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Interesting question to pose for people here: In 2015 38,300 people were killed on U.S. roads, and 4.4 million were seriously injured - if automation saves thos

Interesting question to pose for people here: In 2015 38,300 people were killed on U.S. roads, and 4.4 million were seriously injured - if automation saves those lives, but puts others out of work, is that not what we want? Shouldn't we prioritize life over employment?

hugs 10y ago
High unemployment in a society can lead to higher crime rates. So prioritizing employment is an indirect way of prioritizing life.
- cassm 10y ago
  The alternative, of course, is to re-address what it means to be a productive individual, and to perhaps concentrate on a social safety net.
  - yanjuk 10y ago
    Yes, my idea of a safety net is family plus basic income. However, crucially, there are thousands of important and hard problems out there available to anyone with a roof over his head, food and internet access. Anyone who doesn't find a hard problem to work on, and this includes those in employment with excellent safety nets, is going to go bad sooner or later (drugs, sociopathy, crime, mental illness, suicide, etc).
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      > Anyone who doesn't find a hard problem to work on, and this includes those in employment with excellent safety nets, is going to go bad sooner or later (drugs, sociopathy, crime, mental illness, suicide, etc). Most people don't need hard problems to work on to find purpose or self-actualization. Most are happy to grind away on tedious takes that take time but are not mentally challenging, or care for children or an elderly parent(s). This should be fine under a basic income model. Provide for everyone, let people who want to work on hard problems work on them.
      - yanjuk 10y ago
        One cannot simply "grind away" at a tedious task or a task capable of being automated. Unlike a hard problem, it cannot occupy the mind persistently and meaningfully.
        toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Not every task can be automated.
        yanjuk 10y ago
        Indeed, but that doesn't invalidate my argument. (I included automation for context.) Note also that one cannot merely look after children, because they need to see a greater purpose in what you do.
      - thebigspacefuck 10y ago
        Basic income with an endless supply of Internet porn and video games is a recipe for success
        yanjuk 10y ago
        No, one would get bored eventually, unless the games incorporated hard problems.
losteverything 10y ago
Tobacco. We saw a similar question. It is a human choice. I have not heard anyone suggesting that driver cars would be banned. They could not ban tobacco.
- rpeden 10y ago
  Tobacco could be banned. It wouldn't be a popular decision, but it could be done. It seems that governments in many countries are playing the long game when it comes to an eventual tobacco ban. The first step is to require stern warnings on packaging of tobacco products. The next step is to include graphic pictures along with the warnings. Where I live, these warnings and graphic pictures take up most of the package surface on cigarette packs. I suppose the next step would be to ban branding from tobacco packages so the only thing on the package is the warnings and images. The end goal of this, I think, is to slowly erode public support for tobacco products. Then, when the eventual ban comes, the public response will be more of a whimper than an outcry. I don't necessarily like legislation that bans people from choosing to do something, but I think there's a decent case for it in countries with publicly funded health care, where tobacco uses costs everyone, and not just the individual who chooses to use it. I enjoy freedom of choice, but I'm no libertarian. It seems to me that in any reasonably sized society, you end up needing to find a balance of tradeoffs between individual liberty and the well-being of society. The tricky part is finding that balance. The line between what's allowed and what isn't can feel capricious and arbitrary to anyone stuck on the wrong side of it. I wonder if governments might try a similar tactic on route to eventually banning human-driven vehicles. Start with warnings, escalate to graphic images and video. Eventually, you might get to the point where the majority of people see anyone who doesn't use a self-driving vehicle as a selfish barbarian.
  - jperras 10y ago
    > I suppose the next step would be to ban branding from tobacco packages so the only thing on the package is the warnings and images. We're already going in that direction here in Canada: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/31/well-consult-canadians-on-tobacco-packaging-says-philpott.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/31/well-consult-... > I don't necessarily like legislation that bans people from choosing to do something, but I think there's a decent case for it in countries with publicly funded health care, where tobacco uses costs everyone, and not just the individual who chooses to use it. Bingo. While I am in favour of individual liberties, smoking is not one of them if I am required to subsidize the healthcare that smokers will inevitably need.
feld 10y ago
You solve it by re-training these people for other jobs (free education) and a minimum living wage.
- CPLX 10y ago
  Retraining has been this sort of ludicrous dogma for awhile, especially since the 90's when the Clinton administration seemed to be obsessed with it. I keep thinking this year will be the year this fiction finally dies. The solution involves real jobs with living wages, not sending former factory workers to sit in de facto community college seminars three nights a week for free.
  - jfoster 10y ago
    "Real jobs" doing what? If it doesn't require any education, it might be the next thing that will get automated.
    - feld 10y ago
      It will be the next thing to get automated. Wake up people, the United States is a post-industrial society. We cannot manufacture things and pay people living wages to do it. We want things cheap and we want them now. Sorry. I'd rather pay these people to be on welfare for the rest of their lives than try to bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA.
      - CPLX 10y ago
        > bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA. The United States is the world's second largest manufacturer. > We cannot manufacture things and pay people living wages to do it. It's important to recognize this statement as highly political dogma rather than neutral fact. Of course we can. We just often choose not to, as a matter of public policy.
        feld 10y ago
        Sure, and things like the auto industry are increasingly becoming automated with robotics. So yes, we can manufacture things. We just can't pay people to do it. Not if we want to afford these nice shiny new things.
ThomPete 10y ago
12 million people make a living from transportation industry. Thats quite a number to compensate for. Plus this will apply to other industries too like the maritime shipping industry.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
alphonsegaston 10y ago
Hypothetically, yes, but these kinds of choices are rarely so binary. For example, we have an opioid/heroin crisis that killed 40,000 people in 2014, driven in no small part by the erosion of meaningful economic opportunity for lower class whites. How much will this problem be multipled by growing automation?
- skoocda 10y ago
  Furthermore, there were 32,500 suicides in 2013. I wouldn't say the US is in any position to make the choice of prioritizing life over jobs, not yet anyways; there's still no way to live without a job. Market forces will decide, of course, but I suspect we won't be saving lives with autonomous cars. Just differing the time, place and means of death.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    The 7 million unemployed in the US may disagree - what are they, zombies?
  - takingflac 10y ago
    Everyone dies sometime, this will shuffle the deck a bit and hopefully allow more people to die of old age.
kevinalexbrown 10y ago
If you read people's comments carefully, I think you'll find that almost no one is proposing to stall self-driving trucks for the sake of jobs. But it does raise questions about worker displacement that are very interesting, and not just from a social-justice-warrior brigading perspective. I imagine this will happen much faster than the textile industry changed. Am I wrong there? That alone makes it fascinating.
katabasis 10y ago
Social scientists have been paying attention to a recent spike in suicide among white, middle-aged Americans [1], and economic distress is often often put forward as a cause. This is exactly the group that the automation of these kinds of blue-collar jobs could hurt the most. The introduction of this kind of technology could have very real consequences in terms of public health, human suffering, etc., albeit in a more indirect way. I wish that the process of getting regulatory approval for this kind of tech could be explicitly tied to addressing some of these second-order consequences: no self driving cars until 1) the technology is assured to be safe on the roads and 2) there is a plan to help the huge number of human beings who are in danger of being made obsolete by it to adapt somehow. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-...
burkaman 10y ago
We can prioritize both. It's not acceptable to ignore the consequences of new technology because overall we'll probably be better off in the long run.
furyg3 10y ago
There are always winners and losers, and those on the losing end need to be supported through the transition. If we save some huge amount of labor costs employing the truckers plus the medical costs (normally spent on the 4+ million seriously injured people each year) that frees up quite some money for trucker early retirement or job retraining, based on age. Especially since this shock is likely to occur faster than a lot of other transitions like in automation on farms, textiles, docks, mines, or factories... This is why it's really, really important to have an effective safety net for catching unemployed and re-training them in a technologically advanced society, as it's getting really difficult to predict where and how fast change will occur.

hugs 10y ago

High unemployment in a society can lead to higher crime rates. So prioritizing employment is an indirect way of prioritizing life.

cassm 10y ago
The alternative, of course, is to re-address what it means to be a productive individual, and to perhaps concentrate on a social safety net.
- yanjuk 10y ago
  Yes, my idea of a safety net is family plus basic income. However, crucially, there are thousands of important and hard problems out there available to anyone with a roof over his head, food and internet access. Anyone who doesn't find a hard problem to work on, and this includes those in employment with excellent safety nets, is going to go bad sooner or later (drugs, sociopathy, crime, mental illness, suicide, etc).
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    > Anyone who doesn't find a hard problem to work on, and this includes those in employment with excellent safety nets, is going to go bad sooner or later (drugs, sociopathy, crime, mental illness, suicide, etc). Most people don't need hard problems to work on to find purpose or self-actualization. Most are happy to grind away on tedious takes that take time but are not mentally challenging, or care for children or an elderly parent(s). This should be fine under a basic income model. Provide for everyone, let people who want to work on hard problems work on them.
    - yanjuk 10y ago
      One cannot simply "grind away" at a tedious task or a task capable of being automated. Unlike a hard problem, it cannot occupy the mind persistently and meaningfully.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Not every task can be automated.
        yanjuk 10y ago
        Indeed, but that doesn't invalidate my argument. (I included automation for context.) Note also that one cannot merely look after children, because they need to see a greater purpose in what you do.
    - thebigspacefuck 10y ago
      Basic income with an endless supply of Internet porn and video games is a recipe for success
      - yanjuk 10y ago
        No, one would get bored eventually, unless the games incorporated hard problems.

losteverything 10y ago

Tobacco. We saw a similar question. It is a human choice. I have not heard anyone suggesting that driver cars would be banned. They could not ban tobacco.

rpeden 10y ago
Tobacco could be banned. It wouldn't be a popular decision, but it could be done. It seems that governments in many countries are playing the long game when it comes to an eventual tobacco ban. The first step is to require stern warnings on packaging of tobacco products. The next step is to include graphic pictures along with the warnings. Where I live, these warnings and graphic pictures take up most of the package surface on cigarette packs. I suppose the next step would be to ban branding from tobacco packages so the only thing on the package is the warnings and images. The end goal of this, I think, is to slowly erode public support for tobacco products. Then, when the eventual ban comes, the public response will be more of a whimper than an outcry. I don't necessarily like legislation that bans people from choosing to do something, but I think there's a decent case for it in countries with publicly funded health care, where tobacco uses costs everyone, and not just the individual who chooses to use it. I enjoy freedom of choice, but I'm no libertarian. It seems to me that in any reasonably sized society, you end up needing to find a balance of tradeoffs between individual liberty and the well-being of society. The tricky part is finding that balance. The line between what's allowed and what isn't can feel capricious and arbitrary to anyone stuck on the wrong side of it. I wonder if governments might try a similar tactic on route to eventually banning human-driven vehicles. Start with warnings, escalate to graphic images and video. Eventually, you might get to the point where the majority of people see anyone who doesn't use a self-driving vehicle as a selfish barbarian.
- jperras 10y ago
  > I suppose the next step would be to ban branding from tobacco packages so the only thing on the package is the warnings and images. We're already going in that direction here in Canada: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/31/well-consult-canadians-on-tobacco-packaging-says-philpott.html https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/05/31/well-consult-... > I don't necessarily like legislation that bans people from choosing to do something, but I think there's a decent case for it in countries with publicly funded health care, where tobacco uses costs everyone, and not just the individual who chooses to use it. Bingo. While I am in favour of individual liberties, smoking is not one of them if I am required to subsidize the healthcare that smokers will inevitably need.

feld 10y ago

You solve it by re-training these people for other jobs (free education) and a minimum living wage.

CPLX 10y ago
Retraining has been this sort of ludicrous dogma for awhile, especially since the 90's when the Clinton administration seemed to be obsessed with it. I keep thinking this year will be the year this fiction finally dies. The solution involves real jobs with living wages, not sending former factory workers to sit in de facto community college seminars three nights a week for free.
- jfoster 10y ago
  "Real jobs" doing what? If it doesn't require any education, it might be the next thing that will get automated.
  - feld 10y ago
    It will be the next thing to get automated. Wake up people, the United States is a post-industrial society. We cannot manufacture things and pay people living wages to do it. We want things cheap and we want them now. Sorry. I'd rather pay these people to be on welfare for the rest of their lives than try to bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      > bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA. The United States is the world's second largest manufacturer. > We cannot manufacture things and pay people living wages to do it. It's important to recognize this statement as highly political dogma rather than neutral fact. Of course we can. We just often choose not to, as a matter of public policy.
      - feld 10y ago
        Sure, and things like the auto industry are increasingly becoming automated with robotics. So yes, we can manufacture things. We just can't pay people to do it. Not if we want to afford these nice shiny new things.

ThomPete 10y ago

12 million people make a living from transportation industry. Thats quite a number to compensate for. Plus this will apply to other industries too like the maritime shipping industry.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

alphonsegaston 10y ago

Hypothetically, yes, but these kinds of choices are rarely so binary. For example, we have an opioid/heroin crisis that killed 40,000 people in 2014, driven in no small part by the erosion of meaningful economic opportunity for lower class whites. How much will this problem be multipled by growing automation?

skoocda 10y ago
Furthermore, there were 32,500 suicides in 2013. I wouldn't say the US is in any position to make the choice of prioritizing life over jobs, not yet anyways; there's still no way to live without a job. Market forces will decide, of course, but I suspect we won't be saving lives with autonomous cars. Just differing the time, place and means of death.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  The 7 million unemployed in the US may disagree - what are they, zombies?
- takingflac 10y ago
  Everyone dies sometime, this will shuffle the deck a bit and hopefully allow more people to die of old age.

kevinalexbrown 10y ago

If you read people's comments carefully, I think you'll find that almost no one is proposing to stall self-driving trucks for the sake of jobs. But it does raise questions about worker displacement that are very interesting, and not just from a social-justice-warrior brigading perspective. I imagine this will happen much faster than the textile industry changed. Am I wrong there? That alone makes it fascinating.

katabasis 10y ago

Social scientists have been paying attention to a recent spike in suicide among white, middle-aged Americans [1], and economic distress is often often put forward as a cause. This is exactly the group that the automation of these kinds of blue-collar jobs could hurt the most. The introduction of this kind of technology could have very real consequences in terms of public health, human suffering, etc., albeit in a more indirect way. I wish that the process of getting regulatory approval for this kind of tech could be explicitly tied to addressing some of these second-order consequences: no self driving cars until 1) the technology is assured to be safe on the roads and 2) there is a plan to help the huge number of human beings who are in danger of being made obsolete by it to adapt somehow. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-for-middle-aged-white-americans-study-finds.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/03/health/death-rates-rising-...

burkaman 10y ago

We can prioritize both. It's not acceptable to ignore the consequences of new technology because overall we'll probably be better off in the long run.

furyg3 10y ago

There are always winners and losers, and those on the losing end need to be supported through the transition. If we save some huge amount of labor costs employing the truckers plus the medical costs (normally spent on the 4+ million seriously injured people each year) that frees up quite some money for trucker early retirement or job retraining, based on age. Especially since this shock is likely to occur faster than a lot of other transitions like in automation on farms, textiles, docks, mines, or factories... This is why it's really, really important to have an effective safety net for catching unemployed and re-training them in a technologically advanced society, as it's getting really difficult to predict where and how fast change will occur.