5 ms·

I'm generally pro-self-driving vehicles, and while I don't want to underestimate the difficulties, given how far related tech has gone in recent years I think i

I'm generally pro-self-driving vehicles, and while I don't want to underestimate the difficulties, given how far related tech has gone in recent years I think it'd be a mistake to assume any of this is "never" going to happen. Despite this, I've been very nervously watching how truck driving and self-driving interact. I feel like city-to-city long haul driving will have a very rapid turnover once a certain tech threshold is hit. That threshold might be 5 years out or 20 years out or even further, but once it is reached a lot of jobs cease to be as profitable very quickly. Trucking is a major source of strong employment for those without a college degree. It is a significant source of employment all across the US, and there are related effects - entire small towns and certainly many small businesses rely on the income from truckers. (Everything here is about the US because I know too little about non-US to have even these vague reactions) Miners have become a synonym for workers displaced by technology - yet mining was always 1-2 orders of magnitude smaller than modern trucking and took multiple generations to decline. Trucking could lose a big chunk of the industry in the course of a decade or less, to the tune of a million drivers or more. Having a million or more drivers that are suddenly unemployed or under employed would have a huge impact on the economy and public faith in the economy. Having this occur is predictable even if we can't predict when. Yet how many have given serious discussion on how to handle the reaction once this starts coming to pass? Could be confirmation bias on my part, but I see cases like this - where the effort proved to be more complicated than expected - to falsely create the narrative that this is not a real problem to consider, which just makes the eventual impact worse. EDIT: Please stop thinking I want to "protect" trucking or "stop" self-driving technology. I want neither - I just want us (society) to take advantage of the time when we know a change is coming but isn't here yet rather than deny it as "not yet real" and then wring our hands in despair over the consequences once it IS real.

charmides 8y ago
This attitude is nothing new. But I don't think people are seeing the big picture. Self-driving cars may cause a temporary spike in unemployment, but the economy and human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. See how the length of the average working week has been decreasing in the USA: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8c/boLUsfqNlsI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-06-09+at+11.23.36+AM.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8... (Source: Univ of Gröningen and Univ of California, Davis) This is due to technologal innovations.
- ergothus 8y ago
  I don't think the reaction should be "Let's not do this, it could hurt jobs!". I also don't think the reaction should be "This is nothing to worry about, the jobs thing will work out over time". Right now we have the option to anticipate and act to reduce any painful shocks. later we will not have the benefit of preparation.
- munificent 8y ago
  > human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. Given how many humans currently work at tedious jobs, the conclusion to come to is that they prefer that over no income at all. So simply eliminating that job isn't doing them any favors unless there's some solution for how they will still be able to pay their bills.
  - charmides 8y ago
    I don't think you are looking at the big picture either. New technology is constantly creating new jobs at the cost of old ones. Just like self-driving cars may displace truck drivers, so did new machines displace 19th century factory workers. However, this is such a small problem because the long-term economic benefits are enormous.
    - chrischen 8y ago
      I think people fail to see what "economic benefits" actually means for them. It means that you start spending less time fighting off tuberculosis, dying from an infection, dying from childbirth complications, lowering the cost of living, etc. These things ultimately make it easier for any given person to sustain themselves, if it benefits society. Take GMOs. They increase crop yields, making it cheaper to buy food. Sure it may have eliminated some jobs along the way, but then those guys ended up getting cheaper food at the cost of a having to find a new job.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    By eliminating tedious work, their bills would become smaller. That's the idea with progress, anyways.
Kalium 8y ago
You're absolutely right! Trucking is a major sector of employment. It's also a major source of life-shortening occupational health problems. The life expectancy of a trucker is 16 years shorter than the norm. Why are you so eager to protect jobs that are measurably killing the people who work them? Do you value these jobs so much that you're willing to pay for them in human lives? For my own part, I'd rather have a million former truckers who need retraining and new skillsets than a million dead truckers. But that's me, and I'm known to be weird.
- j88439h84 8y ago
  > The life expectancy of a trucker is 16 years shorter than the norm. Source? What's "the norm"?
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    Exactly. Does the norm include women? Truckers are mostly male and women live longer. Take the typical male life expectancy and knock off a few years as a result of sitting in a chair all aday the kind of diet you wind up having from always being on the road and "16yr less than the norm" seems perfectly reasonable
- SolarNet 8y ago
  Great redirect, but you failed to answer the actual question. But first a rebuttable. First of all the life expectancy between college education and highschool education is 12 years. So that's only a 4 year shorter gap. (Perhaps universal medical care would fix this problem) Second, do you seriously think the US has the capacity to handle 2 million unemployed truck drivers in the course of a couple years? That's a 10% increase overnight, and I have news for you, schools are already overburdened. (Perhaps free college education would provide the money to improve capacity, and fix two problems with one stone) Third, the real problem is the jobs. What job are they going to do once they get their degree. Millennials are already one of the most highly trained yes underpaid generations yet, and they have the advantage of youth. The jobs aren't coming back from these sorts of events. (Perhaps a universal basic income would fix this problem) And finally the real question was: What are we going to do about it. It was a request to have a conversation about the solution. Not to stop it from happening. I've provided my solutions, in the spirit of conversation I would be curious to see what you identify as problems, and your proposed solutions.
Eridrus 8y ago
I think it's basically impossible to prepare for. Finding jobs for these folks can't be done effectively in a top down manner. Retraining programs haven't been found to be very effective. We might extend additional unemployment benefits to people, but that will be a purely political issue when it comes around, not something that really requires planning/infrastructure. And making any transitional moves for truckers is going to be hard because there is currently a shortage of truckers already.
- ergothus 8y ago
  It doesn't have to be a top-down manner. Truckers (and those that rely on truckers) aren't stupid. If you were to go to them as a group and say "hey, we expect 50% of you to lose your jobs, or at least too many working hours, over the next 20 years. How do you want this to play out?" I suspect you'd get a lot of denials, but you'd also get some interest in having a say over the future. The drivers would know where the jobs are harder, they'd be in a good place to nurture the transition. If they were doing so IN FURTHERANCE of their (evolved) job rather than just destroying it, I bet you'd find some folks with ideas. Others would want to transition to a related-but-new job. Or retire early. Or pick up skills for an UNRELATED job. All of which is easier to bring about over the course of years with people who aren't worried about how to pay their rent/mortgage/food/medical bills. In no way is this _easy_ - the number of issues to solve is huge and complex. But since we know the problem is going to happen I'd rather TRY to work on it, be that ruling from top or empowering the bottom or any other strategy other than "Wait until it's an emergency".

charmides 8y ago

This attitude is nothing new. But I don't think people are seeing the big picture. Self-driving cars may cause a temporary spike in unemployment, but the economy and human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. See how the length of the average working week has been decreasing in the USA: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8c/boLUsfqNlsI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-06-09+at+11.23.36+AM.png http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8A9_5tIWVQY/U5XkaRfB8bI/AAAAAAAAM8... (Source: Univ of Gröningen and Univ of California, Davis) This is due to technologal innovations.

ergothus 8y ago
I don't think the reaction should be "Let's not do this, it could hurt jobs!". I also don't think the reaction should be "This is nothing to worry about, the jobs thing will work out over time". Right now we have the option to anticipate and act to reduce any painful shocks. later we will not have the benefit of preparation.
munificent 8y ago
> human workers benefits in the long term from the elimination of tedious work. Given how many humans currently work at tedious jobs, the conclusion to come to is that they prefer that over no income at all. So simply eliminating that job isn't doing them any favors unless there's some solution for how they will still be able to pay their bills.
- charmides 8y ago
  I don't think you are looking at the big picture either. New technology is constantly creating new jobs at the cost of old ones. Just like self-driving cars may displace truck drivers, so did new machines displace 19th century factory workers. However, this is such a small problem because the long-term economic benefits are enormous.
  - chrischen 8y ago
    I think people fail to see what "economic benefits" actually means for them. It means that you start spending less time fighting off tuberculosis, dying from an infection, dying from childbirth complications, lowering the cost of living, etc. These things ultimately make it easier for any given person to sustain themselves, if it benefits society. Take GMOs. They increase crop yields, making it cheaper to buy food. Sure it may have eliminated some jobs along the way, but then those guys ended up getting cheaper food at the cost of a having to find a new job.
- chrischen 8y ago
  By eliminating tedious work, their bills would become smaller. That's the idea with progress, anyways.

Kalium 8y ago

You're absolutely right! Trucking is a major sector of employment. It's also a major source of life-shortening occupational health problems. The life expectancy of a trucker is 16 years shorter than the norm. Why are you so eager to protect jobs that are measurably killing the people who work them? Do you value these jobs so much that you're willing to pay for them in human lives? For my own part, I'd rather have a million former truckers who need retraining and new skillsets than a million dead truckers. But that's me, and I'm known to be weird.

j88439h84 8y ago
> The life expectancy of a trucker is 16 years shorter than the norm. Source? What's "the norm"?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  Exactly. Does the norm include women? Truckers are mostly male and women live longer. Take the typical male life expectancy and knock off a few years as a result of sitting in a chair all aday the kind of diet you wind up having from always being on the road and "16yr less than the norm" seems perfectly reasonable
SolarNet 8y ago
Great redirect, but you failed to answer the actual question. But first a rebuttable. First of all the life expectancy between college education and highschool education is 12 years. So that's only a 4 year shorter gap. (Perhaps universal medical care would fix this problem) Second, do you seriously think the US has the capacity to handle 2 million unemployed truck drivers in the course of a couple years? That's a 10% increase overnight, and I have news for you, schools are already overburdened. (Perhaps free college education would provide the money to improve capacity, and fix two problems with one stone) Third, the real problem is the jobs. What job are they going to do once they get their degree. Millennials are already one of the most highly trained yes underpaid generations yet, and they have the advantage of youth. The jobs aren't coming back from these sorts of events. (Perhaps a universal basic income would fix this problem) And finally the real question was: What are we going to do about it. It was a request to have a conversation about the solution. Not to stop it from happening. I've provided my solutions, in the spirit of conversation I would be curious to see what you identify as problems, and your proposed solutions.

Eridrus 8y ago

I think it's basically impossible to prepare for. Finding jobs for these folks can't be done effectively in a top down manner. Retraining programs haven't been found to be very effective. We might extend additional unemployment benefits to people, but that will be a purely political issue when it comes around, not something that really requires planning/infrastructure. And making any transitional moves for truckers is going to be hard because there is currently a shortage of truckers already.

ergothus 8y ago
It doesn't have to be a top-down manner. Truckers (and those that rely on truckers) aren't stupid. If you were to go to them as a group and say "hey, we expect 50% of you to lose your jobs, or at least too many working hours, over the next 20 years. How do you want this to play out?" I suspect you'd get a lot of denials, but you'd also get some interest in having a say over the future. The drivers would know where the jobs are harder, they'd be in a good place to nurture the transition. If they were doing so IN FURTHERANCE of their (evolved) job rather than just destroying it, I bet you'd find some folks with ideas. Others would want to transition to a related-but-new job. Or retire early. Or pick up skills for an UNRELATED job. All of which is easier to bring about over the course of years with people who aren't worried about how to pay their rent/mortgage/food/medical bills. In no way is this _easy_ - the number of issues to solve is huge and complex. But since we know the problem is going to happen I'd rather TRY to work on it, be that ruling from top or empowering the bottom or any other strategy other than "Wait until it's an emergency".