Self-Driving Trucks Are Going to Hit Us Like a Human-Driven Truck

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]

There will come a point, if civilization doesn't collapse first

There have been times of not just civilizational collapse but the near extinction of the entire species. Humanity once crashed to just a few thousand individuals. We almost did not make it. It is hard to imagine now with a global population of 7 billion but birth rates are dropping like a rock workdwide. Birth rates go down in times of economic stress. Well, imagine job displacement 10X the American Great Depression. Now imagine that worldwide. Now imagine no recovery from that.

Futurists wonder about the robots one day taking over. I wonder if we'll one day just abandon the planet to the robots.

This is actually good news. Right now we have a massive group of people simply not working. Some of them are wanting to work, but many don’t. Markets react to things like automation by lowering costs and not just the labor component is involved in these lower costs.

Much of what we used to pay for is now ‘free’ on the Internet. Walmart drove the profit out of five and dimes. Amazon is doing the same thing to Walmart. We all benefit from this. Let’s not be Luddites. Deflation due to productivity gains is the good kind of deflation. The poorest Americans face the highest proportion of their incomes for housing, energy and food in that order.

The true constraint in this picture isn’t lower wages or lower costs, but an unsustainable cost of government. The bank and RE bailouts were actually bailouts of local governments which rely on property taxes to exist. Imagine a permanent 50% reduction in the price of RE.

That would cause a 100% spike in tax rates on property or collapse all the urban centers in the country. It would be the end of government school systems (50-65% of tax bills), not to mention municipal pensions and services. That’s what needs to reset. Instead we’re getting government sponsored reflation in RE prices.

It doesn’t make sense to pay police officers or firemen $100k+ salaries. The same goes for most government workers. The Chicago Transit Authority pays $20 million/mile to lay rail. Private RR companies do it for $2 million/mile. That’s the middleman that needs to real cutting and it is happening and will happen more and more.

I agree with you that the potential of automation to lead to massive job reduction over the next few decades is something worth careful consideration.

Assuming that the number of jobs replaced by automation far outnumber those that are created, there will be a large pool of otherwise employable adults with nothing they have to do.

Liberals have suggested a base stipend that each person receives just for breathing. Those liberals that are a little more enlightened will allow certain individuals that actually work to make more, but of course those individuals and/or the companies they work for will have to be taxed substantially to provide money for the stipends.

But how are the stipends determined? Will citizens of some countries get larger stipends than those in others? Will citizens with children get an equal stipend for each child? Will two married adults living in the same house get less than two single adults living separately? So even if we agree with the stipend idea in theory, the actual working out of it in practice could be rather complicated and controversial.

What about the economics? It seems as if this will necessarily lead to some form of massive state control. If the state is providing the stipends and the state is collecting the taxes to fund the stipends then even if the state allows corporations to innovate as they please, the state will have interposed itself into virtually every financial transaction. Slight changes in the stipends or taxes could lead to wild swings in inflation and deflation. This could get real ugly since politicians rather than economists or corporate execs will have the ultimate say in these financial decisions.

So most everyone will be able to do whatever they wish. Millions will try and become rock stars, world famous artists, actors, celebrity chefs, etc. There will be a vast oversupply of people doing things because they are fun rather than useful. Most of the people who go into those "fun" fields will fail, and fail miserably. I hope they develop and deploy a sufficient number of autonomous psychologists to mop up the shattered dreams of millions of wannabes.

And what about all the people on permanent vacation? How many people can fit in Yosemite on a single day? Or the Grand Canyon? The Appalachian Trail will trade places with the Los Angeles Freeway system in terms of man-miles traveled per day. Bored people tend to become restless.

The only thing I know for sure is that the Neocons will be in favor of makework projects. They will be OK with a system that appears to be like the current system. So people will get to do work that is truly useless, but be lied to by their countries and corporations and led to believe it is vital and cannot be done by robots.

If I am going to live a useless existence I would rather be left to my own devices, but Neocons will know what's best for me and have me digging and filling holes on a daily basis so I won't be roaming about getting into trouble and taking away their preferred tee times.

"There will always be jobs for people to do."

Ever since the Industrial Revolution there has been a healthy growth in population. It may be, at least in part, that capitalism was successful during this time because population growth created a pyramid effect that generated an ever-increasing demand that was filled by an ever-increasing workforce.

Although world population continues to grow, the rate of growth is tapering off. Also, productivity is going way up, so fewer people are required to supply the same demand. For a while there will be increased demand from an increasing population, and an increasingly wealthy population as countries in Africa, etc. finally get on the bandwagon.

But how long will that last? Also, more and more of what is demanded by people requires less and less to produce. A few people create a video for a few million bucks that can entertain billions for hours. What happens when virtual reality becomes a reality? Then people wouldn't even have to leave their homes to get all of their entertainment needs met. And they wouldn't even need to live in a large home. A small studio apartment with a virtual reality program that simulated life in a Beverly Hills mansion would be all they required.

In his Brave New World Aldous Huxley came up with things like Obstacle Golf, i.e. sports that required the purchase of ever more pieces of equipment. If the number of consumers is not going up fast enough, then the demand per consumer must be increased.

I think we've come to some sort of inflection point where increasing automation will more than keep up with increasing demand such that fewer workers will be needed as we move forward.

I don't currently support any type of government dole, but I also don't know what a better alternative would look like.

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