Comment by DanHulton
19 hours ago
> What the article misses is that money is saved for the company by moving the work to the customer / end user.
What? No, you're making the Doorman fallacy here, explicitly.
The company THINKS they're saving money by pushing the work to the customer/end user, but there's more to wait staff than just taking orders and payment - they provide the ability to smooth over any difficulties experienced during the meal, they signal status, etc, which would theoretically allow the restaurant to charge more than if they force customers to do all this work themselves.
Not to mention, if I had an experience this miserable at a restaurant, I wouldn't be back, which is a direct loss in revenue.
Restaurants aren't monopolies, except in really extreme cases.
I wouldn't go to a restaurant that used QR codes twice. But I can't go to a different supermarket as there's only one in a reasonable distance away, or use another train line, or avoid a government form.
Yes. If you create a straw man, you're very convincing. The real world isn't a static snapshot though. If people are unhappy enough with existing businesses, they will find alternatives or new businesses will see opportunities. Or you can move to a place with the type of businesses you prefer.
Someone giving a pretty basic idea a catchy name like the doorman fallacy doesn't mean that any replacement of humans with automation is a net loss for the company. Lots of automation can be very profitable, even if some positive things are lost in the bargain.
Incidentally, the vast, vast majority of residential buildings don't have doormen, and wouldn't be more profitable by the addition of one.
Isn't it named after the hypothetical scenario about a doorman? The doorman fallacy isn't even specifically aimed at what is more profitable, its just saying that there are softer roles that aren't well defined that aren't replicated when the role is automated away.
That fact doesn’t make it a fallacy. The fallacy part is the idea that the people choosing to automate that job are just stupid and ignorant, and don’t understand what the job really is. Which I’m sure is true for some automation, but doormen are a terrible example.