To wonder what will happen when there are no iobs

[rainandfire]

When technology does everything, driving, deliveries, retail ... what will people do then?

If you can't afford taxis, you aren't going to be able to afford a driverless car in your lifetime.

40 pounds for a 15 min drive? How is that even possible? I'd pay a quarter of that.

You probably live in a city then.

Only the people who actually lived at the source, and sometimes not even then

Actually, fishery products (saltwater) have been harvested going back thousands of years. All around the world. More recently, Portuguese, Norman, Breton, and English fisherman adopted the salt-based curing technique from Basque fishermen in Newfoundland near the cod-rich Grand Banks by the late 1400s.

We’ll stop using money like on Star Trek.

A lot of people will work in IT, and it will be badly paid because everyone can do it.

Lower level IT, such as data entry, yes, but it's already pretty lowly paid.

Top level IT such as programming, systems design, testing, etc., will always be needed and always well paid, because you need the mostly highly skilled people to do it. With more tech, you need even more of them.

People will be paid the standard wage not to work. Those with jobs who have the skills that are still required will be paid huge salaries. There will be huge taxes on businesses to fund the citizen wage. What else will they spend money on if they don't have to pay wages. The machines will work 24 hours, never take holiday or sick leave so productivity and therefore profit will be massive. It's scary to think about it.

I don't want a robot doing my hair or tending to my needs at the spa. There are various type of jobs that will always be there. Technology will create new types of jobs even if it is just someone to turn the robot on or charge it and the like

I think we’re going through the tech equivalent of the Industrial Revolution. It’s quite exciting but scary too.

People will have to be ready to do something different. We need to encourage that kind of mindset, where change is seen as an opportunity.

I do think the jobs we do now will be gone but, hopefully, there will be jobs that we haven’t even thought of now to replace them.

The world will be very different and we can’t get left behind.

DS has it figured out. He is academically brilliant, but has decided to become a plumber.

He said it this way... "When the employment world goes to crap, people will still need to crap, but they won't know how to fix their own toilets."

I think some people up-thread were skeptical about driverless cars arriving soon? Apparently they are now here.

We all knew there would eventually come a day when self-driving cars would start roaming US streets without someone in the driver's seat for safety, but you still might be surprised that the day has come this soon. In fact, that day passed a couple of weeks ago.

www.techradar.com/news/waymos-autonomous-cars-are-already-on-public-roads-without-safety-drivers

For the owner of the taxi, yes. For the customer? Unlikely.

Not sure exactly what you are saying, other than scepticism about using driverless taxis being cheaper than owning a car.

I expect the driverless taxi fleets will be owned directly or indirectly by the manufacturer of each model. Even if there were only one manufacturer, who therefore had a monopoly, they can provide cheaper journeys than car ownership would, and they have to in order to create a massive market for their own product, so they will supplant car ownership. As soon as there are two manufacturers, the competition will bring the price down further to some small fraction over cost. We've already established that cost will be a lot less, because of sharing vehicles between multiple users.

Actually, fishery products (saltwater) have been harvested going back thousands of years. All around the world. More recently, Portuguese, Norman, Breton, and English fisherman adopted the salt-based curing technique from Basque fishermen in Newfoundland near the cod-rich Grand Banks by the late 1400s

None of which changes what I said; which is that poor people inland did not eat fish. Which they did not.

8Not sure exactly what you are saying, other than scepticism about using driverless taxis being cheaper than owning a car*

you said a driverless taxi would be much cheaper than a regular taxi. As I said, for the owner of it, yes, they will get a higher profit. Not likely you'll see any saving though.

People will be paid the standard wage not to work.

They'll probably be paid to walk/jog/cycle on exercise equipment linked to dynamos to generate the electricity that will be needed to run all these robots and tech once we stop using fossil fuels and start to rely on wind and solar power.

Research suggests we'll need the equivalent of several new nuclear power stations just to recharge all the electric cars once petrol/diesel has been banned.

It's a "win win" situation because it will also solve the obesity crisis.

It frightens me as a disabled person with a chronic illness that in 10-20 years im going to be a burden. Even at the moment im struggling to get a job at the right level compared to my skills and experience, it'll be even worse and with disability benefits targeted for cuts since we're apparently all scroungers who knows what kind of future that holds...

Oh, and taxis are not affordable. 40 quid to get to work, 15 minutes drive. 70 quid to get home from city, 30 mins, heaven knows how much that would be around Christmas at night.

The bottom line is it costs a certain amount to drive a car a certain distance. If you could afford any of those journeys in a car you own, you can afford it in a driverless taxi, because that would work out cheaper overall. (It might be more per mile/minute, but you wouldn't be paying for a car you own to depreciate while not in use.)

To take a wild guess, in a world in which 95% of cars on the road are driverless taxis, your 15 minute commute will cost maybe £5.

None of which changes what I said; which is that poor people inland did not eat fish. Which they did not.

Yes they did. There are fish in rivers and lakes. People lived near rivers and lakes and streams for the water they needed, either for transport, for drinking, for irrigation of their crops, etc. Fish aren't just on the coast! There'd be a very small proportion of the population who lived completely inland with no access at all to waterways.

Not likely you'll see any saving though.

Why not? If something costs (for example) half as much to provide, due to new technology, and there's competition to provide it, why would the price not halve?

(It might be more per mile/minute, but you wouldn't be paying for a car you own to depreciate while not in use.)

Only if it's in use 24/7. That won't happen because it'll need charging for a few hours each day. Then you have all the down time, because it's impossible for it to have full use. If it's stationed in a village, it may only get a few journeys per day. To get better usage, it'll have to be "on call" to go to other villages, then you'd be complaining that it takes too long for it to arrive when it's already in use elsewhere, so you'd expect more than one for your village, and that doubles up on the inefficiency and downtime. Suddenly when it's only "working" for a couple of hours per day, the "cost" for users has to increase to cover it's purchase price and other fixed costs. At least with a regular taxi, it can be on the road 24/7 with a rota of drivers, so the vehicle "cost per mile driven" is far less as it's used far more.

There'd be a very small proportion of the population who lived completely inland with no access at all to waterways

Not remotely true. Most people didn't go more than a few miles from where they were born their whole lives. Lots of places are not on a river or lake. They didn't travel to go fishing.

Honestly, between the bizarre notions of history (we all had better mental health when we had harder shorter brutal poverty stricken lives than now?) and the pie in the sky notions of cheap driverless taxis and armies of robots, this is the most misinformed thread I think I've ever seen on here. And that is really saying something.

All the scepticism about driverless cars reminds me of personal computers.
We carry them in our pockets now and almost everyone has one.

In the same way that people probably regarded the very first cars as toys for the rich.

And when the first human genome started to be sequenced.

Just saying...

All the scepticism about driverless cars reminds me of personal computers.

It's scepticism about the speed and scope, not driverless cars themselves. Considering there are large parts of the UK that don't even have decent broadband, I think we're many decades away from the average village having a fleet of driverless cars parked on the village green! Some major towns and cities, perhaps, but very unlikely to see it out in the regions and less populated areas - which ironically is where they'd be most useful, i.e. where there is virtually no public transport and poor infrastructure. Hey ho!

Most people didn't go more than a few miles from where they were born their whole lives

Have you read of the work being done near Stonehenge? Through DNA analysis it is now widely believed that it was a centre of national pilgrimage, with folk travelling from as far away as Scotland along well-established roads to celebrate at key phases of the year.

Or we can move ahead and look at the building of the great monasteries. Are you saying that this skilled construction was done by toothless, starving villeins? Not travelling, well-compensated craftsmen?

We are seeing near the pyramids settlements for workers. It seems they were not actually Israelite slaves, but well-provisioned artisans and engineers.

The point of saltwater fishery products is actually important. Roman garum containers are found all across Europe, a testament to the importance of fish in the Roman diet, and to the widespread trade. Were these traders toothless serfs?

If we look then to the Anglo Saxon and then into the Norman we find Lex mercatoria, indicating a great and structured trade, again all across Europe. Bustling ports. Commerce. Legal structure available to traders.

And along the Mediterranean, the great Venetian trade between Asia and Europe. Wool, spices, dyes. Food.

Let there be no doubt that life during feudalism was no picnic. Very few people had air conditioning or hoovers or ready meals. And of course most were illiterate.

But there is much more to our human history than this snapshot of a serf in a mud hut in the midlands. Skilled carpenters and engineers. Blacksmiths and barrel-makers and shipbuilders and glassblowers. Often moving about....creating an entire class of journeymen. Traders. Soldiers of fortune. Bandits and thieves. Monks and scribes and entertainers. Squires and Junkers.

I think we're many decades away from the average village having a fleet of driverless cars parked on the village green! Some major towns and cities, perhaps, but very unlikely to see it out in the regions and less populated areas - which ironically is where they'd be most useful, i.e. where there is virtually no public transport and poor infrastructure. Hey ho!

Driverless cars, however, are particularly useful in cities. It would mean that people can work or relax in the car while commuting, would save time parking, and they have the potential of being safer and preventing many traffic jams caused by aggressive drivers that push in front of traffic and/or have to break hard. It also has the potential to replace taxis, with greater flexibility than public transport.
It may well be costly to start with, but as with most technology, prices will go down quickly.

Also, as with most technologies will take its time to reach the most remote and poorest areas, but the main point is that the technology won't be that far and it will likely reach the main urban areas. Probably faster than any one of us expects it to.

Driverless cars, however, are particularly useful in cities
Only if the majority of cars are driverless, otherwise drivers will just continue to break the law, drive dangerously and aggressively, effectively forcing the driverless cars to continuously take evasive action making for very slow journeys. It would be like a bunch of cyclists riding down the pavement, pedestrians having to stop and get out of the way to let the bullies through.