And another incentive for businesses to relocate.

San Francisco is looking to tax robots because they are taking rote jobs that humans do.  They’re not the first to consider such a thing, but it’s still foolish.  Never mind, especially with minimum wage laws pricing the unskilled and/or poorly educated out of work, that robots do the jobs more cheaply.  Robots are more reliable, too, as Security guard Eric Leon noted about a security robot:

He doesn’t complain.  He’s quiet.  No lunch break.  He’s starting exactly at 10.

The robot also doesn’t take sick leave or parental leave or any of the other labor froo-froo that San Francisco has mandated, regardless of what an employer and employee might work out between themselves without Know Betters’ dubious help.

If a business is going to be prevented from lowering its cost of doing business, it has little incentive to stay put.  And human consumers, facing artificially elevated prices, aren’t helped a whit.