Saturday, June 9, 2018

Rise of the McRobots

(AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
Everybody has the right to a living wage. It's the responsibility of employers to pay their workers enough to live on comfortably, no matter what sort of work they do. No matter what it costs. No matter how much or how little value an individual employee provides. A job is a human right, and if you pay your employees anything less than a designated amount -- an amount that is not, and will never be, designated by you -- then you're a fascist and you'll be shamed and slandered and picketed until you comply. F*** your laws of economics, you Nazis! This is social justice we're talking about. Profit is bad. Capitalism is evil. If the system can't be destroyed without personally inconveniencing me as I tweet about it on my iPhone, then at least it should be controlled by the government. And if that means putting a few money-grubbers out of business... serves 'em right.
Or at least that's what the #FightFor15 movement keeps telling us. That's what today's Democrats are all about. They think you should make at least $15 an hour for pushing icons on a cash register and glaring resentfully at customers who keep interrupting your important conversation about Kanye.
And this is what #FightFor15's diligent efforts have wrought. Sarah Whitten, CNBC:
McDonald's has been systematically adding self-service ordering kiosks and table service to stores as it works to "build a better McDonald's..."
In fact, the company plans to upgrade 1,000 stores with this technology every quarter for the next eight to nine quarters...
International markets like Canada, Australia and the U.K. are already fully integrated with kiosk service and mobile ordering. Locations in France and Germany, too, are almost completely transformed with this new technology.
By 2020, every single McDonald's location in the U.S. will have ordering kiosks. Then someone will need to build a machine to dry the tears of minimum wage activists.
Technology is about finding ways to get things done with as little human intervention or effort as possible. That's how millions of people get their daily news without thousands of town criers yelling it at them in the town square. That's how you can have a conversation in real time with a friend (or enemy!) halfway around the world. That's how you can travel from one end of America to the other in days or even hours, instead of months or even years. That's how you can watch almost any movie or TV show you can think of, instantly, without having to be kind orrewind.
That's how you're reading this right now.
I don't know about you, but I don't want to go back to living in caves. I don't want to be forced to fight for survival every day of my life. I don't want to go potty outside. I don't want to wash my clothes by scraping them with rocks in a river. I don't want my entertainment options to be limited to campfire tales and public executions. I don't want to go back to those days. Humanity has been there and done that. For all its faults, I'm a big fan of civilization.
It's like that old joke:
What did socialists use before candles?
Electricity.
I, for one, welcome our new fast-food-robot overlords. I'm glad they're taking our orders, and flipping our burgers, and telling us to have a nice day, and doing any other job that humans either don't want to do or don't want to pay other humans to do. I eagerly await the coming culinary utopia where I can obtain a delicious, freshly cooked meal without ever having to deal with another human being.
Now, what the hell is my McDonald's password? I've got so many, I can't remember them all...
(Hat tip: Doug Powers)

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