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yes totally although waiters as a share of the pop have stagnated as food spending has grown iirc, so if you generalize in a literal way you do see problems with maintaining e-pop in an era of industry wide automation
Yes lets zoom out to general equilibrium next, but this is even less scary than partial equilibrium. The human touch remains valuable is the key claim, so where else might we need the human touch? If the economy writ large was 3x bigger, how much new demand for the human touch
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One post
One post can sign your dream client, find your next business partner, scale your company 100x
The thing is you have no idea what post it's going to be
That's why you gotta show up everyday and deliver
And consider that, say, table service is a normal good. If I become super AI rich or at least swimming in consumer surplus, I'm not QR code ordering my burrito, I can tell you that much
And the more luxury you go, the more hands on and human capital intensive the service becomes.
This is an argument for tailors in the age of mass production of clothing. True, but almost not relevant economically.
Not under current production technologies and opportunity costs! But the argument is they will change drastically
I think for the first time in history, AI will effect a movement away from white collar jobs back to blue collar. AI will outcompete most humans at cognitive tasks, but not physical.
I'd say your an economist so first you need to learn to think straight. But I agree in a different way. Robots are still expensive, compete with other products for materials. I predict there will be a role of AI in instructing and enabling people. But beyond that the economy has
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While we were eating out last weekend, I remembered the Automat. It never really took off, precisely because we value human interactions. I agree, human jobs aren’t going away. I think interaction skills will become more valuable.
One day I just woke up with the ability to post and grow my business
3+ years of posting
Constant testing/refining
Committing to the process
It doesn’t happen quick, but once you build out your personal brand the leverage is insane
The issue with automated ordering is that screen ordering is completely inefficient compared to talking to a person. Fix that and the wait staff is as endangered as other jobs.
But taking orders/payment is only part of a waiter’s workflow. A waiter brings you to your table, lays the table, brings food, clears food, makes drinks, cleans table etc. The continued existence of waiters is necessary in anything that aspires to be more than a school cafeteria
once one chain creates truly seamless order/pay tech, one that people enjoy and makes every meal 25% cheaper (no tip and less labor in prices), every other low to mid restaurant follows quickly.
Humans remain at luxury places only.
I'd love to see total hours worked for waiters in California as the statutory minimum wage increased (now $16.50, but still less than fast food wages).
As for everywhere else, the tipped minimum wage means you can pay a waiter as little as $2.13 an hour to work.....and waiters
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I was at an airport restaurant today, After fiddling with the app for 10 minutes with poor wifi I left and went to Burger King where I could order from a person.
I order from a scanned app, at the table, more than i interact with waiters at this point.
The problem is that the automated ordering still tries to guilt you into tipping...
problem of elevator men was solved much sooner than they disappeared. probably a little early to say what happens with waiters (and many other jobs)
Human work isn’t going away
It is declining THOUGH and there is a reality that every American or Global job is replaceable in the next 180 days.
Again, massive automation has not caused mass unemployment because birth rates start declining a lot after 1970.
Global Capitalism is the best birth control on earth.
There's always going to be the sort of person who likes watching someone dance for them.
Server sentiment could flip where half the servers are wiped out at lower restaurants and just upper class ones are left…
If the servers get too expensive and there is a way to secure payment from customers there’s no need to have them and customers and businesses can save.
I intend to enjoy a good restaurant with the money I saved no longer needing accountants or attorneys.
FYI- waiters are hard to replace because they’re salespeople and restaurants don’t survive on order takers.
Hmm. Waiters and individual table service seems to be slowly disappearing outside of very high end places. I don't trust this analysis. A lot of customer service features are falling to automation.
Yeah this is one of the reasons I'm not too scares of AI/automation. I should preface this by saying, I love self checkout, but I'm also a misanthrope with sociopathic tendencies. But tons of people actually want to interact with other people, even if it's a bit slower.
Go talk to anyone who has been in business consulting in the past decade or 2
We have eliminated so many human jobs via technological improvements
You might want to talk to experts before saying things like you just said
I’m not sure pointing to the economic precarity of non-unionized wait staff is the anxiety reducer you think it is.
QR code ordering has devalued the restaurant experience to the point of being worse than dining in. Quality service staff vastly improves the experience.
Contra: Sam Goody, Media Play, and Borders are all gone. Sometimes, shifts in media or technology *do* lay waste to that which was before.
Even most nice restaurants should resort to iPads, food runners and 2-3 food “sommeliers”.
Rolls-Royce is terrible example because they only produce about 4,000 cars per year. the majority of their revenue comes from defense, aerospace and marine selling products built partially by automation.
"Think about that, and then generalize." That's your scientific method? Here's a better example: economists add no value to the economy and yet they continue to proliferate.
I agree with your point, but you’ve used a bad example.
I hate waiters. In China, they’ve eliminated waiters by about 30-50% of the time. A precondition for this is being able to pay at your table from your phone by scanning a QR code on the table. Soon 
Wait what? There’s fully solved automation of waiters? Where? Someone show me a video of fully solved automation of a plate of food and drink being placed in front of you while you sit at a table full of other people doing the same thing.
Food runners usually do that in places with automated ordering. Have you been outside much?
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