What would you think if you pulled into your favorite gas station and learned that just two of the 10 pumps were operating on a self-serve basis, and the other eight required buzzing a station employee to come and fill your tank? Or if you stopped at a convenient ATM and learned that the machine operated for just two hours during the normal business day, and at other times, you were invited to step inside a branch and wait for service from a friendly customer service representative?
You might wonder why there’s a limitation on self-service, and perhaps who may be gaining from the change. And if you asked yourself the second question, you’d be on your way to understanding why the state of Oregon is considering a voter initiative that would limit the number of grocery self-serve checkout lines to only two per store.
Turning from the hypothetical to the real, remember when most U.S. Post Offices had vending machines in their lobbies where you could buy stamps, stamped envelopes, and other mailing supplies at any hour of the day or night? That was before 2006. Since then, most those machines have been eliminated, and you will find a pleasant Post Office employee ready to sell stamps and other postal services — during business hours. Of course, you can also buy stamps by mail, on the web, or at many other retail establishments. Still, postal workers largely don’t have to compete with machines.
Ever since Ned Ludd was said to have inspired a movement to destroy textile machines in 19th-century English factories that were cutting back on human labor, “Luddites” have attempted to protect jobs by limiting the use of labor-saving machines. But now, instead of taking up sledgehammers to crush the offending machinery, labor leaders turn to politicians for statutes and regulation.
When successful, both the original and modern Luddites do the same things: reduce economic growth and call attention to some of the short-term costs of technical progress.
Let’s get this straight. Although Oregon has long been the butt of jokes for preventing customers from pumping their own gas, the state has backed off of this policy slightly. There are no serious proposals to shut down self-serve pumps in other states. Nor are there serious proposals to limit the hours when ATMs can operate.
Why, then, the focus on self-checkout grocery lines?
It’s a one-suit-fits-all solution to a perceived problem. Like many proposals, if you scratch beneath the surface, you’ll find that it may be more about eliminating competition than easing the ordeal of change.
The Oregon effort is being justified using several arguments. One says that impersonal do-it-yourself checkout lines limit healthy human contact when buying groceries. Another is offered by organized labor leaders who, like the Luddites of old, simply want to protect jobs.
Here’s where it gets more interesting. Having recently passed one of the nation’s highest state minimum wage laws, Oregon politicians will have a hard time having it both ways. Higher minimum wages are infamous for destroying low-wage jobs by making it more expensive (or downright unprofitable) to employ low-wage workers like, for example, grocery checkout personnel. Now come calls to limit the automation that might help keep grocery stores in business in spite of having to pay higher wages. Meanwhile, online sellers with free delivery may see an unexpected uptick in sales.
Markets and human creativity have a way of jointly bringing forth changes that ease the burden of doing business while making workers more productive and, therefore, more valuable. This is why wages tend to rise when the dust settles from technological disruptions, and it’s happened more times than we can count. Makers of paper and envelopes surely and understandably lamented the birth of email — but do we regret the technology now?
Some such changes are disruptive to the point of backlash. Few people enjoy change, especially when their jobs are at stake. Even so, it’s better to allow markets, workers and employers to figure out ways to ease the friction of change than to let legislative “fixes” add another element of cost to the problem: anti-competitive, special-interest politics.
Bruce Yandle is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business and Behavioral Science.
