Le free market will fix it

>le all progress is good meme

Idiot!

I was under the impression free market didn't mean literal anarchism

Where do you think we are?

Where does the OP imply anarchism?

Free market drones are fucking stupid but I have no problem with self-service checkouts. And it's not like they're magically going to replace cashiers, they've been around for YEARS. Cashiers will always be necessary unless we somehow invent perfect AI that can 1:1 replicate a human being.

this is not worth reading

Where did I say all progress was good? Where did I say this progress is good?

>the majority of consumers are unable to select their prefered supermarket and/or affected by various factors in behavioural economics

The free market works, if you are not being catered for, you are simply not in the majority or even a sizable minority. Same as democracy.

>he thinks i agree with democracy

>he thinks it would be a good idea to remove democracy from the modern world

>It will be okay.
no it wont, the sun's increasing luminosity will cause earth to become uninhabitable for life in 600 million years and there is nothing we can do to stop it.

that's a given, that's a fact of life

>he thinks i want to remove democracy and not instead institute the maximum capacity for democracy

>cashier isn't there because of new automated self-service
>go to another chashier with a real person or ask staff for help, which have to be there because of autist neanderthals like OP who can't use basic technology
Done

>or if there's no one there just fucking steal it
a friend of mine who works at a grocery store lost his job when they went to fully automated tellers but then they tried to rehire him because the amount they were losing from theft was more expensive than just hiring someone.

Two "loss prevention specialists" standing at the exit checking receipts are still cheaper than 8 cashiers

If anything you can even automate that as well via rfid...

Amazon seems to be working on a completely automated grocery store

>go into supermarket
>get milk, go to pay
>10 automated service checkouts
>swipe card, machine bugs up and an employee walks up to clear the issue
>still get my stuff faster than a regular cashier
>don't get depressed because my social life doesn't hinge on saying hi to some miserable retail worker
>walk out of the store, remark on how efficient it is having two employees standing nearby rather than ten cashiers manning the machines
>check my milk and realize it's 10c cheaper

>pick up my pocket sized supercomputer and buy the rest of the supplies for my party with three button presses, it's delivered in 20 minutes via drone and not manhandled by angry USPS workers

future sure sucks, OP.

>temporary

>wants sense of community
>goes to supermarkets
>doesn't use local greengrocers, butchers, fishmongers etc.

>Buttblasted wageslaves don't know the joys of guaranteed employment from nepotism

You should know better than to speak when you aren't being addressed, now go bag my groceries.

the libertarian millenium is just as stupid as the communist millenium

>i didn't read the post

Please, fuck off.

Those won't exist, that's the POINT.

They largely don't exist now Tbh

Right, because of autists like OP who get nervous when they have to interact with real people. I mean c'mon this sperg can't even go to a lane that has people working it, you expect him to go to Mom n' Pops and risk interacting with someone?

What am I missing? OP is specifically bemoaning the increasing lack of face-to-face interaction with other humans.

>if you are not being catered for, you are simply not in the majority
That really has nothing to do with it.

When all the supermarkets are all under the same ownership, they can all cust costs by depriving customers of service in the same way without any risk. Hell, even if they weren't all owned by the same families, they could still do it - so long as all their major competitors are following the same methodology.

And self-checkout costs nearly as much as it saves (more, in bad neighborhoods) - it's just employment is one of the few areas they have cost control over.

Similarly to how all the laptops switch to calculator push-button keyboards at the same time, providing the consumer with no alternative. How there are no full service stations. Why even the new fancy LED bulbs still don't last more than a year, because their starters burn out. etc.

It doesn't matter what the consumer wants, only what can be delivered cheapest.

The free market is a race to the lowest common denominator, and inevitably doomed to be enslaved by the most successful monetary powers within it.

>both the free market and democracy have the fundamental flaw of literal retards being able to make decisions that affect others
>"I like democracy and we should increase it, but the free market is shit"

>It doesn't matter what the consumer wants

Yeh, fuck, you spent way too much time at a university and not enough time trying to actually sell products on this "ez rigged free marketz that exploited dah consumers".
It really is as simple as products that more consumers like becoming succesful. The rise of Mac over Windows, the fall of IBM, the fall of Blackberry.
It has been shown time and again that if you don't innovate and set yourself and your products apart in this fast paced modern world, you fall behind and are forgotten.
The supermarket brands are highly varied and spend literal billions of dollars in their ad campaigns, shop designs, customer feedback, etc to set themselves apart.
Just because you, as an evidently below-average-awareness consumer are unable to detect product variance, does not mean it is not there.

So you're gaurunteed to have a job as a wageslave? I'm happy for you too, user.

>No u

The mental power of a wageslave, everybody. You should stick to /tv/ and /v/ buddy, those are boards for room temperature IQ posters.

>he's been sitting here for hours monitoring the thread

Loser!

>Only one person can have disdain for wageslaves

You're on a Veeky Forums colony

What is this, a response to the 'LGBTQ Dystopia' greentexts from a few years back? I haven't seen one of those since before college.

What is a 'wageslave'? Someone who has to work? It is unfortunate, but the way that society is structured makes it so your philosophy has to be one with whatever profession (or lack thereof) you have. Therefore, I am not particularly surprised whe a bunch of 19 year old college students on Veeky Forums are advancing the idea that being someone who doesn't have to work is a choice, not a privilege.

fix what?

if consumers are not willing to spend sufficiently more money to be attended by cashiers, then there won't be cashiers and there's absolutely nothing to be "fixed".

There's more similarities than dissimilarities, and even those variances that do exist are primarily those that are there to maximize profit, not for advantage of the consumer, beyond, perhaps, being able to undercut competitors in the same neighborhood. Particularly among supermarkets, where competition is entirely local.

To that end, if one business finds a way to to create significant savings by sticking it to their customers, all other similar businesses are forced to follow suit just to keep up. And this is true even in such cases where the competition isn't entirely local, such as airlines. (Where often you can't even pay for services that used to be assumed.)

Yeah, every now and again someone comes up with a hot new product innovation of one sort or another, but pretty quickly, everyone follows suit, everything starts looking the same, and more often than not, it isn't for the better. It's much more often about financial edge than consumer enticement.

It's not as if supermarkets are giving you a choice in the matter, or as if they ever put that to the test of competition. All the major stores have gone that route, and did so all at once, because, yes, it was cheaper. Only a few tiny hippie chains like Trader Joe's or whatnot, that aren't really in direct competition with those goliaths, failed to make that migration.

Similarly, you don't see markets paying much attention to decor anymore. When was the last time you saw a supermarket with carpet? Maybe people would pay for a more pleasant shopping environment, but no major chain is going to risk its undercutting edge to find out.

It's just a race to the bottom.

if people were willing to pay more to be attended by real persons, companies would follow suit. But the fact is that they aren't, they say they give a fuck but they don't give enough of a fuck to pay 10% more. You're delusional if you think this hasn't been put to the test. If one chain in a town doesn't go automated and the other does, and that same other launches a sale because of cuts to costs, where do you think people will go to?

The "free market" isn't supposed to fulfill your personal ideal of what the world should be like, it's supposed to respond to the consumer's actions, not their beliefs.

>You're delusional if you think this hasn't been put to the test.
I lived in three different US cities in two years, shopping at maybe seven different supermarkets between them, and near as I can tell, they all shifted away from it at the same time.

I'm also old enough to remember when every corporate service station stopped having full service, all at the same time, save one chain, which finally gave it up.

And in the right field to see that all the laptop/netbook brands adapted the same shit keyboard, all at the same time - cuz one manufacturer started selling them dirt cheap.

It doesn't matter if the customer might be willing to pay 10% more, when the entire industry is constantly looking for ways to maximize profit. With supermarkets, it's not even much of a competition thing, as most folks are only willing to travel so far to another supermarket save 10%.

It's rarely about the consumer at all.

>remark on how efficient it is having two employees standing nearby rather than ten cashiers manning the machines

>get mugged by the 8 out of work poor fags
>have the shit beaten out of you
>have your shit stolen by starving hordes of displaced wage slaves

GOOD FUCKING PLAN