• BlameThePeacock
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      8 months ago

      For the first bit, sure, but it won’t stay that way for long. The price of these vehicles is dropping, and the price of humans is going up.

      • maynarkh@feddit.nl
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        8 months ago

        Point is that companies won’t pass the savings off to you ever. I’d be surprised if they stopped begging for tips after firing the people.

        • BlameThePeacock
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          8 months ago

          This is such a common misconception, if companies never passed savings on to us, we’d be paying absolutely astronomical prices and you couldn’t afford to buy anything at all.

          Shirts used to be hundreds/thousands of dollars or days/weeks of your own time, a lot of people had to weave their own fabric and make their own clothes because they never earned enough money to afford to buy one pre-made since all their work went into feeding themselves. Average people didn’t own more than a handful of sets of clothes up until the industrial revolution. Almost all of the benefits of automation in fabric production has all been passed down to you.

          You can now pick up a t-shirt from Walmart for $5, or a dress shirt for $50 both of which are far higher quality than what used to exist.

          Profit margins for most consumer goods industries are not that high usually around 50% from creation to consumer (split between the manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer) and some industries are much lower even than that.

            • BlameThePeacock
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              8 months ago

              There are at least 3 different app based food delivery companies (uber eats, skip the dishes, door dash) in the city near me, on top of the fact that a lot of places have their own dedicated delivery people (Grocery stores, pizza, even liquor stores)

              There’s clearly a competitive market in this space.

          • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Shirts used to last decades too. I have a shirt in my closet that is 33 years old that’s in better condition than shirts less than a year old. A $5 Walmart shirt lasts a few months. You’re not getting the same quality.

            Edit: I just read the last paragraph of your comment and you’re very mistaken about a lot of goods. They get 100+% mark-up at every step of the supply chain. Clothes at a place like Nordstrom have thousands of percent mark-up.

            • BlameThePeacock
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              7 months ago

              Shirts were automated 33 years ago too. I was comparing them to pre industrial revolution clothing which was heavy and itchy.

              As for Nordstrom, those are luxury goods not consumer goods. You’re paying for brand names or fancy fabrics, neither of which are necessary to your life.

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The point is that one person, or a few people, can hoard all the money that would have gone to hundreds of workers.

      Edit: and I’ll bet you $100 right now that they’ll still have a tip option.

    • GlitterInfection@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      How the car is going to buzz into my building, take the elevator, and deliver to my front door is beyond me. Technology is amazing!

    • delirious_owl@discuss.online
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      8 months ago

      Berkeley has had self driving robots deliver food for years. They roll in the sidewalk. When it arrives to your front door, you get a text and go down to the front door. Press a button on the app and it opens the locker door so you can retrieve your order

  • spaphy@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    Even if you don’t agree with any of it, thanks for posting the news. That’s interesting.

      • 800XL@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        If cable, cell, ISPs and companies of that ilk are any hint, we’ll have to pay the upcharge on the items themselves, all of the food delivery company’s fees and surcharges, and then get double-dipped from the driverless car company for those same fees. They’ll also tack on a fee to rent the car while it drives to our homes, another fee for each second it sits waiting for us to go grab the food, a fee for each second of cloud computing time as it updates to the network, a fee for the electricity it uses, and as part of the Eula, we must top off the car’s batteries from our own charging stations thereby incurring that cost as well.

    • Phoenixz
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      7 months ago

      Use 1500 kilos to transport 500 - 1500 grams. Move along now, nothing to see here!

    • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Fuck yeah! Those things are awesome. When I was younger my bank had a drive up window, and another lane with an intercom and a pneumatic tube. I’d use the tube lane even when the window lane was open because I loved watching the capsule go shooting through the tube.

  • BlameThePeacock
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    8 months ago

    This is exactly what I expected to happen, it’s taking a bit longer than I thought, but that’s not surprising.

    • B0rax@feddit.de
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      8 months ago

      Waymo is a company that develops self driving cars (well, not the cars, but the technology). They are focusing on robo-taxis. So like Uber without a driver.

  • nivenkos@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    This is incredible, it feels like parts of the USA are so advanced.

    Here in Sweden we’re going backwards, they even took out self-scanning at a lot of supermarkets due to theft.

    • wagoner@infosec.pub
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      8 months ago

      Definitely makes sense to invest billions in solving this program that people won’t pay more than a pittance for the service.

      • BlameThePeacock
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        8 months ago

        Self-driving vehicles are not only here to solve food delivery.

        In the US, the average American spends about 365 hours a year driving, about an hour a day.

        I’d much rather use that time to work, read a book, or a dozen other activities. It’s over 6% of my waking hours.

  • Jimmycakes@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Going a few extra feet out to get the food is a trade off I’ll make to get the food there fast and safe and presumably cheaper.