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There are 3.5 million truckers in the US. Think about that.

Politically, I'm fairly conservative/libertarian, and I generally accept the economic realities of things like creative destruction. And even with those overarching views, I am terrified of the social impact of autonomous vehicles.

When you take a step back, it is nothing short of disturbing how aggressively and proudly Google and Uber (et al) are pursuing the destruction of the livelihoods of those 3.5 million households in this country. Just a bunch of mostly honest, hard-working folks who live in the exurbs or rural towns, with absolutely no backup plan when a robotic truck either creates tremendous wage deflation or takes their job completely.

And for what? So we can all save a few cents at Target. So a couple billionaire founders can toss some more on the pile. So a handful of engineers can make more millions. So paper-pushing fund managers can make a few more bucks from their stock going up. It's like watching a horror movie in slow motion.

Creative destruction has been a fact of life for centuries, but overall, societies have thrived. My sense - and I have no data to back this up - is that we are approaching a tipping point where the gains from technology are accelerating way beyond society's ability to reallocate those resources to other productive places in the short and even medium-term. That steady-state of frictional unemployment caused by technology is about to be majorly upended, and it just scares me. Societal problems are going to get very, very bad.




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