> And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.
> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.
I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.
There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.
If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.
Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?
I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.
It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.
I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.
There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.
> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.
I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.
There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.
If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.
Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?
I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.
It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.
I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.
There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.