosis or reads an X-ray displaces a person that is not smart enough to transition to doing brain surgery.
How many of those people are there out of >100M US workforce? Many jobs are more vulnerable than sales jobs. Referring back to the table, sales reps are pretty far down the list. Notice the top of the list? Consider how self-driving cars/trucks will affect transportation.
They don’t all have to be replaced for there to be a problem. What if a quarter of the ‘lot of salespeople’ are replaced. That’s 25% unemployment among salespeople. Not pretty.
In third world countries like Zimbabwe, a few relatives in the extended family might have a (government?) job, and they support the rest of the family.
I’ve posted my thoughts on automation and the workforce before. Salient quote:
Re: self driving trucks and jobs. Megan McArdle just had a post this week about self driving trucks being a lot farther off than people think . Referenced an article about the Google self-driving car and how limited it’s utility really is (it relies on INCREDIBLY detailed maps that have to account for every stop sign, cross walk, fire hydrant, etc).
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-05-27/when-will-self-driving-trucks-destroy-america-
How long do you think it will take for image processing software be able to recognize stop signs and crosswalks? I bet they can already.
Remember, self-driving vehicles don’t have to be perfect; they just have to make fewer errors than humans do (cf. more than 30,000 traffic fatalities per year). I agree they may be farther off than optimists think, but not because of the technology. Trial lawyers and regulations are the real barriers to innovation.
Dr lorentz. Did you read the McArdle post and the link within? It’s not really a function of sensor technology. It’s really a question of artificial intellifence.
The mapping technology Google is using solves about 90% of the problems of self driving cars. But it’s hard to see how it will ever practically solve the last 10%.
Do you work with image processing software? Quite a while. You’d have better luck if you emblazoned each sign with a barcode.
The “incredibly detailed map” solution might be easier, if you could crowdsource the data. Sort of a difficult thing to do if having a less-than-perfect data set means trucks will routinely plow through stop signs regardless.
The vehicles also don’t deal well with snow and rain (kind of a problem for cross-country trucking), potholes, etc.
I found the Slate(?) article referenced by McArdle quite interesting. I really thought the self-driving vehicles were much more “aware” than they apparently are. If true, actual self-driving (as opposed to “driver assist”) is significantly further away than popularly believed.
The link was posted while I was writing my comment, so I had not read it at that time. The McArdle post has about a dozen links in it. From the very first link:
“Self-driving trucks are no longer the future. They are the present. They’re here.”
The timeline in this article cites is “complete autonomous capability will be here by 2022, followed by massive market penetration by 2026.” That sounds pretty darn quick to me – faster than I would have guessed.
Now for the McArdle post itself. Her basic argument breaks down like this:
Insisting that it work everywhere at once is a straw man. Eliminating even 20% of all trucking jobs is highly disruptive. Even McArdle acknowledges that “…eventually, we’ll solve the problems and self-driving trucks will displace a lot of drivers.” We’re just quibbling about when.
Thinking about the automated checkout lines, I think the problem might be shoplifting.
An ordinary checkout has an employee as part of every transaction, which makes it harder to swipe stuff. The automated lines have to have some security built in to get the same effect. Which is why, I believe, they weigh every item in the bagging area. That makes the user interface more complicated and more prone to erroring to the “call an attendant” state, which makes the lines slower and more frustrating to use.
I’m a night shift kind of guy though; I tend to time my visits to the local Walmart between 3 and 4 in the morning. There’s nobody there; it’s so nice.
Yup, I do. Good idea about barcodes. I was thinking transponders. It’s not like it would be a big deal to outfit freeways and access roads to connect local terminal facilities, then local human driver could handle the ‘last mile.’ Freeways and streets in my area are already replete with embedded sensors and cameras to report speed and the presence of vehicles at intersections. That’s where these maps come from. I can remember when there were reporters in traffic helicopters to do this job, broadcasting their reports on the radio (what’s that??). Do they even have those anymore?
Here’s another thought: One human driver to handle a convoy of mostly-autonomous trucks. That eliminates most of the trucking jobs, replacing several drivers with one. Here’s yet another idea: remotely piloted trucks, again mostly autonomous but with remote human supervision. That would require fewer humans and save lots of money. Drones are already remotely piloted, after all, and flying is harder than driving.
I bet people who are in the field, unlike me, can come up with much better ideas that are actually viable.
I sort of understand the resistance to kiosks in a grocery store. Before I started using kiosks regularly, I imagined all kinds of headaches. How would you weigh and calculate prices for produce? How would you pay with cash? I’m sure that with a little effort, I could recall some other concerns. In the end, after using them a couple of times to avoid long lines, I saw that the stores had addressed all of the issues and found the experience to be much, much better than using a cashier. Now, I can take some time and carefully watch the prices as I scan the items. I don’t have someone pushing a cart into me as I try to finish my transaction. Everything is smoother and better.
Would you pay a charge to use a cashier in a grocery store? I suspect that like banks, other businesses will eventually charge a fee for service from a human attendant, and the fee will eventually prod even the most firmly opposed customer to change.
I look at the cash register with a long line, and look right next to it and see a cash register with no line. I’ll take the one with no line, please.
The company can’t be bothered to hire enough cashiers to keep the lines moving. Sorry, humans. I love the robots more than you.
As long as you don’t demand the right to marry them…
Bad jokes aside, does this calculus change when the lines move? I hate being the guy who’s forcing everyone else to wait. If I knew there were going to be three people behind me in the self checkout lane I’d never learn how to use them because I’d be too embarrassed to figure it out while everyone was waiting on me.
Supposing the lines were equally long, I imagine I’d go with the human cashier. She does it more often than I do, she’s quicker. And, strictly speaking, she’s hot.
Sorry, that’s driver assist, not self-driving.
As I said, the first 90% is “easy”. That last 10% is really, really, really hard.
Get back to me when we have self-driving cross-country railroads. That should be a no-brainer. We’ve already got the limited access centrally controlled infrastructure. No steering or cross-traffic. There are literally only three decisions to be made in the cab – Maintain speed, go faster, slow down/stop.
So why haven’t the major transcontinental railroads implemented it?
Another barrier to self-driving cars is the number of people who simply enjoy driving.
Differences between vehicles would be mostly cosmetic because all vehicles would move at the same speeds. No more sportscars.
Yes, at the risk of being overly efficient and inhumane (good comment #30 by SoDakBoy), I try to get in and out of the store (and line) as quickly as possible.
It’s like when I’m on the freeway being a
crazyefficient driver. I try to guess which lane will get me where I am going fastest, and I get in that lane. Sometimes I am wrong and regret it. There are always unforseeable circumstances. Like the person whose card is declined, or the person who isn’t ready to pay when the cashier asks for payment.This problem is entirely solvable by the company making good decisions about how to implement the self-checkout line(s). The last time I was at Home Depot they had 2 lanes with 4 self-checkout registers. No line. Even there had been a line, I would have felt comfortable at my 1 register since there were still 3 self-checkout registers available to others.
Here in NYC, McDonalds and Burger King customers are, overwhelmingly poor people; mostly Blacks and Hispanics. I would guess is that automation will take place last here, both for political reasons, and because, I suspect, it’s relatively easy to staff these places in cities; not so in the suburbs.
I would look for some governments to put some regulations in place to restrict the automation and encourage (force) employers to use (hire) employees.
Yes, I always look for governments to do the inefficient thing. But do you expect it will be effective?
Does anyone know how In-and-Out manages to keep prices reasonable while employing a small army of perky and happy young people behind their counter?
When I moved back to NYC after grad school in LA I used to dream about I&O. Then I began visiting Dallas on a regular basis where I would book a hotel across the street from one just so I could eat there. Every employee was fresh-faced, polite and well trained.
In sharp contrast, back in NYC, *most* McDonald’s are filled with surly or disinterested staff.
@hank rhody#84: I don’t expect the law to work much at all. Everybody focuses on the big companies but most work is done by little guys. I expect the big companies to automate and the small businesses and employees to start doing business off the book. Contract labor and such. That is one reason we have an illegal issue. Being illegal in the first place, they are willing to work in the shadows off the books.
Submitted without further comment:
http://jalopnik.com/self-driving-volvo-tries-to-run-some-people-over-1706970068