When we're talking fast food, I really doubt that a high markup is a big deal. I did some research, and McDonalds only pays something like 18 cents per 21 ounce soda, including the price of the cup, lid, and straw. Prices vary from store to store, but the last McDonalds I was in charged $1.57 per regular soda. That's a substantial markup, but people pay it all the time. (And don't say "labor cost"; every McDonald's I've been to recently is self-serve on beverages.)


I see where you're coming from, but you forgot to add in material costs. Let's say that out of that 3 nuyen soyburger, 1 nuyen is cost, 1 nuyen is labor, and the last is profit. When the guy buys the burger, you've just paid him 1 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) for an hour's work. And that nuyen is likely to be recirculated back into the corporate coffers. Entropy means some of it will escape outside the company; but outsiders buying products should more than even that out, if the company is making money.

But we're not just talking about the guys flipping burgers buying soyburgers. We're also talking about the guys working in the company coal mine buying soy burgers and the guys driving steel to build the company railroads buying soyburgers.

Entropy does not mean that some of it will escape outside the company. Entropy means that some of it will be totally unusable, period. No one will be able to use it. Entropy is a measure of waste, whether it be waste energy or waste money. And once it is wasted it is gone forever.

You didn't mention that the cost for the above, including the repayments on your skillwires comes to a few nuyen a month more than "said wage", unless you use only the cheapest flavours on your soy and keep the heating low in winter. But your corporate account has a good line of credit, so don't worry about that: buy your kid their birthday presents, you've got all year to pay it off.

Problem is that people buy products, and people like other people. If a company completely cut out their (meta)human workers the backlash of public opinion would run them out of business very quickly. If KFC replaced every worker with drones think of what would happen, the news stories about the corp maximizing profits at the cost of the worker, the faces of the unemployed, the "Could you be replaced by a drone?" stories, and of course the scare tactics of showing a hacker taking over the drone and poisoning every one at the restaurant.

Watch that stock price crash into the gutter. There are tons of jobs right now that we could replace with robots; but you can't because of worker strikes and public opinion. Look at what happened to the auto industry when they started using robots. They do use a lot of them, but they still have humans doing jobs that could be easily automated.

In 2070 I think that a lot of the jobs that people never see or interact with are now done by drones, but not all of them.

Yes, that's exactly why Wal-Mart went Bankrupt

No, wait.

People like people, but people love low prices.

Right there's the problem. Money can be created from nothingness and destroyed to nonexistence, something that cannot happen to energy or matter. It's all about perceptions of value. The economic entropy metaphor is a good one, but it only goes so far. The fact is, we can account for every cent the guy spends; it's never really "lost to oblivion" unless some very specific things happen.

Money is all about perception. When you go into a McDonalds, you see a soda for $1.57, and see a fair deal. McDonalds sees a huge profit. You perceive you're getting a good deal; McDonalds perceives it's getting a good deal, and the shareholders percevie themselves getting a good deal. Everyone wins, in theory.

Wal-Mart is a great example actually. You go to a Wal-Mart store and you have a greeter at the door. You have people working the cash register and restocking the shelves. Where there are customers there are human workers. Especially that person at the door saying "Welcome to Wal-Mart."

You ever been inside a Wal-Mart distribution center? I have. Robots everywhere. Wal-Mart has one of the most advanced automated distribution systems and warehouse inventory systems in the world. It was one of the reasons Wal-Mart was trying to force RFID tracking chips to be put into every product a few years ago. Shipments come in, get scanned and the pallets are moved by automated forklifts to a designated area. As the individual stores make sales the inventory levels are tracked and the system determines what needs to be sent in the next shipment. The system then pulls what needs to be sent and loads it over by the shipping bays for the trucks to deliver to the stores. The warehouse I was in was massive and I think the entire place had maybe 20-30 people in it.

Yes, but Wal-Mart also quietly abandoned their idea to automate their stores with RFID tags. I'm not sure why, but I think it's because the machines are still too easily fooled.

In the games I have run, both interpretations I have seen presented here exist together. Drone shops would be common: the same way that some robots have started to creep into any number of professions today. Heck, a good number of supermarkets are using low grade robots even now. But, there are a number of establishments that will keep the metahuman factor on as a point of style or just because of the local economy. Ritzier places will more than likely keep their metahuman waitstaff on because of the "service" factor. Having a face to talk to can be a selling point. Areas too poor to afford drones will keep people because they can negotiate their wage down to almost nothing, and the work has to be done somehow. Adaptability will also keep metahumans employed in more complex tasks as well. Perhaps not always in flipping burgers, but whenever multiple factors need to be dynamically evaluated, you still can't beat a meta. I expect however, that more mundane, repetitive and dangerous jobs would become drone automated. Cleaning, flipping burgers, or working in environments too extreme for metas will always keep the drones employed. A good rule of the thumb I have used in the past has been to evaluate the job that needs to be done, and the client base its aimed at. If the people wanting the job done would be willing to pay more for a meta, it will be done by a metahuman. For jobs with a high chance of injury, or where the client dosen't care who is doing the job, its likely to be a robot.

Wall mart is moving towards automated checkout. Most stores employ fewer cashiers than before but has several always-open automated checkout lanes, which actually speeds things up quite a bit. Some people stick to human-assisted checkout, but those who are comfortable with the system use the automated checkout because it is faster.

Of course, the greeters also do double-duty. They're the last line of defense against shoplifters, and some are usually employed to check for receipts, since Wal-Mart's size makes it fairly easy to just grab something and stuff it in a bag.

One thing no Drone can ever do...

Make a decent cup of tea!

I mean, isn't that how Dues was going to be shut down? Forced to make a decent cuppa?

To put it simply, when corporate citizen-employees realize that their job can be automated if they cause socio-economic problems within the mega's structure, you can pay them anything. Asia-syndrome to the max. Don't like it? Tough, you're under a bulletproof contract from the company that incidentally issued you a social security number. They also own almost everything you "lease" from them, and the little money you've managed to pull together only maintains a fraction of its value outside of the company. Oh, and even if you leave, you already contracted out your kids before they were born so you could afford those skillwires that they required you to lease so you could keep your job.

Yep, people are much cheaper.

Although hyzmarca's point is valid. Assuming you have 5-6 drones instead of 4 workers and one supervisor with skillwires 2-3 and the correct B/R softs - how cheap would that be by now? I could imagine that in SR 4 it would approach or even have reached a level where humans just can't compete anymore, even in the most unqualified categories. I'll try to do the math the next days, when I need a rest from learning.

They were moving towards automated checkout, but have since abandoned that idea. They went as far as automated checkout lanes, but that's as far as they got. Wal-Mart, being what it is, doesn't have to worry about unions or organized labor, so they didn't stop because it would put people out of work. No, they deliberately and consciously chose to abandon RFID tags for a fully automated checkout. Why? Not sure, since I'm not a Wal-Mart shareholder. But here is one article on it. It's just one article, and I haven't read it fully, so I can't vouch for its accuracy. But it seems to be a decent starting point.

Actually, the value of money is about resources. And resources can be used up. If those resources aren't replenished, the value of money goes down, it takes more to buy the same amount of stuff. Inflation. Replenishing resources costs resources, which are generally represented by money.

Money is useful only in that it is an abstract representation of available resources. It's value does fluctuate with consumer confidence and other things, but the truth is that these fluctuations even out. Bubbles burst and confidence-induced recessions end.

That's a bit optimistic, although you are correct, as far as it goes. The problem is that there's plenty of things that could happen to change the perceived value of things, and some markets never even out without massive interference. For example, oil prices are high because crude is relatively scarce. However, for countries who peg their currency to oil prices (an "Oil Standard"), their buying power just went up.

As far as bubbles and recessions go, we're in the middle of the biggest Wall Street shakeup since the Depression. We didn't come out of the Depression without a lot of Keynesian economics (read: Massive government interference). We're staving off this one, if barely, by more massive government interference. For example, I expect the government will bail out AIG, and possibly Washington Mutual, in the near future. The lassiez-faire economic strategy never did work.

Oh, one more thing, to bring things back on topic. People who can analyze economic trends will still be needed in 2070. A lot of white-collar jobs cannot be replaced by machines, and the US is already moving more towards an information-based economy, instead of an industry-based one. While a lot of jobs can be replaced by drones, the ones that can't will require people to be able to read and think.

This line of thinking strikes me as faulty for a couple reasons. First of all, remember that most corporations of interest can be considered, in practical terms, politically sovereign. They're not obligated to pay a minimum wage, which is only compounded by the problem that they have an internal economy that's basically independent of the areas that their holdings physically exist in. That independence allows for a mega to pay a wage that's only livable within the company's economy. Now add in the twist of megacorps being able to issue SINs. Now you can hire from the Barrens, which means you can run your operation like modern day China, or India - don't like it? Get the hell out and return to hunting devil rats so you don't starve. You round this all out nicely by requiring product and service purchase from the company to move upward (skillwires, linguasofts, a better commlink..), and you have an eternally indentured blue-collar workforce that makes up ninety-eight percent of your company. Heck, you might even be able to turn a profit off of them. Grunt work is probably the cheapest and most efficient asset that the megas own.

To maintain productivity, corps are obliged to pay a wage that affords enough creature comforts to keep people just barely satisfied. Bread and circuses, remember? As long as people can afford both, they'll be satisfied.

True, but the question is, could an investment into drones be so cheap that if you paid the same to a worker, not even the bare living essentials can be covered? Electricity is cheaper than food.

Power is cheaper than good food in a household but when it comes to commercial facilities operating hundreds or thousands of automated heavy machines, energy consumption is enormous. If a corporation wanted to feed its employees McDonald's grade food (good enough to keep you going but damaging in the long term) that cost will be much less than the electric bill.

Off topic from the main point, but just thought I would comment on this.

You don't have to stop if they ask to see your receipt. At that point all they can do to stop you is accuse you of shoplifting. Considering that they haven't actually witnessed anything, so have no proof, this a very big no no. Can you say "Hello lawsuit."

In order to get an airtight shoplifting conviction you need to observe the person get the item from your shelf, and conceal it (or not if they just walk out with it). Then you need to maintain constant surveillance of the person so you can be 100% sure they still have it on them. Last you wait for them to exit the store then do your stop. While some states (Texas I know for sure) have a willful concealment law. If you get a lenient judge the person can claim they were going to pay for it before walking out, and the judge will let them go. So you wait for them to leave before stopping them since at that point they have given up every oppurtunity to pay or abandon the merchandise.

So since the greeter hasn't seen you conceal anything and doesn't have a clue what you even have, much less what might be stolen or not. No they aren't going to take the chance. You will notice that a good many stores have employees walk large items out, such as tvs, furniture, etc. That way the greater won't be tempted to stop someone over a big value item. Those little inventory control tags, the magnetic ones that set off the door alarm. That is not a reason to stop someone. You could have one stuck on your shoe, or from an item from another store.

I wouldn't try it if a cop asks you to stop, since I'm not sure what the law says about them. However store greeters, cashiers, clerks, managers, etc feel free to keep on walking.

On the issue in the OP.

There is still a lot of inequality of educated positions in the SR world in large part due to the fact that much of the SR world has serious issues. Wars, rebellions, and general instability haunt much of Africa, Asia, South America, the middle east, and even sections of Europe and north America.

Which means even if a great mind does arise in, say, a Chinese warzone, they aren't going to get a cream of the crop type job there. They're going to have to get tucked away in some megacorps secure facility in some secure territory.

Also in areas with high cost of living the people tend to be driven to get higher educations and thus higher paying jobs. Actually a lot of people doing that tends to be why the cost of living is so high in the first place. Bringing in highly paid and educated people from other countries only exacerbates this.

I think the biggest problem comes down to this... economic entropy and all is nothing but a fancy way of saying... this only works until the resources run out. Assuming that in SR's timeframe most things are run off a renewable context (heavy use of renewable resources, highly efficient embedded devices, nanotech makes recycling a huge affair...). So I think we can write that off as a non-issue... especially w/ things expanding to the solar system.

As far as the other comments... in Battletech, the 'captive' merc groups were commonly a victim of something called 'the company store'. Basically they'd get hired, but then they'd have to keep paying their employers for all sorts of things until they owed more than they made. They then became captive unless they went rogue and became pirates. I'd suggest anyone interested also lookup the term 'company town' and 'company store'. Coal mines of old for example commonly owned the entire town their miners lived in.

For those who remember their economics... one of the biggest revolutions in industrial economics was when Ford started paying his employees a good wage. Suddenly his employees could and would buy the cars which made the industry explode and it grew his market, and marketshare, and it led to Ford absolutely dominating the automotive industry for years. Remember, another part of this is economies of scale, the bigger you are, the more efficiently you can theoretically do things. Also, in the corporate world... growth rates are important... you need to grow your revenues, grow your market, and increase market share. And what's important there, is you need to do that faster than your competitors or you'll never make the big leagues.

Frankly... going all drones leads eventually to nihilism as best I can tell.

on an bit of a side note the song 16 tons deals with the concept of the company store

"You load sixteen tons, what do ya get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store "

Which I am sure how more then a few wages laves feel

also if you wanted to look at another example look up sharecropper

The sharecropper was required to purchase seed, tools and fertilizer, as well as food and clothing, medical bills, renting a mule, renting a plow, where all done on credit system at the plantation store. When the harvest came, the sharecrop farmer would harvest the whole crop and sell his or her portion to the planter at a fixed price. By the time all the debts owed and proceeds made were tallied up the farmer was lucky to break even. This system was how the plantation survived after the civil war because many Black in the south where scared to leave the only place they had ever know.

And yet another example of this is the fur trades in the west when they got together for there once a year selling of their furs they would be in the same boat.

As we can see there is a rich history of screwing over people like this.

But it also greatly increases the number of Midwestern autoworkers a predatory Japanese company can lay off.