Hacker News Reader

Comment by steelframe | Hacker News Reader

Maybe they should pity the human delivery workers who they are helping to put out of a job?

Four hundred years ago on the planet Earth, workers who felt their livelihood threatened by automation, flung their wooden shoes, called 'sabots' into the machines to stop them. ...Hence the word 'sabotage'.

There was also a large group of textile weavers, who belonged to an organisation named after Nedd Ludd[0], that engaged in this practice of sabotage. Hence the term Luddite.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite

The gig economy isn't great either, though. These are tough jobs.

The development from human workers to robots mimics what happened in delivery of messages. When I was a kid, people would deliver telegraphs to your door - for a substantial markup. These days, e-mails get delivered to your inbox without any human in the loop, and for free.

Until we're out of this labor shortage, reducing the number of unskilled jobs society needs is a good thing.

there is no labor shortage there is benefits and decent salaries shortage

the fact that nobody is volunteering to become a slave doesn't mean there is a labor shortage

Accepting this for the sake of argument, what's the harm in getting rid of a job that nobody was willing to work at anyway?

Why not both?

I don't think anybody is dreaming of being an underpaid delivery worker for ubereats with zero benefits, high risk of accidents, and just overall terrible working conditions

when we invented aqueducts who cared about the water delivery workers?

those are terrible jobs and they should be automated/replaced

We got rid of literally shit jobs with plumbing

https://historydaily.org/night-soil-men

While I was doing a degree I held two types of jobs over time. One was a shop worker, one was delivering food (pizza one summer, chinese the next)

The delivery job was far better than the shop job (I quit the shop job after 2 evenings)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com