And creating an entirely new cultural, social and business paradigm.
I cannot emphasize this more: our country — nay, the planet — has just been turned upside down. I suspect you think I’m radically overstating the issue. You’ll soon discover that I am not.
Leftist Jeff Bezos is about to not only turn retail business on its head, he is about to gut those persons who vote Demorat and/or Leftist. Because he is about to put them all out of work.
First, what is AmazonGo?
From Amazon.com:
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is Amazon Go?
Amazon Go is a new kind of store with no checkout required. We created the world’s most advanced shopping technology so you never have to wait in line. With our Just Walk Out Shopping experience, simply use the Amazon Go app to enter the store, take the products you want, and go! No lines, no checkout. (No, seriously.)
How does Amazon Go work?
Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning. Our Just Walk Out technology automatically detects when products are taken from or returned to the shelves and keeps track of them in a virtual cart. When you’re done shopping, you can just leave the store. Shortly after, we’ll charge your Amazon account and send you a receipt.
How big is the store?
Our roughly 1,800 square feet of retail space is conveniently compact so busy customers can get in and out fast.
What do I need to get started?
All you need is an Amazon account, a supported smartphone, and the free Amazon Go app.
Why did you build Amazon Go?
Four years ago we asked ourselves: what if we could create a shopping experience with no lines and no checkout? Could we push the boundaries of computer vision and machine learning to create a store where customers could simply take what they want and go? Our answer to those questions is Amazon Go and Just Walk Out Shopping.
What can I buy at Amazon Go?
We offer delicious ready-to-eat breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack options made fresh every day by our on-site chefs and favorite local kitchens and bakeries. Our selection of grocery essentials ranges from staples like bread and milk to artisan cheeses and locally made chocolates. You’ll find well-known brands we love, plus special finds we’re excited to introduce to customers. For a quick home-cooked dinner, pick up one of our chef-designed Amazon Meal Kits, with all the ingredients you need to make a meal for two in about 30 minutes.
So I can just shop normally?
Yes! Just browse and shop like you would at any other store. Then you’re on your way. No lines, no checkout.
Perhaps you’re asking, at this point, am I nothing more than a shill for Amazon? Why such a lengthy quotation from Amazon?
I’m not a shill for Amazon. But I want you to understand the basics up front. I want you to understand what Amazon is offering initially and how it will itself morph and change to something else entirely, bringing the rest of the retail industry kicking and screaming along with it.
Trust me, with Amazon this is an experiment. It will expand from simply convenient foodstuffs. And beware: it accomplishes this feat of convenience by completely recording everything there is to know and see about you, storing the information into company databases. If it is digital it can be hacked. If you partake of the experiment any semblance of privacy you thought you once had will be well and truly gone, never to be re-established again.
THE LOGICAL EXTENSION:
This is a time when unskilled workers are demanding and, in many cases and locales, acquiring a $15-per-hour minimum “living” wage. The move is already having unforeseen consequences — but only unforeseen if you are a Leftist or a Demorat. Those of us with a common sense, business and logical bent knew what to expect.
Businesses have no duty whatsoever to lose money no matter what various governments legislate. A wage jump this large means that businesses have to examine all of their costs and — no shock — any business’s greatest costs are in personnel.
People are messy. They are finicky and critical and they get sick, take vacation, offend others, become unproductive, lazy, unhappy, pick fights, expose companies to various forms of societal lawsuits, and come with mandatory workers’ comp, medical and other benefits. In a word, people are expensive.
Some businesses, therefore, are now doing their best to eschew unskilled or minimally-skilled labor and instead replacing people with, in the immediate case of the restaurant industry, ordering kiosks or devices on tables from which to order and pay. In Seattle, for example, one of the first places to embrace a mandatory $15-per-hour wage rate, small businesses began to shutter their doors, close, go bankrupt or physically move outside the city to neighboring Kings County.
This is already happening. It is already a movement within business.
Now comes Amazon.
And businesses have to compete.
Do the logical extension: Amazon will expand these stores. Other retail stores and chains are allowing Amazon to take the step like the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
But what if Amazon is wildly successful?
Businesses have to compete.
This paradigm will expand to other stores and chains and various forms of retail. When the first large chain embraces the technology the others almost have no other choice. They will do so too. The time will come when you’ll enter a Costco or a WalMart or a J.C. Penney’s or a Nordstrom or a Bed Bath & Beyond, pick up what you want, and leave.
Perhaps “great” for the consumer. But what about the unskilled or minimally-skilled laborer? Their services will no longer be, on a major level, needed. How do these people primarily vote? Leftist or Demorat. And who is Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon? A wild Leftist. Schadenfreude.
A note to those who have no motivations, have no aspirations, no skills, no interest in acquiring skills: you are about to be crushed.
REPERCUSSIONS:
First, the only persons needed to work those first Amazon stores will be those who prepare the food, stock shelves and clean. Cashiers and/or human interaction will be mostly absent. I suspect for some consumers this will be a blessing. I, for one, patronize a store solely to shop, not to chat, unless I need specific advice regarding, say, technological devices.
When the technology really begins to get legs, there will be pushback from unskilled labor, from, say, California’s SEIU, various unions, Leftist groups, BLM and others. I predict that you will initially see mob runs on these stores where large groups will enter and simply loot a store wholesale.
There will be massive labor, union, budgetary, business, cultural and social implications.
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LABOR:
This new paradigm will decimate the unskilled or minimally-skilled labor force. It has to. There is no other option if businesses not only wish to compete with each other nationally but internationally as well.
It will also have a major impact upon immigration. The bulk of illegal immigrants bring no skills with them; they do however bring needs like food, housing, support. Illegal Mexicans, immigrants from other nations will no longer be required to “do the jobs that no one else will do.” There are, already, machines that pick fruit and other vegetables in fields. The need for immigrants will diminish.
This is a game-changer, ladies and gentlemen.
It will not happen overnight.
But it will happen.
BZ
Leftists, more and more it appears, truly do want some kind of very serious civil strife. Perhaps even so far as to, sadly and needlessly, ignite a civil war. I’m yet unsure. I do know one thing: Leftists keep pushing and pushing with bad — but not yet irretrievable — consequences afoot.
Fig 1: Jeff Bezos as Yertle the Turtle, but with bad dentition.
That’s what I found. I included the book so as to capture the shipping dates as well. It clearly states “1 to 3 weeks.” Hmm. Not quite what the publisher says is available.
But if I buy Bob Woodward’s book FEAR, I can reap some great deals and somehow simultaneously get the book delivered the same day. Where are the Tucker Carlson deals? Oh right. Fuck him. He’s a Conservative.