• BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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      9 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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        9 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@lemmy.ca
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          9 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@lemmy.ca
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              9 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.

            • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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              9 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.

  • spaphy@lemmy.ml
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    9 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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        9 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@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

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

    • B0rax@feddit.de
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      9 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.

  • BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

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

    • wagoner@infosec.pub
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      9 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@lemmy.ca
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        9 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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    9 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.

  • nivenkos@lemmy.ml
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    9 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.