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Then the pay can be even higher as you’d be managing basically a road train of trucks.

• dredmorbius 5y ago
  That's not how labour markets work.
  • Robotbeat 5y ago
    It is, if demand for the services keeps up with the expanded capacity. Pay can be higher without risking demand destruction due to high costs. If demand doesn’t keep up, then sure, wages could even be lower than today. But I suspect if we expand capacity, growth in demand for shipping will make up for it.
    • dredmorbius 5y ago
      Wages as with most non-rent prices are driven by substitutability. If another worker is willing to do the job for less pay, then that sets the market price. Productivity is not a factor, though skills, risk, training, trust, and overall attractiveness of the work may well be --- these are the five factors that Adam Smith identifies over 240 years ago. The other factor might be some form of gating of labour supply through registration, credentialling, unionisation, or a professional organisation (a/k/a guild). These rely however on constraining supply and only succeed in securing remuneration based on suplus value through monopoly gatekeeping. Not because labour is compensated due to productivity.
      • Robotbeat 5y ago
        About 10% of truck drivers own their trucks. Maybe that 10% will be able to handle the vast majority of truck traffic. …but not if the tech is controlled centrally by large companies who take most of the profit from it.