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> curious to see what America's 3.5 million truck drivers do when they lose their jobs over the next ten years That is a rather optimistic projection of the ro
by slfnflctd 9y ago
> curious to see what America's 3.5 million truck drivers do when they lose their jobs over the next ten years
That is a rather optimistic projection of the rollout of Level 5 autonomy. The total number of heavy trucks sold worldwide was less than 400k in 2014, and no one has full Level 5 yet (if it can even be done large scale at a profit), so I would adjust those expectations. Most 'displaced' truckers should be able to find work unloading automated long-hauls into smaller short-hauls and driving them during a lengthy transition period.
> your only options are to find a system where people have value independent of their productivity, make being valueless palatable, or just go die quietly
Points 1 & 2 are somewhat interconnected. If I add up the retail value of all my non-paid work, it comes to far more than I make at my day job, and I suspect this is true for many others. Much of what our culture calls "valueless" - because no money is involved - does actually have value, and this will become more clear as time continues to reveal how difficult automating everything really is.
We have already seen this, for example, with people posting what used to be called home videos (no revenue) to YouTube and stumbling into large amounts of ad income, and I believe we'll see it in more areas. It may increasingly be a 'gig economy', but it's happening slowly, and some of those gigs are turning out to be pretty good.
- CoffeeDregs 9y ago> Most 'displaced' truckers should be able to find work unloading automated long-hauls into smaller short-hauls and driving them during a lengthy transition period. If a million truckers lose their long-haul trucking jobs, how do a million short-haul trucking jobs simultaneously come into existence? Many long-haul truck already go to distribution centers on the outskirts of metro areas so the long->short-haul transfer systems already exist.
- slfnflctd 9y agoCheaper, mostly-automated long haul trucking should lead to an overall increase in its usage, meaning there will be more long haul trucks to unload than currently, which will then require even more medium sized trucks (multiple per load) to transfer to. This is a simplified version of the prevailing current theory as I understand it, and it seems fairly solid to me. There's no denying that full Level 5 across the board would lead to very large disruption, but it's a little too early to call how it will play out yet.
- Jesus_Jones 9y agoExactly - we'll lose the long haul easier to automate truck driving jobs first and that will decimate the employment of the field. That's the easy part.
- teachrdan 9y agoIf it takes 10 years for every long-haul trucker to be replaced by autonomous trucks, then 10 years of attrition will reduce the number who will actually lose their job. In a perfect world, new people won't go into the field, and the current truck driving workforce will age or transition out.