[Paracelsus]

And now, a Jeremiad:

Most of you are touting the convenience of this approach to retail.

I do not doubt some of its benefits. It sure is nice to not have to go to twenty separate stores for a week's groceries, and it's also pretty nice to be able to pick up fresh food and vegetables on a daily basis rather than have to farm it yourself.

But convenience has been used against you, to extract more and more money out of you, for seventy years. You are fools for thinking something is good just because it's convenient.

Read Salt Sugar Fat: when feminism started to draw women out of the home and thus create the rat race, the food industry was one of the first to adapt to this societal shift. The food industries described convenience as the great and essential additive to all of their food lines. And for fifty years they relentlessly pushed the idea -- convenience! -- in order to force their processed food drugs on us.

A woman who was working could not make a decent meal for her family in that time. The preparation of ingredients and cooking time simply took too long. Time magazine itself sang the praises of the processed food industry which let a wife put a full three course meal on the table after she'd come home from a full day's work. Again and again, the food industry hammered the idea that convenience was a desirable thing. Convenience destroyed old-school Home Economics courses, depriving huge swathes of women the education or even the chance to learn how to shop, how to keep a budget, how to put nutritious food on a table. Convenience shifted the protein-heavy, mainly-meat breakfasts of the forties and earlier to the carb-heavy, sugar-laden nightmares of modern processed cereals. Convenience destroyed the presence of fresh food and vegetables in the home.

This was foolishness. It still is foolishness. This attitude has as much to do with the destruction of the West as any ugly, bare-breasted bluehair out making a slutwalk.

In fighting the degenerate societal trends of transgenderism and normalisation of paedophilia, we have repeatedly pointed to the slippery slope. The same concept applies here. You all say you want to just get your shit, pay for it, and get out of the store as quickly as possible. Fine: remove a few more of your human interactions for the day. Fine: stop thinking about how much the shit is going to cost you, because more and more pointless variety will be foisted on you and, as data collection continues, you will make less and less of your decisions for yourself. Fine: destroy competition, because this sort of mass retail only has room for one or two real presences in a town or area; all else will be priced out. Fine: wait for the day when there is no practical competition left in the area and Amazon suddenly decides to take your right to shop there away because you said "fuck the Left" on a social media service it is monitoring.

And fine: continue supping at the table of convenience. Because you have so much Really Important Shit ™ To Do that you can't possibly spare the five or ten minutes it takes to actually stand at a counter and interact with another human being, hell, stand at a counter and maybe brighten up another human being's day by giving them a genuine smile. Get your processed shit, go home, stick it in the microwave for 8 fucking minutes, check Fakebook, get your processed and now reheated shit out of the microwave with roughly 0 calories of real nutritional value, sit your ass down on the couch and rag on your social media site of choice about how impersonal and threatening the world is.

As Dave Allen said: "What's this obsession with saving time? Save time! Save time! Run around the country! Leap cars, save time! And what do you do with the time you save? You get bored! So we must devise methods to alleviate that boredom! Whereas if you hadn't saved the time in the first place, you wouldn't have been bored!"

Here's your likely mindset: "convenience frees me up for more time to pursue a peaceful and meaningful existence in other areas."

So: how much more peaceful, contemplative, mindful has your existence been now that we have 24/7 fast food service, 24 hour retail, 24-7 Internet updates, 24-hour gyms, round-the-clock TV services, a news cycle that's down to a tweet?

You think your mental or physical health are any better because you have a car that theoretically at least can get you to work in 5 minutes because it can exceed 100 km/h per hour (but it doesn't and it can't, because everyone else is driving at the same time, reducing speeds to roughly 0.5 km/h, and police won't let you drive at 100 km/h anyway)?

How deep and meaningful are those online "friendships" you've got, since it's so fast and convenient to talk to people on Twitter rather than take the time to meet them in person?

When's the last time you actually baked yourself a loaf of bread? When did you last let flour and water mash between your hands, smelt the acrid tang of yeast, felt heat radiating from something you'd made? When did you last stop to notice a dusty plant on the side of the road, its green perfection given to you by a God unseen? When did you last look up from your fucking phone to see what colour people's eyes are?

Or were you too busy chasing the cheap money you need to buy convenience?

The purpose of convenience is this: to make you stop thinking. To live life on a corporation's terms, not yours. For most people on the planet, a life is a life: you cannot extend it by one whit by driving five minutes instead of walking, and you can best smell life in the sweat of your own skin, in the ache of your own muscles, in slow moments, in the pleasure of not having to fucking be on time for shit down to the last five minute mark. Not for nothing do the young think a day is a year and the old think a year is a day.

[Glaucon]

I am getting more and more disgusted of the "modern" world. I realized almost anything labelled "modern" just makes thing more inhumane. Why build a world that is anti-human and a horror to live in?

If this is the future of the human race, there is no future at all.

[CynicalContrarian]

One massive solar flare (emp) later...

[Sooth]

That still sounds too hard.
I order my groceries with one click online, the same as I got last week.
Stop buy after work on a set day and time and everything is bagged up and waiting for me.

I would rather have it that I know the butcher, he knows what I order and starts slicing it as I walk in the door, then I walk to the baker etc, but the supermarket is one place I will give up my ideal. Worst places.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Paracelsus - as much as I agree with some of your points.

Convenience and the drive for convenience also created many great inventions like starting with the wheel, even fire, electricity, individual cars, internet etc.

It is up to us to understand what is worth the risk. For example - the internet: the globalists have access to every one of your thoughts and musings, your search history early on. If you truly think that they cannot link your IP address, your location, who pays the bills of your net provider with your very person in a supreme databank, then I am afraid you have some more learning to do. The globalists have a shadow you online and it records everything you say or do online. And they certainly don't share much with the cops or FBI - even if you actually murder someone and this could solve the crime. Why should they share the info when a serf kills another serf?

Either way - despite all that you do not refrain from using the internet because it is a good way of finding information about life and our reality. You could go the old route and sift through books and old newspapers, borrow or buy all possible information in hardcopy, but that process would take much longer and be more costly. It is CONVENIENT to use the internet.

It is also convenient to inform yourself about proper food preperation, about supplementation and live even more healthy than the people of the 1940s. Technology is a two-edged sword and always was.

But of course you are right - Amazon may indeed one day cut off your food-supply and your access to the net will be voided as well for saying something nasty on Twitter. This is already starting to happen as folk are found on no-fly lists for various bogus reasons. And they will never fly commercially again.

It is interesting that in some countries like Switzerland one of the fastest growing food retail businesses are local organic farmers who sell their merchandise directly on their farms. They use the internet to market their shops and people drive for 30-60 minutes only to reach that one place where they buy raw milk, fresh local meat or fresh veggies. The government contrary to the US does not restrict them so far.

Frankly the best way is to simply approach technology with an open mind, but draw your line somewhere and then defend it as much as possible.

[Foolsgo1d]

I'm not concerned about convenience but more along the lines of where it is going. Humans for the most part choose the path of least resistance.

[Mage]

I actually believe that the job of a supermarket cashier should be eliminated, it is a hard, stressful, sedentary, low paying, high responsibility, no-perspective and no personal growth involving and unrewarding job, everyone doing it would be better earning some skills and doing something else even if they don't think so themselves and want to continue rotting in their behind their cash machines

I also dislike standing in lines.

However I am worried that this will be a push for cashless society.

Cashless society scares me even more then loss of anonymity. It's not that bad that you are always recognized if you still can use your money as you please. But if all your money can be deleted with a click of a mouse and you cannot even buy a bottle of water and a piece of bread it is truly scary.

Every man should have a habit to counter these cashless payment trends to only shop with cash as much as possible, take the money out of account and pay with cash, it's more anonymous and it increases statistics of people who use cash, elites cannot bullshit that - "most people use cards anyway".

Sadly most women already have a habit of carrying around little to no cash. As always the enslavement of society starts with women used as useful idiots.

[CynicalContrarian]

Gerald Celente :

Quote:

Digital money is not worth the digital paper it is not printed on.

[H1N1]

It is the future. I expect the car manufacturers to corner a significant share of the market as a lot of the tech for it is already there for driverless cars. Supermarkets will welcome it, as they spend vast sums currently on retail analytics, and this is a far more efficient and foolproof means of collecting the data. Not to mention all the efficiency savings associated with this. Essentially the customer will be bringing the checkout, receipt paper&ink, and the retail analytics hardware with them when they come to the store. It'll be about 5 years before it starts to gain traction, but I think it's a question of 'when' not 'if'. A real game changer.

[CynicalContrarian]

(12-07-2016 06:26 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

It is the future. I expect the car manufacturers to corner a significant share of the market as a lot of the tech for it is already there for driverless cars. Supermarkets will welcome it, as they spend vast sums currently on retail analytics, and this is a far more efficient and foolproof means of collecting the data. Not to mention all the efficiency savings associated with this. Essentially the customer will be bringing the checkout, receipt paper&ink, and the retail analytics hardware with them when they come to the store. It'll be about 5 years before it starts to gain traction, but I think it's a question of 'when' not 'if'. A real game changer.

People are daft if they latch onto driverless cars on mass.
Computers fail.
Computers glitch.
Computers can fail or glitch without notice.
You won't get a chance to simply "turn it off & on again" while you're crashing along at 50miles an hour.

Count me out. Bahumbug.

[glugger]

Computers fail a lot less than humans though, CC.

[ivansirko]

Its been a long time since an invention changed the world (or society). The closest recently has been the internet however that is simply just an improvement on communication. Every new process or new "thing" or new "invention" relates to lowering the number of steps it takes to "do something" while increasing the tracking of you. Instead of paying cash at your local Starbucks you can now pump money in an app while getting "stars" and order ahead or use your Iphone. Its HIP! Meanwhile they track in a database what you spend and how often.

I see no different than what everyone else is doing only in the Amazon case its the "experience" not just the sale.

We can probably guess the answer but I want to know what Amazon wants to do with the information gained from this shopping experience?

Even 7-11 has an app you can scan.

[CynicalContrarian]

(12-07-2016 07:34 AM)glugger Wrote:  

Computers fail a lot less than humans though, CC.

Nah.
A computer is just an electronic device running a program.
Add in a parameter that that computer is not programmed for or cannot anticipate & you will have problems.

Detract just one or two electrons from a circuit board because of a glitch & such.
Still liable to fail.

[Thersites]

The first though that came to my mind is the opportunities for day gaming the cashier and chicks in the line will become limited if this come to fruition. I can foresee a trial run of stores in place like NYC and LA to see how everything works. There are number points of failure of this system to be used ranging from problems with a phone, to scanner malfunctions, or food poisoning.

Right now, technology is eroding the limited human interaction people have with each other. Walk into the store, get want I need, and walk away without interacting with other person. Right now a smartphone is albatross upon a man neck with interacting with the world. Timing of this video is kind of ironic to me as I have 5 tab open about setting up "Dark Android" rom to reduce monitoring of my activies from google and other companies.

[H1N1]

(12-07-2016 06:48 AM)CynicalContrarian Wrote:  

(12-07-2016 06:26 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

It is the future. I expect the car manufacturers to corner a significant share of the market as a lot of the tech for it is already there for driverless cars. Supermarkets will welcome it, as they spend vast sums currently on retail analytics, and this is a far more efficient and foolproof means of collecting the data. Not to mention all the efficiency savings associated with this. Essentially the customer will be bringing the checkout, receipt paper&ink, and the retail analytics hardware with them when they come to the store. It'll be about 5 years before it starts to gain traction, but I think it's a question of 'when' not 'if'. A real game changer.

People are daft if they latch onto driverless cars on mass.
Computers fail.
Computers glitch.
Computers can fail or glitch without notice.
You won't get a chance to simply "turn it off & on again" while you're crashing along at 50miles an hour.

Count me out. Bahumbug.

Does your smartphone fail or glitch very often? I can think of one or two occasions in the last 5 years where I've had a mainstream app freeze on me.

Stores already use computers - lots of them. Every checkout, running outdated software, manned by technologically illiterate employees. There's no reason to suppose that Amazon Go will fail any more often than the existing hardware. In fact it is less likely as the software will keep pace with technological development as there's no real infrastructure/hardware overhead.

Most of the purchase assessment stuff will be done by some very cool image analytics tricks, which will make stealing almost impossible.

This sort of thing is going to buy everybody more leisure time. With less need for checkout girls, you'll also be able to have more helpful staff distributed throughout the store. It's unfortunate it's Amazon leading the way, and it's concerning how much closer this puts us to a cashless society, but there's no denying that it is also going to be pretty awesome in many other ways. Ditto driverless cars.

[greekgod]

Makes next to no logical business sense. Grocers historically achieve 2% profit margins.

I understand Amazon is essentially the world's best logistical company but what could be their expected ROI?

Havent seen a piece of produce in any of their ads either. Telling.

I've also come to the conclusion that automated cars are to control the rationing of gasoline. There is no other incentive otherwise. Don't tell me that Google gives a shit about fatality rates from head on collisions.

[H1N1]

(12-07-2016 09:37 AM)greekgod Wrote:  

Makes next to no logical business sense. Grocers historically achieve 2% profit margins.

I understand Amazon is essentially the world's best logistical company but what could be their expected ROI?

Havent seen a piece of produce in any of their ads either. Telling.

I've also come to the conclusion that automated cars are to control the rationing of gasoline. There is no other incentive otherwise. Don't tell me that Google gives a shit about fatality rates from head on collisions.

Apart from the reduced staff bill, reduced infrastructure bill, the eradication of legacy issues, the redundancy of 3rd party retail analytics systems, and the reduced theft rates - other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

[MANic]

I was always the greatest supporter of innovation and efficiency, however, I am increasingly agitated about our future.
Every development these days restricts our personal autonomy more and more. I was never a conspiracy theorist but we do seem to be entering an era of centralized power and its eye is ever watchful. It does not sleep, ever watchful and increasingly powerful.
Also anti-social effects of these developments are tremendous. It's not a matter of workers up-skilling etc.
there simply isn't enough jobs to go around and the rate of losses exceed growth. I know tons of good grads from good universities in supposedly desired fields who simply can't find employment a year or two out of uni.
Which is one of the factors which lead me to believe that civil unrest is more likely than unabating development and advancement

[Silver_Tube]

The analytics are already happening with the discount cards at the store. Most places already have our profiles for each and every little thing we buy. I imagine a lot of that stuff already has rfid tags all over it. I don't see clerk-less purchasing adding any more to that.

I hope it doesn't become the vehicle to restrict say, how much beer I'm allowed to buy, or bring about some nanny state nutritional rules. Then again it would be hilarious to see a fattie get stopped at the exit and have her illegal doughnuts confiscated.

[JohannesAusPrag]

As a programmer I like it, as a man I fear of big brother.

[greekgod]

(12-07-2016 09:56 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

(12-07-2016 09:37 AM)greekgod Wrote:  

Makes next to no logical business sense. Grocers historically achieve 2% profit margins.

I understand Amazon is essentially the world's best logistical company but what could be their expected ROI?

Havent seen a piece of produce in any of their ads either. Telling.

I've also come to the conclusion that automated cars are to control the rationing of gasoline. There is no other incentive otherwise. Don't tell me that Google gives a shit about fatality rates from head on collisions.

Apart from the reduced staff bill, reduced infrastructure bill, the eradication of legacy issues, the redundancy of 3rd party retail analytics systems, and the reduced theft rates - other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

And the cost savings will get passed on to whom? The shareholder or the consumer?

And the additional data they gain will be sold to who?

And the barrier of entry for those on SNAP cards and Obama Phones will be paid by who?


I agree that it is reduces labor costs, toss up on infrastructure costs(IoT aint cheap, network to run such a smart store is going to be a headache), 3rd party analytics are good (competition within the BI realm), couldn't comment on legacy issues, and I don't give a shit about theft rates.

So where are we? Reduction in labor costs, further atomization of society, Seattle's gain is Waco's loss, more invasive data dragnets, less time in store, and zero indication if/how those cost savings are passed on to the consumer.

After all, when Bezos bought WaPo, he totally revolutionized the Journalism game, right?

[zoom]

Amazon is starting to weird me out. First Echo, and now this? It might be a good time to bump the 'Cancel Your Prime Membership' thread.

[Alsos]

(12-07-2016 10:30 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  

The analytics are already happening with the discount cards at the store...

Which is why I grab one or two whenever the opportunity presents itself, and randomly switch them out and occasionally trade them with others (all without formally registering them). Sure, they can probably tie an unregistered discount card to an individual on the back end the first time a credit/debit card is used with the discount card, but at least I have the fantasy that I'm throwing a little sand in the all-seeing eye.

(12-07-2016 10:30 AM)Silver_Tube Wrote:  

Then again it would be hilarious to see a fattie get stopped at the exit and have her illegal doughnuts confiscated.

Think bigger (no pun intended). If she can't get donuts or other comfort foods at the Big Brother Grocery because her payment is rejected, presumably the same restriction applies to other outlets like freestanding bakeries, candy shops, etc. That leaves her with a few alternative options:
1 - straw purchase through skinny friends, probably at a premium
2 - B&E
3 - making her own with general-purpose ingredients that there would be no reason for the system to restrict her from

Which means our fattie either 1) goes Galt after a few dozen practical and calorie-loaded lessons in how markets work, 2) has to learn to plan ahead and think through various contingencies for the first time in her life, while also getting into shape to fit through windows and shimmy up and down ropes dropped through skylights and parkour from the po-po, or 3) has to learn to cook, which could lead to her being both healthier and better LTR material.

So, win-win in that case.

[Seadog]

(12-07-2016 09:18 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

This sort of thing is going to buy everybody more leisure time. With less need for checkout girls, you'll also be able to have more helpful staff distributed throughout the store. It's unfortunate it's Amazon leading the way, and it's concerning how much closer this puts us to a cashless society, but there's no denying that it is also going to be pretty awesome in many other ways. Ditto driverless cars.

It's a funny observation I've noted, that that is rarely the case. Every benefit, or "planned improvement" instead ends up rearranging specifics, but at the end of the day not changing much in terms of actual time freed or advantages.

Case in point, cars allowed people to travel 20x the speed of walking. Did people use this invention to free up time? Or did they simply choose to commute the same 30 mins to work but live farther out?

Going to university used to mean you were smart would get a good job. So they made it so everyone can go and much more accessible via a big loan program. Does everyone get a good job now? Or does it remain the realm of the top 25% or so just like it did before, while universities prosper on account of record enrollment and raising fees, enabled by said programs?

I had a teacher in HS go on about how all these robots and tech were going to make people's lives so much easier, how wouldn't have to work as much but now people are working more than ever! The truth is, if you want to live like someone in 1900, you could likely do so working 10 hours a week.

So while some may use these improvements for more leisure time, I think the majority will use it to shop more, consume more, work more, and otherwise twiddle away their time.

This isn't to say I'm against it, but if history is any guide, most people will simply use this endowment of free time to exchange standing in line on their phone looking at FB, for not standing in line on their phone looking at FB. A deficit of leisure time is not the issue with today's society.

[H1N1]

(12-07-2016 10:55 AM)greekgod Wrote:  

(12-07-2016 09:56 AM)H1N1 Wrote:  

(12-07-2016 09:37 AM)greekgod Wrote:  

Makes next to no logical business sense. Grocers historically achieve 2% profit margins.

I understand Amazon is essentially the world's best logistical company but what could be their expected ROI?

Havent seen a piece of produce in any of their ads either. Telling.

I've also come to the conclusion that automated cars are to control the rationing of gasoline. There is no other incentive otherwise. Don't tell me that Google gives a shit about fatality rates from head on collisions.

Apart from the reduced staff bill, reduced infrastructure bill, the eradication of legacy issues, the redundancy of 3rd party retail analytics systems, and the reduced theft rates - other than that, what have the Romans ever done for us?

And the cost savings will get passed on to whom? The shareholder or the consumer?

And the additional data they gain will be sold to who?

And the barrier of entry for those on SNAP cards and Obama Phones will be paid by who?


I agree that it is reduces labor costs, toss up on infrastructure costs(IoT aint cheap, network to run such a smart store is going to be a headache), 3rd party analytics are good (competition within the BI realm), couldn't comment on legacy issues, and I don't give a shit about theft rates.

So where are we? Reduction in labor costs, further atomization of society, Seattle's gain is Waco's loss, more invasive data dragnets, less time in store, and zero indication if/how those cost savings are passed on to the consumer.

After all, when Bezos bought WaPo, he totally revolutionized the Journalism game, right?

What do the shareholders do with their spare cash, if not invest further into businesses which provide jobs and services which benefit workers/consumers? Who do you think invests in the factories that employ workers, buy capital machinary from other factories which employ workers, etc etc? This is how the general standard of living is increased.

Probably the same people they sell it to now. I've not said it's an unreservedly good thing - I have serious qualms about Amazon (particularly) as a company.

I'm not American so I can't answer the last question. Given that you can buy a smart phone for about £20 these days, I can't see there being that much of a barrier, particularly as market saturisation is likely 10 years away.


Infrastructure will be MUCH cheaper. Running the smart store will be cheap because there is very little wired infrastructure, and the amount of data for the ML to work across will be vast. Improvements will be rapid and seamless. 3rd party analytics will be much less good from a tech point of view. Competition will still exist, it just may be between Toyota and Tesla rather than the conventional retail analytics companies like Footfall. Theft matters - thousands of pounds worth of stuff goes missing each week from a typical Tesco etc. Who absorbs that cost in the long run?

There are reduced labour costs, sure, but I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing by itself. This 'atomization' seems nebulous to me - as you say, less time in store - this frees up more time in principle to see a friend, call them on the phone, or log onto the forum and debate with your web friends.

The savings are passed on to the consumer in improved quality of life and leisure. Your productive time improves dramatically with the introduction of a system such as this. Think, if you are able to compile a shopping list ahead of time - perhaps on the ride over in your driverless car - the app can direct you around the store, so that you spend no time looking for things, and no time queuing to buy them. That alone would knock half an hour or more off my weekly shop.

I'm entirely sympathetic to the concerns about Amazon. As someone who is building a tech business I have very real reservations about the vast monopolistic control these major companies have over the exciting new areas opening up. One can love the technology and the freedom it brings without loving the company that builds it.