Marshall Brain's Blog

Less workers means lower prices
 

Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the country. Most of their employees are in their target demographic (low paid). If they lay off a majority of their workers they will be able to cut prices, but there won't be anyone shopping in their stores because many of their customers are out of work.

Check the economy of '30s to see what happens next. The main cause of the Great Depression was reduced labor spending as a result of automation (called industrialization back then).
 

I'm not positive, but I think that when Walmart goes robotic, the workers will find employment elsewhere. I don't know where right now, but I'm sure they will...

Which leads one down the chain of thought- what if Walmart went *completely* robotic? The chain's decisions could be made by an expert-system/artificial intelligence (ES/AI), as directed by shareholders, who won't actually be there, but will be represented by their own ES/AI system that will vote and make decisions for them.

Currently a corporation is a legal entity, somewhat like a person. What about when the company is completely run by one computer (which controls the others)?

It leads down an interesting road, that is for certain.