> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # What’s the point? - URL: https://www.smdp.com/whats-the-point-20041019/ - Published: 2004-10-19T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-25T01:09:44.000Z - Author: David Pisarra - Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import *The future of America means fewer employees* Seeing the future is not always an easy thing. It rarely is. Change is inevitable and those who refuse it are doomed to be passed over. This is one of the reasons why organizations fail. As individual humans we tend to fall into two categories — those who love change and those who hate it. There are more people by far who hate it than love it. This is why change happens slowly, and for those who wish to succeed it must be done in baby steps. Take for example the local Ralphs stores. Many of them have introduced the self-service line for checkouts. They have the scanner, and a computer automated voice — I call it Silicon Sally — to walk you through the process of beginning the transaction, swiping your purchases over the scanner and then paying for your goods. I like this at lunchtime when I am in a hurry and I’m buying my lunch of a prepack-aged sushi and a fruit smoothie. It is a convenience factor for me, and has become a quicker alternative to waiting in line as someone ahead of me attempts to pay for their month’s worth of shopping with coins. On the other hand, I am not one who will stand there and scan all my purchases for the week and bag them. This is too large of a project for me to do by myself. And frankly, I’m just that lazy. What difference does all this make? It is a vision of the future. My likes and dislikes are being recorded by Ralphs, Wal- Mart and every other major retailer. As technology becomes more a part of our lives, those likes and dislikes will be turned into new technologies. The fact that Ralphs is training its customers to become self-checkout savvy is an indication of where the company model is going. As Ralphs teaches more of us to rely on those machines to do our checkout, they will find easier and better ways to accommodate our laziness. The plan is to get us used to doing our own checkouts. This has the benefit to the retailer of lower labor costs, which creates bigger profits. If you look at the self-checkouts, there is one staff member who is monitoring the four bays for people to do their own work. What that means is that the retailer has now lowered his labor cost by 75 percent on four checkout stands. Three people are no longer needed to do the job. This is the march of technology and progress. As machines are more capable for handling the repetitive, mind numbing work of manufacturing, there is less need for human capital. We simply need fewer people to do twice as much work. This is no different than in 1794 when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and reduced the labor cost of cleaning cotton to the point where it became a profitable product. It was through technology that being a cotton farmer was once a losing proposition but then became a viable profession. It is because of the march of technology that the entertainment industry is going through a massive renovation in how movies are made. The unions are about to lose hundreds of jobs each year as technology increases and more of what used to be done by hand is done by computers. What used to take 10 matte painters a month to do can now be done in a week by one or two people with a computer. What used to require stunt men can now be created with a digital image. This means that new jobs are created, with different pay scales. Where the stunt man of old would have been paid by jumping off a building, on a per floor basis, the digital artist can now create a character that jumps off of a building. The difference is that that digital artist is paid on an annual basis, and could make $100,000 a year. From the studio’s perspective, with a digital artist, it gets the performance that it wants, but it doesn’t have to pay the same insurance rates, feed the stunt man and his crew, and pay for a location. It is safer and cheaper, even though the studio pays the artist more than the stunt man. We face it every day. Whenever you call an organization and get a voice mail system, that has put a receptionist out of work. When you check your bank balance online, you’ve put a teller out of work. Our society is fast becoming polarized between those who understand technology and can adapt to it, and those who can’t. The problem is, as technology gets more efficient, we need fewer people. We have created our own problem. We want life to be faster, better, cheaper, and the only way that can happen is with technology. We also want to have full employment, cheaper health care and lower taxes. These are all pipe dreams. Full employment will never happen. The best we can hope for is a low unemployment rate. Cheaper health care is possible only when we stop wanting to live forever, and lower taxes are never going to happen — they will just arrive in different forms. The “convenience fees” and the “processing fees” are the “shipping and handling” of the tax code and they are not likely to ever go away. People desperately want to believe this is a partisan issue. It is not. This is not the president’s fault, — as much as I wish it was — and it is not the Democrat’s problem. If you believe someone should be blamed, blame Silicon Valley. They are visionaries who are causing the changes. But the fact is this is the face of America in the 21st Century, and we must accept it. Only then can we do something about it. (David Pisarra is a business development lawyer in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He or (310) 664- 9969). *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 19, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/101904.pdf?ref=smdp.com)