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      • 28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
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      • 19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
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    • Brian's 2019 Newsletters >
      • 23rd November 2019 - Another fascinating mix from around the world
      • 30th October 2019 - Where are we headed now?
      • 10th October 2019 - Another tour of the issues
      • 27th August 2019 -Brighter than usual
      • 2nd August 2019 - Mostly more gloom and doom
      • 5th July 2019 - Not much improvement anywhere
      • 19th June 2019 - Better late than neverNew Page
      • 27th April 2019 - More to make you think about the future
      • April 2019 Letters to the Editor of Business Day
      • 2nd April 2019 - Another Month of Mixed News
      • 27th February 2019 - More good news than bad
      • 4th February 2019 - Trying to make sense of it all
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      • 29th December 2018 - Preparing for 2019
      • 3th November 2018 - Death by Hot Air and Other Cautionary Tales
      • 26th October 2018 – The Case of the Treacherous Till Slip and Other Interesting Tales
      • October 2018 - Feedback on Draft Integrated Resource Plan for South Africa
      • 21st September 2018 - The Information Flow Continues
      • 31st August 2018 - Reading for the first weekend of spring / autumn
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      • 13th July 2018 - Energy Update 2018
      • 31st May 2018 - Grime and Punishment
      • 20th April, 2018 - The Equaliser Conspiracy
      • 3rd April, 2018 - More Fascinating Facts and Figures
      • 28th February, 2018 - World Update
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      • 29th November 2017 - Guessing Our Future
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      • 26th July 2017 – Ideas for a Brighter South Africa
      • 3rd July 2017 - Another Energy Update
      • 8th May 2017 – Trucking and Selling
      • 12th April 2017 - False News Today
      • 22nd March 2017 - Predicting Speed of Change
      • 27th February 2017 - Growing Inequality
      • 11th January 2017 - Medical Data Mining
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        • 15th January 2016 - A Taste of Red and White
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trucking and selling

8th May 2017 – Trucking and Selling

My daughter has a somewhat unusual friend. In his early twenties his aim was to win the US Masters Golf Tournament within two years. He even bought a green jacket to make sure it suited him. When that didn’t come off, he became the only person I know to take a holiday in North Korea. More recently he devoted himself to driving one of those huge truck trains that roar across the Australian outback.

Rick is the nearest I have got to meeting a real live truck driver. Mind you, according to the American Trucking Association, there are more than three and a half million truck drivers in the USA. Europe evidently has even more. While I enjoy going on road trips, I don’t think I’d enjoy being a truck driver hell bent on getting to their destination day in and day out. I like to sample small town sights or venture off on a side road to see what’s over the hill. The idea of being away from home and family for so many nights, often spent in a cramped bunk behind the driver’s seat, also doesn’t appeal. About the only positive thing is that they don’t have to waste three years doing tertiary education; all they need to do is pass the advanced truck driver’s course.
 
I’m also not friends with any checkout cashiers even though they give me a friendly hello and a smile before they start spinning my purchases past their scanning machines. I’m not sure I’d like their jobs either, sitting or standing all day monotonously waving items from right to left then processing the payment before starting with the next customer. Like the truckies, they also don’t need tertiary qualifications. According to the census records there are four million of them in each of America and Europe.
 
Now truck driving and checking out are two occupations which are predicted to be completely automated in the next decade. Assuming each worker is paid, on average, ten Eurodollars an hour, then commercial enterprises will save a whopping two hundred and fifty billion Eurodollars a year. Shareholders will be ecstatic at the thought. They might even be tempted to give customers discounts. Of course they could go even further and follow the Amazon example and close their physical stores. Robots in a warehouse would package the goods we order online and load them into self driving trucks or drones for automatic delivery. I just hope they remember to include a robot arm in the design to press my doorbell otherwise they might have to hang around till the late afternoon when I take my dog for a walk and find them lurking with intent outside my gate.
 
Of course there are some problems in this scenario. Most of the retrenched fifteen million or more workers won’t find another job so they won’t have the wherewithal to go online and buy goods from the warehouse. In fact, that’s two hundred and fifty billion Eurodollars that won’t be spent in the economy because it hasn’t been earned. I hope the store owners factor that in when justifying their automation projects.
 
The displaced workers will have to live somehow. Liberal governments are already looking at paying a universal income grant. For the sake of an example, let’s assume that the American and European governments are generous and set the grant at the equivalent of eight Eurodollars an hour. Then the stores would only need to pay their workers two Eurodollars an hour to give them their pre-income grant salary. This, of course, in turn cuts the savings they achieve from their automation projects by eighty percent and, on top of that, the government is going to need to tax the company and its owners more in order to afford the basic income grant. Maybe at the end of it all there won’t be any savings at all.
 
The big problem with all of this is that, by and large, companies don’t care all that much about the workers they retrench. They just want to make more profits. Many governments also don’t care; they think people are unemployed because they are lazy and don’t want to work. So companies are going to be able to profit handsomely until the politicians wake up to the fact they could be swept out of office by a swarm of voters who have a vote but little else. Then there will be a scramble to close the stable door after the horse has long bolted with the loot.
 
Sometimes I just wish we could start with a blank sheet of paper and design the perfect life system for us all.
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  • Home
  • Brian's Blog
  • Musings
    • Brian's 2020 Newlsetters >
      • 28th June 2020 – Mulling a Covid Afterlife
      • 31st May 2020 - Unlocking your mind while in Lockdown
      • 19th April, 2020 – More stimulants for lockdown contemplation
      • 3rd April 2020 - PLanning Ahead in a Time of Plague
      • 19th March 2020 – More to Mull on in Splendid Isolation
      • 24th February, 2020 - The Corona Virus and Much More
      • 24th January 2020 - What changes likely in the new year?
    • Brian's 2019 Newsletters >
      • 23rd November 2019 - Another fascinating mix from around the world
      • 30th October 2019 - Where are we headed now?
      • 10th October 2019 - Another tour of the issues
      • 27th August 2019 -Brighter than usual
      • 2nd August 2019 - Mostly more gloom and doom
      • 5th July 2019 - Not much improvement anywhere
      • 19th June 2019 - Better late than neverNew Page
      • 27th April 2019 - More to make you think about the future
      • April 2019 Letters to the Editor of Business Day
      • 2nd April 2019 - Another Month of Mixed News
      • 27th February 2019 - More good news than bad
      • 4th February 2019 - Trying to make sense of it all
    • 2018 >
      • 29th December 2018 - Preparing for 2019
      • 3th November 2018 - Death by Hot Air and Other Cautionary Tales
      • 26th October 2018 – The Case of the Treacherous Till Slip and Other Interesting Tales
      • October 2018 - Feedback on Draft Integrated Resource Plan for South Africa
      • 21st September 2018 - The Information Flow Continues
      • 31st August 2018 - Reading for the first weekend of spring / autumn
      • 31st July 2018 - Watching the World
      • 13th July 2018 - Energy Update 2018
      • 31st May 2018 - Grime and Punishment
      • 20th April, 2018 - The Equaliser Conspiracy
      • 3rd April, 2018 - More Fascinating Facts and Figures
      • 28th February, 2018 - World Update
    • 2017 >
      • 29th November 2017 - Guessing Our Future
      • 29th July 2017 – Basic Income Grant
      • 26th July 2017 – Ideas for a Brighter South Africa
      • 3rd July 2017 - Another Energy Update
      • 8th May 2017 – Trucking and Selling
      • 12th April 2017 - False News Today
      • 22nd March 2017 - Predicting Speed of Change
      • 27th February 2017 - Growing Inequality
      • 11th January 2017 - Medical Data Mining
    • 2016 >
      • 13th December 2016 - American Irony
      • 25th November 2016 - Global Decision Making
      • 30th October 2016 - Climate Changes
      • 11th October 2016 - Musing Investments
      • 19th September 2016 - The Inexorable Five
      • 2nd September 2016 - Driving Forward
      • 17th August 2016 - Innovationv Update
      • 19th July 2016 - Powering Along
      • 4th July 2016 – An Eye to the Future
      • 10th June 2016 - Reverse Education
      • 20th May 2016 - More Minding P's and Q's
      • 5th May 2016 - A Leisurely Future
      • 17th April 2016 - More Food for Thought
      • 29th March 2016 – America’s Digital Colonisation of the World
      • 11th March 2016 - Measuring Life
      • 26th February 2016 - Growing Older, Growing More
      • 12th February 2016 – Retirement Reflections
      • 29th January 2016 - Just Four More Years to 2020 >
        • 15th January 2016 - A Taste of Red and White
  • Books