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The Future of Work Might Not Be So Bleak (bloomberg.com)
From a report, shared by readers: That said, technology can also favor standard salaried employment. The economists George Baker and Thomas Hubbard, for example, have noted how onboard computers could change U.S. trucking. By monitoring behavior, they would solve a moral hazard problem: Drivers have little incentive to be as careful with company trucks as they would with their own. As a result, more drivers could become employees of companies that buy and maintain fleets, rather than going it alone. They wouldn't have to invest in their own vehicles, which makes them vulnerable to recessions by putting their savings in the same sector as their labor; and they wouldn't be out of pocket and out of work when their trucks broke down. More generally, conventional jobs have a lot of advantages. First, a single worker or group of workers might lack the capital needed to set up a business, or prefer to avoid the stress and risk of running one (consider doctors or dentists who choose to be employees of a medical clinic). Second, business owners might not want their employees to have other bosses -- particularly if the work involves confidential information or team projects that require undivided time and attention. Third, reputations based on ratings might not be reliable: The economist Diane Coyle has shown that the quality of individual consultants can be hard to monitor, at least immediately, whereas a traditional consultancy may be more efficient at "guaranteeing" quality. In short, I believe that salaried employment will not disappear, although it might become less prevalent over time.
n/t
The tax system is biased towards those who risk capital.
This will remove one of the only and best options for upward class mobility. This is a real problem when combined with the joke standards for public STEM education, the other real way out/up.
Interesting times.
..don't panic
The future of work is running your own trucking business?
>They wouldn't have to invest in their own vehicles, which makes them vulnerable to recessions by putting their savings in the same sector as their labor
Owning their own vehicles means they can enjoy reduced income during a recession, rather than losing their job entirely.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Nearly every trucking company has more trucks than drivers due to wages, not a fear of truck damage.
People think technology will displace jobs, and they are right.
But the people being displaced can move into higher level roles. I remember reading one story about a truck driver who was not driving a truck any more, but instead monitoring several trucks and taking over control for tricky parts of the driving.
Across the board, what will happen is that instead of jobs going away, they will migrate into higher level jobs. For those worried about the very poorest, eventually technology will provide close to free food and shelter through automated farming and construction, and so the basic needs of people will be so cheap they can and will be free to anyone not suited for work...
People all through the ages have looked with fear at what technology will do the world, but overall the changes have been a lot more magical and awesome than fearful and destructive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... as self driving trucks, cargo ships, taxis, etc. will be introduced to the market in the coming years. Use other examples.
sigo ergo sum
>> I believe that salaried employment will not disappear, although it might become less prevalent over time.
Um...so you DO believe the future is bleak?
towards elite rent seekers. Owners, not workers. Those folks don't risk anything. Their loans are guaranteed, they've got insider information given verbally at country clubs, laws don't apply to them and if all else fails we've given them so much wealth that if they go down they take everything with them.
STEM isn't going to get you out/up given the amount of outsourcing going on. Only the very brightest can overcome that barrier and not everybody can be a genius, if they could the definition of genius would change.
If you're referencing that Chinese insult about living in interesting times though you're spot on. Between automation, general attacks on education in the form of funding cuts and our endless wars the working class is boned.
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catch-22.
can't get money until you got it first.
For some people, working for others is the only way for them to get money.
vehicle ownership for truckers is a scam. They're low paid and vulnerable (living on the road is costly, you can't just look at their base pay). Trucking companies used that during the recession to force them into 'leases' where the truck company fronts them money for the truck and takes the cost of buying and maintaining it out of their paycheck. Think Uber but a million times worse. If you stop working the truck company takes the equity in the truck but if there's not enough they leave you with the debt. There was a big expose where a guy was working 90 hours a week and taking home pennies (literally, he showed some pay stubs that were around 20 cents after fees).
That said, this guy is full of crap. Automation will put truckers out of business. And even if it didn't there's no way the trucking companies are giving an arrangement that puts all the cost/risk on somebody else. Not unless the government steps in, and I know I'll get dinged for partisanship here but the Republicans control every single branch of government. I'm not holding my breath.
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Truck drivers will be among the next group to be put out of work by computers. Could be a quick and brutal transition the way things are looking.
Picture this in the near future: You aren't on an autonomous approved route? Your company will get it's deliveries days later and at a much higher cost.
I was in an antique car and carriage museum recently. There were some beautiful old carriages and vintage cars. In between the two eras were a few mashups - carriage bodies which had been fitted with a small gas engine and a steering tiller. The worst of both worlds, this technology was clumsy and short-lived. This image came to mind when reading about installing computers in trucks but keeping the driver. How long will this last until self-driving trucks push them into a niche in some museum?
Lots of random postulation in TFA, with little useful substance. Clear that the authors needed to write about something, and this was something. Even if they didn't know anything about the topic, and couldn't be bothered to learn.
It's still not clear, however, which human tasks computers will be able to replace, and what the effects will be.
Oh really? Then what is the point of your guesswork here?
The most difficult tasks for computers involve unforeseen problems that do not match any programmed routine....the example of a driverless car that sees a little ball pass in front of it. This ball poses no danger to the car, which therefore has no reason to slam on the brakes. A human being, on the other hand, will probably foresee that the ball may be followed by a young child, and will therefore have a different reaction. The driverless car will not have enough experience to react appropriately.
Yep. No idea what they're talking about. It's like each driverless car has to learn how to drive on its own, and can't possibly learn from all of the other ones on the road. And there's no possibility that the car would detect the cross-traffic of a child which is large enough to trigger auto-breaking far before a human could notice and react. Even under parked cars, which is technology we currently have. Can I get paid to write about things I have no clue about? How do I sign up for that job?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
In short, I believe that salaried employment will not disappear, although it might become less prevalent over time.
That's too bad. I was looking forward to the future with a 4 hour work week, and robots doing all the actual work, sitting on the beach being served pina coladas by a robot.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
And they cannot stop projecting that damn behavior onto everyone and everything.
" Drivers have little incentive to be as careful with company trucks as they would with their own"
This is blatantly false. People have many other incentives than the merely financial. The fact that we recognize when someone has a good work ethic, is a staunch keeper of their word, is very conscientious, all of these traits reveal non-financial motivation. Sure, some of that clearly will translate into personal gain in the form of the likelihood of continued employment, but not everyone has to stop and think "will my job be helped or hurt if I don't take care of my employer's vehicle?"
And yet time and again, economist measure people's behavior, intentions, motives, and goals almost solely in financial terms and then draw ridiculously biased conclusion based upon that faulty reasoning.
These two geniuses ignore the fact that "onboard computers" are only an intermediary step towards no drivers at all, which is clearly the goal of the trucking industry.
I can't wait for their next article, which is titled, "Being a Slave is Not So Bad Because You Get Free Room and Board".
You are welcome on my lawn.
independent contracting in name only is the issue look at fedex they got sued over that.
companies can get all of the control of employees but get bypass the liability and they can even profit by renting tools at high prices to workers + sell uniforms at high cost to them.
trains still lot's of manual switch both freight sidings and commuter parking areas outlining stations.
...you're bleak." - George Costanza
So unless 1. people stop breeding like rabbits and 2. robots can be built and operated for less than $2 per day, slave labor and slave wages continue to exist.
Nothing but eat and sleep and flirt with the ladies all day.
Until you're going to the butcher, or they don’t need you anymore.
Thanks, but I prefer freedom. I prefer life! It's worth the risk. Plain and simple.
That little trucking example was incredibly wrong on several points.
1 - the trucks will be autonomous, no drivers, no jobs
2 - what jobs there will be will not be secure. The piece just assumes working for someone else means full time secure work. Not part time, on demand work, which more and more of this type or work is. Needing for drivers for deliveries is generally seasonal. With several seasonal markets, be it packages, equipment or seasonal goods.
3 - owning less equipment means you are more at the whim of the job market and can be exploited for low wages
That's the hell we're living in currently, and it has to STOP.
We programmers have been automating our own work for decades now. One could argue that we are working ourselves out of a job, but somehow there always seems to be more work--more automating--to do!
Back in the 30s, Keynes predicted we would all be working four-hour days by now. Somehow, that didn't quite work out.
https://www.theguardian.com/bu...
I love all the automated tools I can now use every day, to do the drudge work I used to have to do manually. Who would want to go back to those days? What actually happens is that automation allows us to do MORE than we could do before, and to do NEW things we could never do before. The total amount of work doesn't seem to be shrinking at all.
Look at the downside too: Employers would become liable for those illegal work-hours and falsified log-books.
Employers push the cost of vehicle maintenance onto contractors so they don't have to bear the cost of shitty drivers. It also allows them to avoid other costs, such as overtime and the severe legal costs on it.
... Work isn't all bad. Then they use the example of trucking and how drivers might work for fleets. Great, except drivers won't BE around in two decades - it will all be robotically driven. Then they talk about how Doctors or Dentists might be a part of a clinic, not noting that Doctors especially now tend to go for direct Hospital employment, working for the corporation and not the idyllic collective they seem to espouse.
If those are the setup examples, then I'm not really interested in the conclusion that the low and the high will be left. Premises are already wrong, so conclusions are suspect.
If it's Gross than he's either team driving with his own truck or he's training.
There's good money in team driving, but it's also kinda crap work. I knew a husband/wife team that did it but besides that it's rough.
If you're a trainer you're taking your life in your hands. The newbies have a high rate of crashes. You're safer in Afghanistan, Iraq or doing undersea welding. It pays well because it's dangerous as hell.
Source: I've got several friends and the aforementioned husband/wife team in truck driving.
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Labor is not the only motivation to enslave. There is dominance, sexual and otherwise; there are bragging rights, pride, ego. Etc.
For instance, when someone ties their partner to the bedposts, they aren't doing it to get them to work harder.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
And will only last until the robots can do the deliveries. Likewise, security roles, vehicle repair, dispatching, loading, transitions between rail and truck chassis for modular carriers, etc.
There's no reason - at all - to assume that the low level job market going forward will be as rich in employment opportunities. Every time any idea like that has been put forward, it's been full of huge holes in reasoning. No exception this time, either.
It's bullshit, and it's bullshit designed to keep the soon-to-be-unemployed passive just a little while longer. That too will come to an end.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Wait til they put all these great pieces together.
What is this: an historical text?
Soon enough, what a truck will be missing is an on-board human, unless (s)he is paid an obscenely low wage.
Yah, economists. Always know what they talk about, do they.
Not any more. That job has been taken over by AI.
And besides, this is Slashdot. We've been doing it for free for 20 years.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
towards elite rent seekers. Owners, not workers. Those folks don't risk anything.
Bullshit they don't risk anything. If you think that entrepreneurs don't risk anything then you've never tried to start or run a company. Owners of companies generally live a life of low grade terror because of the vast number of things that can go wrong and the amount of money they stand to lose.
Their loans are guaranteed, they've got insider information given verbally at country clubs, laws don't apply to them and if all else fails we've given them so much wealth that if they go down they take everything with them.
That's a quaint picture you have that has little correlation to reality for all but a tiny handful of business owners in rare cases. Go ahead and try to get an unsecured loan even if you have a lot of money. I've done it myself and been around plenty of others who have as well including some very wealthy people. It's very rare that you can get a loan without some form of collateral and/or personal guarantee. Even if you are already rich and successful.
STEM isn't going to get you out/up given the amount of outsourcing going on. Only the very brightest can overcome that barrier and not everybody can be a genius, if they could the definition of genius would change.
Who ever claimed that an engineering degree would protect you from globalism? Trying to pretend that global competition isn't a real thing is as absurd as pretending that the industrial revolution was a passing fad or that people will get over these computer things soon. You don't have to be a genius to compete in a global market. But you do have to be aware that the wages will not be set locally and protectionism will not save you.
If you're referencing that Chinese insult about living in interesting times though you're spot on. Between automation, general attacks on education in the form of funding cuts and our endless wars the working class is boned.
It's adorable that you think that. The problem the "working class" (and some white collar work too) in the US has is that in general they want wages that are well above the global average for equivalent work. If you are doing labor intensive work then that work is going to tend to migrate to where labor is cheap. When politicians pander to "bring back manufacturing jobs" what they are really promising is to lower wages to compete with the global prevailing wage. There are plenty of jobs. There might not be plenty of jobs wage levels near the top of the bell curve. Supply and demand. China and India have lots of labor so prices for that labor are relatively cheap. If you want higher than average wages then you had better have higher than average productivity too.