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A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in auton

A very useful visual to add next to this is "The Most Common Job In Every State"[0] map from NPR's Planet Money. As soon as I was aware of the research in autonomous driving I was pretty confident trucking would be the first industry hit. Until I saw that map I had no sense of how major of a disruption this could be. [0] http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-t...

iofj 10y ago
It's not just the jobs. Self-driving trucks will transform an industry where large amounts of humans are necessary into (yet another) industry where capital is the only thing that matters. Once trucks are self-driving, larger companies will gain the advantage and one of the main economic sectors dominated by small to medium companies will become dominated by large international businesses.
FussyZeus 10y ago
Disruption nothing, this is going to be an economic apocalypse for huge swathes of the country. We've never seen an automation wave like this one. It's exciting times to be alive for sure but I'm also legitimately worried if we're going to be able to handle it as a society, if anything is going to tip us into needing basic income, this could be a serious contender. It's not even just the trucking, it's truck stops, highway diners, tiny motels all over the place, there is a massive amount of infrastructure that was built because of and for truck drivers and their needs, and that's still not it because there are tons of small town economies built on the last job that pays well without a college education that more or less anyone can do.
- TheLogothete 10y ago
  Yeah, it's not like this has happened ever before. We definitely need basic income. It will solve all the problems.
  - FussyZeus 10y ago
    No it won't, and it will come with a few of it's own (getting American's past the bootstrap narrative is probably the biggest single one) but it is a step in the right direction. That being said if you can think of another example where we put 3.5 million people out of work nearly overnight along with an entire support system built on their salaries and needs, I'd love to hear it. The only similar thing I could think of would be the rise of automation in American factories, and even then that didn't replace EVERY human with a machine, and carried with it a certain PR cost for the companies involved, whereas I think a shipping company removing humans from their trucks would have a PR boon, not bust.
    - zanny 10y ago
      UBI has nothing to contend with the boostrap narrative. You just shift the target. Rather than pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to not starve or die of exposure, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps to do anything at all beyond basic survival with a roof and bread. You want a car? Go work for it. You want TV? Go work for it. Etc. UBI is only meant to reduce the demand for total income enough that people can recreationally work for things they want, because there isn't enough work to go around for all the things they need. If you wanted to live on a UBI without additional income, you could spend your days at parks or libraries, but by design you should not have the income to be purchasing luxury goods - if you want those you can seek work for them, and because of the drop in labor demand UBI causes, you should still be able to find something.
      - TheLogothete 10y ago
        No, people will just slack because they can buy bread. We already saw this in the soviet block. The human brain works on incentives. Remove the incentive the human is in free fall.
        FussyZeus 10y ago
        The simple fact is that a tiny fraction of our population can create a lot more wealth than the rest of them doing all the busywork they could possibly do, and this is only going to get worse as automation continues to increase. We need to rethink the idea that you need to contribute to eat because it simply isn't true anymore. Now, we can either start giving people what they need to live because they're humans and shouldn't be left to freeze to death, or we can roll tanks on the neighborhoods with the most have nots and keep up the crime, keep the property values low, and generally treat people like crap. I give it 50/50 either way at this point because so many people are so married to this idea that the only way you should be kept alive is if you're a benefit to someone else and I'm sorry, but in the wealthiest nations on the planet with celebrities and CEO's raking in billions, you'd think we could manage to find some cash somewhere to keep people alive if for no other reason than we CAN do it.
- logn 10y ago
  Social Security for everyone.
afterburner 10y ago
A very interesting map, but: "The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories." ... I really wish they'd collapsed some of those categories, could have been even more revealing.
- ddebernardy 10y ago
  Then again, teachers are probably on their way to being (at least semi-)automated as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
  - randyrand 10y ago
    Let's hope. Even free services such as Kahn Academy blow many teachers out of the water in terms of really teaching things. The nanny aspect of teachers will be hard to replace though.

iofj 10y ago

It's not just the jobs. Self-driving trucks will transform an industry where large amounts of humans are necessary into (yet another) industry where capital is the only thing that matters. Once trucks are self-driving, larger companies will gain the advantage and one of the main economic sectors dominated by small to medium companies will become dominated by large international businesses.

FussyZeus 10y ago

Disruption nothing, this is going to be an economic apocalypse for huge swathes of the country. We've never seen an automation wave like this one. It's exciting times to be alive for sure but I'm also legitimately worried if we're going to be able to handle it as a society, if anything is going to tip us into needing basic income, this could be a serious contender. It's not even just the trucking, it's truck stops, highway diners, tiny motels all over the place, there is a massive amount of infrastructure that was built because of and for truck drivers and their needs, and that's still not it because there are tons of small town economies built on the last job that pays well without a college education that more or less anyone can do.

TheLogothete 10y ago
Yeah, it's not like this has happened ever before. We definitely need basic income. It will solve all the problems.
- FussyZeus 10y ago
  No it won't, and it will come with a few of it's own (getting American's past the bootstrap narrative is probably the biggest single one) but it is a step in the right direction. That being said if you can think of another example where we put 3.5 million people out of work nearly overnight along with an entire support system built on their salaries and needs, I'd love to hear it. The only similar thing I could think of would be the rise of automation in American factories, and even then that didn't replace EVERY human with a machine, and carried with it a certain PR cost for the companies involved, whereas I think a shipping company removing humans from their trucks would have a PR boon, not bust.
  - zanny 10y ago
    UBI has nothing to contend with the boostrap narrative. You just shift the target. Rather than pulling yourself up by your bootstraps to not starve or die of exposure, you pull yourself up by your bootstraps to do anything at all beyond basic survival with a roof and bread. You want a car? Go work for it. You want TV? Go work for it. Etc. UBI is only meant to reduce the demand for total income enough that people can recreationally work for things they want, because there isn't enough work to go around for all the things they need. If you wanted to live on a UBI without additional income, you could spend your days at parks or libraries, but by design you should not have the income to be purchasing luxury goods - if you want those you can seek work for them, and because of the drop in labor demand UBI causes, you should still be able to find something.
    - TheLogothete 10y ago
      No, people will just slack because they can buy bread. We already saw this in the soviet block. The human brain works on incentives. Remove the incentive the human is in free fall.
      - FussyZeus 10y ago
        The simple fact is that a tiny fraction of our population can create a lot more wealth than the rest of them doing all the busywork they could possibly do, and this is only going to get worse as automation continues to increase. We need to rethink the idea that you need to contribute to eat because it simply isn't true anymore. Now, we can either start giving people what they need to live because they're humans and shouldn't be left to freeze to death, or we can roll tanks on the neighborhoods with the most have nots and keep up the crime, keep the property values low, and generally treat people like crap. I give it 50/50 either way at this point because so many people are so married to this idea that the only way you should be kept alive is if you're a benefit to someone else and I'm sorry, but in the wealthiest nations on the planet with celebrities and CEO's raking in billions, you'd think we could manage to find some cash somewhere to keep people alive if for no other reason than we CAN do it.
logn 10y ago
Social Security for everyone.

afterburner 10y ago

A very interesting map, but: "The prominence of truck drivers is partly due to the way the government categorizes jobs. It lumps together all truck drivers and delivery people, creating a very large category. Other jobs are split more finely; for example, primary school teachers and secondary school teachers are in separate categories." ... I really wish they'd collapsed some of those categories, could have been even more revealing.

ddebernardy 10y ago
Then again, teachers are probably on their way to being (at least semi-)automated as well... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- randyrand 10y ago
  Let's hope. Even free services such as Kahn Academy blow many teachers out of the water in terms of really teaching things. The nanny aspect of teachers will be hard to replace though.