That is so flippant and just the most immature thing. As an under 30 year old, highly educated individual, yep - just get another job. Move somewhere across country if you need to; you don't have kids or a mortgage.

As a specialized veteran of a job that requires very few transferable skills, truck drivers are fucked initially, and we'll see massive unemployment from this.

In many cases, the areas with high ratios of their economy supported by trade/transportation have very weak other sectors of the economy. Good luck working part-time retail, truck drivers. Hope you didn't like your benefits or salary.

ALL of that being said, I support automation and can't wait for it in my life.

I am honestly sorry for the anger, but really. Stop to think about this from someone else's perspective for a second. Just acting like they should just go get another job and that there aren't any hiccups is ridiculous. Look at Detroit, look at Gary, look at any of the large rust-belt cities. These things aren't without precedent.

Acting like all these people need to do is apply themselves a little harder is just stupid.

What about stagecoach drivers? Bread makers? Blacksmiths? Switchboard operator? What did all these people do when their services were no longer necessary / greatly diminished?

It's not like by Friday automated trucking will take over. You know it's coming, and if you don't start learning new skills or look for new work, then you're just ignorant to technology and will be out of a job.

I think the key difference 'this time' is how quickly change is happening.

Second, in the past, change was necessarily isolated in most cases, because society and business wasn't so highly connected as it is today.

Concretely, at some point, a major trunking firm could replace most of its drivers with machines over the course of a couple of years, at most.

More generally, the rate of change continues to increase. A few hundred years ago, a person could live their life and see no substantive technological change. Now we see those changes happen, in some cases, in a few years.

I don't think the change is coming quickly, actually. I think truck drivers have a good 10 years before they're out of a job, both due to technology (self-driving cars won't be fully autonomous for at least 5 years), and due to regulation/adoption (add another 5+ years). This actually leaves them less of an excuse to start retraining now, but it's also a problem because it gives most of them an excuse to dismiss the tech.

>You know it's coming, and if you don't start learning new skills or look for new work, then you're just ignorant to technology and will be out of a job.

I didn't realize truck drivers were known for staying abreast of advances in technology.

What happens as your list grows, as it will, and takes up every possible job? Eventually we could hit some sci-fi future where robots build other robots and AI comes up with new inventions on it's own.

I come from a dying factory town. I understand the pain, the grief, the suffering of having your livelihood vanish in a puff of machine-shaped smoke. It destroys people - whole identities get hung on one occupation. It destroys communities - whole towns depend on one factory or one trucking line.

So bear that in mind with what I say next.

Suck it up. The rest of us have changed our lives, reshaped our minds, and left behind the communities we knew. It's painful. It can be emotionally excruciating. But it's far from impossible. If we can do it, so can you.

That's just new-age bootstrap bullshit. For many of these families, they are one paycheck away from poverty and homelessness. There is no 'suck it up' when your kids are hungry. There is no money to leave behind the communities they know, where their social supports also exist. Your statements strike me as incredibly naive.

That they need training to find new employment is a given. But, that they should be aware of the goings on in technology, or that they should just pull their boots harder to get out of the mud are both very naive statements.

You know, I had a long comment filled with frustration and anger. It seems kind of silly when re-read.

I wish you luck in your quest, but I don't hold out much hope. I've lived too much of it.

Because it is trivially easy for a 20 year veteran of an entire discipline obsoleted profession that despite having very harsh hours did pay a reasonable wage to just pivot into another career of similar merit?

That is to even say there are ~4 million jobs in the US currently going undone, that would pay ~80k a year in effective income, that people are just not doing now because only the truckers have the work ethic to do them.

That is not how economics works, and the only difference between this sea change and previous ones (the obsolesence of agrarian living being by far the largest) is that unlike those, you could not just "ignore" it until you are dead while your kids and future generations make the transition and just sell your farm after you die.

> by acting rational and find another job

Some of them will. Some will become despondent, sink into depression, and never work again. Humans aren't always rational.