Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about self-driving cars, but the loss of jobs is a REAL issue here, and unlike the factories of yestercentury that created replacement jobs, it's not really clear to me (or even the @LoSboccaccs of HN) what the "replacement job" for a driver will look like.

That is a pretty scary situation, don't you think?

by moving from hunter-gatherer economies (where every single person was engaged in food production) to agriculture, and then from agriculture to mechanized agribusiness, we created a vast pool of unemployed humans (like 90 to 99% of the human race) who were available to do all sorts of other things, basically everything in the economy that is not food production. The REAL issue there was the availability of the jobless to do new work. To that vast list of productive economic activities we soon will be able to add jobs for newly-former drivers.

That really is how it works and it really is not an issue, other than it is what has "paved the way" for our modern high income, high nutrition, high health (by historical standards) lifestyles.

yes I agree, but I'd bet more on stop producing unskilled laborers - or the problem will never end. it was clear that automation was going to make a big mess of the low end a decade or two ago, but steps weren't made yesterday not today to plan for a solution.

now I know basic income doesn't give the same dignity as a job and not everyone can be an astronaut, but society is just keeping the head into the sand regarding this problem and it's just aggravating

what I think is that the sooner it pops the better, especially if it happens in a significant but not widespread sector, so solution could be made before all the manufacturers and most services are automated away from jobs, because there it will become really nasty.

What's the opposite of a Luddite? What do you call a person who assumes that applied technology will fix everything, and anyone hurt by it is merely a necessary sacrifice to usher the rest of us into the coming technological utopia?

Technophile

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technophilia