Checkout Luddites

 I want to talk about two arguments that get made, often by the same people, against the use of automated self-service machines, e.g. grocery store self-checkouts, and why I think they’re misguided.

One is the basic Luddite argument “They’re taking away jobs.”

Yes. Mechanization and automation has, does, and will continue to take away from the labor market’s demand for manual laborers to do those now-automated or mechanized jobs. In most cases, those jobs did not pay a living wage in the first place. This is not an argument against mechanization or automation; it’s an argument for radical restructuring of economic systems. There is no reason that a person should have to spend 8 or more hours a day doing a task that a machine could do in exchange for barely enough resources to survive on, simply because we have decided that people need “a job” to access any resources (but not enough). Seize the means of production and demand a universal guaranteed income for everyone.

But okay, that’s boring. Lots of people are talking about that. I want to talk about the other argument people make: that people shouldn’t be expected to scan their own groceries, pump their own gas, pour their own drinks, or otherwise do tasks that they’re accustomed to having employees do for them, because “I don’t work here and it’s not my job.”

This one is often spun as progressive and “sticking it to corporations,” even though the underlying sentiment is “I deserve to have an underpaid servant wait on me.”

If we are ever going to build an economically just society that doesn’t involve desperately poor people forming an overworked, underpaid service class, people have got to give up this idea that they deserve to be waited on. The revolution will have to involve a lot more of people doing basic things for themselves and a lot fewer service industry employees.

Of course, there is still a need for service employees. Many machines and interfaces are not universally accessible, so disabled people and others may need human assistance, while we continue to push for full universal design and accessibility of all technology. And of course, machines break down, need maintenance, etc. But people have got to get rid of their desire to be waited on, and they have got to stop hiding behind “What about the ELDERLY and the DISABLED” to make their desire to be waited on sound progressive.

“Elderly” is doing a lot of work here, because what it’s meant to imply is ambiguous. Do you mean that elderly people may have age-related disabilities that may impede their ability to do physical tasks like bag their own groceries (setting aside my previously established objections to equating “elderly” and “disabled”), or do you mean that elderly people are set in their ways of doing things and shouldn’t be expected to change, or do you mean that elderly people’s social status should entitle them to be waited on? If the latter is what you mean, the problem is that many of the overworked, underpaid service workers are themselves elderly. Abled 50 year olds demanding to be waited on by 70 year old cashiers because “I’m elderly” are clearly referring to something other than actual age.