re: .

quote:

---

quote:
Between robotics and AI probably half the jobs in our economy are going to go the same way as the cashiers.

Wait? wut?

Those shelves just magically stocked themselves? Those deli items came from a Star Trek food generator? The light bulbs changed themselves? And that spotless environment never has to be cleaned? No security?

You may not see humans on the floor, but behind some wall of mirrors there are as many employees as there was before. Monitoring the technology.

I mean you might have absorbed 4 cashiers (because that's the most Ive ever seen at my WalMart). But produce, butchers, deli, stockers will always have to be on hand

---

Sure. Today.

But Amazon already has robots and AI doing stocking and picking at their warehouses as do a lot of other places. Today. Once that's perfected, those jobs are gone. You'll see warehouses go from a hundred humans to maybe 5. There's nothing special about stocker's job that makes it prohibitive for a robot to do it. Right now it's a matter of scale. Not enough robots to make them cheap enough to cross the rubicon and put those people out of a job yet. But that's definitely, absolutely coming. The efficiency increase will make it impossible to compete if you don't.

Drivers? They're toast faster than anyone at this point.

Here's an LA Times article about it. They project 1.7 million truck driving jobs gone in the next decade. LINK /

And here's why.

quote:

---

Trucking will likely be the first type of driving to be fully automated – meaning there’s no one at the wheel. One reason is that long-haul big rigs spend most of their time on highways, which are the easiest roads to navigate without human intervention.

But there’s also a sweeter financial incentive for automating trucks. Trucking is a $700-billion industry, in which a third of costs go to compensating drivers.

“If you can get rid of the drivers, those people are out of jobs, but the cost of moving all those goods goes down significantly,” Kaplan said

---

Now that brings up a bit of hope here. If we can get the costs of goods down significantly with these efficiency increases, we can increase the quality of life for those with lower incomes. Which makes a guaranteed minimum income possibly a lot more comfortable than what a poor income is today.

But the point is, this is coming sooner than we're prepared to deal with under our current system. Ideology aside, we're about to face a reality that is brand new. What we've always taken as the truth about human economy is about to be thrown on it's head. Free enterprise won't, and shouldn't go away, but if we're going to preserve it and not devolve into chaos, then we've got to have an answer to the question...

What do we do with all these people who will never work again?