I was reading an article last night about how Mercedes developed a convoy of self-driving semi trucks that traveled across Europe and it got me thinking about this whole subject.
What happens when we continue to move forward with the automation of blue collar jobs? It'll be kind of like the invention of the steam engine again, instead of a crew of men to dig a ditch, only 1 operator and a machine will be needed.
To talk about trucking specifically if this kind of shift happens in the next 30 years or so, we're looking at MILLIONS unemployed between drivers, brokers, truck stops, dispatchers, etc. Besides trucking we'd also have more industrial jobs become automated by machines (it's already happening all over the place in mining sites). Instead of process operators, laborer's, construction workers, etc... you just have machines doing everything and a skeleton crew of humans to make sure things are going smoothly. There's and endless number of jobs that could be easily automated moving forward.
The result? Now you have a huge unemployment crisis, and what once was BILLIONS of dollars in worker salary is now just even MORE corporate profit, dividing the wealth gap even MORE.
Which is why taking in millions of low IQ immigrants now for "muh economic growth" makes no sense.
Chase Gray
Bumping because the faggot OP duplicate thread. Idiot
James Carter
That is right. We need something like basic income or we will all die when the machines take over.
Adrian Hughes
Interesting point.
Brayden Martin
With the rise of technology a lot of train jobs went away; positions where you had a lifetime career gone overnight. Aviation faced a similar situation with the rise of cheap computational power. These changes will be completely overshadowed by what is yet to come in our lifetimes, I'm ready for the change
its going to be chaotic, the main point right now with automation is to save money not to make peoples lifes better, Mcdonnals has already boosted their profits by replacing thousands of low end teenager jobs resulting in massive poverty and possible synth hate around the streets think of PETA but against robots man its going to be an anime in real life. only self employed people will last the longest people like, doctors (people will feel weird having a robot doctor face it) artist (until true AI happens) and "jobs" of that type.
Jaxson Clark
What scares me is that this change going to happen extremely quickly once it's here. Historically these transitions take a while and people have the opportunity to change their skill set to something more relevant. This technological revolution will happen seemingly overnight and people will be blindsided by the change, lot of people will be unhappy
Jose Martin
its all waiting on a better energy source and AI when THAT happens is when they show will really start. moving to nevada really soon, will build a cave and fill it with food and buy some guns. but it will happen in like 20 to 30 years we have time.
Lincoln Anderson
Only real solutions to something like this that I can even imagine would be overhauling the entire system and socializing everything ans providing some form of basic income.
Or maybe even just do away with wealth altogether. Eventually things will have to hit a point where money is redundant. If robots will be doing everything for free and probably a lot more efficient, I would imagine there being an abundance of everything.
Regardless, you can expect a population decline.
Nathaniel Russell
such a change pushed on so rapidly would DESTROY the poorer communities. it would be hilarious but there would be complete and absolute blowout. god i cant wait to see inner liberal cities falling apart from the distance.
Carson Anderson
plz klap
Jacob Lewis
They'll claim that what is needed is a guaranteed basic income, but I don't think we should give money away for free. Instead, we could offer a basic income to people who agree to be sterilized, and solve the population problem as well as likely drift the average IQ upward.
Angel Cook
War happens OP. Quite literally.
Hunter Miller
Robots are meant to replace us. They are the next stage of intelligence. Why should a parent out live their child? we're all doomed.
Colton Sullivan
>Why should a parent out live their child if the chance to put my brain in a robot ever comes i will gladly tell my children to fuck off.
Austin Johnson
If done correctly, currency and shit jobs become nonexistent. People would be free to do research and art. Guy A would be free to finally learn the piano since he didn't have to dig that ditch. Possibly create a new style in the process. Guy B would be free to breed roses instead of sitting behind the wheel driving a delivery truck.
Or society crumbles. Guys C through W are unable to get food and turn to crime because theres literally no employment possibilities for them. Guy X sits on a pile of gold shekels like Scrooge McDuck because he has almost zero overhead for his business. That money is never reinvested into the community. You don't want to know about guys y and z...
Samuel Martinez
Agreed. I still feel as if there could be a balance but humans are too erratic. Emotions are literally our Achilles heal. Maybe a pill that makes us all emotionless like in equilibrium could work. But, muh humanity n all.
Either way it's interesting times ahead.
Aaron Ortiz
I already know about guys y and z.
Isaiah Mitchell
Automation engineer here. We'll all see basic income become a thing within our lifetimes. The transportation industry is going to be almost fully automated within the next 10 years which will wipe out tons of jobs and the recent pushes for a greatly increased minimum wage is already driving huge progress in automation of low end jobs.
Grayson Stewart
Well shit, I guess we can just never fucken discuss it again. Thank fuck for the Economist.
Jesus fuck.
On topic, the real interesting part is that this entire situation is completely new foro our species. We have never had to ask ourselves "what if there just isn't anything for me to do anymore?"
Unless you're a NEET, then you should be preppen dat noose.
Adam Allen
>basic income in america Oh lad. I hope jesus shows up and performs a miracle because there is just not enough cash to give everybody equal gibs me dats.
Jason Flores
This may be my overly litigious American perspective, but I don't see Self-driving trucks happening just because when something DOES go wrong (and it will) and someone gets killed, it's a lot easier to throw a driver under the bus than have to deal with a giant lawsuit against whatever giant corporation is bringing these trucks to market.
So corps may save somewhat on labor, but expose themselves to much more liability.
Robot cooks won't be a thing outside of fast food or maybe shitty chain restaurants in our lifetimes, no one will pay decent restaurant prices for food cooked by a robot.
Caleb Rodriguez
Who will buy shit from corporations if no one has a job ?
Kevin Harris
What do you think will happen when automation has replaced 50% of jobs?
Lucas Price
Most of the country will turn into detroit. If nobody has a job nobody can pay taxes to fund the basic income. America already has a huge amount of debt. It's the same problem with hernie's ebin free college plan. Where does the money come from?
Wyatt Garcia
Dont worry, elite has a solution on the way (((ww3))).
Robert Johnson
We won't turn into Detroit dude.
It will be fucked up, but we're better than that.
Nathan Anderson
Seems stupid to have a humanoid robot for cooking when you could more efficiently automate it with a machine cycle.
