The Intellectual Investor – Value Investing by Vitaliy Katsenelson My Article in The Wall Street Journal – Ep 266
Oct 23, 2025
Vitaliy shares insights from his tour of an Amazon fulfillment center, highlighting how robots and algorithms orchestrate order fulfillment. He discusses the chaos theory of inventory management and the impact of gamification on worker performance. Reflecting on the human cost of automation, he raises concerns about job displacement and the potential for higher structural unemployment. Additionally, he emphasizes the need for future generations to develop uniquely human skills to thrive in an AI-driven world.
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Tour Of An Amazon Fulfillment Center
- Vitaliy toured an Amazon fulfillment center and expected impressive efficiency but found something more unsettling.
- He describes a vast, noisy facility with dark zones where robots move shelves and humans work only at the boundary.
Robots And The Dark Zone
- Thousands of orange robots ferry five-by-eight-foot shelves in a dark zone separated by a fence from human workers.
- Humans only interact at DMZ loading and picking stations, following pictorial instructions while cameras monitor their every move.
Humans As Software Executors
- Workers execute no judgment and simply follow detailed computer instructions all day.
- Vitaliy compares them to biological components running software with precision but without autonomy.
