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American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

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Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#31

Post by golemotron »

k__ wrote: post #10
tuna-piano wrote: post #6

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…

> UBI > sitting around choose one

Maybe it's just me but I'm getting tired of UBI being put forward as a realistic answer to technological displacement of workers. The most immediate problem would be getting it through legislatures without loopholes that undercut its purpose as a replacement for all other redistributions. That simply never happens, particularly in the US.

The next problem is that no one seems to appreciate how incompatible it is with open borders in a world of nation-states. The latter is particularly telling since advocates of UBI are often advocates of less restrictive immigration across the world, yet they don't seem to see the problem. It's an indication of how ungrounded the discussion about UBI is right now.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#32

Post by mavhc »

jondubois wrote: post #19

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 com…

The majority of the population now don't starve when there's bad weather, have indoor plumbing, healthcare, don't die from playing tennis without socks.

What do we need money for now, and why? Houses mostly, because a) hand built, and b) scarcity.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#33

Post by k__ »

JBReefer wrote: post #24
k__ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI > sitting around choose one

Why not? That's what I would have done in my early twenties.

People who don't give a fuck already doing it.

Also, just because no one is willing to pay for what you do doesn't mean you are doing nothing. I think there will be a bunch of people doing different things than now and many anti-UBI people would call what they gonna do 'sitting around'.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#34

Post by ufmace »

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.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#35

Post by stcredzero »

jondubois wrote: post #19

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 com…

That's only true in the short term. Historically, innovation has always killed jobs in the short term but created them in the long term.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#36

Post by WillPostForFood »

beyondcompute wrote: post #27
kbenson wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what way is this different than the industrial revolution? Are we, as a world, wallowing in relatively more people starving and in poverty than ever before? Why is this different?

Well, I still believe that world became better than it was: https://www.ted.com/talks/larry_brilliant_makes_the_case_for... And, of course, it all is just a food for thought, doesn't necessarily mean we need to prohibit sales of self-driving vehicles (except for special technical applications). But still we have to understand that it's our conscious effort, not just the "natural force of Progress". As a society we sh…

Would you rather have Donald Trump intervening to steer economic trends in harmonious ways, or would you rather trust the natural force of progress?

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#37

Post by icebraining »

tuna-piano wrote: post #6

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…

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?

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#39

Post by k__ »

golemotron wrote: post #31
k__ wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI > sitting around choose one

Maybe it's just me but I'm getting tired of UBI being put forward as a realistic answer to technological displacement of workers. The most immediate problem would be getting it through legislatures without loopholes that undercut its purpose as a replacement for all other redistributions. That simply never happens, particularly in the US. The next problem is that no one seems to appreciate how incompatible it is with…

I have the feeling, alle the counter arguments simply boil down to "all humans are lazy and won't work anymore if we don't force them" which is a pretty dull view on humanity.

Re: American truck drivers could lose their jobs to robots

#40

Post by PeterisP »

Osiris wrote: post #3
MrFoof wrote: post #2

> 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 elim…

Our education system needs to adjust to prepare our youth for highly technical jobs. Instead of truck drivers we'll need engineers to build the automation systems and programmers to write the complex software behind it.

There is no economic reason to automate things in order to replace 1.8 million drivers with 1.8 million engineers.

Automation happens when you can replace 1.8 million drivers with 0.18 million engineers.

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