when you are served by human, it just brings certain je ne sais quoi.
i’m baffled both by the angle of attack and choice of an image (is this retweet of musk?)
i like how his example is a job that doeant even exist anymore anyway
Does Sonic still do that?
Like a year ago I pulled into a Sonic spot and person working there literally yelled through the intercom “just come through the drive through!”
I haven’t been there in a very long time, but wouldn’t surprise me if they ditched the skates and now are just running through the parking lots with bags of food.
All the sonics near me aren’t even drive-ins anymore. They’re just a drive-through with an inside seating section.
They’ve taken everything from us.
I don’t think sonic has a traditional job anymore, last time I checked he was driving this blue car with no roof
not on rollerskates anymore. tbh i thought sonic went out of business cause all of them closed down at the same time in my town. i dont eat meat so i never looked into why. thats just what i assumed
The bourgeois hireling exposes himself
I do tend to have this conversation with “leftists” who are against AI doing these sorts of service jobs. These jobs are meaningless and degrading for the people in them. The issue is we need to work to live in an age of abundant resources
It is just a rehashing of the automation argument again: under capitalism it creates unemployment, under socialism it reduces required labor. And attacking the technology itself is neoluddism which is an impotent ideology regardless of your sympathes.
imo best to just accept the evolving technological environment and invent new ways to exploit it. The bourgeois will always find new ways to dispossess the working class and create a reserve army of labor
And attacking the technology itself is neoluddism which is an impotent ideology regardless of your sympathes.
Ok, but if Musk makes shitty TeslaXBots, we can still attack them, right? Not because it’d actually change anything, just for fun.
You should attack anything Musk makes.
But only when you aren’t going to get caught, Teslas often have cameras so you need to make sure your face is hidden and there are no witnesses.
Pick your battles I guess
I get what you’re saying but I also think it’s understandable that a lot of people are still very wary of AI. For one I think there’s a lot of reasonable doubt that it will, at least as it exists now, actually help useful automation and instead just being hyped up by tech oligarchs and mostly just pumps out slop. Right now the jobs it seems to be close replacing are not the ones I think society should be focusing on replacing. Robots writing TV shows while Bangladeshi children make sneakers this the vision of the future current AI models present to me.
Edit: also current AI models seem to have a high social cost while not actually doing a good job automating. It burns a lot of energy while generally producing lackluster results.
Its also anti-marxist. Engels wrote extensively about the luddites (silesian weaver uprising). Marxism is supposed to emancipate the working class from labor and use technology to improve their lives, hell marx himself thought that the technology of his time was nearly sufficient enough so people dont have to work at all.
hell marx himself thought that the technology of his time was nearly sufficient enough so people dont have to work at all.
He was mostly right about that. Any labor above the level of ~25 hours a week is an imposition of the society on the working class, for the sake of overproduction.
Gonna go against the grain here and say that, while Bernie’s post is absolute dog shit, of all the low-hanging fruit out there, the idea of automating human-to-human interaction is especially grim imho. Waiting tables is meaningful work. It is capitalism that turns such roles into ‘service’.
Counterpoint: nobody actually wants to wait tables. People do it because they need money.
Automation would be great if we didn’t all need money for survival.
Jobs aren’t the problem. Money is.
In a perfect world, we’d all be happy that robots are doing our miserable work, like waiting tables.
If it weren’t for the need for money, automate away all these stupid fucking jobs. We can all find better uses for our time.
But, without a job, no money. That’s the rub.
Alas, I don’t know what the actual practical solution is. Or if a “Star Trek Socialist Utopia” moneyless future is actually possible at all.
Or if a “Star Trek Socialist Utopia” moneyless future is actually possible at all.
It absolutely is. We could have something not too dissimilar from it right now, there is literally enough of everything people need to fill that need and then some. There’s also plenty enough of even large swathes of “luxury goods” for everyone too. But the greedy hoarders that rule us all won’t allow such a world because then they couldn’t be greedy hoarders or get to rule us all.
I’m with you on all the rest of what you said, though. It is more ideal to eliminate the need for people to have to do the kind of labor they don’t want to do. But I also still think there will always be people who enjoy certain types of labor that most of us would rather not do, like waiting tables. And in a world where mostly only robots did that, what a nice perk for someone who is sitting at a table to get waited on by a real person who greets them and is genuinely interested in helping them out. There’s no reason there isn’t room to make that happen too.
Nobody wants to wait tables under capitalism. Imho in the absence of wage slavery there would still be people who find fulfillment in that line of work - performed on their own terms.
And if we’re taking Star Trek, Sisko’s dad literally runs a restaurant. He serves people food because he wants to!
Fair point, but I’m still highly skeptical of the idea that anyone would actually choose to wait tables—in lieu of any other possible activity—if there was zero financial need to do so.
Why would anyone do anything ever if they could just stay home and goon
The number of retirees who get BS jobs just to kill time suggests people like having some productive way of occupying their time. It’s just if we had near unlimited choice in what that productive time killer was I don’t think many people would op for “bring food to whiny assholes”.
But the power dynamic would be different, wouldn’t it. The assholes are only whiny because they have you over a barrel. What if the only leverage anyone had was whether bodily fluids make it into the dishes or not
I mean if we broaden the scope to include stuff like bartending etc I can see it but just moving plates, bowls, and cups to and from tables? I mean this is probably a really small niche for it. But it feels like the equivalent of arguing for queues because some people have fun interactions in them.
A restaurant near me has robots to ‘move plates’. They still have human waiters though, because there’s more to the job than just carrying things!
Yeah, I’ve been to Japan and the same thing is there, you vastly reduce the amount people doing it and they’d serve a similar role to a bartender doing questions, recommendations, etc. at least at the restaurants near me at least 70% of the staff are just trying to hustle things back and forth.
I don’t think most people consider the new role “waiting tables” even if that is theoretically the role’s core function. Most of what I’ve seen is because they’re considering primarily those that aren’t primary waiting, and primarily operating as human item movers.
Without the item moving component, most consider it functionally a different role, at least in my experience, where it wouldn’t be described as waiting tables.
Ok maybe I should have been clearer with what I meant by ‘waiting tables’ lol
I would note though that the robot depicted in the op is not optimized for carrying plates. It’s built to look human, presumably to replace the human part of the job
Without the item moving component, most consider it functionally a different role, at least in my experience, where it wouldn’t be described as waiting tables.
I mean waiter and table-busser are two distinct jobs at most restaurants. There’s overlap in what they do, but still, there is a lot more to being a waiter than moving stuff around. There’s more to it for table-bussers too, but just “moving stuff” is closer to their job description than it is for waiters.
There is like a chinese restaurant close to my home that has basically replaced all waiters with robots. Most people found it endearing but strange.
Waiting tables is meaningful work. It is capitalism that turns such roles into ‘service’.
servers in the US have to worship customers so you probably have a bit of a warped view
If people weren’t working 60+ hour weeks waiting tables (and everything else) they might find richer sources of interaction
I’m not arguing that anyone spend 60 hours a week doing anything, but serving someone food is a rich source of interaction, and an art that can be perfected over a lifetime. Just because capitalism has already turned workers into vending machines, doesn’t mean that’s how things ought to be
I would rather pick up my own food than be served by a waiter tbh
Yeah I agree. I finding having to deal with a waiter annoying. If I want another beer or extra mustard I gotta flag down this person who’s running helping other people. I’d rather just order at a counter and then pick it up myself, or get one of those little number thingies.
Bartenders make more sense cuz you’re usually not 100% how many drinks you’re gonna at when you sit down but I don’t get the need for waiters.
Yeah I mean automate McDonald’s by all means. I’m talking more about proper restaurants.
Even in proper restaurants, I don’t see why you can’t order at a counter, even if you don’t want to carry the food to the table yourself just give people those number things
There’s so much more to the job than carrying things and putting them on tables though. What if you have questions about the food? What if you want them to give your steak another touch on the grill? The system you’re describing is fast food, which is fundamentally something else (while it certainly has its place).
What if you have questions about the food?
Read the menu? Or ask the person taking your order at the counter?
What if you want them to give your steak another touch on the grill?
Tell that to the order taker?
Sorry but I work retail and I find it so inherently degrading I don’t think it should exist at all. It’s breed a class of completely impatient, helpless people who refuse to do any basic problem solving and so torment minimum wage servants cuz they can’t get their treats. Learn to read a fucking menu!
I’ve worked multiple jobs in the service sector and I can absolutely tell you that waiters are still needed. The circumstances you are describing are essentially fast food/ small business pop and mum shops as Andrzej3K described.
However, it doesn’t account for very specialized service jobs that exist in places like fine dining, luxury hotels, airlines, and other specific workplaces.
As someone who has worked in those fields you don’t have any counters, and menus often don’t tell you everything (for example: if the food contains something a guest is allergic to). I don’t know what country you’re from but in my country, we have something called RSA standards (Responsible Service of Alcohol) that is a legal requirement and must be enforced in the service sector, and last time I checked robots can’t actively assess whether someone is too intoxicated to buy more drinks, you need human servers for that.
Finally, you need customer-service workers to organize and set-up the spaces that guests will be in, and cooks and bartenders can’t do that because they’ll always be back-of-house doing their own prep. Hell even in cheap dining places, you still need people to set-up the tables because robots aren’t good enough for that.
I do however, agree that waitstaff have created a breed of guests who are incredibly entitled, self-centred, and incapable of doing work themselves, but the vast majority of them were already like that because of their class position (you think these capitalists don’t treat their subordinates in their own workplaces the same?). That doesn’t mean waiters shouldn’t exist at all. Both can be true.
If we’re automating the waiter out of existence, how on earth do we still have an ‘order taker’? Surely you can just order on the app, or better yet reheat your own slop at home.
There isn’t a job that can’t/won’t be made degrading by wage slavery. I mentioned this elsewhere, but teachers are treated like shit in most places, especially outside of the public sector. It doesn’t make the work itself inherently degrading.
The thing about jobs is that they stand between us and our work. They keep us from being useful to each other until we convince ourselves that in an ideal world we’d all be watching TV and writing fan fiction. But we need work imho — just not as defined by capitalism
The “sit-down service” of proper restaurants is 80% generating the feeling of being waited on like a noble. Without that subservient dynamic, you’d have maybe a quarter of the wait staff, maybe less.
The restaurant, the waiter, and the menu, as we know them, are fundamentally institutions of capitalism. If preparing and serving food was oriented toward everyone’s harmonious well-being, the setup and the socially necessary labor would be completely different.
I came to this realization from working in restaurants for a few years after becoming a socialist. At every turn I was thinking “wow, this is so inefficient and bourgeois”.
I don’t think I disagree with any of that, or that any of that disagrees with anything I’ve said. I guess the only thing I’d add is that it is nice to be looked after, outside of sheer sadistic pleasure in dominating someone else. It’s nice to just relax and let someone else facilitate things, and it’s nice to provide this service to other people outside of a wage-slave context, as anyone who’s hosted dinners for family etc knows
All the best weeks of my life were on trips where market and money relations were either an afterthought, or had been outright bypassed- before age 20 these were church or scouting events, and after age 23 these were anarchist communes.
We would cook 2 to 4 things in bulk per meal, done either on a rotation or by whoever was the most motivated to, everybody would serve themselves, and it was super cheap. Dishes were also done based on motivation. On the anarchist communes we would even pull off all kinds of gourmet specialties.
Cooking labor was much more efficient than piecewise-to-order restaurant model, cleaning labor was optimized, and waitstaff simply did not exist. Everybody already looked after each other. Maybe if someone was disabled we would bring a plate to them. Maybe 1 person would serve as “host” role per 100 people dining.
I have worked all up and down the chain of production as a server, a cook, a wholesale purchaser/inventory manager, a vegetable farmer, and a grocery retail employee. Of all of these, being a server is the only one I would not choose to do again if it were purely out of my own volition.
I feel like there are some things where efficiency isn’t paramount though, right? You wouldn’t go into an art gallery and lambast them for not fitting more paintings on the walls. Nothing against the ‘one massive pot’ model tbc — I myself have enjoyed those set ups immensely. But I still think there is a place for something restaurant-like outside of capitalism. Maybe a much smaller place, sure. But service is an art, and some people get really into it at the top end of the market
i mean, sorta when it’s your local bar/restaurant where you plausibly can be on first name basis and bullshit around on slow day, and even then, depending? but drive-through or chain restaurants, there is very little possibility of interaction there, people look overworked and tired already.
ai-friends are much more grim
I don’t even mean it in the sense of being pseudo-friends though - I mean the human interaction inherent in the job itself. It’s not the work itself that is bad, but the conditions. The same could be said of e.g. teaching.
And automation is not going to make those workers any less overworked or tired!
Please just retire Bernie
One of the sadder things about capitalism as an economical system is that automation of labour is a threat to the vast majority of people instead of being a boon.
Bernie is wilding here though.
Americans describing dystopia: imagine borgor but with robot
not the best example but we do have to reckon with automation eventually. i suggest communism.
Hmm, that’s a good idea, but what if we did a socialism to smooth the transition into communism first? We could do some good bits and deal with contradictions better that way, I reckon.
The problem on both pics is car-centric infrastructure. If you want a burger just go inside restaurant and eat, instead of wasting public space being served food and eating in your car
If people didn’t need a car, they’d have lots of money to spend on other things and stimulate the economy
the burgers just don’t taste as good when they aren’t brought out by someone making minimum wage
Who will buy hamburgers if everyone is unemployed?
The people who own the robots I guess.
A true Burgerreich.
We must now exploit food service workers for their emotional labour as well. Bernie go serve food for a week pretending to care about some of the worst people on earth without dropping a smile once and then see if you feel the same way.
AI is going to steal all the carhop jobs, destroying the vibrant drive-in restaurant industry. This is the main problem with AI and a good thing to focus on, thank you Sen. Sanders.
Brandon ass post
Call me when that robot can roller skate with a tray of milkshakes!
this irobot ass shit is not appealing in the slightest.
To be fair it’ll create new jobs too; for example similar to the cybertrucks, just as the robot sticks its hands around your throat to choke you to death, it’ll switch to manual control and a person sitting in an office will have to press a stop button.
