...and somebody's gotta pay.
When the real bill arrives, you pay what you weigh.
[AJ Freeman *human byline art c/o yurazenvisuals*]
It’s Tuesday afternoon, and with my recent schedule shift I guess this is now the best time for another week On the Job! This week, we discuss the shape of society and its impact on the future…wait that was last week. Fine, every week.
Whatever…on any day I’m AJ Freeman and “This Was a Real Job.”
This Week in Work: The East Brunswick Chicken Emergency
I’ve spent a fair amount of digital ink in this space on crime as a social construct.
Just in case you frequent a different bookstore than folks like me, this is the phenomenon that ensures that a willful violation of minimum wage law is something to be settled out in suits while an employee taking 20 bucks out of the register often requires an immediate response from armed security forces.
“Crime” is typically not categorized by the harm done, but by the party (or concept) harmed.
That’s why it was a pleasant surprise out of New Jersey to see a law enforcement apparatus focus on something that could be called justice for once.
Last week, that state’s government ordered the immediate closure of over two dozen Boston Market restaurants amid a major wage theft scandal. The sanctions followed a nine-month investigation, which found that the company withheld over 600,000 USD in wages from 314 employees across 27 locations.
Now, 600k may not sound like much in the age of personal spacecraft and billion-dollar concert tours, but we’re talking about normal everyday people here, human beings who sell their time and effort for everyday subsistence…and yaknow just over $1,900 on average sounds like a pretty devastating amount for someone who who washes trays down at the chicken joint to lose.
As a result of the pen-and-paper robbery, the company was also assessed 1.6 million in liquidated damages to compensate the victims (and their lawyers) for breach of contract, along with over 500,000 in administration fees and penalties. The locations implicated in the wage theft scheme must also cease operations until all debts stemming from the case have been fully satisfied.
We are all very disappointed in Boston Market, and maybe it should just sit in the corner for a while and think about what it did and how it hurt others.
Now, of course this leads right back into an examination of crime as a social construct. Barring the unlikely scenario where failure to meet minimum wage and undercounted overtime hours were reported directly to the state tax bureau, illegal withholding of wages logically necessitates the filing of falsified documents in official proceedings, which I thought was a jail-crime.
Submit some falsified documents next time you file taxes and see what happens.
Still, the shock of “any actual punishment for the callous, amoral conduct of business owners” is the most unexpected element of this story—and it did some real doing to outdo “the fact that over two dozen Boston Market restaurants still exist.” It’s not the handcuffs, hose-down, and concrete cage that law enforcement would threaten a shoplifter with…but it’s anything at all, and that’s something.
Yes, there are the other employees at 27 Boston Market restaurants to consider (after all, a company that doesn’t pay out wages when the store is open surely won’t make it happen during any sort of shutdown) but…hey, how hard is it to find another fast-food job? Go to any restaurant with a drive-thru in 2023 and there’s a decent chance they’ll tuck an application in your bag.
…and so, in a world were some nobody can chat scat about violence against elected officials and get shot in their home by letter cops while some somebody can attempt to seize permanent power in a nuclear-armed state by invalidating official election results in a violent coup d’etat and walk free on the equivalent of like 17 bucks bond, it’s refreshing to see a more even application of law concepts.
Shame this is news.
Maybe Update Your Resume: Pilot
Scientists in Widely-Recognized Korea have debuted a new AI-powered flight system than may have wide reaching implications in commercial flight.
Dubbed PiBot because we live in a cartoon, the system combines a humanoid robot with an array of onboard cameras and an LLM (language learning model) programmed to read and understand operation manuals. It can also communicate with air traffic control (no word on simulated Pilot Voice, although it’s certainly in the range of current tech) as well as human co-pilots onboard.
Now, humanoid robots are stupid and unnecessary. I addressed that in the welcome email you got when you subscribed, so I’m fully aware that machines don’t have to be people-shaped in order to perform their intended duties. Like, an AI autopilot system doesn’t need a tailbone, let’s just grow up and get over that.
Instead, we can talk like adults about the parts of this that work.
Autopilot is nothing new…in fact, the technology and application thereof is so familiar and aircraft-specific that it has been called “autopilot” for decades. In fact, even today most of commercial flying as a whole is done by computers, with human supervisors essentially only needed to manage takeoffs, landings, and skillful descents into the Hudson River.
There are naturally some vocal concerns, which as someone with a mild fear of flying, I totally get. Most modern-day aircraft to leave the ground come back to it in one piece, but the fact remains that if something goes irreversibly wrong up there your chances of seeing your next birthday are about as high as your chances of winning the lottery while being struck by lightning.
I get it, we all saw what happened with Boeing’s 737 Max. Then happened again.
It’s almost an immaterial concern though, given that “pilot error” is the leading cause of airplane crashes in general, and “suicide by pilot” is a surprisingly common phrase in a time where the general public is more suicidal than ever.
Whatever the flaws of a robotic pilot system, it never wants to destroy itself and all of its passengers.
This is usually the part where I talk about how people who justify their existence earn a living by flying commercial aircraft will probably have to find something else to do in the next few years, but it seems that despite some artificial assistance, the profession is dying a death of natural causes.
With fewer new pilots than ever working to earn their wings (largely due to high barriers to entry, like affording lessons on PILOTING AN AIRCRAFT at one’s own expense), it’s only a matter of time until a lot of people have to choose between being flown to Disneyland by a robot pilot and staying home to support local businesses, engage with community, and develop a richer internal life.
Nobody wants that shit, so I fully expect autonomous commercial aircraft to take off sooner or later…besides, you’d think Americans of all people would be aware of the existence, effectiveness, and proven reliability of drone flights.
Hell, you could argue that having a few hundred autonomous airplanes crisscrossing the skies simultaneously is substantially safer than having our planetary surface overrun by millions of fast-moving self-driven tanks jockeying for position in city streets while I’m walkin’ ova here, buddy!
…but I’m not here to argue about that. Hell, I’m not here to argue about anything, you can argue among yourselves in the comments, this is my piece of the Internet. What I am here to say is that this new AI utility represents the latest attempt at bringing costless labor to a critical section of the workforce, and the investment numbers say that airlines around the world are on board with it.
Cannot Be Unseen: The Ugly
I’ve been in public-facing working class jobs my entire adult life, and so I’ve long known how troublesome working with people for any purpose can be.
That being typed, the 15 years since December 2019 have demonstrated a particularly distasteful side of the society we share…one rooted in personal benefit at any expense. I have seen The Ugly in its rawest, realest form.
The Ugly is that spirit that sucks down seven slices of pizza before most people at the party get one. The demons that possessed people we cordially interacted with for years to fight until first blood over TP. The corner of human nature that demanded, faced with a global threat, that we sacrifice the vulnerable in an effort to continue our mundane business as usual unencumbered by reality.
Most of us have had recent encounters with The Ugly, and in an era defined by shifting material circumstances, you can expect to become increasingly familiar with it. If you’re still wondering what it looks like, look no further than Wyoming, where feeble-minded controversy rages in the US state’s capital.
Cheyenne’s city hall has become the backdrop for an epic struggle to determine the fundamental rights of man…or a debate on passing a simple city ordinance, depending on who you ask. The new local initiatives, aimed at banning plastic bags, have sparked “outrage” according to local coverage, which I’d think would be aimed at the state’s $7.25/hr minimum wage but hey I’m not from Wyoming.
While it’s easy to get caught up in the sensationalism of slow-witted rubes sending threatening letters to local officials because they equate certain types of grocery shopping bags with personal freedom, it’s important not to lose sight of the bigger picture, no matter how hard it may be to look in the face.
See, here’s the most off-putting part about The Ugly that lurks within our fellow citizens of this world: it’s not about plastic bags, or masks, or toilet paper, or directed energy weapons, or any other super stupid shrivelbrain nonsense.
It’s about the necessity of collaboration to meaningfully address the challenges that face our civilization, and the adamant refusal of certain subsets of society to engage in any such thing. The Ugly flows forth from a baseline disconnect about what it means to be human, and I’m not sure there’s any civil resolution for it.
Regardless, there will have to be a resolution of some type. I’m not sure (or don’t really enjoy seriously considering) what that resolution looks like, but our shared future depends on it. What I do know for a concrete fact at this time is that I’ll never unsee The Ugly in the hideous hominids who revel in it…and I’ll never stop appreciating the beautiful human beings who do not.
Hope Spot: Such Things as a Free Lunch
The trusty boomerism “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” was dealt the biggest blow since corporate executives figured out how to turn lavish midday meals into publicly-subsidized business expenses in the wake of big news out of Massachusetts in recent days.
The state, taking advantage of added revenue delivered by a new 4 percent tax on an ample supply of local millionaires, has passed a budget that includes two free meals a day for all school-age children in the state.
That’s right, “Children in food debt” is no longer a thing in Massachusetts…and at least to me, that’s a good thing.
Ensuring children are at least not wasting away while stored in warehouses designed to permit all of their parents to work brings a society closer to what a developed modern nation should look like, if you ask me. How the hell are you supposed to learn anything when the first thought in your head is of hunger?
Adults skip their coffee and make a big show of feeling helpless and stupefied, how can we expect a child to absorb algebra on an empty stomach?
Still, I know not everybody comes here to read my egalitarian screeds so fuck it, let’s take this Hope Spot in a cynical direction: You would think in a nation that spends as much on its military as the next 10 countries combined, military readiness would be a priority. How ready can a country be to spread exploding democracy around the world if its base of soldiers is malnourished?
What, you didn’t know that American’s public schools are troop farms? Think about it…in my day they had the Presidential Fitness Test, which was a very subtle way of determining whether the current crop of middle and high schoolers could be mobilized against some other set of wealthy interests.
To be fair, although they’ve mostly done away with the Presidential Fitness Test, they do have today’s schoolchildren regularly undergo live combat exercises to familiarize them with the rigors of the battlefield…as an army marches on its stomach, feeding schoolchildren today helps ensure a stronger fighting force tomorrow. Even as an investment in national security, free lunches make sense.
Sure, my beliefs that all people should get to eat and live indoors by default are radical and dangerous—I realize this, many people have told me so—but the idea that it is both ludicrous and obscene that children in one of the richest regions of Planet Earth regularly go hungry is beginning to gain some official traction…and that’s reason enough to hold out hope, at least for the week.