But you have to admit, there's going to be riots in the streets when it's no longer economical to pay a human to drive a trunk/taxi.
Look at the protest people have over Uber, and they're not even destroying jobs, they're just moving them from one place to another. And already you can see that non-trivial parts of society can't handle that.
There's going to be protests, poverty and chaos, and eventually the market will redistribute the workforce but short of a major welfare program like 'basic income' I don't think we can have any illusion of this being a soft transition.
Why would there be riots in the streets for self-driving cars in particular? Like when there were riots for the assembly-line or the tractor? There will be riots for education, healthcare and opportunity - and probably there should be. Technological progress of civilization should be something more meaningful than the rich getting richer.
Yes, exactly like that.
Not sure why we are suddenly discussing what I propose instead.
All I am saying is that it's easy to forget that real people are effected by progress and that the narrative that we all benefit is kind of disingenuous from that perspective and I believe we need to think harder on what to do about that because it's only going to increase.
Maybe we'll all be ok immersed in VR adventures as long as we're fed and clothed...
It's fantastically expensive.
So, ~4.4% GDP is pure healthcare waste. Social Security is 4.9% GDP and welfare is another ~4%. So, right now we could use 13.3% GDP or 7k per person in the US. However, that 7k would remove the justification for a lot of low income tax breaks freeing up enough to hit the 1,000$ per month range without raising net taxes.
Now, this would take a huge shift at the federal and state levels, but compared to say the 'New Deal' it's not actually that large a change in policy. Further, while some people would stay at home, it would also free up a lot of jobs and inefficiency.
The real problem is a small but very influential slice of the population would be worse off.
PS: Remember, every policy change is going to make somebody worse off, so harming someone is not enough to make a change bad.
Sounds like a fantastic job for machines! Humor aside, even with UBI you will always increase your income and wealth if you put in extra work, unless some current schemes where your income stagnates or even falls if you earn enough to put yourself outside some arbitrary bracket.
Think back to when people were just becoming aware of computers and how they will change the workplace. The same arguments were made - high unemployment, etc.
Look where we are today. Imagine a world without computers!
I see the same for automated driving. It will lead to the creation of more jobs than it will kill. Yes, some jobs will go, just as computers killed some professions.
Get ready for change folks. Embrace or go the way of the dodo
You must be able to point to some jobs that actually provide more, just claiming it will create more while the reality is that it doesn't unless we are talking wallmart jobs isn't an argument thats more a religious belief.
There are around 3-4 million software developers in the US. 18million worldwide. Those and some other areas of STEM jobs are providing some of us with a future and rising income. But for most other people they are on the wrong side of that divide.
So you were not old enough to be part of that discussion.
But what jobs am I talking about?
Back then, the counter argument was computers will create jobs for those who have to design them and those who have to maintain them. That was the best they could muster. Very little was said about computer networking back then.
But today, we have developers, system and network admins, operations people. And that's just those that are directly involved in managing computers.
So don't panic. Robots, autonomous vehicles will create more jobs than they'll kill. Humans will be needed to build and maintain then. In many instances, they will need to be networked. Humans will be needed to set up and maintain such network of robots and fleets of autonomous vehicles.
The future is bright. Embrace it!
There are 18 million developers world wide, a little more than 3million in the US.
Between 1998-2004 the us lost 4 million jobs to china, in the same period china lost 15 million jobs to the robots.
Outsourcing is just the step before automation.
I am not panicking as I am one of those who benefit mostly from this, I am just painfully aware of some of the consequences. And you haven't provided a single example of new jobs for those without education which is the base of this discussion.
When I was at university google had 8 employees :) ... who would have imagined then jobs like SEO/SEM Consultant, blogger, online life-coach, android indie game designer, stay-at-home person selling junk on ebay, etc, etc.
For self driving cars... how about:
- Guide (jump into the self-driving van, and I (human) will give you a personal and engaging tour of the region, parks, people, wines .... we'll do a few stops at designated restaurants and souvenir stores (where I'll get a few dollars per visitor).
- Self-driven drug / alcohol / party stuff / shopping / pet / kids / delivery
- Artist (drawing random patterns on the dusty planes with programmed cars?)
- Game host (where you offer 50 cars to some players who do some kind of AR laser tag activity while driven ... all the while trying to figure out the patterns they are driving in to win)
- Real-life marketing consultant (sell pay-per-detour, is paying for the detour worth it? Only if they used keyword X last, week and you have the right store front design, blah, blah, blah).
- Scheduling Assistant (Human helper to call your rides)
- Mobile Mechanic (fast response team to fix those helpless cars stopped on the road because a leaf covered the LIDAR)
Will the number of jobs add up? It's anybody's guess. I think the transition is going to hurt badly. But it will reach a new equilibrium eventually.
What is happening these days is an increase of capital rather than labour heavy companies. The number of new companies is falling in all of europe and the size of the large companies is falling net.
Most of those things are on the verge to be automated too.
So you are not even remotely showing anything.
Do you have any estimates or references about _that_ number?
People seem to be too focused on jobs that will be lost because of automated cars/vehicles, but are not looking at the jobs that will be created because of that. Think back to when people were just becoming aware of computers and how they will change the workplace. The same arguments were made - high unemployment, etc. Look where we are today. Imagine a world without computers! I see the same for automated driving. It will lead to the creation of more jobs than it will kill.
Not sure how you figure that.
Jobs are going to be lost anyways, whether from cars or from a different technology.
Are you arguing the problem is that people aren't able to continue to do trivial things which technology can easily replace them at? Or that they will not have a relevant skill / source of income?
If the former than we should give hoes and scythes back to 90% of the population and get rid of agricultural machinery. If the later - it's a problem that needs to be addressed one way or another, self-driving cars are really a minor detail here..