Good piece. I don't know why Dems are bending over backwards for the Teamsters, who played footsie with Trump. Trading potential saved lives and lower fares to protect low wage jobs does not seem like a great trade off.
They see it as a wedge issue to bring the rank and file Teamsters back into the fold and create a renaissance in union membership. They could organize millions of rideshare drivers and independent contractor truck drivers and own them forever by positioning themselves as defenders of their jobs against the evil billionaire policy failures, and frankly, it’s a narrative grounded in reality.
The other tack they could take is to advocate for a post-work UBI utopia at billionaire bro expense—not a workers’ paradise but a workless paradise. This vision was widely held by many in the ‘60s.
Does anybody want a job? What they want is an income.
Actually, someone (sorry I've forgotten who) had a focus group with truck drivers about basic income, and they all felt that they would rather work for their money. As long as we're talking about an ideal world, I think a 4-day work week would be the way to go. A progressive basic income would make that more likely.
That's because a large majority of people would not know what to do with themselves without the structure of work filling their days.
IMO, if people's needs are met by AI/robots doing all the work and providing everything for free, a majority of people would while away their days getting drunk/stoned, paying video games, watching sports, listening to music or following entertainment news.
As George Carlin accurately said:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
This reminds me of a funny story. I worked for another AV startup called Optimus Ride, in the same building as Motional. The building is in the Seaport district, which at the time was Boston’s designated self-driving testing zone. The building also houses a seafood packing plant and a cruise ship terminal. At the time, Seaport businesses had to show the City of Boston that they had a link to the maritime industry. We argued that we could transport cruise ship sailors and lobstermen to their boats, and bring customers to the Yankee Lobster Company restaurant. :-) I wonder if Motional had a similar argument. I think the lesson is that bureaucracy can be “flexible”.
Oh no!!! Dems are supposed to be the Party of smart people. Perhaps they will demand horses too? Most drivers will be gone by 2030. Technology wins. Fact of life. Interim solution; $5M fine for every robotic accident. Commitment/Bond goes with driverless license.
I have a difficult time imagining the elderly Democrats championing such ideas will remain in office.
Frankly who cares what the Teamsters think?
The few people with union jobs have a cushy deal. Great for them, but those of us who actually work for a living don't care what the privileged few think.
Plus most union rank and file vote GOP already. No loss there.
Dems and particularly Democratic Socialists will want to preserve driver jobs because drivers are voters and will vote Dem if tech threatens to take away their rice bowl.
Boston is heavily union, although across the USA, ONLY about 6% of people are in private unions. About 53% of public workers are unionized and I am hoping this goes down under Trump.
Excellent analysis, as usual. I do wonder how long this will be a blue issue, though. In the CA county I live in, trucking accounts for something like one in 14 jobs, and it’s a “lead red” district. Those jobs disappear, or threaten to disappear, the politics could get interesting for any party in power. Texas has a lot of truckers….
Framing this in relation to the book “Abundance” is telling. The “Abundance” authors present a thinly researched but compellingly told reason for the housing shortage. There is plenty of evidence that their thesis is too simplistic at best and just plain wrong at worst. Saving driver jobs is far from the only, or even most important, reason to slow the development of driverless cars. These vehicles are surveillance machines, owned by private companies, who will not hesitate to sell the data to police or other government agencies. Furthermore, saying that driverless car companies’ safety claims should be “taken with a grain of salt” then relying on unnamed safety experts to make the same claim, is intellectually dishonest. If these cars truly are safer, why won’t the companies release enough data that these claims can be verified?
Brilliant analysis. We’re on a path to 2 Americas, but not exactly in the way John Edwards envisioned.
Red America will be a techtopia.
Blue America will be a Luddite, lawless union shop.
There will be a Darwinian resolution as people vote for their feet favoring Red, but immigrants will turn the reds blue and the cycle will continue ad infinitum.
Wait a second! There is an additional consideration here that is NOT shared by housing, food security, etc. outlined in Abundance. Robots have no conscience, as do (most) humans-and the liability of a robot causing injury to a person (pedestrian, cyclist) is not adjudicated as yet. Let Red States do this experiment, and wait a few years for the results before allowing these robots into your community.
I don't think banning driverless cars is a good idea, but it doesn't seem like it would take long to catch up once the technology proves successful elsewhere. Is there a reason you would think otherwise?
Technically speaking, I expect that it'll take a year or two to scale up a robotaxi service in a new city once the technology is mature. However, policy can be sticky. Once a ban on AVs is in place, there will be vested interests lobbying to keep it in place, and it might be difficult to get it repealed. Look at how long the Jones Act has been around despite its obvious downsides.
ugh. makes me embarrassed to be a progressive. as someone who's taken a waymo ride or two (and driven amongst them countless times), there's little doubt in my mind that they're a safety upgrade over unpredictable human drivers. we should be embracing this as an opportunity to remake urban transit - perhaps this could reduce the need for car ownership?
i'm old, so this reminds me of an (even older) lefty friend who refused to use ATMs because they were taking jobs away from bank tellers. i guess it's a counterfactual, so can't say this definitively, but i'm pretty sure we wouldn't be living in a progressive utopia if only everyone still did all their banking face-to-face. obviously, there's a need to think about how new technologies will impact human lives and whether they'll actually be beneficial. but, as the article points out, this particular instance just feels symbolic of left/dem/progressive dysfunction.
AVs would also be good for the environment and for low-income people in that without the cost of a driver, buses could be cheap to free. There would need to be cameras and security people available of course, to make it safe. But people manage to travel unsupervised in subways for the most part, so there's every reason to think it would work.
Also, great way to transport kids, keeping parents out of the chauffeur role.
This part about 2035 seems a bit simplistic: "... while their cars drive them to work". What work? If the author's vision comes true, millions of people who used to drive cars and trucks have lost their jobs at this point, and so have tens of millions of others whose jobs are now done by robots and AI. Software developers, illustrators, journalists, lawyers... There is no industry that won't be massively affected by AI.
I'm not saying banning driverless cars is a good choice. I don't know the best solution to the problems AI is going to cause. But the approach "don't regulate it, everything will be fine" seems a bit too simple.
Either "AI" is oversold as a concept (as based on current LLM approach) or it isn't.
If it isn't, dreaming that the "free" market will solve all problems, leaving behind nobody is just that: a dream.
Sure, many people will be able to reinvent themselves. But if this is the paradigm shift that we are being sold, there's going to be a clear limit to how many. What, then? UBI? But I read comments here that say that that amounts to people wanting a rice bowl...
Protect jobs! Bring back elevator operators!
Good piece. I don't know why Dems are bending over backwards for the Teamsters, who played footsie with Trump. Trading potential saved lives and lower fares to protect low wage jobs does not seem like a great trade off.
They see it as a wedge issue to bring the rank and file Teamsters back into the fold and create a renaissance in union membership. They could organize millions of rideshare drivers and independent contractor truck drivers and own them forever by positioning themselves as defenders of their jobs against the evil billionaire policy failures, and frankly, it’s a narrative grounded in reality.
The other tack they could take is to advocate for a post-work UBI utopia at billionaire bro expense—not a workers’ paradise but a workless paradise. This vision was widely held by many in the ‘60s.
Does anybody want a job? What they want is an income.
Actually, someone (sorry I've forgotten who) had a focus group with truck drivers about basic income, and they all felt that they would rather work for their money. As long as we're talking about an ideal world, I think a 4-day work week would be the way to go. A progressive basic income would make that more likely.
Isn't it amazing that people have that kind of work ethic even in this day and age?
That's because a large majority of people would not know what to do with themselves without the structure of work filling their days.
IMO, if people's needs are met by AI/robots doing all the work and providing everything for free, a majority of people would while away their days getting drunk/stoned, paying video games, watching sports, listening to music or following entertainment news.
As George Carlin accurately said:
"Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that."
This reminds me of a funny story. I worked for another AV startup called Optimus Ride, in the same building as Motional. The building is in the Seaport district, which at the time was Boston’s designated self-driving testing zone. The building also houses a seafood packing plant and a cruise ship terminal. At the time, Seaport businesses had to show the City of Boston that they had a link to the maritime industry. We argued that we could transport cruise ship sailors and lobstermen to their boats, and bring customers to the Yankee Lobster Company restaurant. :-) I wonder if Motional had a similar argument. I think the lesson is that bureaucracy can be “flexible”.
That is funny. Thanks for sharing!
Oh no!!! Dems are supposed to be the Party of smart people. Perhaps they will demand horses too? Most drivers will be gone by 2030. Technology wins. Fact of life. Interim solution; $5M fine for every robotic accident. Commitment/Bond goes with driverless license.
Looks to me like the author is right. Blue states will block autonomy.
Red States will encourage.
The Democratic base is people who live in a city, work a normal professional job, and want to take a Waymo sometimes. Hope the politicians catch up.
I have a difficult time imagining the elderly Democrats championing such ideas will remain in office.
Frankly who cares what the Teamsters think?
The few people with union jobs have a cushy deal. Great for them, but those of us who actually work for a living don't care what the privileged few think.
Plus most union rank and file vote GOP already. No loss there.
Those Boston politicans are not elderly, though
Dems and particularly Democratic Socialists will want to preserve driver jobs because drivers are voters and will vote Dem if tech threatens to take away their rice bowl.
Boston is heavily union, although across the USA, ONLY about 6% of people are in private unions. About 53% of public workers are unionized and I am hoping this goes down under Trump.
Excellent analysis, as usual. I do wonder how long this will be a blue issue, though. In the CA county I live in, trucking accounts for something like one in 14 jobs, and it’s a “lead red” district. Those jobs disappear, or threaten to disappear, the politics could get interesting for any party in power. Texas has a lot of truckers….
All the more reason for Dems to use it as a rice bowl issue.
Framing this in relation to the book “Abundance” is telling. The “Abundance” authors present a thinly researched but compellingly told reason for the housing shortage. There is plenty of evidence that their thesis is too simplistic at best and just plain wrong at worst. Saving driver jobs is far from the only, or even most important, reason to slow the development of driverless cars. These vehicles are surveillance machines, owned by private companies, who will not hesitate to sell the data to police or other government agencies. Furthermore, saying that driverless car companies’ safety claims should be “taken with a grain of salt” then relying on unnamed safety experts to make the same claim, is intellectually dishonest. If these cars truly are safer, why won’t the companies release enough data that these claims can be verified?
Your Orwellian paranoia combined with rice bowl progressivism is why the tech bros won't be able to automate human labor out of existence.
Where's the DISLIKE button Substack?
Brilliant analysis. We’re on a path to 2 Americas, but not exactly in the way John Edwards envisioned.
Red America will be a techtopia.
Blue America will be a Luddite, lawless union shop.
There will be a Darwinian resolution as people vote for their feet favoring Red, but immigrants will turn the reds blue and the cycle will continue ad infinitum.
How many comments so far? Maybe therapy is a better use of your time?
Hey Brad, maybe you could amplify it by sharing with your subscriber.
Wait a second! There is an additional consideration here that is NOT shared by housing, food security, etc. outlined in Abundance. Robots have no conscience, as do (most) humans-and the liability of a robot causing injury to a person (pedestrian, cyclist) is not adjudicated as yet. Let Red States do this experiment, and wait a few years for the results before allowing these robots into your community.
I don't think banning driverless cars is a good idea, but it doesn't seem like it would take long to catch up once the technology proves successful elsewhere. Is there a reason you would think otherwise?
Technically speaking, I expect that it'll take a year or two to scale up a robotaxi service in a new city once the technology is mature. However, policy can be sticky. Once a ban on AVs is in place, there will be vested interests lobbying to keep it in place, and it might be difficult to get it repealed. Look at how long the Jones Act has been around despite its obvious downsides.
ugh. makes me embarrassed to be a progressive. as someone who's taken a waymo ride or two (and driven amongst them countless times), there's little doubt in my mind that they're a safety upgrade over unpredictable human drivers. we should be embracing this as an opportunity to remake urban transit - perhaps this could reduce the need for car ownership?
i'm old, so this reminds me of an (even older) lefty friend who refused to use ATMs because they were taking jobs away from bank tellers. i guess it's a counterfactual, so can't say this definitively, but i'm pretty sure we wouldn't be living in a progressive utopia if only everyone still did all their banking face-to-face. obviously, there's a need to think about how new technologies will impact human lives and whether they'll actually be beneficial. but, as the article points out, this particular instance just feels symbolic of left/dem/progressive dysfunction.
I want to live in a world where I don’t need to drive and where there are fewer automobile fatalities.
I also want to live in a world where people aren’t exploiting for their work and get a fair wage.
These shouldn’t be contradictory or controversial ideas.
AVs would also be good for the environment and for low-income people in that without the cost of a driver, buses could be cheap to free. There would need to be cameras and security people available of course, to make it safe. But people manage to travel unsupervised in subways for the most part, so there's every reason to think it would work.
Also, great way to transport kids, keeping parents out of the chauffeur role.
This part about 2035 seems a bit simplistic: "... while their cars drive them to work". What work? If the author's vision comes true, millions of people who used to drive cars and trucks have lost their jobs at this point, and so have tens of millions of others whose jobs are now done by robots and AI. Software developers, illustrators, journalists, lawyers... There is no industry that won't be massively affected by AI.
I'm not saying banning driverless cars is a good choice. I don't know the best solution to the problems AI is going to cause. But the approach "don't regulate it, everything will be fine" seems a bit too simple.
To say the least.
Either "AI" is oversold as a concept (as based on current LLM approach) or it isn't.
If it isn't, dreaming that the "free" market will solve all problems, leaving behind nobody is just that: a dream.
Sure, many people will be able to reinvent themselves. But if this is the paradigm shift that we are being sold, there's going to be a clear limit to how many. What, then? UBI? But I read comments here that say that that amounts to people wanting a rice bowl...