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It appears to me that a lot of the responses to this are missing two very important key points this short post illuminates.

1. Self-checkouts have become another a way to diminish the power of the strike.

2. It's not really automation. The labor has been shifted onto the customer.

We can have a discussion about efficiency and innovation, but that's not exactly what's being pointed out here.

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It is automation, but the concept being automated isn't that obvious; they're automating theft prevention mechanisms.

The real shift that allowed for this isn't so much the development of these POS systems, but rather the ubiquity of touch screen devices in our daily lives. In the past these POS systems probably required training, but now they're intuitive. Our adoption of technology adjacent to the POS industry has lowered the bar for entry such that now even a toddler can operate a self checkout; that's not even an exaggeration.

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