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

latimes.com

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

#101

Post by WalterBright »

Long haul trucking should be replaced by trains anyway. Heavy trucks are the primary cause of expensive highway damage, and are environmentally destructive with all the fuel, tire dust, etc. The reason trucks are economically viable at all is they shift their costs to the taxpayer, who pays for the highways.

(A truck loaded to the legal limit inflicts 9,000 times as much fatigue damage to the road as a car, and trucks are often overloaded.)

I propose that the government drastically increase weight fees for highway use, and use the revenue to subsidize freight trains. (The truck container can just be picked up and dropped on a flatbed rail car.)

Trucks for the last mile are still necessary.

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

#102

Post by hyperliner »

susan_hall wrote: post #98
hyperliner wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess a question is: where would the income (that is supposed to be "redistributed") come from, in a world where the customers of every commercial entity cannot earn an income to pay taxes and contribute to the pool to be redistributed? I guess a country could always wage war against another and take their resources or enslave their people. Is that the ultimate outcome? Not trying to stir politics here, just to fin…

> where would the income come from You are confusing money with wealth (stuff people want). The money would come from the government, which can simply print it. Take a hypothetical situation where robots cause the total amount of wealth (stuff) created, in one year, to increase by 100%. Now assume the government prints enough money to increase the total amount of money by 100%. In this case, wealth has increased by 1…

Why would there be zero percent inflation, if the money supply doubled?

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

#104

Post by WalterBright »

duaneb wrote: post #94
beaner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. Robots do things cheaper. This allows prices to fall. Also, if a business has nobody to sell to, then they themselves are in trouble. That they remain profitable is a sign that things are fine. Humans are adaptable creatures and we find other things of value to do. People from some industries will…

> Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. I don't think everyone--in this time or others--would agree with this. I certainly don't believe in being "better off", I think that's an illusion born out of minimization of our greatest fears. Just because you aren't about to die of tetanus does not mean your quality of life has improve at all.

> I certainly don't believe in being "better off"

I do. Archeological evidence of American colonists' bones reveal that they worked extremely hard and died young. Look at their clothes in a museum - they look like childrens' sizes. Look at their teeth in bones in museums. Do you prefer teeth like that?

I can buy an orange any day of the year. I have hot/cold running water. I'm warm in winter. I have clean water to drink. I have ice cream in the summer. I have endless entertainment at the push of a button. I can talk at any time to any family/friend anywhere in the world at my whim.

I'd probably be dead by my age if I lived 200 years ago.

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

#105

Post by WalterBright »

susan_hall wrote: post #96
beaner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. Robots do things cheaper. This allows prices to fall. Also, if a business has nobody to sell to, then they themselves are in trouble. That they remain profitable is a sign that things are fine. Humans are adaptable creatures and we find other things of value to do. People from some industries will…

My great grand mother gave birth to 16 children, who had healthy childhoods and good educations. My family was not wealthy. Nowadays only the wealthy could afford to raise 16 children, with good childhoods and good education. If people now are more affluent than they were in the past, then why is it more difficult to raise children? For those who wish to have large families, it seems obvious that the last 100 years h…

In the 1800's, having children was a net asset because they were put to work as soon as they could walk. This is not so in today's society, where they are unemployable and do not contribute economically until 22 or 23.

Also, my grandparents came from families with 8 or more children, and many of them died as children. This was normal for those days.

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

#106

Post by akira2501 »

duaneb wrote: post #94
beaner wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. Robots do things cheaper. This allows prices to fall. Also, if a business has nobody to sell to, then they themselves are in trouble. That they remain profitable is a sign that things are fine. Humans are adaptable creatures and we find other things of value to do. People from some industries will…

> Haven't people been asking this for the past few hundred years? And yet we're better off in life than we ever have been. I don't think everyone--in this time or others--would agree with this. I certainly don't believe in being "better off", I think that's an illusion born out of minimization of our greatest fears. Just because you aren't about to die of tetanus does not mean your quality of life has improve at all.

> Just because you aren't about to die of tetanus does not mean your quality of life has improve at all.

I have asthma and require corrective lenses. My quality of life is orders of magnitude better now than it would have been even 100 years ago.

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

#107

Post by harryh »

astazangasta wrote: post #57
harryh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay/productivity gap graphs are nonsense http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=30585

I disagree with this conclusion, and I tend to disfavor the PCE. The argument is that employers are spending more on benefits, therefore pay has not actually fallen. However, the largest component of the difference between the PCE and CPI is based on employer-provided healthcare; in the US, healthcare spending has been growing at faster than inflation for decades, and medical costs are one of the main avenues of weal…

The conclusion isn't that everything is hunky dory. What he does conclude is that labor's share of income hasn't much changed. What has changed is the distribution of income between laborers. As has been noted in about a million places, gains have increasingly been going to those at the top.

Your chart implies some sort of breakdown between productivity and income but does not demonstrate that productivity gains have been equally distributed. In fact, there are a lot of reasons to think that most productivity gains are going towards the top end of the labor pool as well. Due to the lever of technology, we see increasingly small (in terms of # of employees) firms serve increasingly large markets.

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

#108

Post by zamfi »

hyperliner wrote: post #102
susan_hall wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where would the income come from You are confusing money with wealth (stuff people want). The money would come from the government, which can simply print it. Take a hypothetical situation where robots cause the total amount of wealth (stuff) created, in one year, to increase by 100%. Now assume the government prints enough money to increase the total amount of money by 100%. In this case, wealth has increased by 1…

Why would there be zero percent inflation, if the money supply doubled?

At the risk of being simplistic, because so did the "stuff" supply. Inflation is when the money supply increases without the stuff supply increasing, so each dollar is worth less stuff.

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

#109

Post by afarrell »

nixos wrote: post #85
afarrell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well wait no. If it is the case that anyone can buy off-the-shelf software for self-driving cars for a price of $20,000, then a person could just buy a rig, fit it out, develop a relationship with a set of farmers or whatever, and be in business.

How would one of the conglomerates stop that besides competing on price or erecting regulatory barriers?

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

#110

Post by afarrell »

smokeyj wrote: post #65
afarrell wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does automated truck drivers unequivocally equal economic inequality? It's theoretically possible that this labor is now freed up to create value for lower income households.. The only reason self driving tech won't be commoditized will be regulatory barriers. You can imagine why entrenched interests would lobby for such.

> It's theoretically possible that this labor is now freed up to create value for lower income households.

If there is competition, then it is true that driving down food/commodities prices will create value for lower income households. But a solid portion of that value will still accrue to the companies running the transit networks using fewer people.

Google has spent years trying to enter the field of self-driving cars. So has Uber. Would not the inherent difficulty they are encountering be a barrier to entry.

I'm not arguing for throwing regulations around willy-nilly. I'm not arguing for regulations at all. I don't know enough to do that with any confidence. I'm just saying that in asking the question "Should we use the force of the state to handle some of the effects of this?", the probability of this increasing income inequality is worthy of serious consideration.

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