Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs • Hacker News Board

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#81

Post by brianlweiner » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:06 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #79

gaius wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the price of anything is what people are willing to pay , there is minimal correlation with production costs. If the inputs get cheaper profits will go up but the consumer will pay the same. Do we see massive price drops whenever any company outsources their call centre to India? Nope, the price stays the same and the execs pocket the difference in bonuses.

Right, the price of anything is what people are willing to pay, there is minimal correlation with production costs. This only works if the seller has monopoly pricing power. Otherwise gas would be $5/gallon all the time. Do we see massive price drops whenever any company outsources their call centre to India? Massive, no, but the prices of most things other than housing, health care, and education have in fact been d…

Or they are in response to internal rising costs; e.g outsource 20 IT positions because health insurance costs for your other 200 employees are increasing 16%.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#82

Post by brianlweiner » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:23 PM UTC

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #61

harryh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically prices of goods to consumers have dropped dramatically as automation and globalization have reduced the costs of production. Your hypothesis that most of the gains would be captured by producers in the form of increased profits is wrong for almost all consumer goods.

Citation needed. Over the last couple decades processed foodstuffs have been constant in price, but the portions have decreased to cut costs. You can play Russian dolls with old cereal boxes, fitting the newer ones inside the old ones.

Between 1960 and 2007, the share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.5 to 9.6 percent

http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/detail.a...

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#83

Post by DavidWanjiru » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:25 PM UTC

I always have a question about this stuff: when the robots take all of our jobs (or the jobs of a critical mass of the human population), who is going to buy all this stuff the robots make if the humans who are supposed to buy the stuff are broke because they lost their job to a robot?

Has anybody tried to do some kind of study/educated guess about this impact?

At the end of the day, while robots can do our jobs better than we do, they can't consume stuff better than we do, and ultimately our consumption of stuff is what creates the jobs the robots are taking over.

With jobs even as "safe" as surgeons potentially under threat, how long before everyone is in trouble?

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#84

Post by cushychicken » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:28 PM UTC

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #7

>“If you can get rid of the drivers, those people are out of jobs, but the cost of moving all those goods goes down significantly,” Kaplan said. This is a major point of automation. Yes, many jobs will be lost. But the prices of many goods will decrease. The problem is that the current transition threatens to be so rapid as to seriously disrupt society. Perhaps new jobs will eventually be created to make up for those…

Tons of people are misunderstanding the likely order of events that would decrease shipping costs related to automated long-haul trucking. It'd go like this:

1) One company develops and ships a working autonomous truck. They start selling to shipping companies, or roll their own. 2) The truck client/shipping company starts competing with other shipping companies by offering vastly lower prices on the same shipping. 3) Retailers flock to the automated shipping company because they're vastly cheaper. The first retailer to move and contract with them enjoys a brief competitive advantage over other companies by cutting retail prices slightly and gaining a market advantage. Eventually, other shipping firms pop up to service the other retailers' need for competitively priced trucking. 4) Supply of automated trucking catches up with retailer demand. Retailers are forced to, again, compete directly with one another on price for the same goods, but now the overhead of paying humans to manage shipping is gone.

The doom and gloom comments about overcharging for products is a little ridiculous, IMO. Uber, Apple, Amazon, and Google are at each other's fucking throats for market share in this space. You bet your ass they'd fight tooth and nail with one another on price.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#85

Post by nixos » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:29 PM UTC

afarrell wrote: post #27

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This assumption that everything will be cheaper seems a bit disingenuous, because why would these companies want to automate themselves so badly if they weren't going to keep most of the savings as profit? Even if prices were lowered by a few percent for some goods thanks to cheaper shipping, that's little help when you have no source of income. This will only exacerbate the demand-limited economic slump we're curren…

This depends on what the barriers to entry for starting a company. If the barriers to entry are low because you can buy self-driving software off-the-shelf for $20,000 then profits will be low. If the barriers to entry are high because the shipping is done by Uber, Google, etc then the profits will be high. But you are right that it would increase economic inequality.

> If the barriers to entry are low because you can buy self-driving software off-the-shelf for $20,000 then profits will be low

In the beginning. Then due to economy of scale (and government regulations), it will be controlled by two huge companies, owning all IP, making any inroads close to impossible.

Think of when the newest major computer manufacturer was founded.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#86

Post by sverige » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:30 PM UTC

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #61

harryh wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically prices of goods to consumers have dropped dramatically as automation and globalization have reduced the costs of production. Your hypothesis that most of the gains would be captured by producers in the form of increased profits is wrong for almost all consumer goods.

Citation needed. Over the last couple decades processed foodstuffs have been constant in price, but the portions have decreased to cut costs. You can play Russian dolls with old cereal boxes, fitting the newer ones inside the old ones.

Correct. While producers of the raw materials (corn, wheat, rice) have seen prices decline when adjusted for inflation, the producers of finished products (Corn Flakes, Wheaties, etc.) have seen prices rise even when adjusted for inflation. But there are only four or five big middlemen, so it's a lot easier for them to capture the increased margins than the tens of thousands of farmers who produce the raw materials.

Similarly, if Apple could reduce its shipping costs to near zero by teleporting the raw materials to Foxconn and then teleporting the finished goods directly to retail outlets, they'd still charge $600 per iPhone, even though they have competition from other phone makers in the form of Android.

The Invisible Hand doesn't always work the way it did in Adam Smith's time.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#87

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:45 PM UTC

intrasight wrote: post #56

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like featherbedding. Putting pointless people in the middle just to skim money from the process. Who benefits? Nobody but them. Reminds me of how the railroads had to pay into the pension fund for Firemen, long after steam engines were dead and gone. Just because.

Is no more fetherbedding than any other regulated profession (doctors, layers) who get to themselves decide who is a member in good standing.

Ha! A guy that takes a cut for 'managing' an autodriving truck - which then drives itself - is very different. Because doctors and lawyers actually do work.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#88

Post by xapata » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:48 PM UTC

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #83

I always have a question about this stuff: when the robots take all of our jobs (or the jobs of a critical mass of the human population), who is going to buy all this stuff the robots make if the humans who are supposed to buy the stuff are broke because they lost their job to a robot? Has anybody tried to do some kind of study/educated guess about this impact? At the end of the day, while robots can do our jobs bett…

Through most of history, people transition to doing other jobs. That transition is often painful. Thus various government welfare programs.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#89

Post by xapata » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

fjjrxcbdhx wrote: post #14

GarrisonPrime wrote: post #7

>“If you can get rid of the drivers, those people are out of jobs, but the cost of moving all those goods goes down significantly,” Kaplan said. This is a major point of automation. Yes, many jobs will be lost. But the prices of many goods will decrease. The problem is that the current transition threatens to be so rapid as to seriously disrupt society. Perhaps new jobs will eventually be created to make up for those…

This assumption that everything will be cheaper seems a bit disingenuous, because why would these companies want to automate themselves so badly if they weren't going to keep most of the savings as profit? Even if prices were lowered by a few percent for some goods thanks to cheaper shipping, that's little help when you have no source of income. This will only exacerbate the demand-limited economic slump we're curren…

> keep most of the savings as profit

Only to the extent they are resistant to market forces.

Re: Self-driving trucks threaten one of America's top blue-collar jobs

#90

Post by applecore » Sun, Sep 25, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

DavidWanjiru wrote: post #83

I always have a question about this stuff: when the robots take all of our jobs (or the jobs of a critical mass of the human population), who is going to buy all this stuff the robots make if the humans who are supposed to buy the stuff are broke because they lost their job to a robot? Has anybody tried to do some kind of study/educated guess about this impact? At the end of the day, while robots can do our jobs bett…

In a word, redistribution.

With a rising share of income going to robots (capital) rather than humans (labor), there needs to be a stronger social safety net. This means guaranteed health insurance, health care, retirement benefits, and even a minimum income.

That safety net will have to be paid for via some combination of taxes on wealth, profits, and investment income.