Hacker News Reader

Comment by riggins | Hacker News Reader

goodbye truck driving jobs.

I wonder what the social implication will be when, over the next 20 years, whole sectors are automated. There are so many simple jobs that are /ripe/ for automation. If you're not doing the automation or some other high skill job, you're in serious trouble. Social welfare, and free money to the unemployed, are going to become an obligate, long-term realities.

> Social welfare, and free money to the unemployed, are going to become an obligate, long-term realities

Something tells me from watching what is going on in places like greece, spain, and even stateside in places like detroit and camden, that the above is not going to happen. Or should people expect central banks to print more and allocate more debt to people?

That might be because governments keep talking about going back to growth after the austerity measures. If there is no growth and unemployment stays at the current levels, things eventually need to change. And it's not only a governments' thing, with a large part of the population without any money, consumption will suffer a lot so companies will feel it deeply.

It's going to take some time though as nowadays the middle class doesn't like the idea of more social welfare since there's currently a direct connection to heavier taxes.

I realize this is slightly off-topic, but reducing consumption is not a bad thing.

We can all collectively live on a lot less than we currently do (stuff-wise, not necessarily money-wise).

I keep hoping that a positive side effect of this economic shift will the reduction of accumulation of unessential crap..

I tend to agree but if the consequence is less money for the companies to hire people then extending social welfare needs to cover for the lack of jobs available. I can imagine a lot of positive side effects if this happens.

I think that the fruits of all these contemporary advancements won't be really seen until the global population starts dropping. Right now, automating generally puts someone out of a job and forces them into one that is more or less made up just so that they can have a job[1]. With a declining population, automation will pick up whatever slack worker 'scarcity' creates.

It's interesting to think about how that world would look like. Imagining a constant rate of production, this means that cheaper goods will be spread around fewer people. I imagine that this would drive a push away from mid-level jobs, probably into highly educated roles that innovate or maintain complex autonomous systems.

[1] http://www.strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Once again, we'll have large amounts of people in need of re education to learn new abilities for jobs that might not exist today. It's interesting as well what automation might do to economies with large work forces supported by governments.

I'm just waiting for the time when society realize working may not be an existential need.

http://hateandanger.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/buckminster-...

Would be nice if the mining superprofits tax had gone through. Then at least we could be collecting some revenue from these vultures before they pick up shop and leave the place a completely uninhabitable toxic mess in 10 years' time.

hello truck repairing jobs

I suspect this kind of automation will end up reducing the total number of trucks required, perhaps by quite a lot.

No, not by very much. Computerised dispatching systems tell trucks where to go, even with human operators, and a human is probably a little better at driving than an automated truck. The gain is that the trucks no longer park for any reason other than maintenance, while humans have to stop to embark/disembark. And will frequently have, eg, a fatigue break during night shift.

If anything, supply/demand curve logic suggests there would be more trucks overall.

As you say, existing trucks are parked a bunch of hours a day. I think you and the parent have a semantic misunderstanding. You (i think) are saying there will be more trucks on the road, more routes being run at the same time. Th parent is saying fewer trucks will be built, because we can get 100% utilization as opposed to the 33% we have now. [1]

[1] disclaimer: i don't think robot trucks will have 100% utilization, and current utilization is probably higher than 1/3, i just guessed 8 hours of use a day. I think the point stands, more trucks on the road at the same time, but fewer trucks overall.

I understand what the parent is saying, I just disagree :).

My day job has large elements of mining haul truck performance. Currently most mines would probably be in the 40-70% utilisation band (for practical purposes), automating the trucks would probably add ... 5% utilisation? Maybe 10%? Both guesses, but they aren't likely to break 75% (I doubt they would break 65%, but I'm wiling to be surprised by evidence).

Practically speaking, the trucks would be more reliable due to automating, and in economic terms, truck hours/dollar would increase (*edit, said drop initially). Supply/demand theory tells us that mining companies could reasonably respond by buying more trucks.

I am referring to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Well, you have infinitely more experience in this topic than I do, so I'll defer to your thoughts on the matter.

My guess is that jobs lost to truck automation will be less than offset by increases in mechanics for those trucks. What do you think?

And truck designing ones. The moment you get rid of the driver you can go berserk with innovative designs.

Hello modern day luddite!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com