Still Free

Yeah, Mr. Smiley. Made it through the entire Trump presidency without being enslaved. Imagine that.

Thursday, November 18, 2021

So You Wanted $15 Per Hour Eh?

 I'm not against people being properly paid for their labour. What I do know is that you can't force someone to use YOUR labour. I also know that some jobs were never meant to be jobs that supported a person as their sole source of income. Also generally, the less skill your job requires, the less pay you get because there are that much more people who can do that job. But what happens when you ask for too much money for your labour? What happens when you're not competing with other people, but with machines that require no breaks, no "benefits" and can work 24/7/365? Well a lot of people are going to find out:



Meet your $1/hour replacement. Why not "free"? Well, all machines require maintenance and have an upfront cost. So say you have 3 "cooks" who require a $24k/year salary for 3 shifts. That's $75k. You get one of these machines to do their work all day. Even if it costs you 24k/year to maintain, you've saved 50k.

Here's their projections/cacluations:



Now what?

I've had a lot of posts on automation and AI and the disruption it's going to create. Don't sleep.