Posted on 07/27/2013 10:36:25 AM PDT by JerseyanExile
Edited on 07/27/2013 10:40:27 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Over the Next Two Decades, the Machines Themselves Will Take Over the Driving.
Caterpillar will have 45 self-directed trucks at a mine in Australia.
And then one day, man went the way of the mule.
Some 5.7 million Americans are licensed as professional drivers, steering the country's vast fleets of delivery vans, UPS trucks and tractor-trailers.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
lol
more union jobs down the drain !
couldn’t have happened to a more deserving bunch !
when you make it more affordable to choose an alternative to your overpriced union wages, companies will do so.
Ban unions, cut employee regulations, and remove the minimum wage and companies will gladly switch back to human labor.
So. What will become of the C. B. radio?
Why would they switch to human labor?
Ya sure. Canada just banned one-man train crews in the wake of that runaway oil train disaster in Quebec.
Of course, robotrucks are a great way to social-engineer automobile drivers off the roads too . . .
I like it. Machines that make themselves, fix themselves and operate themselves. The biggest consumers on the planet will be machines and no more need for pesky humans.
“Over the next two decades.”
Easy to make a prediction like that. In 20 years no one will remember it.
More people have to be turned into submissive sheep before that can happen.
Reason? Because it won’t be just self-driving cars. The all-knowing government will have dictated how they function in minute detail, in such a way that the cars function as part of the collectivity, rather than as individual driving machines, as they do now.
What will it take to make people give up the independence of the private car? It’s the last bit of independence we have.
You can be sure the government will fight dirty to get us there.
Labor vs. Capital — the eternal battle. Whichever is cheaper wins.
It is not a safety issue that keeps engineers behind the controls on trains - many of the worse train accidents are blamed on the engineers themselves and automated systems likely would have prevented those accidents from happening.
So if we can't even maintain driverless trains, why would driverless trucks be the ‘next step’?
Mind, Australia really lends itself to autonomous transport - road trains are common, long stretches of road with little general interaction. But that is a massively far cry from a big rig traveling down the urban highway.
But if you were going to bet on this technology, I'd put money into depots and not the technology itself. Especially in the United States, there are limited corridors which lend themselves to autonomous trucks, at least at the start. And buying land with the intention of developing transition depots to transfer autonomous loads to trucks with human drivers for final mile delivery would seem to be the much safer and ultimately more profitable bet.
“Why would they switch to human labor? “
Without unions, human labor is more flexible. You can have your driver fill in for somebody else while he’s back and waiting for the next load. The person you’re answering has a point. When human labor was free in Greek and Roman times there were no labor saving machines. The Greeks understood pumps and steam power. But a famous ancient Greek text explained that slave labor was always more cost effective than building machines. Then, as labor became more expensive labor saving machines came along. As domestic help disappeared and the lady of the house had to work along came vacuum cleansers, electric irons, inside plumbing, etc. As labor becomes more and more expensive and dangerous, employees get replaced by machines. By dangerous I mean that your employee can get a free lawyer and sue you. The more expensive (all manner of costs, not just wages) then the fewer people who will be employed.
Because companies will ALWAYS choose the cheaper alternative. If you make it cheaper for them to use people instead of machines they will do so.
There are now more unionized government workers than in private sector America...
And those in the private sector wonder how government became so bloated, controlling and corrupt?
Will this cause an increase in robot lot lizards?
So if people had a chance at a part time job with no benefits that would lower their current standard of living from living off the public dole they would gladly line up for those jobs?
I personally would have a small army of servants if the price were right.
Right. You are an elitist.
Wait just a minute. They can start working on driverless trucks just as soon as I get that flying car they promised.
What could possibly go wrong?
In other news, a startling new discovery means that a cure for cancer is just around the corner.
nope. But if you removed all government assistance from them and they were hungry enough, they would be lined up around the block for the job.
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