California Orders Digging with Spoons
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So California orders digging with spoons. What is Markowski talking about? Okay, a little backstory here. I wrote a column about this. I’ve mentioned this before on the podcast and it’s a Milton Friedman story from the 1960s when he was visiting China. He was visiting China. He was watching, again, this is under Mao Tse -Tung, watching a big government works project being done.
And for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why in the world had all of these people digging with shovels. I don’t know whether they’re building a canal, whatever it may be. And he asked his little Chinese government minder why in the world they weren’t using tractors and, you know, heavy earth moving equipment and all that good stuff, bulldozers. And his little Chinese minder said, well, this is not really a government works project. This is actually a jobs program.
Milton Friedman thought to himself, well then hell, why don’t you take the shovels away? Why don’t you have them dig with spoons? Well, you know, we watch idiocy, the same type of idiocy happen here in this country, most certainly in blue states like California. I saw this, this is basically the equivalent of digging with spoons.
Democrats in Sacramento are trying to get rid of self -checkout lines. Basically, what they’re doing right now, they passed a bill to limit self -checkout at grocery stores and other pharmacies and whatnot. The stores now have to task, obviously you go into and you have self -checkout, you have one employee there that’s looking over several,
kiosks where people are doing self checkout to help. This legislation is going to require force companies to have one employee. They can’t do anything else. They are solely tasked. They’re relieved of all other duties except to monitor two self -service stations. So basically your store could be empty. Your store could be empty at a certain.
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point in time. But that person you have to still has to stand there and monitor the self checkout stations. You can’t have them do a cleanup on aisle four. It’s against the rules. If a store has six self checkout stations, three employees would be required to monitor them, even if there’s no customers. They also have to limit self checkout to purchases of 15 or fewer items. What else?
The bill requires stores to complete a worker and customer impact assessment before adopting robotics, sensors, artificial intelligence, electronic monitoring, and effectively any technology designed to increase worker productivity or customer convenience. These assessments would have to examine a technology’s potential negative effects on employees, consumers, or the public.
Retailers would have to identify the number of employees whose duties would be affected by the technology, plus the hours and jobs that might be eliminated.
Stores would also have to analyze access barriers for certain populations of consumers, including seniors, the disabled, the unbanked. Those without access to appropriate technology, youth, or other vulnerable populations. Retailers might have to also document how cameras placed to catch shoplifters affect minorities. Again.
What the hell business is it of the state of California to get involved in a private business this way? This again, this is dictator type powers. Why can’t a company decide? And if a company implements policies that don’t work, guess what? That company is either going to have to correct those policies or they’re going to get
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eliminated. That’s how the world works.
How the hell do these politicians, who the hell do they think they are? The type of power that these people wield.
I mean, I’m sorry, this is evil. Where you feel you have the right to tell a business how they should operate.
how they should go ahead and try to make profits, try to make, in essence, a living.
But again, like I said, we continue to move further and further in the direction far left, mouth, say tongue. Again, I’m gonna be honest with you. I don’t know who would want to do business in the state of California. You wanna explain that to me? I just don’t get it. Watchdog on wallstreet .com.
