The Economic Consequences of Self-Driving Trucks 615
An anonymous reader writes: Last week we learned that self-driving big-rig trucks were finally being deployed on public roads in Nevada for testing purposes. Experts consider trucking to be ripe for replacement with AI because of the sheer volume of trucks on the road, and the relative simplicity of their routes. But the eventual replacement of truck drivers with autonomous driving systems will have a huge impact on the U.S. economy: there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers, and millions more are employed to support and coordinate them. Yet more people rely on truckers to stay in business — gas stations, motels, and restaurants along trucking routes, to name a few.
Now, that's not to say moving forward with autonomous driving is a bad idea — in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important. But we need to start thinking about how to handle the 10 million people looking for work when the (human) trucking industry falls off a cliff. It's likely we'll see another wave of ghost towns spread across the poor parts of the country, as happened when the interstate highway system changed how long-range transportation worked in the U.S.
Now, that's not to say moving forward with autonomous driving is a bad idea — in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important. But we need to start thinking about how to handle the 10 million people looking for work when the (human) trucking industry falls off a cliff. It's likely we'll see another wave of ghost towns spread across the poor parts of the country, as happened when the interstate highway system changed how long-range transportation worked in the U.S.
Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Interesting)
The summary says "in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important." My brother is a truck driver, and from what he has told me, and also what I have seen reported multiple times, and what I have seen myself, the vast majority of accidents involving trucks are caused by car drivers misbehaving around truck. They pull stunts like pulling in front of them at merges then hitting the brakes. An autonomous truck will hit such a car just like a manned truck, so I think the claim that automating the trucks will save most of those lives is wrong.
Your brother is correct. Professional drivers can drive hundreds of thousands of miles per year, while Joe Blow in his Honda may do 15,000. Statistics show that most accidents involving a larger truck are, in fact, the fault of the car. So automating trucking won't help.
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:4, Interesting)
It will help SOME. Automatic drivers will not suffer degradations of reaction time due to distractions or getting sleepy. But that might just prompt drivers to be even more risky around trucks because they assume it will always be able to react to whatever stupid shit they pull. (Physics be damned!)
You assume the "professionals" really are.... (Score:3)
The trucking industry USED to be pretty well regarded for having top notch drivers. I don't think this is the case today. Some of the trucking schools were caught red-handed passing students who had "stand ins" taking the exams for them, for example. And all too often, long-haul drivers are pressed to drive so many hours at a time that they're really not that safe and alert at the wheel some of the time.
The drivers I saw hired at a manufacturing place I used to work for were not exactly pillars of societ
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:4, Informative)
Sensors and computers will provide evidence it was the texting fucker in the car that caused accident.
Re: (Score:3)
You gave an anecdote of a single incident.
Yes, and the plural of anecdote is data. All the statistics that make up the "the car usually caused it" stat is a sum of anecdotes, assebmled by police. The police are trained that all crashes are speed and alcohol related, and that a car-truck crash is the fault of the car. The bias is there.
And if you think the police have sympathy for truckers, you know nothing about the business.
I know more than you do. Yes, the police target them for inspections because the drivers so often miss something on the piles of paperwork. Easy fines to meet their quota. They don't actually have it out for truc
Re: (Score:3)
The summary says "in 2012, roughly 4,000 people died in accidents with large trucks, and almost all of the accidents were caused by driver error. Saving most of those lives (and countless injuries) is important." My brother is a truck driver, and from what he has told me, and also what I have seen reported multiple times, and what I have seen myself, the vast majority of accidents involving trucks are caused by car drivers misbehaving around truck. They pull stunts like pulling in front of them at merges then hitting the brakes. An autonomous truck will hit such a car just like a manned truck, so I think the claim that automating the trucks will save most of those lives is wrong.
What makes you think that the autonomous truck will hit the car just like a manned truck? I'd think that with the sensors on the truck tied directly into the autonomous control systems the autotruck could react thousands of times faster and more effectively than a human being truck driver.
Have you seen what autonomous cars can do? I've seen video of a driverless car parallel parking in a space just barely able to accept the car; by speeding up to the parking space and doing a handbrake turn so that the car
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
the autonomous control systems the autotruck could react thousands of times faster and more effectively than a human being truck driver.
If a truck's stopping distance is 2/3 of a mile, and a car comes to a complete stop in 1/4 of a mile directly in front of the truck, it does not matter how fast the truck's reaction time is. That car is going to have a bad day.
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Informative)
If there's that much difference in stopping distance then the truck is criminally poorly maintained.
No, the fact a truck going the same speed as a car can take three times the distance to stop is physics. See this chart. [ny.gov]. The car weighs around 3000 lbs, and the truck is 40,000-80,000 lbs. The car has a lot more rubber per pound on the road so stops faster. And no matter which driver caused it, when a 40 ton truck hits a 1 to 2 ton car, the car loses. It is the same problem with many motorcycles being able to stop faster than a car.
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm... looks like somebody failed at learning Amdahl's Law.
Let's say a truck is driving at 60 MPH (88 feet per second) when somebody jumps in front of it, 88 feet away. The driver will take 0.5 seconds (44 feet) to react, then the truck's air-brakes will take another 0.5 seconds (44 feet) to engage. By that time, the truck will have hit the person. Then the truck will take another 355 feet [maafirm.com] to come to a stop.
Let's replace the human-driven truck with an automated one, and assume that the computer is unrealistically perfect and manages to reduce the reaction time to zero (seconds or feet). In that case, it still takes 0.5 seconds (44 feet) for the air brakes to engage, so the truck has "only" 311 feet of braking distance left to travel when it hits the person.
In other words, reaction time accounts for only about 10% of the total stopping distance, so the maximum improvement gained by switching to an autonomous truck would be about 10%. That's not zero, but it's also not "thousands of times" better, as you claimed.
Re: (Score:2)
Correct, but for people or cars between 311 and 355 feet they will be alive instead of dead.
This is not a binary solution. Just incrementally better than the current (human drivers) solution.
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Informative)
That won't help. The problem with trucks isn't human reaction speed, it's the sheer amount of kinetic energy that needs to be dissipated for one to stop. A 60-ton truck going at 50 mph has 29 MJ of kinetic energy. For it to stop, every single joule needs to go somewhere, and with current technology that means they'll turn to heat. And that means it's going to take a while as that heat dissipates - the brakes will literally melt if you try to brute-force a shorter braking distance, for example by increasing braking system pressure.
Alternatively, just consider how much damage is caused by a truck crash. Physics don't care if it's another car's rear or the truck's own brakes it's pushing against; any object that tries to stop its motion in a hurry is going to be hit by those same forces.
Re: (Score:2)
yes, the famous drive in the middle lane and cut off someone in the right lane to make the exit
Re:Won't save most of the 4000 lives (Score:5, Interesting)
To give a counterexample, I was driving down a long hill that I have driven daily for 20+ years. At the bottom of the hill, right before it went around a curve, I saw cars hitting their brakes, and knew there was probably a traffic jam around the corner, so I started slowing down.
There was a truck driver pretty far behind me, and he didn't bother slowing down until he came around the curve, saw the traffic jam, locked his brakes, and ran off the road, and blamed me for the accident.
I'm a physics major, so I measured the location of where he locked his brakes, and the point he came to a stop. A little high school algebra showed he was moving 80-85 MPH in a 70 MPH zone when he hit his brakes.
For that reason, I subsequently installed a dashcam in my car. It pays for itself the first time some idiot lies and tries to pin the blame on you.
Re: (Score:2)
Automated trucking might have prevented that. Rather than the driver being an isolated unit (or in a perfect world listening to some radio station with local traffic) the automated truck can be in communication with other automated trucks and regional traffic control systems. With some subsystem paying 100% attention to it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm a physics major, so I measured the location of where he locked his brakes, and the point he came to a stop. A little high school algebra showed he was moving 80-85 MPH in a 70 MPH zone when he hit his brakes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you need to know rather more than where he locked his brakes and where he stopped? Mass of the truck? Coefficient of friction between tires and road, which will depend on tire pressure, road conditions, temperature...?
Your point that plenty of drivers are woefully inattentive is valid, of course. I've seen the same situation as you describe occur on countless occasions on the windy* roads where I live (where it often helps to look out for reflections of cars on the side
Re: (Score:2)
I agree: automating truck driving will not decrease truck-car crashes very much since most of those are caused by the car driver.
I don't see much of a future for drone trucks, though. Instead I think the role of the truck driver will change, with less emphasis on managing the controls and more on the strategies involved. Such as selecting between alternate routes when road conditions up ahead have changed, supervising loading and unloading, monitoring the truck's performance and intervening when something-
Re: (Score:2)
> Instead I think the role of the truck driver will change, with less emphasis on managing the controls and more on the strategies involved.
Sure. That job can be done from behind a desk tough, managing not just one single truck but dozens of them, at the same time. With the added benefit of being home for dinner (or breakfast, if you get the night shift).
Trucks have the advantage to planes, that in case of a malfunction, it is much easier to pull over and stop. A service car could then be dispatched, i.e
Re: (Score:2)
There are numerous different scenarios. Long haul trucking (for example) may end up being totally autonomous, just having a human driver picked up when close to leaving the freeway system.
Local delivery (Fed Ex, UPS etc) will still have an operator (or perhaps two or more) that can jump out with the package while the delivery truck drives around the block (or drops the second operator at a second location.) While going between locations the operators sort packages. When empty the operators may get dropped o
Re: (Score:3)
The plural of anecdote is not data. While your brother may actually be honest and not biasing himself in favor of himself, it's not clear that truck drivers are always in the right or even mostly in the right.
I've seen a lot of bad truck driving behavior -- abrupt lane changes, following too close, failure to yield, speeding, etc. When in Arizona last winter it was fairly appalling how badly trucks drove on I-10 between Tuscon and Benson. In fact there was a semi that crashed and burned on the westbound
Re: (Score:3)
When I got my CDL I remember being told you should always have your foot on the break when you go over a hill, but I never remember doing it. There are so many situations where caution is ignored, such as stoppin
Re: (Score:2)
The economics aren't the same. Paying several $10k's to replace a driver is economical. Paying one $10k to have an automatic driver in my car isn't within reach for most people.
New Jersey and Other Fictions... (Score:5, Insightful)
In NJ, you aren't allowed to pump your own gas so that you will keep the guy who pumps it employed. They *could* have employed him dong something useful--thing TVA-type programs where he's doing a job to improve the environment, for example--but this is what they picked. There will be pushback against automated trucks in a similar fashion, although of course they're so much more proficient that they will prevail in the end.
There are a lot of trucks where liability or small tasks that still require human judgment will keep with human drivers for a good long while yet. Fuel Trucks delivering to local gas stations, septic trucks and heating oil trucks that have to find a port in every person's yard, etc...
I do wonder whether the amount of stuff that falls off the back of the truck will go up or down. Less oversight of the stuff, but less chance for a driver to be in collusion with the people who fall things off the back of trucks.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:New Jersey and Other Fictions... (Score:4, Interesting)
There are no such people. I mean, if there were, then WTF would they do when they go on a trip to a different state? Stand next to the gas pump and act helpless, like a drooling moron?
I went to visit in-laws in Oregon a while back, and was amazed at how much of a pain in the ass getting gas there was. In normal states, you can just get out, pump the gas, pay, and leave. But in Oregon? In Oregon you have to wait in line for fucking ever because they have one guy running around handling all the pumps and there's a line of cars waiting because he can't keep up. People from Oregon say "oh, isn't it great how we don't have to pump our own gas?" No, it really fucking isn't! It's worse!
Re:New Jersey and Other Fictions... (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, let's be honest: if someone is frail enough to require a walker, in many cases they're probably not healthy enough to be operating a vehicle in the first place. In an emergency, how are they going to press the brake pedal hard enough to actually stop effectively (i.e., hard enough that the ABS would kick in)?
Second, in the entire Metro Atlanta area I've only ever noticed one gas station that advertized full service. So how do disabled people around here get gas? Simple! Every staffed gas station, including self-service ones, is required by law [consumered.com] to have the attendant pump gas for disabled people, rendering the whole thing a non-issue. (By the way, that's a Federal law -- the Americans with Disabilities Act -- so don't pretend as if it wouldn't apply in New Jersey and Oregon too!)
The bottom line is this: Why should able-bodied people be treated like drooling morons -- and have to pay more -- just so that some minimum-wage worker can pretend that he's useful? The answer is, no goddamn reason at all!
Re: (Score:2)
God save the covered wagon drivers! (Score:2)
And taxi drivers. Stop uber!
Not sure what to worry about here (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't imagine that even with trucks driving themselves, that we wouldn't want or need someone being with the truck. For interactions with people for delivery, to handle mechanical problems or unexpected issues that would arise.
I just don't think it'll be the employment collapse everyone is imagining, I just think we'll move from truck driver to truck manager.
Re:Not sure what to worry about here (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you want one person per one truck, when you can have a customer service team with one person per hundred trucks?
Re:Not sure what to worry about here (Score:4, Informative)
We won't have a truck manager on every truck. We'll have truck managers responsible for a region of maybe a couple hours' drive. When a truck gets sick, the local truck manager drives out to where it is and fixes it. So we're replacing a couple million jobs with a couple thousand.
Re: (Score:2)
this guy explained the problem better than i can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3)
For some jobs you can eliminate the person that goes along with the truck. For example when the truck is making deliveries to warehouses or stores and there are people there that can load or offload what is needed. When you have lots of small deliveries or need a task done at each spot then you still need someone or people to go along with the truck. Say a furniture delivery business or a moving company. But they can find people easier since they wouldn't need to have someone with a special license anym
3.5 million truckers (Score:4, Informative)
But the eventual replacement of truck drivers with autonomous driving systems will have a huge impact on the U.S. economy: there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers, and millions more are employed to support and coordinate them.
Who said anything about replacing truck drivers with autonomous driving systems? Airplanes have autopilot, but they still require TWO pilots. Autonomous trucking systems will be no different. Somebody will have to drive it in city traffic and park it at the freight terminal, and take over when the autonomous system doesn't know how to handle a situation. The difference is that in a plane you usually have seconds or minutes to take over the system, whereas on a road with cars mere feet away, a trucker will have fractions of a second to respond and take over to a situation.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Who said anything about replacing truck drivers with autonomous driving systems? Airplanes have autopilot, but they still require TWO pilots. Autonomous trucking systems will be no different. Somebody will have to drive it in city traffic and park it at the freight terminal, and take over when the autonomous system doesn't know how to handle a situation. The difference is that in a plane you usually have seconds or minutes to take over the system, whereas on a road with cars mere feet away, a trucker will have fractions of a second to respond and take over to a situation.
If a plane could simply pull over on the outskirts of town to meet its harbor pilot, long haul freight plane pilots would be on the block, too.
Re:3.5 million truckers (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why it's an absurd notion. Human beings can't "take over" in a fraction of a second, especially since they're out of practice from not driving the car and daydreaming (at best). An automated car has to handle every situation it encounters on its own, otherwise it's worse than useless.
Re:3.5 million truckers (Score:5, Interesting)
I wouldn't say it's worse than useless. But it may not be the panacea that we expect.
First, I have my doubts about the whole "A.I. Can Handle Anything" theory. Weather, accidents, and construction can create very creative roadways where you will want a driver behind the wheel who'll be able to figure out and work with human beings on the scene (for example, a cop doing traffic control around an accident).
So you'll still want drivers. The question is, how many drivers will you need?
Consider long-haul trucks, which are the ones that are really ripe for automation. They usually have two drivers so that they can run 24 hours at a stretch. I believe--and I may be off--that the rules for these people require that they drive no more than 12 hours. It might be 10 hours, I don't remember. But in any event, the reason you have two drivers is so that you don't have a truck spending 12-14 hours sitting by the side of the road while the single driver sleeps.
You could get rid of one driver right there. A long haul truck with one driver who can sleep for 12 hours and will only be woken up if something weird is going on that the truck can't handle so it pulled off to the side of the road. That's still saving money versus having two drivers and is certainly not "worse than useless."
Re:3.5 million truckers (Score:4, Interesting)
Perhaps more accurately, the A.I. MUST be able to either handle the situation or decide it can't and bring the vehicle to a safe stop to allow a driver to take over. What it must not do is suddenly buzz and expect the human to instantly take over to avoid a crash. Rule number one, the AI is responsible for the vehicle until the human voluntarily indicates he has taken over, no matter what.
Who manages the loading and unloading? (Score:5, Informative)
Also, refueling? En route maintenance. Stuff like that?
There is more to being a truck driver than just driving.
Re: (Score:2)
Also, refueling? En route maintenance. Stuff like that?
1) Truck signals for fuel.
2) Dispatch arranges for fuel delivery.
3) Truck pulls over when/where instructed.
4) Fuel truck pulls up, driver transfers fuel.
5) Profit!
Also, existing truck stops could simply employ drivers to bring autonomous trucks in for fueling and then send them on their way.
Same basic idea for maintenance.
It's My rant (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: It's My rant (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. The solution is, and has always been, the complete elimination of the now useless people. There will be paradise on earth, one day, but only for the One Percenters. The world is being remade by, and for, the Ruling Elite. If you're not part of it now you will never be and neither will any of your descendants. You're part of the surplus populace scheduled for eradication. Sorry.
Re: (Score:3)
What route do you expect the 1% to take to eliminating the surplus population? Will they do it Adolph HItler style, with purpose built facilities where the 99% will be rounded up and exterminated? Will they do it Joseph Stalin style and simply deprive the vast population of food and other needed necessities?
It seems more probable that in a future dystopia, they might claim the best resources for themselves, set up their own communities with heavi
Re: (Score:2)
While I do not agree on the teachers (that idea has now failed many, many times), I agree on the rest. Capitalism cannot work in a post-production society. Distribute the wealth some other way or society dies.
Re: (Score:2)
History disagrees with most of the things you said. As menial, unskilled and repetitive jobs get eliminated, the service industry grows. Fast food servers have been useless for a long time, but they're very rarely replaced by automation. The enormous service industries that are hallmarks of successful western economies are make work programs because we have this antiquated idea that everyone needs a 40+ hour a week job. Plus, most people like having others serve them.
Re: (Score:3)
We've already seen it. The age of crisis lasting from the start of first to the end of second world war basically brought an end to laissez-faire capitalism. Things we have now - from social security to 40-hour workweek - were all reforms demanded by the labour movement. And attempts to return to the good old Gilded Age are backfiring quite spectacularly up
Move those drivers into services around the trucks (Score:2)
There's still lots for people to do with those trucks. People have to load them, drive them between loading/unloading and staging areas, maintain them, fuel them, etc. Sure, a computer can back up a semi to a loading dock, but the logistics are more complicated than that, so humans will be involved. So basically, the effect of having self-driving trucks is that the same people that drive them all around the country can now just live at end and way points, and we can deploy more trucks for them to handle
Who owns the trucks (Score:2)
Don't (at least some) truck drivers own their truck?
Buy an autonomous truck, sit back and rake in the dough.
A good model would be to train some drivers in maintenance and repair. It's like the old automated plane joke - there will be a pilot and a dog, the pilot to make sure nothing goes wrong and the dog to bite the pilot if he touches anything
It will happen in stages (Score:2)
It seems like the first and most obvious step for the trucking industry is to replace trucks on the long haul only. For example, one driver might drive the truck to the highway onramp and send it on its way, then the truck drives itself for hours and hours to where it is at an offramp by another driver who takes it to its final destination.
Self-driving will certainly reduce the work available for truckers, but it will be a really long time before it eliminates them. Tractor trailers are not only difficult t
Re: (Score:2)
Tractor trailers are not only difficult to maneuver, but often require very difficult maneuvers to park where they can be unloaded or unhitched.
Sounds like a perfect job for a computer to solve.
Save the buggy whip makers! (Score:2)
I see this every time a new technology that comes along that could replace human laborers, technology means millions will lose their jobs. What always happens is that these people all seem to be capable of finding other work. The work I do in computers did not exist before computers existed. Before the electronic computers existed there was a job description called "computer". Had I lived in an earlier age I'd probably be employed as one of those computers.
Another reason that truck drivers won't find th
Re: (Score:3)
What always happens is that these people all seem to be capable of finding other work
So far.
When there are no more unskilled jobs left, the people who can't get skills will not get a replacement job.
unexpected positives? (Score:2)
If I was living in some remote rural town, say in southeast Utah that was 100 miles from the nearest Walmart and suddenly they start offering free delivery via self driving car on everything in the store, I think that would be kind of cool.
What about having a self driving camper with satellite wifi? You could sit in the back and do your digital nomad thing while the self driving car figured everything else and drove you all sorts of cool places.
former trucker here... (Score:3)
...I was a trucker long before I was a geek.
Autonomous trucks will still need fuel, most truckers don't sleep in hotels and I can't speak for anybody else but when I was a driver I ate one sit-down meal a day when I stopped for fuel.
Will be interested to see how AI deals with a mountain pass or city traffic; I think autonomous trucks will need human assistance for at least the foreseeable future.
Re:former trucker here... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be interested as to how they will deal with 6" of snow, and no real lane lines.
You don't save jobs by holding back progress (Score:3)
This fool wants to keep makework jobs where people pretend they're useful just so they can have a bullshit job.
That isn't going to give you a healthy economy.
Do we need to worry about how people are going to get work? Yep.
But you do that by getting them competitive jobs that robots don't do better than them.
Did holding back automation save the manufacturing jobs in the rust belt? Nope. All the work went to china instead. So good work. Instead of losing 50 percent of the jobs in the factory you lost 100 percent. Genius.
This is a tech site... embrace the technology or I don't even want to hear your stupid whining Luddite ass.
What about self driving cars? (Score:3)
Taxis, buses, professional drivers, insurance claims, body shops, traffic cops...
Those individuals will be just as affected. And this technology will advance regardless of whether people like it or not. Either we're prepared to accept a future where labor is no longer as important as it once was and we move to allow all people to pursue other interests (work week reductions as well), we're just going to have larger and larger prisons or social as people won't just accept not eating, or the less fortunate will revolt and there will be blood in the streets.
I think there's more peaceful ways to do make the transition but I doubt the elite will necessarily approve. For some reason, re-training will continue to be a fantasy solution in their eyes.
Three words... (Score:3)
Re:Markets, not people (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, God knows we don't need any of that advanced technology crap!
Next thing you know, they might develop big machines to replace covered wagons and plows. Then where will we be, when all those teamsters and farmers are put out of work?
And what's with these "computer" things? Everyone knows a computer is a (usually) young woman who calculates (by hand) the numbers required by Real Scientists (tm). Replace them with machines? I say no!
I say we just destroy all that automation and go back to the tried and true ways we've always known! Ned Ludd Lives!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This time around I think the services sector, which is kind of the only thing absorbing overflow, might just be unable to grow further. If anything, it might implode and add to the bulk of socialism/violence, as the truckers who use the services can't do that anymore. Call centres can only call so many people, and they need those people to have some sort of revenue they want to give to the call centre people. But when it gets to "my call centre people call your call centre people" for the purpose of profit
Re: (Score:3)
The majority of jobs today aren't needed (I.E, Sales). Service will continue to grow as productivity increases.
Today's problem is uneven trade. The USA median hourly wage has been stagnant for 50 years while Asia's has increased 400% - we gave them our jobs. That needs to be reversed.
Re: (Score:3)
The majority of jobs today aren't needed (I.E, Sales).
You're dead wrong. You know a job is needed when somebody is willing to pay you to do it. When I was doing my PC repair business in college, I would love to have had a sales person who could track down leads and find me customers. It would have made my work much more profitable, because people are looking for that all the time, however I don't have the skills to find them. Salespeople do.
Re: (Score:3)
There's currently no system to handle distribution in such an economy. It doesn't matter if there are resources a-plenty if many people can't access them. Robot farms may be able to make food at almost no cost, but there's still a cost - and if most of the population is unemployed, they can't pay even that.
Re: Markets, not people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it didn't. In fact, the economic growth seen under such policies was extreme. So extreme, that it had never been seen before, and has only been duplicated in less free countries due to access to existing capital bases.
You cite "monopolies" and I suspect that you refer to the Standard Oil monopoly (where SO gained 90% of the market share in the kerosene market). What you fail to understand is that under SO's monopoly, the price of
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Huh? My friend who works/owns a sawmill that the workers bought produces something and that is as socialist as you can get, with the workers owning the means of production. Then there is the credit union that I own a share of which produces the same kind of stuff that private banks do. Also the co-op that I also own a share of which produces much the same stuff as any other store.
Even when the government is involved, the community owned damns do a good job of producing the electricity that enables posting t
Re: (Score:2)
Next thing you know, they might develop big machines to replace covered wagons and plows. Then where will we be, when all those teamsters and farmers are put out of work?
It actually is pretty tough to make a living as a small farmer these days.
A functioning society requires jobs that pay a livable wage to people who, for whatever reason, aren't cut out for collage. These are the jobs that are rapidly vanishing, due to automation.
The industrial revolution brought high atmospheric CO2 levels, the likes of which haven't been seen on this planet in over 20 million years. There's no avoiding it, "progress" always comes at a cost.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree the solution isn't to go back on technology though. It's socialism. Plain 'ole socialism. When we don't need these people to work we don't just let them starve while we all take turns seeing who can make the 1% the happiest. And btw, I said _socialism_, not communism. And not a fascist dictatorship that occasionally publishes a pamphlet with something written by Karl Marx either...
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:3)
Because when they have their bread and circuses, they won't be beating your fucking head open with an iron pipe.
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never actually had to live in such an environment, have you?
I'm posting from behind a two meter spiked fence at the moment. Outside the fence are people living in shit conditions, suffering, and generally making the world an uglier place for me. And we still get robbed. All the money I have can't fix the side effects of living in an impoverished city. Having actually spent significant time in both situations, I've come to realize that the people who don't see the advantages of a reasonable degree of socialism are the people whose worlds have benefitted from it so thoroughly they take it for granted.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:3)
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Oh for fucks sake (Score:4, Insightful)
"Fortunately, those scenarios are fictional."
For now.
New technology is coming along. The situation is almost unprecidented - the closest comparison would be the industrial revolution, but even that is just a poor analogy. This means that history cannot serve as our guide - and those fictional scenarios may well be what lies ahead.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem with Socialism for someone who actually works for a living is that it doesn't seem like it promises me anything positive. I get to pay for things demanded by non-workers, but I get essentially nothing in return.
We do not get anything in return? How about this? We don't get our heads on a pitchfork. Put millions of people out of work and bad violent shit is bound to happen. Fucking history is right there to tell you this. How stupid can we be that do not see the self-preservation benefit of not putting millions of people out of work?
Re:Oh for fucks sake (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument was already covered above. I can protect myself for a modest outlay that's a lot less than I'm already paying in taxes.
And even if I couldn't, I don't know why I should think that paying off violent extortionists would result in anything but more violent extortion. Why do you think it might?
History tells me that bad things eventually happen to every society. There's not one single example of any system that endured permanently in peace. So what's the lesson? (Personally, the lesson I learned is not to use "look at history..." as an argument for anything.)
People that revolt from a position of abject poverty and unemployment are extortionists?
Re: (Score:3)
If we put these doomsayers back about 40 years, they'd say the sky is falling for the telecom industry when switchboard operators were being replaced with automated circuit switching systems.
Some of medium.com's articles are really good, especially the ones about physics. But some of them (like this one) are either based on hearsay or make some really dumb assumptions.
Take for example the map they show that indicates that most of the states have trucking as their top income sector. If we rolled back the clo
Re: Markets, not people (Score:3)
Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Re:Markets, not people (Score:4, Insightful)
This has all happened before, and it will all happen again.
When the resource sector automated everyone moved to manufacturing, when manufacturing automated everyone moved to service, now that service is automating where exactly do you expect them to go?
Re:Markets, not people (Score:5, Interesting)
let the markets sort themselves out.
No worries, millions can move into the "big rig hijacking" business! A semi-trailer full of something easy to sell on the street, or a tanker full of a chemical useful in making meth, or of gasoline (gasoline smuggling was the mafia's most profitable business for years) - all very valuable targets. Today that theft is kept somewhat in check by the real risk of getting shot in the process, or of wrecking the rig if your try a scene out of a Fast and Furious movie. But an AI truck with safety reflexes on a lonely stretch of road? Well, the markets will sort themselves out.
As for the legal trade, driving is a crappy job unless you own your truck, and I rather suspect the owner/operators of today will become the owners of tomorrow. Truckstops may go the way of the buggy whip, but I can't see that happening fast - like all infrastructure changes, the capital outlay is so high this will be a 20-50 year transition.
Re:Markets, not people (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the transition will take at most 2 to 5 years once the tech is commercially available, because the cost of a driver is $40k minimum per year. If you can outfit a truck with an auto-driver for $40k it starts to pay off really quickly.
It also lets you operate the trucks 24 hours per day (minus maintenance and refueling).
Re: (Score:3)
let the markets sort themselves out.
No worries, millions can move into the "big rig hijacking" business! A semi-trailer full of something easy to sell on the street, or a tanker full of a chemical useful in making meth, or of gasoline (gasoline smuggling was the mafia's most profitable business for years) - all very valuable targets. Today that theft is kept somewhat in check by the real risk of getting shot in the process, or of wrecking the rig if your try a scene out of a Fast and Furious movie. But an AI truck with safety reflexes on a lonely stretch of road? Well, the markets will sort themselves out.
As for the legal trade, driving is a crappy job unless you own your truck, and I rather suspect the owner/operators of today will become the owners of tomorrow. Truckstops may go the way of the buggy whip, but I can't see that happening fast - like all infrastructure changes, the capital outlay is so high this will be a 20-50 year transition.
How are these not targets already? To me, it seems like it'd be a lot simpler to hijack a truck driven by a human who can accept alternate programmed instructions (also known as "threats," in this context) given in natural human language, than a computer-driven truck. You can't just mess with GPS to hijack a truck; telling a truck that he's not where he thinks he is won't work as well as some people might think, and there's the dual-threat of counter-spoofing technologies (easy to build in if you want to.
Re:Markets, not people (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Markets, not people (Score:5, Interesting)
What you describe sounds analogous to harbour-pilots that are used to navigate big ships in and out of port. They belong with the port, not the ship.
You could imagine that long distance truck journeys could happen without any driver on board, then they pick up a driver just on the edge of a city to take them to their final delivery.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
You're not trying to steal the truck, you're trying to steal the cargo. You either hook up and haul the trailer off, or just unload what you can and scatter. If it's in a county where the sheriff is the brother of the guy doing the robbery, and the nephew of the guy in charge of the local organized crime, well, the police will get there just in time to not quite catch anyone.
Why would you waste money on a cab for a truck that drives itself?
Why do airliners still have pilots?
Most likely, the driver will still be in the cab for the next 20 years, with fewer husband-wife
Re:Markets, not people (Score:4, Insightful)
*pfft* And you're telling me the Democrats give a flying fuck about your jobs either? Who is pushing the H1-B visas so fucking hard? Oh that's right, Democrats.
The politicians are shitty but a lot of the reason they're so shitty is because of tribalistic asshats like you that slavishly associate with a faction. This permits which ever faction you associate with to get away with ANYTHING and you'll forgive them. And the opposing faction could be fucking Jesus Christ walking around giving sight to the blind and you'd still hate them.
You're a fucking cancer on the political system.
Do not vote political parties. Neither the democrats nor the republicans are actually on the ballots. It is just people. PEOPLE. Individuals. Vote for them. Fuck parties. Just look at the people. Evaluate them on a personal level.
That's as good as you'll be able to do in this political system. But really you're not helping anyone by saying "oh its all this political party's fault"...
What if the republicans didn't exist at all? And lets say we a choice between the democrats and some other leftish party. I don't know... the Greens or something. Who wants to bet that someone would be saying in no time "If only the greens weren't there everything would be better".
Its bullshit. This is the sort of crap dictators tell their starving people to explain why their country is shitty. They say "it is because of those evil foreigners!"...
Look at Baltimore, chump. You know the city that recently rioted. Riddle me this, when was the last time that city was run by Republicans? Exactly. The whole country could be run lock stock and barrel by the democrats and most of the shit you're upset about would either not change or might even get worse.
You're mad about markets and capitalism? Tough shit. Not even the Soviets could kill capitalism INSIDE the soviet union during the cold war. The market is forever. You can't kill it. It is a dynamic inevitability, No stable society can exist that does not account for the market in a substantive way.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apparently you are the one who doesn't understand economics. Prices are whatever the market can bear. If the costs can be lowered, it does not mean that the prices go down because they are already at whatever the market can bear. Prices will stay the same, corporate profits will raise.
Re: (Score:3)
Apparently you are the one who doesn't understand economics. Prices are whatever the market can bear. If the costs can be lowered, it does not mean that the prices go down because they are already at whatever the market can bear. Prices will stay the same, corporate profits will raise.
You have over-simplified the economic situation. When costs fall, if there are enough sellers, one of them will reduce his profit margin to try to gain market share. The others must follow, until prices reach a new equilibrium. An example of this is the computer industry. Prices for a unit of computing capability have been falling steadily for 60 years.
Re: Markets, not people (Score:4, Informative)
Other things that are cheaper: food, fuel, clothing, entertainment. If you measure the price by "how many hours would the average person have to work to buy it", then almost everything is cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
Stop lying. I can get books that used to cost $20-30 for $5-15 on Amazon, brand new.
And real prices for cars have fallen dramatically--it's just that our real wages have also fallen dramatically, because we have redistributed purchasing power away from capital and to asset prices, which has killed the funding pool for jobs. Get rid of the Fed, and nominal pri
Re: (Score:2)
More than likely, such trucks won't be used to local addresses, but to those huge distribution points along the freeway and possibly shipping ports if they are not in the middle of an urban area.
Having a limited number of well known spots and routes will likely be the first step, buy a company like Walmart that has the infrastructure and the need to move that much stuff.
And they will get robot guards, what could possibly go wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
Or maybe go back to a fully manual agricultural society? About as sane.
Re:LEOs (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides, in an emergency the two choices are to brake or to try to turn. In a big rig trying to make a fast turn is probably just going to make the situation worse. A computer can hit the brakes just as well as an unprepared human.