According to Amazon statements, they will not disappear, like the people in Thimbleweed Park. They will be assegned to other tasks.
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(unless the robots’ AI will be able to self-repair!)
And build new ones i.e. multiplying thus eliminating the need for any humans at all. Skynet…
In my (big) hometown we have only IKEA. And even there you have the choice to pay at a regular checkout.
It can be done with all kinds of shopping and especially grocery shopping (because these products are the most private ones). Next time you’re waiting in a queue at the checkout of a grocery market just have a look at the products of other customers. 
For example male singles tend to buy convenience foods (especially frozen pizza). I can tell you that you have a dog if you buy dog food. From the amount of the food I can infer the size of the dog (a big dog needs more food). If you buy diaper, it’s very likely that you have a child. These are useful informations for other companies. For example your indemnity insurance is interested to know if you have a dog and a child.
Another example: In Germany we have a “bonus program”/discount ticket system called Payback. (Yes, no joke, Payback.) If you participate they track and know all your purchases. In addition they offer a credit card. It would be easy for them to connect the information they have about your purchases with the limit of the credit card. Payback has lost several lawsuits in the past because they violate the privacy of the customers.
Same here.
Yes, of course. Amazon is fully trustworthy. They pay the highest loans … Oh. Wait.
To state it clear: Amazon gives a beep of their employers. At least in Germany they are monitored and get the lowest possible income. Whenever the employers are trying to strike, Amazon just hires new contract people.
Do you also already have the McDonald´s where you order your food at a touchscreen wall, pay by card, get a tracker and have your food brought to the table?
We’ll live forever… the solution is out there!
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You’d have to tell your insurance company if you have any dependents anyway – my point was I can’t see there being anything significant that insurance companies or banks or whatever can glean from your grocery shopping that would be enough to significantly affect something like getting a new bank account (to use your only example).
No - at least not in the three in the city.
BTW: someone else already pointed out that the part where someone uploads his mind to an AI is bascially the plot of Robocop 2?
That’s right. That’s only one of the many reasons why I’ve never bought (and never will) something on Amazon.
Amazon takes it all. It’s not like Ebay, where private sellers, many times with their own businesses and local stores, have the chance to sell their products with a standardized and general web-platform (instead of making theirs). No. That means that the concern about workers rights (intermediate workers, not manufacturers) goes in the hands of Amazon that doesn’t care for nothing. Also my girlfriend had a lot of problems with a product that was shipped four times and always wrong.
With every other web store (local store or Ebay) there’s usually a telephone number or an e-mail and you can contact directly the store manager. I have called tons of time and it was super useful.
Disintermediation isn’t usually bringing to a better world. We pay some cents less, but portions of society lose rights, while big companies get higher profits. That’s the trend of these years, unless new organizations like EU start to play their normative role in the globalized world (while nation-states are quitting their power, mostly consistent in laws and duties).
I’m scared of what Amazon is bringing in e-commerce but in the end I think it will end up in being like McDonalds.
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The purchased products tell them how many money you have. If Amazon detects that you are poor (because you are buying only cheap vegetables or haven’t payed instantly your bills), they will sell this information to all banks. And why should these banks now give you a (new) bank account or a credit? The risk for them would been too high.
(This is not an artificial example: In the past you haven’t got a new credit/loan in Germany if you lived in the wrong street.)
A loan or credit card is a bit different to a bank account. In the UK, at least, a bank wouldn’t refuse you a basic paying-in account just because you buy cheap vegetables.
As for records of late bill payments I find that understandable – I wouldn’t loan someone money if I didn’t think they would pay it back. Even if they didn’t use information from your grocery shopping, they would have to assess you somehow, and the data and outcome would likely be the same.
I had to pay for a credit check when I took out my first mobile contract because I didn’t have enough credit history, good or bad. So you can equally be penalised for not having visible records.
I wouldn’t sign up to anything that explicitly tracks your spending and uses it against you (like the Payback scheme you mention), but I’m not going ‘off grid’ just yet either 
It’s the same with Amazon. There are third party sellers (also sometimes having local stores) selling new and used goods, even competing with Amazon.
They have their own shop page and are rated by customers. Sometimes they use Amazon fulfilment centres or they handle shipping themselves.
e.g. need a used copy of The Curse of Monkey Island?
I don’t see a difference in using eBay with Buy Now (no auction) vs. Amazon (you can choose to not buy anything from Amazon directly).
It’s very disturbing. The Amazon Echo, the Google Home and similar products are the ones that scare me the most. A device that can listen to everything that is going inside my house? No thank you. And those “free” mobile games, half of them are harvesting data to sell:
Privacy is going down the toilet!
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As someone who lives in Seattle, I have not been in the store and don’t have a huge desire to. It’s a very small store, basically a convenience store, not a supermarket. They ID and track you via camera and facial recognition. It’s all very impressive and scary as hell, but there is very little we can do about it. Normal stores are now using facial recognition just to track where you go. If you use a credit card, no matter the store, you are being tracked. One of the advantages of using Apple Pay over a normal credit card or Google Pay is that the store gets no trackable information from you (and why stores hate it). For online purchases, I use privacy.com, which creates disposable credit card numbers so you can’t be tracked. I wish my bank just did this.
Or always use cash and wear a mask. It’s the future.
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Don’t buy there.
In Germany this is not allowed. We have some few stores where they present you personalized advertisements on terminals with face-recognition (without giving the data to others), but these things are heavily discussed and it’s likely they are not allowed.
Don’t do this. Paying with cash is still very common in Germany.
Nice! I was not aware of this service. I wonder how do they make money…
From their website:
Every time you spend using a Privacy card, the merchant or website pays a fee (called interchange) to Visa and the issuing bank. This fee is shared with us.
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‘we will never sell your personal data’
You must be naive if you still believe into such statements. Once there is enough value and interest …