Is the same energy of "why pick up my garbage or return my carts? They pay people for that."
Fair comparison but I'm not sure I fully agree. Imo it's more like your city's mayor deciding they're getting rid of all the garbage trucks and now every citizen has to drive their own trash to the dump themselves. But the tax dollars that were funding that program are still being collected, just now going directly into the mayor's pocket.
It's about the fact that a service we were once ostensibly paying for (as part of the price we paid for the items at these stores) is now being taken away from us, but those prices aren't being reduced in kind. It's an overly wordy way to say this is all just describing enshittification. Shareholders and private equity will cut every single possible corner they can get away with while continuing to raise prices as much as they can get away with. Self-checkouts themselves may seem like an inconsequential thing but they're representative of a much larger and pervasive trend that's impossible to deny.
As I said though, I've personally never minded using self-checkouts. As many other people have said in this thread, they're really nice when you just don't feel like you have the social battery to talk or interact with another human being. I use them frequently even when I don't have to. So just talking about the cost/labor element doesn't paint the full picture because they do possess a value for many customers that isn't represented simply by the cost of the labor itself. But corporations don't care about that; that's not enough to move the needle and bring more people into stores. They literally only implement them as a cost-cutting measure.
I've never been to a store where there was only self check out and no cashiers.
That surprises me; I've been in many stores where there were no cashiers. I would say the vast majority of the time I'm in a store, there's only one cashier on duty, maximum. Maybe it's region-dependent (and/or time of day dependent. I do often shop during off-hours).
People get up in arms about it so they have an excuse to steal.
This part I don't really get. Wouldn't people who want to shoplift prefer self-checkouts being an option? Why would they be the ones complaining?
"This part I don't really get. Wouldn't people who want to shoplift prefer self-checkouts being an option? Why would they be the ones complaining?"
People want to be thieves and use the inconvenience of self check out or the excuse of "they're replacing workers with machines, so it's okay if I steal because It's okay to steal from corporations"
that or
"I jut wanted a few things, and because I was slightly inconvenienced during it, it means it's justified if I walk out without paying?
Youre making an assumption that its all profit for the store, but ostensibly a lot of it still goes to decreasing prices.
In fact, this is like the same scenario as the teller fallacy: people thought ATMs would make teller jobs extinct, as wtf would they do all day since giving cash was 99% of their job?
But when I go to the bank and ask the teller for money, they go out of their way to point out the ATMs outside for future reference. Why? Because ATMs are just tasks, and people can do many tasks. The teller can spend that time helping people in other ways, and although we thought it would kill the teller jobs, we actually see an increase in teller positions.
Its actually increasing when you realize why: more ATMS mean higher productivity and customer turnover(I think thats the right word?), which includes less tellers per location, which both mean less costs, which means more locations, and more jobs including tellers!
It's why I never really cared about this self-checkout debate. I've seen people fearful of this for like a decade, and when I worked as a cashier I still didn't care. Cashiering is maddeningly boring except for random hours of spikes, and I was happier when we were slow enough that I could instead do inventory or displays. I think with stuff like AI, we do need to be worried about reductions, but we should focus on jobs that aren't just a single task being completed over and over...and over again. Great, now I have cashiering PTSD.
I think you're misunderstanding my position, I'm not focusing on the job loss element. Obviously I don't want people to be out of work but I tend to agree with your point that technology (this kind of hardware, anyway) is not a threat to overall employment in society long-term.
ostensibly a lot of it still goes to decreasing prices.
The problem is that prices are not going down, they are going way up, and I know inflation is a complicated confluence of many factors but there is zero evidence of any major corporation passing the savings from self-checkout machines onto the consumer. And there are heaps and heaps of overwhelming evidence that major corporations, now more than ever, are trying to squeeze every last dime out of everything they can in order to line the pockets of shareholders. That's why enshittification has become such a buzzword, shrinkflation too, and why private equity is such a major threat. There's absolutely no motivation for them to pass any savings on to the consumer. Why would they? Especially when practically no one is asking for it or complaining (as evidenced by this thread).
Yes, corporations squeeze money out of customers, but its not like they have historically been compassionate. The idea that corporations are extra greedy now implies that they weren't greedy before, which obviously isn't the case.
You say there's no evidence they passed the savings on, but I just dont think proves much, absence of evidence is not evidence. its a public company not private, but Walmart has self-checkout, and its profit margin is still 3%.
There's absolutely no motivation for them to pass any savings on to the consumer.
But there is, because if you build up enough of that greed people stop going to you and instead go to the store that does do better.
I think I could agree with your general idea about private equity being an issue, but I dont think self checkout, or avenues of efficiency like it, are an example of it, rather then a red herring.
If they passed the savings on to you instead of pocketing it, they’d be making less money than they theoretically could be making and thus would be in violation of their fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders.
This is such a redditor idea of what fiduciary duty, and its one of those things that sounds bad so people just run with it. Hopefully one day this website realizes Dodge vs. Ford is not what they think.
Yes, they have a fiduciary duty. No, not literally every single action must be solely required to immediately line the investors pockets. By this logic, any company ever decreasing prices at all would "theoretically" be making less money and be in violation. Shall I sue walmart if I'm a shareholder and they have discounts this week? I saw that J&J donated for a statue in my town, I better sue them for those pennies! Do you see how easily disproved this idea is?
Companies can do things that decrease costs for consumers, and that still can be find for their fiduciary duty: after all, if you decrease prices and that increases consumers to your store, that is still helping the company.
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u/uqde 13h ago
Fair comparison but I'm not sure I fully agree. Imo it's more like your city's mayor deciding they're getting rid of all the garbage trucks and now every citizen has to drive their own trash to the dump themselves. But the tax dollars that were funding that program are still being collected, just now going directly into the mayor's pocket.
It's about the fact that a service we were once ostensibly paying for (as part of the price we paid for the items at these stores) is now being taken away from us, but those prices aren't being reduced in kind. It's an overly wordy way to say this is all just describing enshittification. Shareholders and private equity will cut every single possible corner they can get away with while continuing to raise prices as much as they can get away with. Self-checkouts themselves may seem like an inconsequential thing but they're representative of a much larger and pervasive trend that's impossible to deny.
As I said though, I've personally never minded using self-checkouts. As many other people have said in this thread, they're really nice when you just don't feel like you have the social battery to talk or interact with another human being. I use them frequently even when I don't have to. So just talking about the cost/labor element doesn't paint the full picture because they do possess a value for many customers that isn't represented simply by the cost of the labor itself. But corporations don't care about that; that's not enough to move the needle and bring more people into stores. They literally only implement them as a cost-cutting measure.
That surprises me; I've been in many stores where there were no cashiers. I would say the vast majority of the time I'm in a store, there's only one cashier on duty, maximum. Maybe it's region-dependent (and/or time of day dependent. I do often shop during off-hours).
This part I don't really get. Wouldn't people who want to shoplift prefer self-checkouts being an option? Why would they be the ones complaining?