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Comment by johnsushant | Hacker News Reader

What would all these drivers do once self driving taxis become the norm?

They would instantly go from severely underpaid to completely unemployed. Considering that a market disrupter like Uber has affected them to this extent, do people honestly believe 100,000 new jobs would be available once automation takes their jobs?

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This is a larger problem than just livery drivers, automation threatens nearly every industry over the next 30 years. The vocations requiring less training will go first but eventually jobs that no one expected will become automated.

This is a bigger societal problem than just livery drivers, what do we do when there is no work for people? What do we do when technology drives the market value of an individuals labor to zero?

To be clear, I don't believe letting them kill themselves is a good answer.

Just because we're not sure what the jobs of the future will be like doesn't mean there won't be any. In the 1800's, 90% of people worked in agriculture. Tell anyone back at the time that in the 21st century it'd be < 2% and they'd freak out just like you are now.

I think the increase in leverage provided through the industrial revolution will pale in the comparison of that provided in the upcoming age of automation.

Just because historically there was job replacement with the innovation doesn't mean that we'll see that in the coming century. If we are unprepared it could threaten our society for decades.

Airplanes do in fact have the capability to complete a flight from point A to point B without a pilot. Yet, we still embed pilots in the cockpit. Cars might be simpler, but there's way too many gotchas while driving a computer cannot be programmed to handle that a human driver can intuit or defend against.

A completely driver-less future might happen, but it won't be with the current infrastructure. IMHO, you'd need to isolate self-driving lanes from human driver lanes completely before it can become a reality, and slowly phase out driver-only cars with self-driving cars/lanes. Even at that rate, I'm still not certain it would work better than what we have now...

planes are big enough that 1 or 2 pilots is a small component of the airfare. you would probably pay 1% or 2% more for a piloted plane, would you pay 40% more for a human driven taxi?

good point. maybe an outright ban on small vehicles and mandate public, driver-less, mass transit for everyone in a city like NY. Everyone walk the last mile or two - we're all fat anyway.

>...but it won't be with the current infrastructure... slowly phase out driver-only cars with self-driving cars/lanes.

Upvoted!

I've posted it before and I'll post it again: what advantages does driverless car-based transportation infrastructure offer over a rail system of the same scale? I am genuinely interested to hear counter arguments since, to my mind, well planned/maintained rail systems can better leverage centrally generated power, have better driver (conductor) : passenger ratios, are easier to maintain in aggregate (ie. tracks vs. roads, total number of train cars < total number of motor vehicles, etc.), and so forth.

What am I missing?

Infrastructure. You can reach a lot further using roads than you can using tracks. A system that would replace roads with tracks would be completely impractical and we'd end up with the same as the road system with all its problems.

The last mile problem [0]. A rail system could work for a very densely populated area, but there is way too much sprawl. It's part of the reason why cars are basically seen as a necessity in the US.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)

Come on. Make those trolleybusses (which share most advantages of rail if they get dedicated driving space) and infrastructure problem almost disappears if they have proper batteries to drive like buses through less dense areas.

The problem is not last mile. It idea that last 30 miles are not viable to run extended routes through as it gets too slow to follow the winding paths as plain buses.

The solution is actually pedestrian traffic and biking optimization for last few miles access, not tossing more cars at the problem. Not building areas in cities with crummy access to public transport. Making it less necessary to carry heavy loads personally relying on improved delivery systems instead. (Which should also create some jobs.)

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