Thanks for sharing. It’s always nice to get facts straight from a person in the trenches.

I mean this with equal sincerity, everything in your post indicates that you are arrogantly ignorant of life generally and people working to provide a way to pay bills. People often work to support themselves and their families. They accept employment to pay the bills. Guess what, they are also free to quit if they don't like the job they have, generally after finding a different, better job

OTOH, you condescendingly would tell folks directly or indirectly rendered unemployed because of automation "the universe [did] you a favor" by ending your livelihood.

Who tf are you to dump on people who become unemployed involuntarily and to speak for "the universe" to boot ?

I'm by no means a Luddite, but your position and tone reek of ignorance or arrogance or both.

Don't bartenders get the waitress wage? like way below minimum and are dependent on tips. So MGM isn't hurting by customers tipping. They are really that cheap to cut employees getting 2 dollars an hour.

i'm not, but i apologize for not weeping sufficiently for the temporary unemployment plight of the 3rd string bartenders at the hands of robo-tender

that's good! now that we're in agreement that there's no stopping robo-tender, do you think 3fiveofdiamonds should go down kicking and screaming?

in vegas the minimum wage is the same for everyone whether you get tips or not. i'd be shocked if MGM pays any of their employees minimum wage.

by the way, MGM didn't even announce any job cuts! some anonymous employees said they are "bracing for it". well they should be bracing for it! robo tender is coming.

whenever some new thing causes job losses the reactions always break down in the same ratio: 60% say "those greedy bastards i hate them", 5% embrace the new technology with open loving arms, 35% yell at those 5% for being insensitive

Fwiw I saw this comment:

https://vitalvegas.com/mgm-resorts-t...SUtFOV_3nCMk34

I am curious to see how this unfolds. I think automation is not something to be afraid of, but something we have to embrace (it's coming one way or another).

I have someone on facebook who was saying that they prefer to use the cashier at the grocery store rather than the self-checkout machines because they want the cashiers to keep their jobs. I think this girl is just lazy tbh.

Why do we even need the waitresses? Since the casino knows your exact location on the floor, couldn't be they deliver these cocktails by drone? I'm completely serious.

one thing will never change - a drink tastes better when a hot girl hands it to you

No, your arrogance is not "weeping insufficiently"; it lies in your sneering at persons stuck in mundane, machine-like jobs, that the "universe would do you a favor " by getting them involuntarily canned.

Also, the issue is not "stopping automation", it is mitigating its effects on those in the workforce being impacted.

Watch this from John Oliver on Automation and learn something maybe ? US tax incentive to allow Carrier to automate US plant and eliminate 2,000 jobs, rather than ship those jobs overseas.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h1ooyyFkF0 ,2000 jobs lost to automation, rather than to shipping them overseas, same net outcome.

Remember to vote Andrew Yang in 2020 to get your $1000 a month automation displacement bucks!

Elon Musk, February 2017: “I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income . . . It’s going to be necessary . . .There will be fewer and fewer jobs that a robot cannot do better. I want to be clear. These are not things I wish will happen; these are things I think probably will happen.”

Milton Friedman (Nobel-winning economist), 1980: “We should replace the ragbag of specific welfare programs with a single comprehensive program of income supplements in cash — a negative income tax . . . which would do more efficiently and humanely what our present welfare system does so inefficiently and inhumanely.”

I just watched that episode this morning. He makes lots of great points. I mean it’s pretty effin horrific that they got tax breaks to save jobs knowing they were going to get rid of jobs. Not shocking. The last thing the GOP cares about is normal people.

Well yeah, this is the solution.
Automation is pure wealth creation. As long as the wealth is distributed to everyone such that people are free to pursue thir passions, they won't fret when the most tedious jobs are made obsolete.

the idea of UBI is not new. check out lawsonomy and "direct credits" which caught fire during the depression.

when people are feeling economically oppressed they look at the government as an enormous honeypot that they can dip their claw into. it's so big, plenty of honey for everyone! (unfortunately, there's not enough honey for everyone)

makes sense that UBI would pick up steam now when there's so many millions of people who were sold a false bill of goods about college. folks come out of there with 50k+ in debt and zero skills, it's an enormous catastrophe.

one major problem i have with UBI/automation argument is that we can't actually envision this world of total automation. it's essentially an alien planet. we're nowhere near it today.

eventually, left to their own devices, google, apple, amazon, and walmart will have all the money. so some point before then there would need to be some kind of government intervention.

but robo-tender is literally nothing. the trucking industry will be the first to go. there's 2 million jobs gone. taxi/uber gone, there's another half million. bartenders will still be around.

even then, America won't be ready for UBI. we can see it on the horizon. but the horizon is much farther away than it looks.

Nothing happens overnight, but technology has allowed change to happen much faster than it did in the past and the speed of it will only continue to get faster.

One thing I think you are completely wrong about is a college education. Overall, people with a college education earn way more than someone without one, at least up to now. Sadly, colleges are making degrees available to peopl that imo are worthless, and the people will struggle for a very long time to pay them back.

What kind of college degree do you have?

“Drink manufacturing” in a large scale environment like a casino is a prime example for a job that can be totally automated. The only problem is that based on reports from people who have seen the machine in action and honestly just the design of the machine in the picture, technology is just not there yet.

In a perfect world, cocktail waitresses still exist because customers like them, but players order via their own device or have the waitress put in the order on her device. The automated backroom will have the drinks ready for her by the time she gets to the room. Now the waitress only has to pick up the drinks and look on her device to see where they are supposed to go.

A lot of people fail to understand that automation would be possible right now in a lot of sectors but it’s still way cheaper to have humans perform the task. Or you have environments like car manufacturing where the same person who performed a task 10 years ago now gets paid to sit around and watch a machine do the exact same thing.

don't know why you're saying i'm wrong, it sounds like we're in complete agreement.

one generation ago, a college degree was much more valuable than today. there are a million reasons for that. some large ones:

- college enrollment rates way up. one generation ago, less than 50%. today, 70%. people didn't get any smarter. colleges are making an immoral money grab and enrolling an extra 20% of people who should not be there. they are selling them to the salt mines. that debt is no joke when you're out of college and earning $20/hr (if you're lucky to find a $20/hr job).

the dummies who shouldn't have been in college in the first place will probably not take full advantage of it and won't even find that entry level $20/hr job. most of them will get the same crap job they would have gotten out of high school anyway, and will just be 4 years behind.

- cost of college has tripled. one generation ago college loans were a new concept. "working your way through college" used to be a thing.

now, 70% of college graduates leave school with some form of debt.

while the cost of college skyrockets, the average salary of college graduates is has been stagnant. they are not getting their money's worth.

And like you said, Bdywax, the useless degrees are another immoral money grab. Completely separate from my opinion of the value or morality of the actual classes, people who are majoring in things like gender studies or social justice are being criminally overcharged. Every single thing these people are "learning" can be learned for free online. No need to go into massive debt to rot your brain.

I did my parents a huge favor and dropped out my junior year. My major was organizational communication. I dropped out because all I wanted to do was play poker all day, not because I got bad grades.

My sister finished her degree from the same expensive university that I went to, got a graduate degree, and has never, not for a single day, earned more money than me. and i've worked plenty of crap jobs. graduating college means nothing. your result depends on your individual ability and skills after college.

these people who are being sold to the salt mines are under the illusion that they will leave college and their piece of paper will entitle them to a job that they like, that also pays $50k/yr + a Cadillac insurance plan. it's not the kids' fault. they've been sold a false bill of goods.

if a person can comfortably afford to put their children through college, it gives those children basically the ultimate advantage. you can't get a better head start than being a debt-free college graduate.

but putting somebody 50k+ in debt and sending them off with a degree in fashion design or gender studies is, in my opinion, a form of predatory exploitation by the universities.

Trucking, eh ?

The assault on trucking jobs/wages goes back many years. The assault from Automation in the freight industry as a whole gave rise to some litigation I worked on long ago. NLRB v. Int'l Longshoremen's Assn., 447 U.S. 490 (1980)(My one and only POTUS brief.)(Labor agreement covering East and Gulf ports upheld re automation protections for workers.)

What the Court held was that employees could negotiate protections against automation displacing their jobs or income. I had represented the Teamsters, who wanted the automation matter subject to collective bargaining, but would need to sit down and work on rules concerning shipping containers being unloaded and unpacked versus hauled away to be unpacked.

One of the more interesting conversations I ever had was when a reputed mob guy told me post decision that, "I had done a good job lawyering; but on remand the matter was going to be resolved by a tribunal to which I was not admitted to practice.".

There are alternatives to going on the government dole to protect employees from the ruins of automation.

Don't mourn, organize now, not when the s**t hits your particular fan.

I think you made a wise decision for you from the looks of it.

How's the poker doing ?

it was going very well right up until April 15, 2011! I do know a tiny bit about having the rug pulled out from under you by a higher power. Not exactly the same as having your job killed by automation, but similar.

That's true for a lot of degrees but there are plenty of jobs that require a specific degree. No matter your individual ability or skills. No hospital will employ you as a surgeon without going to med school and it might get tricky to become a judge without a law degree. Personally, if nothing else my masters from a big name business school got me into an extremely valuable alumni network.
There are a couple of reasons why the trucking situation will change mid term.

- Amazon is going to be the #2 retailer in the world very soon. They aren't too excited about union stuff. That's going to add pressure on Walmart. And Amazon vs. Walmart will be the big thing over the next decade.
- Other countries without powerful unions will automate the whole logistics process. That's not good for the US. Here's a pretty cool video about a robot-only Alibaba warehouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBl4Y55V2Z4 Things like that decrease the US competitiveness even more and you either have to do something about it or use even more tariffs.
- And possibly most importantly, the average truck driver is getting older and older because young people don't want to do the job even though it pays pretty decent money. The job of truck driver will continue to exist, but maybe for 10% of the current workforce. Lots of that decrease will simply come from not replacing retiring workers.

Indeed. This is why I believe the universities are engaging in predatory exploitation.

If you're a biology major, pre-med, some kind of actual science that requires lab or field work, you're gaining access to a privileged environment. There are some things you can't do on the internet.

Law is another great example. You could study the law from now until you're dead and not make much of a dent in the potential knowledge. There are an endless number of facts to gather - you need people with experience to point, guide, and shape you into something productive.

On the other hand, the exact opposite is true if your major is something like gender studies or social justice. Peer review literally doesn't exist. The papers and studies that are produced by that section of academia are cited an average of zero times. Joke and prank studies and papers make it into their academic publications on a regular basis. It's nothing but activists giving you their (often uninformed) opinions which are passed off as special knowledge.

The universities are dressing and plating these items as if they're the same. Like a restaurant serving filet mignon to one person and airplane salisbury steak to another, calling them the same thing and charging the same price.

But those are the extremes, most everyone else falls in the middle in murky territory. Today in 2019, if you're a generic business or communications major, your degree has been extremely watered down by the increased admission rates (70% of high schoolers! Think about how smart the 70th smartest person is in a class of 100). The classes must be dumbed down to accomodate these people, so you're hit with a double whammy.

Combine this with the TRIPLING of the cost within the last generation...the universities are running a scam, there's no other way to put it. And then you get idiot politicians that say EVERYONE should go to college and it should be free. Ya, brilliant, let's make college exactly the same as a high school degree - 100% worthless.

"Bite my shiny metal tap!" - Bender J. Rodriguez, bartender