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Priscilla's avatar

This article has opened my eyes to the value of call centres. I’ll never despise being answered by someone in a call centre again, even if said call centre is in India or the Philippines rather than here in the UK. I already try to boycott self-checkouts, try to not transact solely online (but must do so less and go to things like farmers’ markets more) and nearly always insist on dealing with a person. But these actions don’t necessarily get through to the people who have made the decision to replace their staff with machines, the top brass. Still, at least it’s doing something and sending some sort of message. As a lowly staff member in my local M&S food store told me last year when I complained about there being no human manned checkouts and about the proliferation of self-checkouts, only two of which had the facility to pay with cash, ‘You should have rebelled against this trend long ago!’ Effectively she was telling me I was too late. We must continue to resist while we can though.

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Johan's avatar

Catherine Austin Fitts also talks about the importance of people needing to be and feel productive and UBI is the absolute antithesis of productivity.

Having just returned from Cairo - what I consider to be a sort of bastion of The Real World - I saw, especially at the airport, how all people have the opportunity to be doing something even though the Western world won’t consider it strictly “productive”. Prior to 2020 I would’ve felt a vague irritation at the mess and apparent pointless bureaucracy.

Many moons ago, I arrived in London from far away on a working-holiday visa and can still remember the buzz of menial jobs, house shares and all manner of interesting experiences. I am living a blessed life because of that.

A question though: who exactly will be calling these AI supported call centres in future and for what purpose? There will be far less people around who won’t be travelling, buying machines with a guarantee or be allowed to complain about anything…

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