Robots are a current invention of capitalism.Recently, hotel chains have experimented with robots to perform some types of hotel labor: deliver towels to customers, clean floors, and so on. Hotel workers are worried about the future of their jobs.

How will robots, if widely used, change our human interactions, however brief those interactions? Will I prefer being serviced by a robot? Will I feel slightly uneasy going to and from my hotel room passing, not house cleaners, but little R2-D2’s?

It’s true, I won’t have to tip a robot. Of course, how do I know hotel owners might not add robot service to my bill?

Also, because of fewer jobs, more homeless people may confront me and my conscience as I step from the hotel. More homeless camps? More soup kitchens? Perhaps my taxes will rise to support emergency room care because fewer Americans have health insurance.

In themselves robots are neither good nor bad. Machines, including computers, have freed us from much backbreaking labor and tedious calculations. They have increased both our physical and mental reach.

If robots bring benefits, that is all to the good—as long as the benefits are shared. If fewer human hours are needed to perform work, establish, perhaps, a 32 hour work week as opposed to a 40 hour one. Provide affordable job training for increasing tech jobs and other growing fields. Employed workers pay taxes.

Capitalism is great. Share it.