Self-Service, Shmelf-Service!

By Grp Cap Lionel Mandrake via https://worldyturnings.com/blog/

I was recently in my local Aldis grocery store. This is a store where there were once six checkout lanes and is now down to two (one used) and twelve card only self checkout lanes where the sheeple gladly scan each item, bag each item and then accept their own payment just like the cashier they are now replacing. All without even a small discount.

Now, that’s pretty damn stupid. That’s why I never use a self checkout lane. What if nobody did or at least demanded a discount?

People have changed in the last few decades. We are less caring about our fellow humans (that need a job), are in too much of a hurry and we don’t see the future beyond our own noses. That’s another story.

How did this all begin?

Back in the 1970s when the first fully self service gas stations were sold to the public you got a nice discount. The oil companies knew that people would never pump their own gas without a financial incentive. Now we accept everything that our Corporo-Fascist America throws at us without even a complaint, or concern.

The ability to “automate” gas stations actually goes back to the 1930s when the oil companies slowly began to relinquish ownership and control of the gasoline distribution system in America. This arrangement was first tested in Iowa by Standard Oil of Indiana and came to be called the “Iowa plan.” Now, less than .5% of gas stations are owned by the oil companies.

You can trust your car to the man who wears the star!  Texaco Slogan

In 1947 Frank Ulrich, an independent operator in Los Angeles CA did something that shocked the world. He allowed people to pump (not pay) for gas in the first “self serve” gas station. Ulrich used the slogan, “Save five cents, serve yourself. Why pay more? ” to advertise his self-service station. While the station did well, the concept didn’t catch on Nationwide until the 1973 oil embargo made gasoline prices shoot up and people began to shop price over convenience and gas fumes.

The Big Change – Self Checkout

In 1973, a station in Abilene, Texas, invented pay-at-the-pump. And that added the self checkout to the previously “semi automated” store where you still had to go inside to pay.

For the station owner, it saved money because they were paying one attendant, rather than a team of employees. With the money saved, they could charge a nickel less per gallon of gas which at the time gave people a nice discount for playing the role of attendant, initially lowering the price 25%. from 20 cents to 15 cents/gal.

In yet another example of the dumb American, today we volunteer as a temporary employee, free of charge because somebody’s profits aren’t high enough. So we make it easier for them to fire people. Done deal.

Long before the self service gas stations hit America, we had the Supermarket. This changed the way people bought food.

Before the first Supermarket in 1916 (Piggly Wiggly) you told a clerk what you wanted at the neighborhood grocery store and he got it for you, bagged it and cashed you out. In some cases, because there was such low opportunity for the cheating and fraud that is omnipresent today, you simply told the clerk to charge it to your name. The bill came, and you paid.

That was a world very long ago that changed over time because of economics and the real culprit, inflation, due to ever increasing Government spending. So, shopping for nearly everything (i.e. Amazon) became more about price than convenience.   

The magic of Capitalism is that through innovation and competition, consumer prices fall or are kept from rising too quickly because of supply, demand or (worse) inflation caused by Federal Spending.   That’s why Government loves Technology and is pushing it further now than ever before – inflation control which keeps the lid on interest rates (prevents imminent Govt bankruptcy) with the side benefit of improved surveillance/dependence of it’s citizens.   

We are now seeing that the price of that technology is too high. 

Yes, prices are cheap in our Technoworld but you have to wait days for Gizmo when you could have bought Gizmo at your old friends store in town where it was on the shelf. Sadly, your old friends store,  like most of downtown retail, is long gone.

At least half the population thought all those Government services and programs that helped cause massive and still unreported inflation was free. They kept voting for more of the same and both parties, now merged into the Uniparty separated only by different spending priorities, realized that the way to stay in office was to give people want they want, regardless of the consequences to our Nation and it’s economy.

Back at Aldis, as I was paying with real cash, there was panic in the house as a mother/daughter self checkout team was nearly screaming that one item was being rung up automatically, over and over and over with no end in sight. The bill for this one item was reaching triple figures. Help!

The one guy who could stop the madness was checking me out and had to close down the register before he could respond. I mentioned that I was in line with him as I could not support the Fascist TechnoCorporations wanting to replace him with a machine. He kind of agreed but said that people still need to be around (maybe 1 or 2 staff per store) so that they can resolve machine problems and instruct other people in line to use another bad machine with a bad program written by bad programmers that used to work at Boeing.

I told him that in less than 10 years those machines will be connected to a cloud based AI server that will be able to self diagnose and repair from the cloud.

If automated checkout machines have mechanical problems (most mechanical components in self checkout computers will be eliminated in just a few years) the AI master controller in the sky (rented space from the Mag 7 real estate developers) will recognize and shut down the failed unit if it can’t be fixed by a remote reboot. That would do exactly what the live cashier would have done.

No human necessary.

The Darkside

Many studies have suggested that the unchecked AI supported by our President will result in a permanent unemployment rate between 60-80% in a generation. I will let you think about the structural changes in our society and culture that will emanate from that kind of “revolution”. But whose revolution is it? Are you a part of it beyond your 401K stock picking brilliance with an S&P Index ETF?

That 401K, already virtual, will be moved into another realm on the master Central Bank server where you are not in control of your personal economy. Your “wealth” is illusory and so will be your crypto when the unhackable is hacked while you self serve you way to food, cars, banking and even insurance on the Internet. Maybe that will keep you busy in a world of unemployment.

And, if you need help processing your own insurance quote, mortgage, car loan or CBDC blackflag removal request……

Just visit us at AIworldforall.com!

We are at a tipping point and it surprises me why there are so many on all sides of the political spectrum that are either ignorant (like Trump) or tucked away in their saferooms about the risk of AI to our collective futures. Yes, technology has brought amazing things to our temporal human existence but this time it’s different. AI is unlike every other technology in that it’s sole purpose is job destruction.

Alarm bells should be ringing about where the top 7 companies in America (aka Magnificent 7) are taking all of us – Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Libertarians, Trump Haters or Lovers. Do we really want 7 AI companies to control 50% of our corporate wealth and power in the next 5 years? They already have 33%.

This is just the beginning of our end, yet I still have a fading hope that we have time to stop or at least slow the Hellbound Train filled with Nerds coming at us.   It’s in my next article:  AI = Slavery.

Sic Semper Tyrannis