The other question you need to ask in order to understand this future scenerio:. Shipping costs will significantly decrease, what will consumers and shareholders spend the extra money on?
Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
Imagine telling a farmer in 1850s America, when 64% of America farmed, that in 2016 only 2% of people would be farming! Imagine the distopian horror (1)! If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.
Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors, leading to the enormous improvement in production, income and standard of living since then. If 64% of people still farmed, or 2% farmed and 62% were on UBI - who would have had the time or incentive to create computers, software, advances in healthcare, etc?
I'm not claiming the transition is easy for someone who's laid off - it can be an extremely tough process, but it's absolutely necessary for the improvement of humanity.
Don't kid yourself. New jobs get created, but fewer. And many of those who lose their jobs don't get retrained—for a myriad of reasons—and end up leaving the workforce entirely. Many just end up on long term disability because it's the only path they have.
Jobs are disappearing. They aren't "coming back" in greater numbers. And the new jobs, by and large, aren't for the previous workforce.
We already live in a world where many jobs are unnecessary. A large portion of government jobs are, essentially, welfare jobs. One of the systematic reasons of for the expansion of government is "job creation". Politicians will create jobs, but those jobs add nothing to society. We've got people pretending to work a job to collect a paycheck. It's welfare.
The industrial revolution replaced muscle with machine, but brainpower was still a required input. There was a clear shift: from doing the work to using a machine to do the same work, but faster. There was enough demand that things didn't collapse.
The current shift is replacing both muscle and brainpower. Outside of creative jobs, what is left for the human to do? Make the brain smarter? We are already entering into a time where the machine makes itself smarter without the advent of the human.
New jobs will be created, sure. But those jobs will not be for the 1.8 million truck drivers. Instead the government will likely end up soaking it up through one program or another. Tens of thousands will end up in welfare jobs. Hundreds of thousands will end up on long term disability. The numbers aren't small.
UBI is an inevitability. You've got some 40 million people on food stamps, about 9 million on disability. Millions more working pointless government jobs like directing people from one TSA employee to another. At what point to we recognize that the future does not look like the past?
Farming and other types of automation that put people out of work in the past used technology to amplify and/or replace physical labor. Now we are learning how to use the general purpose computer to replace mental labor. These are different types of automation that will have fundamentally different effects on society. While we have many examples of new technology replacing physical labor, automation of mental labor is new. I suggest watching CGP Grey's explanation[1] of why "this time is different."
> went into other endeavors
We are automating away entire classes of jobs, so this will require retraining. How, exactly, do you propose to send half[2] of the workforce to college for retraining in a highly technical field? Assuming this was even possible and assuming there will be jobs for all of these new programmers/etc, is this retraining cheaper than UBI or other plans? It is relatively easy for a farmer to learn another trade that requires primarily physical work. Retraining drivers for unautomatable technical work is a lot harder and more expensive.
[2] Driving is the largest category of jobs. The next handful of job types (e.g. retail sales, various clerical work, customer service/support) are also being automated away. Together is very roughly half of all jobs.
> If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.
Perhaps we'd be in a better place today. We can't know for sure, without first experimenting.
Wealth inequality is a real and growing problem, and I believe is a much bigger impediment to human progress than a basic income would be.
What about the millions of incredibly intelligent minds who could be earning the big bucks on Wall Street, but instead are toiling away 7 days a week in research labs at universities, surviving only off the small budget they're allocated? Are they working to survive, or are they surviving just to work?
What about the millions who would love to further their education, but instead have to work two jobs to support a family?
Personally, I come from a lower income background and would never have had the opportunity to go to university if it wasn't for the generous social support my country has.
Humans are inherently enterprising creatures. Yes, a basic income will enable some to sit around and do nothing. But those people have already found ways to do that, and why should we stop them? The people who truly want to change the world are not going to be impeded by some cash handed to them.
Shockingly enough, a UBI has been a libertarian concept for nearly half a century. If UBI had some reasonable limitations, like say 10% of the GDP divided evenly amoungst those who apply, it would provide a hard bottom to poverty while leaving huge incentives to find gainful employment.
I'm not saying it wouldn't quickly turn into 51% of the people voting themselves 100% of the money (which would quickly become worth nothing), but it isn't the worst idea out there.
The idea of decreased shipping costs might not pan out at all (at least at first).
First, the initial (expensive) investment in the self-driving trucks will offset the wage gains from not hiring truckers ----, so shipping costs will remain where they are mostly for the first few years at least until this is balanced.
Second, the "increased spending"/"creation of new jobs" effect might only be relevant if the shipping costs are a significant part of the final price of a product. From what I've seen, it's at most 10% (at most), and less for the average item. That's why we can have $1 stuff that comes all the way from China.
But, let's accept that this (reduced retail prices) will happen, there are other things I don't see working with this idea:
>Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
Which, more likely than not, wont involve people with trucking skills.
And most likely wont involve domestic labor either, most things are made abroad (China, etc) anyway.
>It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
That's because your whole job sector hasn't been deprecated when you're forty (or approaching)...
>Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors
That was in a time those other endeavours had a huge boom and needed tons of hands (and even so, millions of ex-farmers ended up getting the short stick).
We don't have an industrial revolution expanding the need for workers now, we have a software/automation revolution slowly decreasing workers demands sector by sector.
In fact we haven't had a need for more workers for quite a few decades -- what we did is inflate, as much as we can, the services sector to compensate for it instead. But there's only so many service type jobs really viable, plus automation also begins to eat into them, and with the squeezed middle classes pinching pennies its even bleaker for them (being non essential et al), even if decreased shipping costs turn out to mean a (huge and unrealistic) 10% more income.
I think what you are missing is the fact that this time the changes will take place much faster. With farming, the changes were slower and generational.(The children of farmers didn't do farming). And still these changes had colossal impact on societies(and a lot of blood was spilled).
> If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.
We might even be in a better place than we are today. There would be even more entrepreneurship and labor would have more bargaining power when entering new industries.
Nothing about UBI prevents there from being new opportunities created. If anything, it provides for more potential for those opportunities by encouraging people to leave shitty low-productivity jobs to start their own thing or to search for a higher productivity job.
Retraining a farmer's kid to be a riveter on a bridge construction project in the late C18/early C20 is a whole lot more feasible than retraining a 40yo professional driver for the jobs opened up by their obsolescence, such as rocket surgery and brain engineering.
Were the people who created computers and advances in healthcare and those other innovations really driven by the need to have food on the table? Is that, and not either the seek of knowledge or the desire to get rich, really the engine of these advancements?
> Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
> It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
This is incredibly fanciful look at the future. The population cannot grow AND lose jobs to machines. Disruption is having its own variant of Moore's Law, in that, we are disrupting more industries at a faster rate.
UBI, or some form of which, will not only be necessary, but likely inevitable. The improvement of humanity you speak of is in fact a humanity that will survive on creativity, not labour. Labour is done.
Additionally, capitalism doesn't care about "expanded industries" any more than Moore's Law cares about engineers who made their career in the 1980s.
The transition is necessary, and it will be hard, and it won't happen without social security. It's a complete fantasy to see it happening any other way.
> If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.
that's simplistic - people generally don't want to be unemployed. if they get enough money to (barely) scrap by it takes a lot of weight off their shoulders, because they know they wont starve without their jobs. but having a job that fulfills you and income that enables you to save money is a big part of being happy. the (healthy) unemployed i know are mostly young people and every single one of them is constantly applying for jobs, even though they're able to pay rent, food and the occasional treat on unemployment benefits.
American Population in 1850: 23 million.
American Population today: 319 million.
American Farmers in 1850: 14.72 million.
American Farmers today: 6.38 million.
And this is with several major wars in between.
Basically we've gotten just better than twice as efficient in farming labor in 160 years (this is measured in man-hours worked). The value of that labor is what has changed. Farming itself is more efficient and we can feed 10 times as many people via refrigeration and shipping.
The difference though is that the changes are happening at a rapid pace. It used to happen across generations so people could adapt but now things happen at a pace that you cannot guarantee what you started at will still be needed in 5-10 years time.
I'm skeptical about the timelines of these reports. Certainly we'll never see all 1.8 million drivers lose their jobs overnight. These guys are predicting auto-truck apocalypse in 5-10 years, and we still don't have a single commercial system on the road that's capable of even lightening the load on a driver, much less replacing him. I think truck automation will go in 2 ways at the same time, and we can watch the progress of each:
Systems to ease the strain on independent drivers. Ones that can cruise on the highway without supervision indefinitely, but need help with city streets, parking, maintenance, loading and unloading, keeping manifests, dealing with whatever company is loading and unloading the cargo, etc. They may need somewhat fewer of this class of driver, since the trucks will be able to run more continuously and there will be less need for second drivers and probably fewer trucks. Motels and truck stops will hurt some when the truckers can sleep while the truck drives instead of stopping. I think we're at least a decade away from this existing at all, much less being common.
Full automation for tightly integrated logistics chains. Maybe the Wal-Marts, Amazons, Fedexes, and other huge companies that own the entire logistics chain will be able to figure out how to use fully automated trucks, that can drive from one company facility to another, complete with parking and maneuvering, driving local streets, and letting other company systems handle the logistics of loading and unloading and keeping track of what items are where. I bet at least one of them will start experimenting with something like this in the next 5-10 years, but probably at least 20 years before it works well enough for them to cut down on the number of drivers they employ.
There will be job losses, but it will be slow and gradual. There should hopefully be plenty of time for the economy to adapt, and hopefully either create new jobs for all of these people to do, or move towards something like UBI. I think we'll have to have a massive cultural shift before anything like UBI would be considered or even possibly make sense.
Yeah, I've been thinking lately as well, why are we doing that? I mean as a society? (I recall a phrase said by someone, that we are consciously building a future nobody wants to live in.) What exactly are we getting from that?
Ultra-rich, namely car companies owners and shareholders, will become even more rich. (Why are they doing it, by the way, don't they have enough super-cars, mansions, yachts already?)
What am I getting from it? Basic goods will become 7% cheaper? Who needs that? I am happy with current prices.
And then dozens if not hundreds of millions people worldwide will lose their jobs and even more the very means for their existence. What will be the impact on their families, communities?
I may be terribly wrong but it seems like yet another round of value extraction by a small cohort of ultra-rich from general society.
There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration, scientific projects, disease fighting, urban development, planetary computer network, and so on.
And there are "comfort gimmicks" like refined sugar (and sugary drinks), tobacco, toasters, etc. that produce effects from which people living consciously and healthy would want to get rid of. And that are propelled only by "economic factors". Which are a paperclip maximizer.
The only people who really benefit from innovation are entrepreneurs, investors and shareholders. The majority of the population are actually worse off because of innovation (at least this is the case right now - The value is just not trickling down).
The worst part of this will come when even highly educated people start losing their jobs to machines... We will have a situation where entrepreneurs, investors and company shareholders will earn massive incomes while many of the world's smartest people (who fell through the cracks of the system) will struggle to make ends meet - I think many engineers already feel that this starting to happen now.
Money used to go mostly to employees, but as employees become less valuable in the workplace, it will go mostly to shareholders (owners of capital). This is why tax on income is making increasingly less sense - We need a tax on capital holdings instead.
When you consider the massive role that luck plays in becoming a successful entrepreneur, it does bring into question the fairness of the entire system.
The balance is shifting; we are moving from an economic system which not so long ago seemed 'mostly fair' to one which is becoming 'mostly unfair'. Maybe something like Universal Basic Income would be a good first step.
What we have now is no longer capitalism, it's increasingly an Oligopoly.
>1.8 million American truck drivers ... well-paying working-class jobs
Those two items right there are exactly why they are being automated (in addition to additional efficiencies and cost reductions). If companies can eliminate those costs, they will if there's a way to do so. That is the unfortunate reality.
What to do about the aftermath that affects actual people and families as pay is reduced or eventually eliminated over the next 10-25 years? Well, that's the new problem. Not one that the companies that employ truck drivers will be looking to solve, but the one everyone else has to cope with in some capacity -- whether directly affected by the reduced jobs, or indirectly affected by those now looking for work in their community.
This is a perfectly reasonable intuition – that there will be large net loss of jobs as trucks are automated – but we should not mistake the intuition for evidence. There is a long history of believing that massive job losses are imminent due to technological advance.
The problem with mistaking this fear for a fact is that it often leads to an incorrect intervention. (I call this a WMD argument.)
We’d be much better served with much greater caution about what is actually, observably, measurably true. In this case, we’d have to discover the yet-unfound correlation between technical advance and employment rate.
It isn't that simple. The robots will never be a drop-in replacement for all the various tasks that a "driver" actually does. Driving, negotiating the vehicle down the road, isn't the entire job.
(1) People will still be needed for inspections and maintenance, however that will be done. Much of that is now covered by drivers (the little things) and cannot be automated.
(2) Insurance companies may demand that a human, a certified driver, at least ride in the truck as backup/security and to deal with awkward situations.
(3) Boarder crossings will still need humans.
(4) Hazmat loads will still need humans on board for safety reasons.
(5) Winter driving. I have yet to see any autodrive system capable of attaching chains or deicing a clogged brake line.
(6) Automation will open up new areas for drivers. By driving shipping costs down, more trucks may hit the road, requiring more people for the jobs listed above.
It may be a wash. The concept that every driver can/will be replaced by an autodrive bot is naive.
Vox writers should be more worried than drivers. Driving a car, dealing with other users on the road, making regulators happy are all difficult problems.
Meanwhile, I have already seen Reddit bots which summarise submissions. How far off are from one that will rehash 2-3 articles and toss in an infographic (created elsewhere)?
What I don't get is, if we're so close to this becoming a reality, why isn't the lower hanging fruit of train/locomotive automation already here?
That seems to be an order of magnitude simpler issue to solve, and yet we don't seem to be there yet. Granted, forms of automation have penetrated that industry - deadmans switches, automated signalling and such. But there's still a human at the helm of every freight loco.
Smaller scale urban light rail deployments seem to have got close to full automation, presumably due to being able to embed all the necessary elements into the end-to-end installation of the system (signalling, stock, cameras/sensors etc).
How can the kind of full automation that would put truck drivers out of work, arrive before the kind that would put train drivers out of work?
Well, if we talk about trains ... the future is already here. Humans where deemed unworthy to drive high speed trains so ETCS[1] takes over almost everything. The drivers are in cabin for the same reasons we still have pilots in airplanes - just in case.
I don't know about the US, but here in Australia, truck driving is an "old man's job". The average age of a truck driver here is 47, apparently. Automated trucks probably won't get here in time to dovetail with the natural retirement of these drivers...
Disclaimer: In 1997 I was cut off by a semi (in the middle of trying to pass him), who did NOT signal, on a 2 lane road (I-5 in California, speed limit was 85 or so), and ended up entering the ditch and rolling over 8 times and shattered my hand (it's fine now, but it took a while). The driver never stopped. I was lucky to walk away from that one.
Sorry, truckers, but your job can eat a bag of dicks.
Lest we forget, the only reason trucking is so huge is because train cargo wasn't maintained (conspiracists say the oil industry lobbied for trucking).
And they are cut off and break tested by 4 wheelers all the time. Lets crush all cars and make every person ride the bus?
Btw, cargo trains are very cute for big loads between huge industrial hubs. Which means according to your theory that most people and their job in every state can go fuck themselves. Also I suspect you'll be fine with your Amazon Prime taking 1-2 weeks to reach your door.
It's scary and understandable at the same time especially when you multiple the number of drivers with their salary, then you get a yearly cost of 72.000.000.000$
Is the answer an "Uber for robots"? Rather than an organisation owning all the robots, individuals could own a robot and rent it out though an online marketplace. It would be a continuation of the "owner/driver" model, without the need to actually be a driver.
Maybe the problem is that if it's a lucrative opportunity the group running the marketplace will want to keep all the profits for themselves, by owning the robots and locking out small players?
At scale, the value truckers provide is being a driver, not offer there trucks. Yes, there will be companies that provide logistics as a service, but it's hard to imagine a business based on a single robot.
At some point everyone gets phased out. The question we should be asking, is how do we prepare to transition people from one job to the next more quickly. Coal miners are a perfect example. They're largely stuck. They haven't the money to send their kids to school to do something else, nor do they have the $$ to do it themselves (and likely not the time either). We need to rethink (as a planet), how we deal with churn.
Don't see it happening anytime soon. Self driving cars directly create convenience for the end user, and the public may be willing to accept a few crashes here and there in exchange for that convenience.
The first time an unmanned Fedex truck kills a family of 6 in a minivan people will decided they would rather pay a few cents more to have trucks driven by humans.
Robots might destroy jobs, but also create new jobs for us.
It's like innovative products - which might make some products obsolete but also makes space for more innovation and other products that would've not existed otherwise. :)
Entropy and diminishing returns from readily accessible energy sources will kick in at some point. My guess is it'll happen before the robots are more adaptable to changing road conditions than humans.
It's already happened. Those AIs are called compilers. Compilers get more powerful every year. If you took them away, there aren't enough people on the planet to do the same job with assemblers.
[+] [-] tuna-piano|9 years ago|reply
Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
Imagine telling a farmer in 1850s America, when 64% of America farmed, that in 2016 only 2% of people would be farming! Imagine the distopian horror (1)! If we had established UBI then, and people could get paid to sit around, imagine the state we'd be in today.
Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors, leading to the enormous improvement in production, income and standard of living since then. If 64% of people still farmed, or 2% farmed and 62% were on UBI - who would have had the time or incentive to create computers, software, advances in healthcare, etc?
I'm not claiming the transition is easy for someone who's laid off - it can be an extremely tough process, but it's absolutely necessary for the improvement of humanity.
(1) http://www.nytimes.com/1988/07/20/us/farm-population-lowest-...
[+] [-] themagician|9 years ago|reply
Jobs are disappearing. They aren't "coming back" in greater numbers. And the new jobs, by and large, aren't for the previous workforce.
We already live in a world where many jobs are unnecessary. A large portion of government jobs are, essentially, welfare jobs. One of the systematic reasons of for the expansion of government is "job creation". Politicians will create jobs, but those jobs add nothing to society. We've got people pretending to work a job to collect a paycheck. It's welfare.
The industrial revolution replaced muscle with machine, but brainpower was still a required input. There was a clear shift: from doing the work to using a machine to do the same work, but faster. There was enough demand that things didn't collapse.
The current shift is replacing both muscle and brainpower. Outside of creative jobs, what is left for the human to do? Make the brain smarter? We are already entering into a time where the machine makes itself smarter without the advent of the human.
New jobs will be created, sure. But those jobs will not be for the 1.8 million truck drivers. Instead the government will likely end up soaking it up through one program or another. Tens of thousands will end up in welfare jobs. Hundreds of thousands will end up on long term disability. The numbers aren't small.
UBI is an inevitability. You've got some 40 million people on food stamps, about 9 million on disability. Millions more working pointless government jobs like directing people from one TSA employee to another. At what point to we recognize that the future does not look like the past?
[+] [-] pdkl95|9 years ago|reply
> went into other endeavors
We are automating away entire classes of jobs, so this will require retraining. How, exactly, do you propose to send half[2] of the workforce to college for retraining in a highly technical field? Assuming this was even possible and assuming there will be jobs for all of these new programmers/etc, is this retraining cheaper than UBI or other plans? It is relatively easy for a farmer to learn another trade that requires primarily physical work. Retraining drivers for unautomatable technical work is a lot harder and more expensive.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
[2] Driving is the largest category of jobs. The next handful of job types (e.g. retail sales, various clerical work, customer service/support) are also being automated away. Together is very roughly half of all jobs.
TL;DR - just watch [1]
[+] [-] jordwest|9 years ago|reply
Perhaps we'd be in a better place today. We can't know for sure, without first experimenting.
Wealth inequality is a real and growing problem, and I believe is a much bigger impediment to human progress than a basic income would be.
What about the millions of incredibly intelligent minds who could be earning the big bucks on Wall Street, but instead are toiling away 7 days a week in research labs at universities, surviving only off the small budget they're allocated? Are they working to survive, or are they surviving just to work?
What about the millions who would love to further their education, but instead have to work two jobs to support a family?
Personally, I come from a lower income background and would never have had the opportunity to go to university if it wasn't for the generous social support my country has.
Humans are inherently enterprising creatures. Yes, a basic income will enable some to sit around and do nothing. But those people have already found ways to do that, and why should we stop them? The people who truly want to change the world are not going to be impeded by some cash handed to them.
[+] [-] merpnderp|9 years ago|reply
I'm not saying it wouldn't quickly turn into 51% of the people voting themselves 100% of the money (which would quickly become worth nothing), but it isn't the worst idea out there.
[+] [-] coldtea|9 years ago|reply
First, the initial (expensive) investment in the self-driving trucks will offset the wage gains from not hiring truckers ----, so shipping costs will remain where they are mostly for the first few years at least until this is balanced.
Second, the "increased spending"/"creation of new jobs" effect might only be relevant if the shipping costs are a significant part of the final price of a product. From what I've seen, it's at most 10% (at most), and less for the average item. That's why we can have $1 stuff that comes all the way from China.
But, let's accept that this (reduced retail prices) will happen, there are other things I don't see working with this idea:
>Who knows what they will spend the extra money on, could be healthcare, boats, TVs, whatever. But new jobs will be created in these expanded industries.
Which, more likely than not, wont involve people with trucking skills.
And most likely wont involve domestic labor either, most things are made abroad (China, etc) anyway.
>It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
That's because your whole job sector hasn't been deprecated when you're forty (or approaching)...
>Instead of UBI, people were forced to leave farming and went into other endeavors
That was in a time those other endeavours had a huge boom and needed tons of hands (and even so, millions of ex-farmers ended up getting the short stick).
We don't have an industrial revolution expanding the need for workers now, we have a software/automation revolution slowly decreasing workers demands sector by sector.
In fact we haven't had a need for more workers for quite a few decades -- what we did is inflate, as much as we can, the services sector to compensate for it instead. But there's only so many service type jobs really viable, plus automation also begins to eat into them, and with the squeezed middle classes pinching pennies its even bleaker for them (being non essential et al), even if decreased shipping costs turn out to mean a (huge and unrealistic) 10% more income.
[+] [-] papapra|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morgante|9 years ago|reply
We might even be in a better place than we are today. There would be even more entrepreneurship and labor would have more bargaining power when entering new industries.
Nothing about UBI prevents there from being new opportunities created. If anything, it provides for more potential for those opportunities by encouraging people to leave shitty low-productivity jobs to start their own thing or to search for a higher productivity job.
[+] [-] manicdee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icebraining|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomkin|9 years ago|reply
> It really, really bothers me the constant "x technology will drive x people out of work, therefore we need Universal Basic Income, so they won't starve!"
This is incredibly fanciful look at the future. The population cannot grow AND lose jobs to machines. Disruption is having its own variant of Moore's Law, in that, we are disrupting more industries at a faster rate.
UBI, or some form of which, will not only be necessary, but likely inevitable. The improvement of humanity you speak of is in fact a humanity that will survive on creativity, not labour. Labour is done.
Additionally, capitalism doesn't care about "expanded industries" any more than Moore's Law cares about engineers who made their career in the 1980s.
The transition is necessary, and it will be hard, and it won't happen without social security. It's a complete fantasy to see it happening any other way.
[+] [-] jmadsen|9 years ago|reply
decreased shipping costs will go into the pockets of the business owners as additional profits.
Since I'm already used to paying $X for that, why would you necessarily cut that out when you can keep it?
Just another possibility.
[+] [-] stefs|9 years ago|reply
that's simplistic - people generally don't want to be unemployed. if they get enough money to (barely) scrap by it takes a lot of weight off their shoulders, because they know they wont starve without their jobs. but having a job that fulfills you and income that enables you to save money is a big part of being happy. the (healthy) unemployed i know are mostly young people and every single one of them is constantly applying for jobs, even though they're able to pay rent, food and the occasional treat on unemployment benefits.
[+] [-] busterarm|9 years ago|reply
Basically we've gotten just better than twice as efficient in farming labor in 160 years (this is measured in man-hours worked). The value of that labor is what has changed. Farming itself is more efficient and we can feed 10 times as many people via refrigeration and shipping.
[+] [-] pkaye|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcphage|9 years ago|reply
The 62%, obviously.
[+] [-] SubiculumCode|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imaginenore|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redwood|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] karma_vaccum123|9 years ago|reply
The article cites $40k average pay per driver. That's fast-food wages
[+] [-] nickthemagicman|9 years ago|reply
What then?
[+] [-] k__|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwaway_xx9|9 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ufmace|9 years ago|reply
Systems to ease the strain on independent drivers. Ones that can cruise on the highway without supervision indefinitely, but need help with city streets, parking, maintenance, loading and unloading, keeping manifests, dealing with whatever company is loading and unloading the cargo, etc. They may need somewhat fewer of this class of driver, since the trucks will be able to run more continuously and there will be less need for second drivers and probably fewer trucks. Motels and truck stops will hurt some when the truckers can sleep while the truck drives instead of stopping. I think we're at least a decade away from this existing at all, much less being common.
Full automation for tightly integrated logistics chains. Maybe the Wal-Marts, Amazons, Fedexes, and other huge companies that own the entire logistics chain will be able to figure out how to use fully automated trucks, that can drive from one company facility to another, complete with parking and maneuvering, driving local streets, and letting other company systems handle the logistics of loading and unloading and keeping track of what items are where. I bet at least one of them will start experimenting with something like this in the next 5-10 years, but probably at least 20 years before it works well enough for them to cut down on the number of drivers they employ.
There will be job losses, but it will be slow and gradual. There should hopefully be plenty of time for the economy to adapt, and hopefully either create new jobs for all of these people to do, or move towards something like UBI. I think we'll have to have a massive cultural shift before anything like UBI would be considered or even possibly make sense.
[+] [-] beyondcompute|9 years ago|reply
Ultra-rich, namely car companies owners and shareholders, will become even more rich. (Why are they doing it, by the way, don't they have enough super-cars, mansions, yachts already?)
What am I getting from it? Basic goods will become 7% cheaper? Who needs that? I am happy with current prices.
And then dozens if not hundreds of millions people worldwide will lose their jobs and even more the very means for their existence. What will be the impact on their families, communities?
I may be terribly wrong but it seems like yet another round of value extraction by a small cohort of ultra-rich from general society.
There are technologies that are genuinely useful, like space exploration, scientific projects, disease fighting, urban development, planetary computer network, and so on.
And there are "comfort gimmicks" like refined sugar (and sugary drinks), tobacco, toasters, etc. that produce effects from which people living consciously and healthy would want to get rid of. And that are propelled only by "economic factors". Which are a paperclip maximizer.
[+] [-] jondubois|9 years ago|reply
The worst part of this will come when even highly educated people start losing their jobs to machines... We will have a situation where entrepreneurs, investors and company shareholders will earn massive incomes while many of the world's smartest people (who fell through the cracks of the system) will struggle to make ends meet - I think many engineers already feel that this starting to happen now.
Money used to go mostly to employees, but as employees become less valuable in the workplace, it will go mostly to shareholders (owners of capital). This is why tax on income is making increasingly less sense - We need a tax on capital holdings instead.
When you consider the massive role that luck plays in becoming a successful entrepreneur, it does bring into question the fairness of the entire system.
The balance is shifting; we are moving from an economic system which not so long ago seemed 'mostly fair' to one which is becoming 'mostly unfair'. Maybe something like Universal Basic Income would be a good first step.
What we have now is no longer capitalism, it's increasingly an Oligopoly.
[+] [-] MrFoof|9 years ago|reply
Those two items right there are exactly why they are being automated (in addition to additional efficiencies and cost reductions). If companies can eliminate those costs, they will if there's a way to do so. That is the unfortunate reality.
What to do about the aftermath that affects actual people and families as pay is reduced or eventually eliminated over the next 10-25 years? Well, that's the new problem. Not one that the companies that employ truck drivers will be looking to solve, but the one everyone else has to cope with in some capacity -- whether directly affected by the reduced jobs, or indirectly affected by those now looking for work in their community.
[+] [-] mwsherman|9 years ago|reply
The problem with mistaking this fear for a fact is that it often leads to an incorrect intervention. (I call this a WMD argument.)
We’d be much better served with much greater caution about what is actually, observably, measurably true. In this case, we’d have to discover the yet-unfound correlation between technical advance and employment rate.
[+] [-] sandworm101|9 years ago|reply
(1) People will still be needed for inspections and maintenance, however that will be done. Much of that is now covered by drivers (the little things) and cannot be automated.
(2) Insurance companies may demand that a human, a certified driver, at least ride in the truck as backup/security and to deal with awkward situations.
(3) Boarder crossings will still need humans.
(4) Hazmat loads will still need humans on board for safety reasons.
(5) Winter driving. I have yet to see any autodrive system capable of attaching chains or deicing a clogged brake line.
(6) Automation will open up new areas for drivers. By driving shipping costs down, more trucks may hit the road, requiring more people for the jobs listed above.
It may be a wash. The concept that every driver can/will be replaced by an autodrive bot is naive.
[+] [-] blfr|9 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, I have already seen Reddit bots which summarise submissions. How far off are from one that will rehash 2-3 articles and toss in an infographic (created elsewhere)?
[+] [-] FooHentai|9 years ago|reply
That seems to be an order of magnitude simpler issue to solve, and yet we don't seem to be there yet. Granted, forms of automation have penetrated that industry - deadmans switches, automated signalling and such. But there's still a human at the helm of every freight loco.
Smaller scale urban light rail deployments seem to have got close to full automation, presumably due to being able to embed all the necessary elements into the end-to-end installation of the system (signalling, stock, cameras/sensors etc).
How can the kind of full automation that would put truck drivers out of work, arrive before the kind that would put train drivers out of work?
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
Even just deskilling trucking offers the opportunity for bigger cost savings.
[+] [-] ucho|9 years ago|reply
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System
[+] [-] 4ad|9 years ago|reply
A single train driver moves 100x more stuff than a truck driver.
[+] [-] Tsagadai|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awjr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
Disclaimer: In 1997 I was cut off by a semi (in the middle of trying to pass him), who did NOT signal, on a 2 lane road (I-5 in California, speed limit was 85 or so), and ended up entering the ditch and rolling over 8 times and shattered my hand (it's fine now, but it took a while). The driver never stopped. I was lucky to walk away from that one.
Sorry, truckers, but your job can eat a bag of dicks.
Lest we forget, the only reason trucking is so huge is because train cargo wasn't maintained (conspiracists say the oil industry lobbied for trucking).
[+] [-] PedroBatista|9 years ago|reply
Btw, cargo trains are very cute for big loads between huge industrial hubs. Which means according to your theory that most people and their job in every state can go fuck themselves. Also I suspect you'll be fine with your Amazon Prime taking 1-2 weeks to reach your door.
[+] [-] merpnderp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andersthue|9 years ago|reply
That's more than Uber's latest valuation.
[+] [-] femto|9 years ago|reply
Maybe the problem is that if it's a lucrative opportunity the group running the marketplace will want to keep all the profits for themselves, by owning the robots and locking out small players?
[+] [-] nxzero|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xf00ba7|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TrevorJ|9 years ago|reply
The first time an unmanned Fedex truck kills a family of 6 in a minivan people will decided they would rather pay a few cents more to have trucks driven by humans.
[+] [-] palakz|9 years ago|reply
It's like innovative products - which might make some products obsolete but also makes space for more innovation and other products that would've not existed otherwise. :)
[+] [-] paulryanrogers|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tfnw|9 years ago|reply
Take your pick, or interpolate between them.
[+] [-] sevenless|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply