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"Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale." It will take as much time as factories
by roel_v 10y ago
"Even if driverless transport technology arrives, it would take quite sometime for it to be adopted on a massive scale."
It will take as much time as factories can produce 100's of millions self-drive retro-fit kits, or alternatively, the average write-off time of a truck, say 5 years? Because 95% of companies that don't start transitioning to self-driving the day after it becomes available on the general market, will not be able to compete within the year or 2 after.
"I think people are underestimating how many new jobs could be created."
A company providing a fully automated solution for all of that is, what, 300-500 people? So let's say there would be 10 of those (which is too many, consolidation and all). Let's say that we round that up (double) to 10000, and then say we're off by a factor of 10. That's 100k, vs 3.5 million jobs now (counting just truckers, and just in the US, so not even counting all 'associated' jobs).
This whole 'but there will be new jobs' thing doesn't stand up to even the tiniest bit of math, even with very generous assumptions. And that's not even considering the nature of those new jobs. Someone who is a truck driver now, isn't going to be a software engineer, or even a sales guy. There are going to be vast portions of the population who will not be qualified to do any of the jobs that the automated ones will generate.
I don't know the solution, and I don't think UBI is it, but what I do know is that the commercial availability of self-driving cars will hit the labor market like a Mack truck (pardon the pun).
- shubhamjain 10y agoI agree that you can't replace 3.5M truckers with highly technical jobs but this is an oversimplified analysis that doesn't consider how industries will grow. When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because it was destroying jobs. Within few decades, the textile industry was employing more people than it was ever before. Replacing truckers with highly reliable and automated transport, would only increase the size of the industry and volume of goods transported would multiply . Analysing what are the exact jobs that would replace these truckers is flawed. There is so much interdependence in industries and technology is changing at so many points that you have to assume there would different kinds of work that would be created. I can guess that, with more goods transported, there would be more humans needed to transport it to their destination. Of course, there could be flaw in my argument that there is an upper limit on products we can create that need transportation but I am assuming this won't be a case for a long time.
- Razengan 10y ago> When Power Loom was introduced, it was often a centre of vandalism because it was destroying jobs. You just gave a very good example right there of a potential for new jobs but you overlooked it: Employing former truckers as guards for self-driving truckers to protect them and their cargo from vandals and protesters. Until self-driving vehicles also become self-defending, humans will still have to sit in the automatic trucks. They'll still need places to grab food from along the way, and so on.