by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Earlier this month a big-rig semi traveled from a railyard in Tucson to a distribution center in Phoenix - a distance of approximately eighty miles. The route was nothing special, basically a long, fairly straight stretch of multi-lane highway that reaches across a broad stretch of the Sonoran Desert to connect two of Arizona's larger urban areas. Thousands of big commercial vehicles travel that same road every week.
But what was remarkable about that particular trek across the desert was this: the semi had no driver. A fully automated commercial truck drove from Tucson to Phoenix, driverless, and while it was enroute it passed slower vehicles, faithfully obeyed traffic signs and signals, and successfully navigated on-and-off-ramps. Yes, the test run occurred late at night when traffic was scarce, and a lead vehicle about five miles out in front checked for surprise road hazards, and a vehicle following stood ready to intercede if an emergency developed, and unmarked police vehicles were also close at hand - but the trip was successful and none of the emergency procedures had to be deployed.
While all of that sounds like great news for modern man - because fully automated vehicles could provide more time for humans to get other things accomplished, and they could also significantly reduce road injuries and deaths - fully operated vehicles also represent a death knell for professions like truck drivers, bus drivers, Lyft, Uber, and taxi drivers, and all manner of delivery personnel.
And it's not just a threat to transportation workers, automation has already invaded the retail markets.
I have shopped in stores with automatic checkouts, though I have never used one - and never will. But they are here, and retailers who have traditionally mistreated and underpaid their employees have been quick to begin using the automatic checkouts, machines which require no raises and no benefits.
During the pandemic banks learned that many of their customers are just fine with doing their banking on-line or through ATMs, and now branches are closing as more and more banking customers get routed into automated banking.
Recently I read where food-dispensing "automats" are making a comeback in some urban areas. These are like snack machines but on a much larger scale, and people can essentially purchase an entire meal, item by item, without any human contact.
One question remains, however, as commerce becomes more and more automated: how do all of the newly unemployed, those people displaced by automation, pay for the goods and services that the machines are providing?
Automation doesn't create markets, jobs do!
2 comments:
I retain a vivid 1950's era memory heralding labor saving devices that would shorten work weeks and give modern humanity leisure time. Automation was supposed to lead to a panacea. This may be the first big lie I recall being told.
We have lost telephone operators, typesetters, and manufacturing jobs to automation. Telephones are now two-way radios once described in the comic strips by Dick Tracy. Newspapers are on the verge of extinction; the typesetters were just the tip of that industry's iceberg. America's steel mills oxidize in the rust belt as manufacturing was exported to nations without labor unions, environmental laws, or laws protecting health and safety of workers. Many of our electronic products are made using slave labor in foreign countries.
Greed killed those American jobs. When computers fail, greed will slaughter motorists on highways populated by driverless vehicles. As long as unfettered capitalism runs amok, greed will sacrifice jobs, lives, and our quality of life to the bottom line.
Joblessness, poverty, hunger, and homelessness are the end result of labor-saving devices, not leisure time.
Kudos to the state of Oregon fro bringing back gas station attendants to pump gas. Oregon did that to create jobs - a bold move!
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