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low-end jobs
More recently, I've interacted with automation that is designed to specifically replace humans rather than broadening service. The automated check-out at grocery stores is the big example here. Instead of one cashier per line, stores now need one employee per 4 or so lines. This isn't making things more convenient for customers; unlike ATMs, the scanners are only available when the store is open anyway.
There are practical reasons I tend to avoid the automated checkouts, mostly related to speed. The line for the human has to be about three times as long as the line for the machine before the machine looks like a time-saver. People may get more proficient at scanning and packing over time, of course.
But I find that even absent that consideration, I'm reluctant to use the machine. Doing so helps to eliminate a low-end job that might be the only job the job-holder is capable of doing. Most of the cashiers I see at the grocery store aren't college-age kids looking for spending money; they're middle-aged and sometimes visibly handicapped.
This is not wholly a compassion-based argument; it's also one of expedience. I think we as a society are better off if almost everyone has a productive job. And some people are only capable of the lower-end jobs that are most in danger of being automated away. (Aside: for this reason, requirements for high minimum wages are also a bad idea -- don't make it cost-ineffective to hire people at prices they're willing to work for!)
We cannot avoid automation, of course, and in many cases it's a good thing. I'm no Luddite (she says, typing on her computer :-) ). But I kind of wish that we could focus it a little differently sometimes.
And yes, sometimes the humans are annoying to deal with. Last night I lost close to ten minutes to an inept cashier, and there is one (mentally challenged) bagger who I will never again allow to touch my groceries because he seems utterly bewildered by ideas like "the bread goes on top" (multiple failures). People who aren't capable of doing the job shouldn't hold the job anyway just out of pity. (Giant Eagle was right to fire the guy who was partially eating food and then putting the package back on the shelf, and I don't care that he didn't understand that this was wrong.) But y'know, the machines aren't painless either -- just try to get a scanning error fixed. And for the most part, the people holding these jobs are quite capable and willing to work, and I find I'm rooting for the people over the machines.
Re: part 2
Ooh, I knew you'd ask a difficult question like that. It was in a conversation on a very high-volume mailing list which I read in digest form (so the "from" lines don't reflect authors), some time in the last 2 years, plus or minus 1.5, by one of several resident Libertarians. Or maybe it was in a private off-list discussion. I've been grepping my archives, but haven't found it so far and am having trouble thinking of clever strings to grep on.
I may give up grepping at some point, and just post asking if someone wanted to own that position. How interested are you to know?
Also, do you get enough email? If not, I could help with that....
For most people it doesn't, which is why I wondered about the degree to which this would actually work. But for some, this is a religious obligation; the word tzedakah, usually translated as charity, actually means justice.
I've heard it translated as "righteousness", too.
We support the poor not because we pity them but because they are human beings who deserve it, and there but for the grace of God go I.
This reminds me! There was a quote that crossed my desk which I thought you might like, from one Matt Gordon, on an email list I am on:
I accept a personal obligation to aid those less fortunate, but I don't think it's generally the place of government to mandate it.
I have much to say on this. I'm going to be non-linear here and jump ahead, otherwise I'll never to get home.
One of the Waytes (Laenus, the mad fiddler) made a fascinating point to me over dinner one night. He pointed out that through period, the Roman Catholic Church did all of the things we now think of as "Health, Education and Human Welfare": they founded and ran the universities, the hospitals, the almshouses, the monestaries (which housed many people who could not otherwise make their way in the world), and they patronized the arts.
They did this in part by imposing a simple flat tax upon their worshippers -- "tithe" means "tenth", and that's what it was. They also did it by pay-per-use services (college students paying to attend lectures, by the lecture, in a very clean capitalist system) and self-sufficiency and industry (monestaries strove to be self-sustaining).
With the eviction of religion from civil life, these functions were no longer systemically performed. For quite a while -- a bunch of human generations -- people got on OK without them. But it turned out they hadn't been fungible after all. The problems the Church had been solving didn't go away. And they compounded.
Eventually some situations got so dire, that the government wound up being brought in by the citizenry. So now we have government run schools and government funded universities and government subsidized hospitals and governmental arts grants. We don't have much in the way of poor houses, but we have some grant money going to battered women's shelters and homeless shelters and soup kitchens.
When FDR started the New Deal, it was, in a way, secular government throwing up its hands and saying, "Alright, alright! I guess someone does need to deal with this!"
It seems to me, in light of history, that a society cannot neglect these problems. Leaving individuals to sort it out on a non-systematic, ad hoc basis winds up imposing massive costs -- from the direct monetary through the costs of lost labor and human potential -- on society. There must be a systemic, institutional approach to dealing with them.
Maybe it doesn't have to be the "government", but I for one would be very unhappy to see it be the Church. Or churches.
[cont]
errata
Ooh, I knew you'd ask a difficult question like that.
Oops, sorry. Please don't go to any more effort on my account; it's not that important. I incorrectly assumed that it was a recent conversation or perhaps something you'd read on LJ. If it was a conversation still in progress that'd be interesting to look in on, but sending someone email two years after the fact just doesn't have the same attraction.
Also, do you get enough email? If not, I could help with that....
I probably get enough email, but I'm always interested in hearing about other things I should be reading. procmail can at least let me sort it for batch reading.
I've heard it translated as "righteousness", too.
That too. I think of it as "when we do justice we behave righteously". Do you know the phrase "tzedek, tzedek, tirdof", usually translated as "justice, justice you shall pursue"? It comes amidst a bunch of commandments and/or advice about behaving righteously.
Quote: thank you! I like that.