Humans to serve the rich, robots to serve the poor

Will automation make human service workers a luxury?

The rich are capturing a greater share of income and wealth than any time since the Roaring 20s. As a result, the top 20% are responsible for more than 60% of consumer spending, which is forcing companies to alter their business strategies to cater to them. They have to follow the money.

At the same time, the businesses frequented by the masses are being automated. Self-checkouts and ordering kiosks are being installed in grocery stores and fast food restaurants. Tablets are being put at restaurant tables.

A larger share of commerce is moving online, forcing physical retailers to close stores and reevaluate their operations. Clothing retailers are experimenting with automative systems to revolutionize the shopping experience. Best Buy has shifted to an online-first strategy to compete with Amazon.

Inequality and automation aren’t progressing down separate paths. They’re very much intertwined, and the trajectory of one impacts what will happen with the other. If inequality gets worse, and automation continues its forward march, the service experiences of the rich and the rest will continue to diverge.

An unequal service sector

Since the recession, the automation of routine jobs has increased dramatically, but much of that automation has only impacted the businesses that serve the masses.

While it’s becoming harder to find human assistance in mass retailers and fast food cashiers are being automated, little is changing at the stores that serve the rich, and even the upper-middle class.

If you frequent luxury fashion retailers, you’ll still have the best of service — from a human — but if you go to H&M, it will only get harder to find a person to assist you.

If you go to a Michelin star restaurant, you’ll get the best of service, but if you go to an Olive Garden or a Boston Pizza, the tasks of servers will be slowly replaced by tablets and robots.

Apple serves as a great example of this. They do sell premium products, but they’re still accessible to a large number of people. While it’s getting harder to find help at a mass retailer like Best Buy, Apple’s stores are always full of sales people ready to help, even just to assist you in getting more out of your existing products.

However, even Apple is shifting to further serve the luxury market. Their gold Apple Watch, with a price tag above $10,000, was firmly targeted at the rich. People expect to pay a premium when buying an Apple product, but that Apple Watch was in a class of its own.

Automation must be a collective decision

Not only would these development further the class divide, creating one service sector for the rich and another for the poor, but whether service is by humans or robots shouldn’t be so dependent on income.

It’s imperative that automation isn’t just done at the whim of CEOs and business owners. There should be a dialogue with the public about how they want their services delivered. There are benefits and drawbacks to using robots or humans, but with consultation may come a middle road where the worst tasks are handed to robots, while others remain in the hands of humans.

In order for such a debate to be done in a non-coerced fashion, people must know that if their jobs of automated, they won’t fall into poverty. Otherwise, they’ll doubtlessly be against automation. Even if they despise their jobs, they’ll want to keep them because they’ll still need the income to survive.

This is just one example of how automation, when combined with soaring inequality, can have negative social consequences. The only way to ensure automation is undertaken in a universally beneficial way is to address the growing divide within our societies, and guarantee a minimum standard of living to everyone.

The world of work is changing, faster than we yet realize, but how do we harness automation to create a better world?

Freedom From Jobs identifies the problems with our current economic system, how automation is already impacting the way we work, and presents a vision for the future that would liberate the masses from the exploitative toil of wage labour.

Available now on Amazon, iBooks, or Kobo.

Paris Marx is the author of A Music Industry for the 99%, Dystopia or Utopia?, and Freedom From Jobs. He writes about the growing divide within the capitalist system, movements for alternative forms of economic organization, and ways of living that challenge traditional narratives.

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