https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-costco-kroger-facing-self-checkout-reckoning-2023-10
Some are finding they still need employees to combat theft, assist with purchases, review IDs, and check receipts.
Praxis
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I would argue that self-checkout machines are less about automating labor away and more about transferring that labor to an unpaid workforce (customers).
you make a fine point. thinking about it now, doesn't this show that the bourgeoisie is even more clueless and less able to "innovate" than they suggest in their propaganda? Since they aren't even automating away the drudgery, or improving customer satisfaction, but simply transferring the labor from the worker to the customer? That seems like a desperate attempt to stop the declining rate of profit rather than a real "innovation"
I don't think the bourgeoisie really innovate at all anymore because there are now professional workers who have that job instead. Production engineers improve production methods and processes, for instance, and there's a whole genre of "supply chain management" jobs. This is of course ignoring the actual engineers and programmers who design the big new "innovative" products (see: Tesla, Spacex, Amazon).
But yeah I think self-checkouts and the like are a transparent attempt to cut costs, and this article is them being pissed that actually this is one corner that can't be cut as much as they'd like.
Yes, that's true. It's the workers educated in technical and professional fields who do the real innovation. But since the booj own the means, they decide in a top down way what those workers work on. I.e. they "steer" the "innovation" in a direction meant to benefit them. And it seems that they're even bad at that part, now.