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Guy Goodbody posted:Other forms of automation are complicated, I don't know if the government has the ability to ban other stuff. But driverless trucks seems like an easy fix. You wouldn't have to ban all research into anything, I don't know why you'd think that. Just ban the use of driverless trucks on public roads. Because if you don't ban that research, then a self-driving vehicle that is objectively and clearly safer than human driven trucks will be developed. It's inevitable, because humans are pretty poo poo at driving on the whole and your self-driving vehicle doesn't have to be very good to do better than us. Insurance companies will despise you, and your law will be directly responsible for every death and injury caused by human truck driver error. You're so strangely desperate to save these jobs that you're literally willing to sacrifice lives so that someone can sit in a truck cab and do nothing of social value.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:07
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Paradoxish posted:Because if you don't ban that research, then a self-driving vehicle that is objectively and clearly safer than human driven trucks will be developed. It's inevitable, because humans are pretty poo poo at driving on the whole and your self-driving vehicle doesn't have to be very good to do better than us. Insurance companies will despise you, and your law will be directly responsible for every death and injury caused by human truck driver error. Is it really inevitable? Robots are poo poo at not running into stuff. edit: that came across as a little snide, but I didn't mean it to. You just have a lot of faith in future robots, and I'm wondering where that's coming from
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Dec 7, 2016 06:09
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Guy Goodbody posted:Why is that cost only going to go up? Well, all costs are going to go up because of inflation, but why would the cost of truck drivers specifically be going up in a big way? Right, inflation or cost of living or any other factor. Automation at least has a chance to reduce costs, at least in theory. Failing that it can keep costs stable or slow increases.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:11
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Polygynous posted:Right, inflation or cost of living or any other factor. Automation at least has a chance to reduce costs, at least in theory. Failing that it can keep costs stable or slow increases. At the expense of three million truck drivers.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:11
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Guy Goodbody posted:At the expense of three million truck drivers. Yes, and?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:13
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Guy Goodbody posted:At the expense of three million truck drivers. If you ban automatic telephone exchanges you can get a lot of those people jobs as switchboard operators, and unlike truck drivers switchboard operators hardly ever get in fatal crashes on the job.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:15
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Guy Goodbody posted:Is it really inevitable? Robots are poo poo at not running into stuff. Highway driving isn't that hard of a problem, which is why there are already quite a few driver assist systems in production. I'm pretty confident that we'll have systems that are far better than humans in at least that limited domain within the next ten years or so. It really doesn't matter, though. Take it as a hypothetical if you want. If a safer system is developed, would you then consider that to be something that's acceptable for use, even if it costs jobs? What if it's only equally as safe as a human driver, but drastically more efficient and so much better for the environment in the aggregate? I'm just really curious why you think jobs are more important than other social benefits.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:16
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Guy Goodbody posted:OK, so the law would have to say something like "any commercial vehicle using a public road must have a fully qualified operator on board" I think that would do it. And I don't care about self driving cars because that's outside the purview of the thread. And who in the Republican isle would care about actually implementing any of it when the Businesses they love to cut taxes to would benefit from eventually paying less to Truckers? Particularly when Elaine Chao is very Free Market? If you care about Truckers, as others have pointed out, you need to build a better social safety net to make sure Truckers don't need to rely on terrible jobs to keep a piss poor status quo which they aren't actually thriving in as is. But your silent majority elected a man who doesn't care about the Trucker in the end, sunshine. Banning Automation of trucks or all transportation here is either going to cause a brain drain to other countries who won't care to take away the jobs of the engineers building better GPS and/or will be inevitably prove useless when other countries bring about self-driving trucks that can turn better profits than us to make UPS salivate for more. It doesn't really matter if the tech is new, laws could take decades to form. And by that point the Trucker would inevitably be as dead as the coachman.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:17
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Polygynous posted:Yes, and? How long will it takes for the savings from self driving trucks to offset making three million people unemployed? Paradoxish posted:I'm just really curious why you think jobs are more important than other social benefits. I'm not sure there are other social benefits
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Dec 7, 2016 06:18
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Guy Goodbody posted:How long will it takes for the savings from self driving trucks to offset making three million people unemployed? Well, it's happening, and yeah, we have to figure out what to do about it. Putting our heads in the sand doesn't help. Or we could let self-driving trucks happen and roll back advancements in agriculture so they can do hard and dangerous farm work instead.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:23
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Guy Goodbody posted:I'm not sure there are other social benefits So answer my hypotheticals then. In any case, making self-driving vehicles that are more fuel efficient than human driven vehicles is pretty trivial. We already have them, in fact. Modern automatics are more efficient than vehicles where a human being chooses when to shift. The next logical step for efficiency is to remove accelerator and braking control and hand it over to a computer. I have no idea whether self-driving vehicles will be safer than manually driven ones (although I strongly suspect they will be), but they will be more fuel efficient.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:24
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Polygynous posted:Well, it's happening, and yeah, we have to figure out what to do about it. Putting our heads in the sand doesn't help. Oh see, this is the point of my thread, what if we did something so it didn't happen? What if poo poo wasn't inevitable, and people could actually change stuff? I mean, I'm like 90% sure that self driving trucks aren't actually controlled by the tides If self driving trucks end up on the road, it's because people put them there. So we could stop that. And then three million people wouldn't be unemployed in order to further enrich the already rich.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:30
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^^^: apparently only rich people drive cars on roads shared by trucks or buy products that have been shipped on trucksGuy Goodbody posted:How long will it takes for the savings from self driving trucks to offset making three million people unemployed? Probably not that long in aggregate (the positives affect a whole lot more people than the negatives), but it takes zero time for subsidizing human truck drivers to start having negative effects. Not to even mention the people working on self-driving vehicles who would lose their jobs if you banned self-driving trucks.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:32
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James Garfield posted:Probably not that long in aggregate (the positives affect a whole lot more people than the negatives), but it takes zero time for subsidizing human truck drivers to start having negative effects. Not to even mention the people working on self-driving vehicles who would lose their jobs if you banned self-driving trucks. Assuming that trickle down economics is wrong, do the positives actually affect more people? And what is the number of people working on self driving trucks vs. the number of truck drivers, and how much easier would it be for the self driving truck guys to find new jobs vs. truck drivers?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:35
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Guy Goodbody posted:OK, but what if driverless trucks happen, but then all the extra money companies make isn't taken up by taxes, and then there's just a bunch of people out of work and the truck company CEOs have more money? That seems a lot more likely to me than we just tax all the truck companies so much we can pay the truck drivers their wages while they just sit at home And what if you just didn't do anything and stuck your thumb up your rear end and waited for the end of the world? Realistically speaking, expecting the state to curtail the actions of capital significantly is unlikely until the crisis has already happened, but if you're proposing solutions regardless, banning automation is at best a stop gap that kicks the can down the road a bit. Unless you plan to ban technological progress you're going to run into increasing amounts of automation and the removal of humans from the production process is going to require a radical reorganization of how the economy works, you can do it in advance, or you can do it at the point of revolution, but you will do it one way or the other. Guy Goodbody posted:Is it really inevitable? Robots are poo poo at not running into stuff. Our entire society is structured around finding ways to do things with as little human input as possible. That's literally the essence of capitalism. It desires, always, to produce more with less labour, by the use of machinery and automation. The progress of automation is inevitable because our entire planet is ultimately devoted to automating things. The whole collective intellect and output of human endeavour is focused, to some degree, around finding ways to do more with less human input. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 06:44 on Dec 7, 2016 |
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Dec 7, 2016 06:39
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Guy Goodbody posted:Oh see, this is the point of my thread, what if we did something so it didn't happen? What if poo poo wasn't inevitable, and people could actually change stuff? I mean, I'm like 90% sure that self driving trucks aren't actually controlled by the tides If self driving trucks end up on the road, it's because people put them there. So we could stop that. And then three million people wouldn't be unemployed in order to further enrich the already rich. So the solution is to just stop technological advancement so millions of people can still be forced to work lovely jobs so the already rich can be further enriched. Right.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:42
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Polygynous posted:So the solution is to just stop technological advancement so millions of people can still be forced to work lovely jobs so the already rich can be further enriched. Right. Do you think truck drivers will be happy that they are no longer forced to be truck drivers, and are instead forced to be unemployed truck drivers?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:44
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Guy Goodbody posted:Do you think truck drivers will be happy that they are no longer forced to be truck drivers, and are instead forced to be unemployed truck drivers? Why would they be forced to be unemployed?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:46
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Guy Goodbody posted:Do you think truck drivers will be happy that they are no longer forced to be truck drivers, and are instead forced to be unemployed truck drivers? Whether they are happy about it doesn't really signify, you can't resolve it by trying to legislate the problem out of existence.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:46
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Guy Goodbody posted:Do you think truck drivers will be happy that they are no longer forced to be truck drivers, and are instead forced to be unemployed truck drivers? No one is forcing them to be truck drivers. No one is forcing them to be unemployed if driving a truck is no longer a viable career option. If there isn't something socially valuable and well compensated for them to do, then that's a social and political problem that has nothing to do with automation.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:49
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INH5 posted:If those security systems are so good, why do they worry about the drivers stealing stuff? Because making sure people who handle assets aren't stealing them is a fundamental aspect of business and accounting. Opportunity (I'm transporting these goods, alone), pressure (I'm getting a working class paycheck and I got bills to pay), and rationalization (Sam Walton ain't gonna miss a couple TVs) are all 3 check-boxes on the fraud triangle. We're not talking about building Fort Knox here, all the security measures have to do is deter casual theft and maintain accounting records. House and Car door locks are easy as poo poo to pick, and that doesn't matter because most people breaking into houses and cars aren't trained locksmiths. As far as I'm aware, typical security measures for a truck hauling merchandise for a big box store involves running an inventory of everything loaded into the truck, locking the truck door with a $5 padlock, putting a plastic seal on the lock, checking & breaking the seal at the destination, unlocking the truck, and running another inventory count as the truck is unloaded. There are a million ways you could steal something in this set up, and basically no way you could steal and have the theft go unnoticed.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:49
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Polygynous posted:Why would they be forced to be unemployed? Well, they could always pull themselves up by their bootstraps. OwlFancier posted:Whether they are happy about it doesn't really signify, you can't resolve it by trying to legislate the problem out of existence. Couldn't you? Why wouldn't a law banning self driving trucks save the jobs of truck drivers?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:50
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Americans can't even ban guns. Good luck banning something actually useful AND will make shareholders lots of money.
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Dec 7, 2016 06:52
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Guy Goodbody posted:Well, they could always pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That is the traditional answer given by those who claim to care about the (white) working class, yes. Guy Goodbody posted:Couldn't you? Why wouldn't a law banning self driving trucks save the jobs of truck drivers? Or we could try to not enact the dumbest possible legislation, perhaps?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:54
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There's a legal definition of a truck for starters. Something that drove itself but was designed to be legally distinct from a truck and was relatively efficient compared to a human-driven truck would be invented and adopted by logistics companies if you banned self-driving trucks. Are you going to ban all self-driving locomotive vehicles in response? e: Nocturtle posted:Americans can't even ban guns. Good luck banning something actually useful AND will make shareholders lots of money. This is also an extremely good point that will be the more immediate problem. OP where do you expect the political will for this ban to come from?
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Dec 7, 2016 06:56
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:There's a legal definition of a truck for starters. Something that drove itself but was designed to be legally distinct from a truck and was relatively efficient compared to a human-driven truck would be invented and adopted by logistics companies if you banned self-driving trucks. Are you going to ban all self-driving locomotive vehicles in response? That's why I said the law would have to say commercial vehicles, not trucks. I'm one step ahead of you.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:00
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Guy Goodbody posted:Assuming that trickle down economics is wrong, do the positives actually affect more people? And what is the number of people working on self driving trucks vs. the number of truck drivers, and how much easier would it be for the self driving truck guys to find new jobs vs. truck drivers? There are far more people who buy goods shipped in trucks, drive on roads, and buy gas (which was shipped in trucks) than there are truck drivers. Anyway I'm still waiting for an answer on the law banning automatic telephone exchanges, it wasn't sarcastic.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:00
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OP considering that your concerns in this thread are literally automation.txt maybe you should spend the effort necessary for this hypothetical national movement that's capable of banning entire branches of the tech tree on something actually useful. Like reforming welfare into a GMI.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:06
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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Guy Goodbody posted:Well, they could always pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Because, as I explained, you cannot ban all automation, unless you want to try to legislate technological stasis which will also accelerate the collapse of current society because capital relies on automation to meet its need for growth, you will eventually run up against collapse because automation will eventually replace a critical mass of the population anyway. Once again, all you're proposing is kicking the can into the future a bit, it is not a solution, only a postponement.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:06
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OP what do you think about a legislated phase out program in the event that we suddenly have self-driving trucks that can feasibly replace human drivers? In other words, a program where companies are required to pay for retraining and job placement assistance for truck drivers before they can be replaced.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:08
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Here's a list of other things not banned in the USA: -coal power plants -payday loan centers -medical drug commercials -mandatory arbitration clauses -unlimited campaign spending via PACs -asbestos But don't worry, the powerful national truckers union will make a stand and stop the automation. Long-haul trucking jobs are in high-demand and strong industry regulations definitely allow truckers to get the bare minimum amount of sleep human brains require. Unrelated: quote:Employee turnover within the long-haul trucking industry is notorious for being extremely high. In the 4th quarter of 2005, turnover within the largest carriers in the industry reached a record 136 percent,[66] which means for every 100 new employees hired, 136 quit their jobs
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Dec 7, 2016 07:18
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Guy Goodbody posted:That's why I said the law would have to say commercial vehicles, not trucks. I'm one step ahead of you. Okay fine assuming you got your law passed the definition of a commercial vehicle would get lobbied against as well as your law instead of something showing up to defeat the spirit. How are you going to get that passed though? And on top of this why not ban automatic switchboard operations on the same logic that jobs at any cost is worth the removal of technology? Plenty of people would take manual switchboard operation over being unemployed.
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Dec 7, 2016 07:23
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Guy Goodbody posted:That's why I said the law would have to say commercial vehicles, not trucks. I'm one step ahead of you. Why trucks though? Then you'll just have to ban the next technology that will put people out of jobs. I have a future-proof solution for you: Ban mechanized farm equipment. Turn combine and tractor factories into scythe and wheelbarrow factories. There - 100% employment forever.
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Dec 7, 2016 08:14
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OP, lets illustrate the point with a simplified example. Say a new commercial truck costs $150,000, and has a life-span of 10 years before needing replacement or major overhaul. We can divide that cost across its lifespan (amortization) to a yearly cost of $15,000. An auto company has come out with a new driver-less commercial truck, and it costs $200,000 for the same 10 year lifespan which we can amortize to $20,000 a year. The going pay for a commercial truck driver is $22 an hour. Now lets pretend we have a company, which operates 120 trucks, and employs 1 full time driver for each truck who works a standard 2087 hours per year (lol) for a yearly pay of $45,914. Yearly costs for running trucks with drivers: $1,800,000 spent on trucks $5,509,680 spent on drivers =$7,309,680 total cost Yearly cost for running driver-less trucks: $2,400,000 spent on trucks $0 spent on driver hours =$2,400,000 total cost This means that the company loses $4,909,680 a year (the difference between the two choices) if it decides to employ trucks with drivers when driver-less trucks exist. If congress passes a bill outlawing driver-less trucks, the math remains the same and the company is still losing $4,909,680 a year they don't have to. You say fine, who cares? Well over the long run, provided our 120 truck shipping company doesn't have an unbreakable monopoly on the entire trucking industry in the US, this prevents the increased efficiency of operations from lowering the price of shipping and increasing the quantity of things we can ship, aka it stops us as a group from doing more with less. Increasing efficiency via technology and automation is why today 1.5% of the US population is employed in agriculture, while 150 years ago it was 50% of the population. In the short run it sucks for the drivers laid off, but you solve that through having a robust social safety net and job-training programs, not weird Luddite laws which force people to endlessly perform robotic tasks we fully have the capability of building robots to perform.
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Dec 7, 2016 08:15
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Interesting thread; not seen someone argue for stopping the march of progress so honestly before. However, banning self driving trucks sounds like crony socialism to me.
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Dec 7, 2016 08:22
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What on earth is "crony socialism"?
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Dec 7, 2016 08:38
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The good news about when all the truck drivers lose their jobs is they aren't locally confined to a specific geographic area so it won't cause the destitution of areas that happen when industries like steel or coal collapse.
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Dec 7, 2016 08:47
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I drive a truck and from my experience with how the industry works it will take a while for self-driving trucks to become fully implemented. There will be a protracted transition involving more and more safety alert technologies with each individual company using whatever level of technology they want according to their own level of capitalization, the size of their safety department, the nature of their delivery (low-cost owner operator contractor? dependable LTL fleet) and even then there will still probably always be drivers behind the trucks (or at least one of the trucks in a line of trucks programmed to follow one another on a designated highway corridor). They'll just be less paid, much as a factory worker whose labor is done mostly by a machine is less well paid than a skilled handiworker. Guy Goodbody posted:Are you suggesting that the savings will be passed on to the consumer? Has that ever happened? Because the Target near me put in self-checkout aisles and I'm pretty sure that didn't coincide with an across-the-board price drop. I'm guessing you don't know anything about logistics chains Or about the history of luddites and legislation to protect the cottage industry of textiles in the wake of the cotton loom (they inevitably failed because private capital was too strong and influences the legislative process too much to justify long-term hanging on to technologically obsolete industries)
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Dec 7, 2016 08:54
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OtherworldlyInvader posted:In the short run it sucks for the drivers laid off, but you solve that through having a robust social safety net and job-training programs, not weird Luddite laws which force people to endlessly perform robotic tasks we fully have the capability of building robots to perform. One problem with this is that a robust social safety net and job-training programs would have to be paid for with tax dollars. Having an entire relatively well-paid section of your society switch from being nett contributors to dependants overnight is going to put rather a dent in that tax-base, even before you factor in all of the secondary workers and businesses their wages currently support. Surely there should be a government interest in maintaining this tax base.
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Dec 7, 2016 11:16
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Because a steady pace of innovation means steadily increasing standard of living, OP. You may as well have asked in the 1800s, "Why don't we just ban farm machinery?" I mean, farmers need jobs right?
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Dec 7, 2016 11:28
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