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Here come the self driving vehicles AND Basic Income

We're saved, no more traffic problems! Vox article here.

So far, discussion of self-driving cars has mostly confined itself to tech geeks and urbanists. But if they live up to their promise, autonomous vehicles could have seismic effects on America’s economy and culture. It’s probably time for a wider circle of participants, including economists, politicians, and social scientists, to start grappling seriously with what’s coming.

...

Let’s take just one example: long-haul trucking.

In a great post about autonomous trucks, blogger and independent researcher Scott Santens advocates for a universal basic income to protect truck drivers and the many others who will lose jobs to automation and robotics in coming decades.

That’s an interesting idea — lots of good Vox articles on it — but it seems unlikely to manifest in the US in the next decade.

Until then, what’s the solution to hundreds of thousands of unemployed truck drivers?

Tags for Forum Posts: autonomous vehicles, basic income, traffic, vox

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I have now. Thanks. Elon Musk says and does some far out things so of course has a long list of critics. I however posted that with the robotisation of US inter-state truck driving we would need to have a basic income. I completely take the coming of autonomous vehicles as a given though and I think that's what you're getting at.

I do wonder in the urban environment how they'll get around though. I mean all it would take is some bored young kids to discover that they can play chicken with cars and always win to bring autonomous urban transport to a halt. There are of course solutions to this; either teach the vehicles to smidsy and kill the odd pedestrian for no consequence (which is what we have at the moment) or ban them from public roads in urban areas.

Presumably a few will get killed playing chicken which should cut that out. But put a camera on them and punish them via law. We need this tech as it will save lives - if a few die other ways it's still a net gain
That kind of response worries me! Five years ago we were told driverless cars will work their magic with current infrastructure and laws.

We don't hear so much of that now as their limitations in cities are being understood better. I can foresee car manufacturers and motorist organisations lobbying for American-style jaywalking laws- purely for safety you understand!

And before long we'll be back where we started, the streets surrendered to motor vehicles!

If the vehicles are fitted with a lifelike "autopilot" then kids won't know whether the vehicle is autonomous or not. Something like this should do it:

They have to retrain. Same as when other industries develop. Really not sure the basic income is either an effective use of money or will create the positive incentives one presumes you wish to create.

Far better to plough that money into adult education and training. We should welcome automated vechials though. Don't see the tech being widely adopted for 20 odd years but hopefully it will be here before all to long.

I'm at 5-7 years. 20? Investors want a return on their money before then!

Basic income will become necessary. Almost all jobs will be automated.

Nonsense all jobs will be automated!

Different jobs will be created just like every other technological change. Yes the demand for their return but investors will wait more than 60 months. Look at teslas development path. Even when you have working self automated vehiacals adoption will take time.

Why would you need basic income provision?  That has never been done for any industry in the past (miners, steel workers, ship builders etc).  What makes truckers different? 

OK, let's just have hundreds of millions of starving unemployed people, that always works out. Did you read the article I linked to? That explains it better.

People won't starve because of other benefits - a basic income is a very different proposition. It won't happen, and if these people wont retrain or take other jobs why pay them 10k a year?

It's not that easy. Eg, you can look 1980 to 2000 and say  "X,000 industrial jobs lost, X,000 jobs in call centres created, so the call centre jobs replaced the steel jobs" and on the macro level you are right, but on the individual level where people actually live, what really happened was the older steel workers never worked again, the younger ones retrained/moved jobs, and the generation below them were in the call centre jobs from the start. 

Take digital publishing. That wiped out a whole section of skilled jobs in printing over a very short period of time. I knew a guy who'd been a typesetter - I met him trying to retrain to use Quark Xpress (yup, long time ago!). He was trying,  but at 50 it was pretty clear he wasn't what employers wanted for a trainee job,  and his experience wasn't worth anything any more. Very very sad.

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