Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh

[U.P. Cinnabar]

It gets better. Or worse.

Drones might one day blanket cities dropping off Amazon goods, but in the short-term, there’s plenty of opportunity for them to help out in limited engagements, where delivery via other means would be difficult, impossible or just not quite expedient enough. UPS kicked off trials of deliveries of that kind this week, with a pilot flight to drop a small package (containing a “mock” asthma inhaler) to a summer camp located on an island in the Atlantic.

The 3-mile journey took about 8 minutes, using a drone branded with UPS badging and colors, and supplied by CyPhy Works, a Massachusetts-based drone company that supplies both the hardware and software for drone operations. UPS is also an investor in CyPhy, participating in a $22 million round the company raised last October.

Technically, the pilot voyage of this drone doesn’t represent anything very challenging – even though the PARC (Persistent Aerial Reconnaissance and Communications) unit supplied by CyPhy flew itself, autonomous short-duration runs are pretty standard fare as far as drone operation goes. The real advancement here is that even this test flight wasn’t really possible as executed prior to the issuance of new rules by the FAA around commercial drone use.

Proof-of-concept and trials like this one are also requisite steps in getting to a point where UPS is actually using this tech live in the field where it could genuinely help. The scenario here was that a child on the island attending the camp needed an asthma inhaler delivered quickly, and since the island is unreachable by car, and any human-driven air or water delivery would potentially take too long. Having a working service you can actually deploy in those scenarios would be significant, even if this trial is just an early step to achieving that.

Saw this earlier on the news yesterday, while tying up loose ends, before the big move.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Great. And that's how many more people unemployed?

It wouldn't be so bad if there was an abundance of other jobs for these people to step into, but there aren't.

And, it's worse if you're over 40. Rather than re-train more experienced workers out of "bad habits," employers would just as soon hire younger workers who can be trained up in the way they want them to go.

[Broomstick]

Great. And that's how many more people unemployed?
It wouldn't be so bad if there was an abundance of other jobs for these people to step into, but there aren't.

And, it's worse if you're over 40. Rather than re-train more experienced workers out of "bad habits," employers would just as soon hire younger workers who can be trained up in the way they want them to go.

Oh, yeah, that - I've unfortunately considerable personal experience with that one...

[Me2005]

The big difference is just that it's not obvious what kind of jobs could exist; there is no big growth sector to replace the current set of jobs.

It's never that obvious in advance what's going to replace the jobs lost, which is why you always see predictions of technology destroying jobs and causing mass unemployment over and over again (particularly in downturns, like the recent recession, the early 1990s recession, the minor downturn in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and so forth). Try telling someone rendered unemployed in the late 19th century about the jobs in the early 20th century, for example.

This is why it's mostly pointless to debate this topic. All I can do is point out that despite repeated predictions, it hasn't happened. Stas provided some interesting stuff on Japan, but Japan's also got extremely low unemployment regardless of that and a rapidly aging population that's quickly shrinking the work-force.

I thought as you did once. This videoby CGP Grey persuaded me otherwise.

Boiling it down, if you've got a vehicle that can move from A to B reliably without causing problems, you've just ended the jobs millions of Americans. Not just truckers and taxi drivers; but probably manufacturers (as the cars that used to be owned by everyone are now more efficiently owned by Uber et al), mining and earthmoving (big trucks can drive themselves!), farming, and surely more. And these aren't jobs that those people can move out of - their entire skill set will suddenly be rendered moot.

[The Romulan Republic]

Again, this is why I've shifted to regarding some form of socialism as almost a necessity- because you are likely going to have a lot of people who need to eat, and have homes, and, you know, live, for whom their will be no well-paying jobs under our current system, and no amount of "go out and get a job, you lazy parasite!" will change that.

Edit: Actually, the very first step should be a push to implement a guaranteed basic income. Some countries have already begun to do this, or at least debated it.

But we'd have to shift the mainstream quite a bit to the Left in the US for it to be likely to be implemented here, I think. Its only recently that a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage has become a sort of mainstream position.

[Guardsman Bass]

The big difference is just that it's not obvious what kind of jobs could exist; there is no big growth sector to replace the current set of jobs.

It's never that obvious in advance what's going to replace the jobs lost, which is why you always see predictions of technology destroying jobs and causing mass unemployment over and over again (particularly in downturns, like the recent recession, the early 1990s recession, the minor downturn in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and so forth). Try telling someone rendered unemployed in the late 19th century about the jobs in the early 20th century, for example.

This is why it's mostly pointless to debate this topic. All I can do is point out that despite repeated predictions, it hasn't happened. Stas provided some interesting stuff on Japan, but Japan's also got extremely low unemployment regardless of that and a rapidly aging population that's quickly shrinking the work-force.

I thought as you did once. This videoby CGP Grey persuaded me otherwise.

Boiling it down, if you've got a vehicle that can move from A to B reliably without causing problems, you've just ended the jobs millions of Americans. Not just truckers and taxi drivers; but probably manufacturers (as the cars that used to be owned by everyone are now more efficiently owned by Uber et al), mining and earthmoving (big trucks can drive themselves!), farming, and surely more. And these aren't jobs that those people can move out of - their entire skill set will suddenly be rendered moot.

People are capable of retraining for new jobs, especially when the transition takes years or decades.

But like I said when I made my first post in this thread, this debate is usually pointless. It's easy to see the jobs that are lost and the dislocation caused by that, but you don't see the jobs that are coming or that might exist - and even then, you tend to forget previous waves of reduction in job categories that got absorbed into the broader economy.

[Simon_Jester]

Except that the trend is already towards increased unemployment and underemployment, and we're seeing a rise in the number of highly educated people with strong academic credentials who cannot find work commensurate with their educational background.

You can't dismiss that by saying "all previous industries where people were put out of work resulted in simultaneous creation of equal amounts of equally rewarding jobs." This is already happening.

[Guardsman Bass]

A mismatch between educational credentials and work available is not usually technological unemployment. It can be, but that' usually not the case.

[Simon_Jester]

There's a relationship between the two. If piling on more education isn't a reasonably reliable way to obtain work, then "people can retrain" becomes a much less reliable defense against jobs getting downsized out of the economy.

It's one thing to say that it doesn't matter when ditch-digging jobs dry up because any fool can get a high school diploma and become a clerk. It's another thing to say it doesn't matter when driving jobs dry up because you can retrain, when there are highly trained people in a variety of fields doing semi-skilled labor that is itself a target for automation, because there just aren't that many highly trained jobs available.

[Me2005]

People are capable of retraining for new jobs, especially when the transition takes years or decades.

But like I said when I made my first post in this thread, this debate is usually pointless. It's easy to see the jobs that are lost and the dislocation caused by that, but you don't see the jobs that are coming or that might exist - and even then, you tend to forget previous waves of reduction in job categories that got absorbed into the broader economy.

Where are you going to produce the millions of jobs displaced by fully autonomous transportation? We're not talking some slow growth steady advancement displace and retrain stuff here (as in the industrial revolution, when agriculture very slowly became less and less lucrative compared to arguably *easier* city/factory jobs that were coming online in droves as new tech was invented constantly); we're talking taking one of the biggest job sectors today (and one of the biggest for the last 100 or so years) and replacing it with robots, and all of the skills it required becoming obsolete. It's very possible it'd happen more quickly than decades as well - tell any business that they can eliminate labor costs and drop their insurance to nothing and see if they bite.

Seriously, watch the video I linked, he did research and presents it all very well; It's like 5 minutes. He goes into how even more jobs are at risk, and some you'd think are safe: It's likely computer programmers will program (most of) themselves out of work, for example; and computers are now replacing writers and artists. Wattson is coming for Dr. House-style diagnostic doctors, and could plausibly be in every home in the country via the web.

[Guardsman Bass]

I've watched it. It's just the same old stuff - the horse argument fallacy, a list of examples of potential automation in various industries, hyped claims about Baxter and Watson, the lump of labor fallacy as applied to machines replacing human minds and mind-work, and so forth. In other words, it's what I've been pointing out since my first post, about how we generally can't imagine what will replace existing jobs and industries while being cognizant of what might potentially be lost. "The robot revolutions is different" - but every revolution has been supposedly different, and the fact that he points out that most of the job categories are the same over long periods of time is telling in a way that CCP Grey doesn't realize.

. . . But here I am arguing about this, and as I pointed out before, arguments over this tend to be pointless. Maybe I'll be wrong this time around. But I doubt it.

we're talking taking one of the biggest job sectors today (and one of the biggest for the last 100 or so years) and replacing it with robots, and all of the skills it required becoming obsolete.

You realize we literally did this with manufacturing, right? Manufacturing employment was once one of the biggest sectors of the job market, and yet it's now shrunken down to a tiny fraction of itself. It shrunk to a fraction of itself even before the mid-1970s, particularly in major sectors like Steel and Automobile production. So tell me what happened to the overall unemployment rate in the US? Did it skyrocket over that time period? Or was it relatively stable outside of recessions, even if local areas underwent a great deal of suffering from it? If you told someone in the 1940s that all of those manufacturing employees plus the population growth over that time plus tens of millions of immigrants would be absorbed by the rest of the economy - sometimes well, sometimes very painfully - would they have believed you?

[Guardsman Bass]

I think I'm just going to bow out on this topic. I'm just repeating myself at this point. Take that as a concession if you want.

[K. A. Pital]

I think it is a bit premature to say displacement of intellectual labour is part of a "lump of labour" fallacy.

The history of labour has been the steady displacement of physical labour by intellectual labour. The precise nature of generated jobs is irrelevant when looking at the broader picture of decline in manual labour and rise of mental labour. This fundamental transition is akin to the demographic transition and can only be done once (there's no third type of labour, only two broad intersecting categories: manual and mind). The decrease in manual labour has been adequately compensated by the rise in demand for intellectual labour. A sufficiently adept AI might render this tendency obsolete.

If intellectual labour is itself displaced, there's nothing to replace it with. Well, except sexual pleasures, I guess, but machines are getting better even at this, too. So phased-out clerks will quite likely find no new jobs even as prostitutes.

[Broomstick]

But we'd have to shift the mainstream quite a bit to the Left in the US for it to be likely to be implemented here, I think. Its only recently that a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage has become a sort of mainstream position.

I would NOT say a $15/hour minimum wage is any way "mainstream" in the US. It's only just become possible to float that idea on the far left here.

[Broomstick]

People are capable of retraining for new jobs, especially when the transition takes years or decades.

I guess you blasted past where I point out there are often age limits on retraining programs, sometimes quite arbitrary. Why is someone 30 eligible for retraining but not someone 40?

There can be arbitaray educational limitations as well - I was barred from several retraining programs because I had a bachelor's degree. I presume that the thinking was that someone with a 4-year degree couldn't possibly need retraining when the program was developed, but there it still is.

And finally - where is the money going to come from for these training programs? The government? Or is the now-unemployed person with no current income expected to pay tuition?

[Broomstick]

It's one thing to say that it doesn't matter when ditch-digging jobs dry up because any fool can get a high school diploma and become a clerk. It's another thing to say it doesn't matter when driving jobs dry up because you can retrain, when there are highly trained people in a variety of fields doing semi-skilled labor that is itself a target for automation, because there just aren't that many highly trained jobs available.

Or, to put it another way:

There are far too many people such as myself, with a 4-year college degree whose job skills acquired 20-30 years ago became obsolete due to technology, who are now pushing the lesser educated out of jobs like my current one. 30 years ago the job I do did not ever require a high school diploma, now the college graduates are pushing the high school graduates out of the market. You need more and more education not because the job requires it but because competition between workers require it - and this job will NOT yield adequate money for a middle-class life even before you start talking about paying back college tuition loans.

It's not efficient, it's a waste of resources, and I don't think it's sustainable.

[The Romulan Republic]

But we'd have to shift the mainstream quite a bit to the Left in the US for it to be likely to be implemented here, I think. Its only recently that a 15 dollar an hour minimum wage has become a sort of mainstream position.

I would NOT say a $15/hour minimum wage is any way "mainstream" in the US. It's only just become possible to float that idea on the far left here.

Depends where you are.

We've seen some cities push it on their own.

And I believe a wishy-washy, watered-down version of it made it onto the Democratic Platform.

[K. A. Pital]

Hahaha. Where did you study economics, TRR?

$15 minimum wage is not socialism and not a form of basic income. It will accomplish only the further development of robotization (historically, rise in the cost share and price of labour has always driven the introduction of labour-saving and, eventually, labour-displacing technology).

So congrats, you introduce the minimum wage without changing the social order. What will happen? Well, most likely capitalists will replace burger flippers with robots. Any minimum wage job that can be automated away after a 50% wage increase will be automated away to prevent a shock doubling of labour costs.

Capitalism is a sickness. Minimum wage is a palliative, but it will not work as intended for those whose jobs are already at risk (though it will help everyone whose job cannot, yet, be automated away at less costs than paying the new min wage, sure).

[His Divine Shadow]

Here's a recent lecture with Mark Blyth hitting basically all the points in this thread though it's mainly about "trumpism":
https://youtu.be/Bkm2Vfj42FY

Replaced with a youtube link instead.

[The Romulan Republic]

Hahaha. Where did you study economics, TRR?

$15 minimum wage is not socialism and not a form of basic income.

I claimed neither.

Read my post if you can before you try to act superior.

I gave 15 an hour as an example of the political spectrum shifting Leftward in the US.

Basic income is not, strictly speaking, socialism, but it is an example of the state taking a greater role in the economy to ensure a more equitable society, and socialist or not, is a measure that needs to be implemented.

It will accomplish only the further development of robotization (historically, rise in the cost share and price of labour has always driven the introduction of labour-saving and, eventually, labour-displacing technology).

It will likely happen anyway, and I would rather see us adapt to ensuring that people can eat and have homes in such a world, rather than keeping wages low in the belief that that will lead to more jobs (isn't that a cornerstone of Reagan/Republican economics?).

So congrats, you introduce the minimum wage without changing the social order. What will happen? Well, most likely capitalists will replace burger flippers with robots. Any minimum wage job that can be automated away after a 50% wage increase will be automated away to prevent a shock doubling of labour costs.

So in other words, you want to keep wages low, inflicting suffering and hardship on people, so you can push your pet ideological hobby-horse.

Disgusting.

Capitalism is a sickness. Minimum wage is a palliative, but it will not work as intended for those whose jobs are already at risk (though it will help everyone whose job cannot, yet, be automated away at less costs than paying the new min wage, sure).

Minimum wage will help those who are employed.

Guaranteed basic income will help those who cannot find work.

But since you are clearly speaking from a point of view of ideology first, rather than practicality, I'm not sure their's much point to this discussion.

[K. A. Pital]

Minimum wage will help those who are employed.

And whose jobs cannot be outsourced or automated - not a minor caveat there, as you can see.

Guaranteed basic income will help those who cannot find work.

There is no guaranteed basic income. It is pointless to discuss this. It is a fundamentally different thing, basic income, and it is not related to minimum wage or its raise.

So in other words, you want to keep wages low, inflicting suffering and hardship on people, so you can push your pet ideological hobby-horse.

No; in fact, I would rather like wages to grow as it would benefit me and other hired workers first and foremost. The problem is, how are you going to make them grow? Capitalism is hitting natural barriers to growth and globalization is driving down the wages in a 'great equalization' - you cannot escape the fact that wages are growing in the Third World because investment occurs there, and not anymore in the developed nations where the infrastructure is often dangerously close to brink of decay.

It will likely happen anyway, and I would rather see us adapt to ensuring that people can eat and have homes in such a world, rather than keeping wages low in the belief that that will lead to more jobs (isn't that a cornerstone of Reagan/Republican economics?).

The problem is, I think, the magnitude of the raise. The current minimum wage is what, 7,5 dollars an hour? You propose doubling that by decree, instantly. This is a 50% spike in labour costs. Ask yourself: what kind of businesses employ people at minimum wage? Usually the most unscurpulous, greedy, vile bastards to ever grace the face of the Earth - Walmart, fast food chains, Amazon's serfdom-like logistics subcontractors, et cetera.

Will these people keep paying double the wage or will they try to find ways to get rid of people now that they cost more? This question is a honest one. The US is a free and de-unionized economy in a globalized world. It is not a regulation-heavy social-democratic nation where outsourcing might carry penalties; where unions might put a brake on mass firings.

I am only asking you to seriously think through not just the immediate well-meant public relations effect, but other effects which will follow.

The problem is not that I agree Republicans are proposing good solutions - no, they're horrible solutions - but they have already put the US economy into a position where their claims are likely to come true - capital is fluid and 100% free, borders are open, unions smashed. And that in an age where wage growth, let us be honest, is a thing you need a microscope to locate.

[The Romulan Republic]

Minimum wage will help those who are employed.

And whose jobs cannot be outsourced or automated - not a minor caveat there, as you can see.

I would support some policies to discourage or prohibit certain kinds of automation and outsourcing (perhaps higher taxes on companies that use heavy automation or outsourcing?), but I am doubtful as to how much success they will have long term. Its not easy to turn back a technological development- if everyone's doing it, everyone will have to keep doing it in order to keep up with other countries/companies/etc. You are no doubt aware of this, of course.

Thing is... that's already happening anyway.

There is no guaranteed basic income. It is pointless to discuss this. It is a fundamentally different thing, basic income, and it is not related to minimum wage or its raise.

Perhaps a more accurate way to phrase it would be "guaranteed living wage". Any legislation implementing such a thing, of course, ought to ensure that it is tied to inflation.

No; in fact, I would rather like wages to grow as it would benefit me and other hired workers first and foremost. The problem is, how are you going to make them grow? Capitalism is hitting natural barriers to growth and globalization is driving down the wages in a 'great equalization' - you cannot escape the fact that wages are growing in the Third World because investment occurs there, and not anymore in the developed nations where the infrastructure is often dangerously close to brink of decay.

Well, their are a lot of reasons for decaying infrastructure, Republican obstruction being a big one in the US.

As to "barriers to growth"- well, obviously, we cannot have perpetual growth with finite resources, although I will point out that exploitation of resources in space (aka asteroid mining) could allow for further growth, but that might be approaching an entire different topic.

How do you make wages grow? Legislation, demanded by people who can no longer provide for themselves and their families even with a good job. Policies to discourage outsourcing and automation. In short, much heavier government involvement in the economy.

Although I am concerned as to what the effects on Third World countries would be if we were able to magically stop outsourcing.

The problem is, I think, the magnitude of the raise. The current minimum wage is what, 7,5 dollars an hour? You propose doubling that by decree, instantly. This is a 50% spike in labour costs. Ask yourself: what kind of businesses employ people at minimum wage? Usually the most unscurpulous, greedy, vile bastards to ever grace the face of the Earth - Walmart, fast food chains, Amazon's serfdom-like logistics subcontractors, et cetera.

Well, to be honest, we're probably not going to get nation-wide 15 an hour in the next few years. This was a point of major contention in the Democratic Primary- Sanders pushed for 15, Clinton for 12. Guess who won? Although Clinton shifted her position slightly closer to Sanders' over time- I think it ended up as being basically "I'll support fifteen in places that support fifteen, otherwise twelve".

I support fifteen though, partly for political reasons. Getting shit through Congress tends to involve a lot of compromise at the best of times. If you start out aiming for fifteen, you might get twelve if you're lucky. If you start out aiming for twelve, you'll be lucky to get ten, I imagine.

And by the time anything gets passed, we'll likely have had a few more years of inflation and cost of living increases.

So I'd rather aim high, as it were.

Will these people keep paying double the wage or will they try to find ways to get rid of people now that they cost more? This question is a honest one. The US is a free and de-unionized economy in a globalized world. It is not a regulation-heavy social-democratic nation where outsourcing might carry penalties; where unions might put a brake on mass firings.

Their isn't a simple answer to this, of course.

Some employers aren't complete shit bags, but many will, of course, continue trying to outsource/automate jobs away.

Outsourcing is, of course, a major political issue, but a lot of the "solutions" involve Trumpian bullshit where we blame the foreigners for everything and try to cut ourselves off from the world.

That said, opposition to global trade deals has gained a strong bi-partisan following, being a major point of contention between Clinton and Sanders again, although Clinton claims to have abandoned her support for the TPP (time will tell how sincere that is, if she wins the Presidency).

I think the answer, to some extent, ultimately lies in your post itself- their are economies, Western Democratic economies no less- that handle this better. We can see, roughly at least, the direction in which we need to move. However, that will require a significant shift in US politics and culture, and its not likely to be fully implemented until we're desperate.

I don't think its impossible, though- look at the reforms FDR was able to implement during the Depression. I'm not saying it was prefect or anything, but America has not always been quite the Reaganesque mess it is today, not even in living memory.

I am only asking you to seriously think through not just the immediate well-meant public relations effect, but other effects which will follow.

My foremost concern is making sure people who are suffering now can eat, have homes, get health care, etc., not PR. That and preventing the kind of political instability and rise in violent radicalism that tends to accompany economic hardship. We can already see a bit of that in Trump, thankfully thus far limited in its effects.

I acknowledge their will be long-term complications and that those should be taken into consideration, and efforts made to mitigate them. But we also need to help people now. Because some sweeping collapse of capitalism, if it ever happens, is a long way off. And I would not pursue a long-term social agenda by inflicting or enabling such suffering today.

The problem is not that I agree Republicans are proposing good solutions - no, they're horrible solutions - but they have already put the US economy into a position where their claims are likely to come true - capital is fluid and 100% free, borders are open, unions smashed. And that in an age where wage growth, let us be honest, is a thing you need a microscope to locate.

I would not call US borders "open", exactly, anti-immigrant fear-mongering notwithstanding.

Nor would Trumpian "close the borders" bullshit help much, I think (not sure if that's what you're going for, but the point is valid regardless). Cheap foreign labour would become a lot less attractive to shit bag employers if you had to pay everyone a decent wage and immigrants didn't have to fear getting deported if they reported exploitation, I'd think.

That said, you're largely right about the problems here, but Republican economics is not going to last if current trends continue. If you have tens of millions of able adults for whom their simply are not jobs, at least in the traditional sense, to apply for, you will not be able to keep up "Get a job! Its your fault if you're poor!" It'll break down. The only question being weather that breakdown will come in the form of democratic reforms, or economic/social collapse and likely mass bloodshed.

Obviously, I prefer the former option.

I guess I'm thinking first and foremost from the perspective of damage control while we adjust to- whatever the hell our economy is turning into.