Human replacement – a prelude

The McDonald’s Corporation, the most famous fast-food company in the world, will lay off large numbers of staff. And they will do it during Holy Week, the most ironic time for such layoffs aside from Christmastide. But in addition to that, they are testing the total replacement of human beings by machines that will even handle a customer’s interaction with the company’s outlet. That presages the total replacement of human beings in the workforce – a thing necessary only to an elite that wants the planet to themselves.

The McDonald’s story

Breitbart came out yesterday with the story of what’s happening at McDonald’s. They are closing all their offices in the U.S.A. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow (April 3-5), they will ask American and some international staff to work from home.

Why those three days, and why take that step? Because they will announce layoffs – how many, they won’t say.

We want to ensure the comfort and confidentiality of our people during the notification period.

Translation: to avoid having a boss summon an employee to his office, in front of other staff, and quietly tell that employee that his services are no longer required and he ought to make arrangements to pack up his personal belongings and clean out his desk (or office), they would rather send the layoff notice in email, and invite the employee to make remote arrangements to pack up his “stuff” and ship it to him, preferably over the weekend. This might seem to be a kinder, gentler way of giving someone the ax. In fact it is an impersonal, even cowardly, way of handling severance. No doubt someone in Human Resources (i.e. Personnel) is already preparing to sell these employees the whole life insurance, valued at their annual salary, and health insurance packages incident to severance, as per the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.

But all that is only part of the story – and the other part should alarm everyone.

Human replacement – a test case

In December of 2022, McDonald’s launched its first-ever fully automatic restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas. From order placement to order pickup, a customer has no human contact whatsoever.

This Twitter account holder than asked sardonically,

Would you rather have robots or employees serve you your food??

One other user answered, “McHellNaw!” But others realized this grim truth: that human beings would lose their jobs to machines. Still another user suggested this:

Believe it or not, this restaurant is in the hands of a franchise operator, not the company. The operator, Keith Vanecek, said in an interview with Newsweek:

The technology in this restaurant not only allows us to serve our customers in new, innovative ways, it gives our restaurant team the ability to concentrate more on order speed and accuracy, which makes the experience more enjoyable for everyone.

And what did the company say?

When you step inside the test restaurant concept, you’ll notice it’s considerably smaller than a traditional McDonald’s restaurant in the U.S. Why? The features—inside and outside—are geared toward customers who are planning to dine at home or on the go.

A warning we should heed

Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone explored this concept in its fifth season: “The Brain Center at Whipples,” S05E33. Mr. Wallace V. Whipple decides to automate his factory fully, to realize the greatest possible output. All his employees lose their jobs. The factory workers lose them first, then the shop foreman, then the plant manager. Too late, Whipple realizes that he is just as expendable – and the Board of Directors “expends” him, replacing him with a humaniform robot. (In fact it’s Robby the Robot of Forbidden Planet fame.)

Imagine, if you will, Keith Vanecek facing just such an ignominious replacement. Then imagine that happening to the CEO of McDonald’s.

Elon Musk understands the problem. He co-founded OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT. Now he’s afraid of it – so afraid he joined many others calling for a moratorium on AI development. As he should be – because ChatGPT, by some accounts, can already write essays indistinguishable from a human work product. (The Federal Trade Commission is worried enough to investigate OpenAI and demand that Chat GPT shut down.)

Only the World Economic Forum and its head, Klaus Schwab, can benefit from this. The fully automatic workplace at last makes sense of certain programs that produce depopulation. This includes promotion of non-procreative “alternative lifestyles,” and the SARS-CoV-2 vaccination programs that have increased all-cause morbidity and mortality in every country that has used them. If you want the planet to yourself, that’s what you do.