Posted on 05/23/2015 7:29:36 PM PDT by RightGeek
Late last year, I took a road trip with my partner from our home in New Orleans, Louisiana to Orlando, Florida and as we drove by town after town, we got to talking about the potential effects self-driving vehicle technology would have not only on truckers themselves, but on all the local economies dependent on trucker salaries. Once one starts wondering about this kind of one-two punch to America’s gut, one sees the prospects aren’t pretty.
We are facing the decimation of entire small town economies, a disruption the likes of which we haven’t seen since the construction of the interstate highway system itself bypassed entire towns. If you think this may be a bit of hyperbole… let me back up a bit and start with this:
It should be clear at a glance just how dependent the American economy is on truck drivers. According to the American Trucker Association, there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the US, and an additional 5.2 million people employed within the truck-driving industry who don’t drive the trucks. That’s 8.7 million trucking-related jobs.
We can’t stop there though, because the incomes received by these 8.2 million people create the jobs of others. Those 3.5 million truck drivers driving all over the country stop regularly to eat, drink, rest, and sleep. Entire businesses have been built around serving their wants and needs. Think restaurants and motels as just two examples. So now we’re talking about millions more whose employment depends on the employment of truck drivers. But we still can’t even stop there. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at medium.com ...
If we have a post-scarcity economy, and if human labor is no longer so essential for much of production, what will it look like? I think there are a number of POSSIBLE solutions to this -- but I fear that a lot of "do-gooders" will smugly say "the solution is more socialism". I would really like to see people push for any other solution. But the "basic income" thing will appeal to many people.
Not too many people digging the Eire canal by hand anymore either.
FWIW, I’m thinking of buying a new car and have also been thinking that it just might be the last car have to have as a “manual”. Can’t wait to not drive to work through rush hour traffic. It would be nice to sit in the car and do some sightseeing or get some work done.
thanx be back bump
>>If we have a post-scarcity economy, and if human labor is no longer so essential for much of production, what will it look like? I think there are a number of POSSIBLE solutions to this — but I fear that a lot of “do-gooders” will smugly say “the solution is more socialism”. I would really like to see people push for any other solution. But the “basic income” thing will appeal to many people.
Especially the Wall St class. They see “basic income stipends” as a way to pay less. Their argument will be, “You already get enough to live on from the government, so you should be willing to work for just enough to buy some luxuries.” The American worker will become a disposable temp solution to immediate needs for the shareholders and then they can put the workers back on the dole.
The goal is “Capitalism for the elites and socialism for the masses”. This is why the elites of both parties are so anxious to flood the labor market with foreigners with a work visa. They need to devalue labor to the point where the people demand a basic income stipend paid for with fiat currency and just enough tax dollars to pretend that it’s legit.
Never has been a guarantee, but the principle of comparative advantage has always worked.
“FWIW, I’m thinking of buying a new car and have also been thinking that it just might be the last car have to have as a “manual”. Can’t wait to not drive to work through rush hour traffic. It would be nice to sit in the car and do some sightseeing or get some work done.”
My wife got a Lexus last year. She laughed at me one day as I backed out of the garage. Without realizing it, I was waiting for the Lexus to close the garage door!
Driverless trucks will come, but probably more slowly and a whole lot less complete than this story assumes.
This is a truck-centered discussion, but, if one were to think a lot more broadly, then, imagine the effect to many other parts of the economy if all vehicles were to become autonomous. So, we’d have cars and trucks and SUVs and minivans and RVs, all driving themselves.
It would be just truck drivers. Taxi drivers would also be out of jobs. Heck, insurance companies would have millions fewer clients, and so, we’d lose a lot of insurance agents and agencies. We’d also lose a lot of traffic cops and ‘meter-maids’ and highway patrolmen, and we’d end up with a lot fewer lawyers and ambulance chasers, and a lot fewer people in courts because there would be no need for handling traffic violations/tickets. We’d end up with vehicle makers having to insure the vehicles they sell, rather than the owners, and in fact, there would be no need for ownership. We’d end up with fewer parking lots and tiny parking garages at airports and shopping centers. We might even end up with houses being built with no garages or driveways. We could end up with no mailmen (finally, a solution to the Post Office always operation in huge deficits).
We could end up with no repair bills or maintenance bills for our vehicles.
Hmmm....
Bring on the autonomous vehicles. NOW!!!
I think that for a long time, even if the truck is self-driving, it will have a human “pilot”, there to assist in tricky maneuvers and as “insurance”. The same way that modern jetliners can pretty much do everything on autopilot and/or with instructions from the ground, but even the smallest regional jet still has 2 pilots.
Those politicians that proclaim we must save the planet under the guise of climate change will ensure the planet is cleansed of too many people.
Imagine trying to flag down a robot truck after sliding off a rural freeway on a freezing winter night.
But then I remembered how, year or so ago, people kept saying, "If I see one of them drones, I'll shoot it down! Make good target practice, they will!" And yet I haven't heard of a single case yet of one being shot down. Maybe some have been, but nowhere near near as much as one would have guessed from all the talk about it.
OnStar(tm) will take care of you.
It's not just truck-driving. There will come a point, if civilization doesn't collapse first, when every job that can be reliably and enjoyably done by a person of average intelligence or below can be done more cheaply by a robot or computer, heck there will come a point when the same will apply to any job that can be done by a person with IQ a standard-deviation above average, Flynn effect or no. Simultaneously the jobs that require intelligence will require fewer and fewer people to accomplish -- as an example, why have lots of people give lectures on general relativity when everyone can see the most articulate of the current generation of brilliant gravitational physicists give the lectures? LegalZoom already does routine legal paperwork without a lawyer. AI to write even complicated trust documents isn't all that hard to program, law being essentially a system of formal rules, so we'll need fewer lawyers.
When the number of jobs that need to be done is far smaller than the number of people needed to do them, what do you propose? Let those without jobs or income from capital investments starve? A broad need-based dole that, unlike a basic income scheme, will discourage people from seeing the jobs there are?
Those of us on the right had better think this through, because otherwise the left and the professional managerial class already have a vision of how such a society should look, and it's got most of the worst aspects of 1984, Brave New World and The Hunger Games all rolled into one.
Drones don’t have unions
Self driving vehicles still can’t find the road when it snows or in a heavy rain. I think will see self driving trucks coupled with drivers. Allowing drivers to sleep instead of stopping after they have driven to many hours. I still haven’t seen a self unloading truck that can handle a COD delivery. Cash On Delivery for those in Rio Linda.
May I say I agree 100%.
I’ve had many discussions on this point, and almost nobody wants to talk about it.
Liberals simply assume all problems will be handled by more government control, and conservatives by the market.
But what if the free market commits suicide? It’s worked in the best interests of humanity ever since it emerged just a few centuries ago, but there’s no law of nature it will continue to do so forever.
“Income” is not the real issue. What do low and mid level IQ people do with their lives if they’re superfluous to the real economy? The history of American ghettoes and Indian reservations and British slums does not bode well for the psychological health of people in this condition, even when their material condition is significantly better than that of their ancestors.
I am not sure of your age obviously but I doubt many of us will see full scale self-driving cars & trucks anytime real soon. While the technology exists the implementation will be slow starting with expanded cruise control. Your steering wheels will be around a while yet. :-)
What I believe will happen much faster is exponential increase in robotics and automation, e.g. fast food restaurants etc
> I think that for a long time, even if the truck is self-driving, it will have a human “pilot”
The joke going around is that companies will cross train the accountants and bookkeepers to ride the trucks and do their work while “piloting” them.
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