Re:Truckers Working Alongside Coders Trying to Make Driverle...
by stale2002 on Thursday June 22, 2017 @08:28PM
(#14616322)
Why would you think this?
Lots of products have price elasticity of greater than 1.
Shipping seems like a very elastic industry. If anything, demand would increase by more than 1% for every 1% decrease in cost.
This is because shipping costs if shipping costs are low enough, then you can build something for cheap somewhere else and then ship stuff across the country to high cost of living locations.
YOU wouldn't ship stuff more, but industry would.
IE imagine if something costs 1/3 if it is made in China.
If shipping costs are more then you save, then nobody would ship it. But if shipping costs go down, now you can easy get those cost benefits of across world or across country manufacturing.
Re:Truckers Working Alongside Coders Trying to Make Driverle...
by vkou on Friday June 23, 2017 @01:07PM
(#14620762)
Amdahl's law. Shipping is only useful when you have goods to ship. Unless you're selling bricks, shipping is a small portion of the price of most products. Reducing the cost of shipping, which is already a small portion of the price of the product will not result in price elasticity of greater then 1.
This is the only point I seek to make.
If salaries are 60% of the cost of shipping, and self-driving trucks make drivers twice as productive, costs will drop 30%.
This will bring a demand increase of less then 30%. Let's say 15%.
... Doing the math, it looks like 42% of truckers just lost their jobs. But at least they can buy more apples with the money they no longer have.
The bigger the productivity gain, the worse it will look for them.