Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands

Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by ticksoft on Friday June 12, 2015 @06:39PM (#9709007)

In addition to those government issues, there's less cash flowing from the non-existent workers to [local] businesses, which means that infrastructure from those businesses is no longer sustainable. The internet does that too.

Futurologists of the past speculated that salaries earned by machines would be shared out to civilisation (to allow us to stop working), but it's gone in another direction.

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Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by analog31 on Friday June 12, 2015 @08:36PM (#9709376)

Going one step further, with less cash flowing from workers to businesses, there will be less need for trucks to move materials and goods around.

This would allow the truck driving robots to stop working as well.

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Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by justonepost on Friday June 12, 2015 @06:41PM (#9709023)

Yes, rather than decreased work all we have is increased consumption (which is slowly destroying the planet).

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Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by adventured on Friday June 12, 2015 @06:43PM (#9709031)

Robotic labor will be taxed and regulated in the near future, in most countries, to force such outcomes. Restrictions will be put on robot output or on how many human-hours equivalent they can operate per day.

Within a decade or so we'll see marches in the streets by lower-income laborers arguing for these changes. Robots don't vote, so it's obvious what will occur eventually.

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Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by Shivetya on Friday June 12, 2015 @06:59PM (#9709089)

the taxes exist already through tax on the companies profits. there will plenty of work for techs who work on robotic machinery, its not simply electronics, there is hydraulics, and more involved.

government increases the cost of each worker to the point that companies are forced to find alternatives that are cheaper. from mandated pay, benefits, employer paid fees and taxes, and costs of implementing safety regulations, support staff and their inherent costs, its not hard to see that to compete on a world market that automation will be used.

many jobs out there now currently have human robots for the most part, performing the same task over and over with little variation but a whole lot of opportunity to screw up. the labor component simply moves into new opportunities, including as stated into maintaining the new machines

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Re:Driverless Trucks to Hit Alberta’s Oilsands by steve19 on Friday June 12, 2015 @07:11PM (#9709127)

alternatively, they could decrease income tax so that salaries can be lowered but net income remains the same (or even increases) to make robots less competitive.

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