Self driving trucks by 2021? A pipedream or reality?

[wheel_nut]

I had to nip out today and used all my gizmos on my car, it turns on the wipers when it rains, it knows when to turn on the lights, it keeps the temperature at a constant. With the various sensors in and around it followed a car for over 25 miles, slowing when it did, speeding up with him, it was only when I touched the brake it let me take over. The lane control, overtaking sensors prevent the car changing lanes or warn me that there is a car in any blind spots.

Its a simple bread and butter car with nothing particularly special in it.

I remember the first manned space mission and when the astronaut opened his instructions, it simply said, Feed the Monkey!

[truckerian99]

SirNickleBarsteward:
Drone truck startup Einride unveils new driverless vehicles for autonomous freight hauling - The Verge

Just read this horror story about driverless trucks.
Would be interested in other drivers comments.

Mine is…all self driving vehicles on public roads are completely bonkers and should be scrapped. All the money wasted on this pointless technology should be spent on enhanced driver training, better hourly rates, and extra motorway facilties for current truck drivers who deliver everything for this country working tirelessly every day through the pandemic to keep goods on the shelves. Just a no brainer to me.
.

Self driving trucks my fat hairy arse. No chance in the next 50 years. Look at the so called technology they put in trucks now:

1. Lane keep assistance that cannot tell the difference between actual lines and blacked out lines for roadworks.

2. Emergency braking systems that cannot tell the difference between road signs or keep left islands and genuine obstructions or stationary/slowing traffic.

3. Emergency braking systems that engage when the vehicle in front has already turned off the road or left the carriageway on a slip road.

4. Automatic gear shifts that cannot find a gear at roundabouts and drop into neutral stranding you in no man’s land.

5. Eco-roll systems that cut in half way up an incline.

6. Gears that shift into 12th on a steep slip road at 35mph when you’re fully laden.

and the list goes on.

If manufacturers cannot get basic driving systems to work then anything else is just fairyland ■■■■■■■■!! The main problem is computers cannot anticipate the future like humans. They do know the incline is coming or that the line is blacked out or the car is going to turn off before you hit it or that solid car sized object in front is a bollard/chevron/island. Believe it or not, but the thickest driver out there is still smarter than the biggest computer in the world when it comes to anticipation and future prediction. Also, none of the sensors on the front of cabs have necks, so cannot look left/right and see what is coming they just see what was in front of them a millisecond ago and that is not as fast as the speed if light travelling to your eyes and then signalling to your brain etc.

[juddian]

^^^ this

A few other thoughts why drivers should resist unecessary automation where possible, ‘‘they’’ have gradually gotten rid of various groups of the despised by ‘‘them’’ manual working class who had some real industrial power, miners, steel workers, dockers, you name it, anyone with some clout whom, usually when unionised (and didn’t believe users like the tories, labour no better since Blair destroyed the party, when they tried their usual divide and rule tactics, miners the prime example) could wield some power when they united, power which could be used not just to get themselves a better deal, but an essentially powerful even if they don’t realise it group of workers whom if they could unite and fail to co-operate would severely curtail evil plans, eg should a totalitarian regime attempt to destroy or reset the country or society

It isn’t just about the alleged cost savings of doing away with the driver, its removing a group of people, maybe the most powerful of all industrial groups if united, who might still hold wrong thoughts from positions where they could be ‘troublesome’.

You don’t have to wear a tin foil hat, just don’t be so keen, as sadly some are here, too clever by far they know who they are, to welcome each new piece of electrickery, the more you welcome and co-operate in the automation of your job thereby deskilling it by a salami slice method the faster you aid your replacement by cheaper less skilled people eventually handing over entirely to a machine, the elite’s idea of utopia.

[franglais]

Juddian:
^^^ this

A few other thoughts why drivers should resist unecessary automation where possible, ‘‘they’’ have gradually gotten rid of various groups of the despised by ‘‘them’’ manual working class who had some real industrial power, miners, steel workers, dockers, you name it, anyone with some clout whom, usually when unionised (and didn’t believe users like the tories, labour no better since Blair destroyed the party, when they tried their usual divide and rule tactics, miners the prime example) could wield some power when they united, power which could be used not just to get themselves a better deal, but an essentially powerful even if they don’t realise it group of workers whom if they could unite and fail to co-operate would severely curtail evil plans, eg should a totalitarian regime attempt to destroy or reset the country or society

It isn’t just about the alleged cost savings of doing away with the driver, its removing a group of people, maybe the most powerful of all industrial groups if united, who might still hold wrong thoughts from positions where they could be ‘troublesome’.

You don’t have to wear a tin foil hat, just don’t be so keen, as sadly some are here, too clever by far they know who they are, to welcome each new piece of electrickery, the more you welcome and co-operate in the automation of your job thereby deskilling it by a salami slice method the faster you aid your replacement by cheaper less skilled people eventually handing over entirely to a machine, the elite’s idea of utopia.

We’ve had this discussion, in various forms before but, I think you’re looking at the situation too narrowly Juddian. Are you saying that working down a pit, or sweating in a foundry is desirable because it gives a worker financial clout?
Although it maybe there is truth in that as an observation, that isn’t a good reason to continue dirty, dangerous, and life shortening occupations. It is a reason to address other aspects of the sharing of wealth.
(I’m only on a short break, so you will escape too long a post from me)
But the financial current set up is not written in stone. There is a lot to be said for universal basic income. How we get there is likely to be difficult but as a system it has a lot going for it in view of increasing automation.

[ezydriver]

switchlogic:
Technology is ever advancing, get used to it and enjoy it because you sure as hell won’t stop it

Bit defeatist mate…

[wide-load85]

I don’t think driverless lorries will be able to do my job in my lifetime, getting fragile 10-14ft wide loads down some nice tight roads in Cornwall with sometimes inches to spare on buildings, trees etc. I’ll let the rdc runners sweat on this one, soon be a robot that can trunk from depot to depot on the motorway. We have trouble finding humans with the judgement and width perception to do our work, let alone machines

[rjan]

Franglais:

Juddian:
…

We’ve had this discussion, in various forms before but, I think you’re looking at the situation too narrowly Juddian. Are you saying that working down a pit, or sweating in a foundry is desirable because it gives a worker financial clout?
Although it maybe there is truth in that as an observation, that isn’t a good reason to continue dirty, dangerous, and life shortening occupations. It is a reason to address other aspects of the sharing of wealth.

I’m not sure dirty, dangerous, and life-shortening occupations have really been eliminated. The ambulance is called to an Amazon warehouse today probably more often than it was called to a pit. The crucial difference is that at times you got good money at the pit.

I think a lot of workers might say that they want sharing the wealth solved first, and another good job lined up, before their supposedly undesirable occupations are abolished.

I think there’s an insidious strain of thinking amongst some socialists, who perhaps mean well, which goes something along the lines of, we’ll reorganise or abolish various working class jobs for the good of the workers (to protect their physical health, their lives, etc ).

When it’s pointed out that this undermines the intrinsic pleasures and dignities of their work (because men do derive satisfaction from being in control of their work, and of having the last say over how they balance the risks of the activity against the hassles of avoiding those risks, or of confronting the dangers of an all-powerful nature, such as in a pit or a foundry, to achieve for themselves and for us all what cannot otherwise be done), or even undermines their wages outright, the socialist might argue that the remaining problem is on account of the capitalist system, and that these workers will now be even more eager to have it gone.

Actually what happens is that workers typically lodge a demand to return to the previous state of affairs, of their possessing capitalist jobs, and where tolerating the dirt or danger (which the next man wouldn’t) guaranteed their good wages.

The dysfunctions that poverty and insecurity create, and as people’s daily lives become a competitive battle against each other for work and survival (as opposed to cooperating against the risks of the pit or the foundry), tends not to create anti-capitalists. Instead it tends to dim the vision of how a better society can work, it provokes the worst in many and deprives many more of the power to express their goodwill, it alienates people from one another and from socialists.

In fact it tends to send afflicted communities careering off to the political far-right, as the ensuing anomie and insecurity recharge older and more resilient tribal ideologies. Now the socialist says he must fight wrongheaded workers to avoid a slippery descent into fascism, so the socialist is once again positively attacking the working class for their own supposed good.

The real slippery slope here is the one the socialist is on, that such socialists keep finding reasons to justify why assaulting workers is actually the proper course of action.

(I’m only on a short break, so you will escape too long a post from me)
But the financial current set up is not written in stone. There is a lot to be said for universal basic income. How we get there is likely to be difficult but as a system it has a lot going for it in view of increasing automation.

Practically speaking, you can achieve the same goals as a universal income, by simply sharing the available work and having a policy of full employment, and those policies were already executed in the postwar period. By the 1970s, the social security system had grown in scope to the point that even those who couldn’t work were undoubtedly guaranteed food and shelter.

It beggars belief how often this idea of “universal income” is presented as radical and untested. Even in the narrowest form where the state literally gives out cash, the Alaskan state government have been giving out oil money to every household for decades (the “Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend”), presumably as a way of greasing the consent for the activities of the oil industry there.

It’s also not clear what sort of society UBI proponents have in mind. Is it one where a minority of actual workers get up every morning and go to work to tend the machines for free, whilst the rest make no contribution and live off what the workers who tend the machines produce? Or is it one where the minority who do work become an aristocracy, but who enjoy sharing the wealth with a zoo of the useless unemployed?

It’s difficult to see what advantage a UBI has, over a simple system where workers are paid properly for their work, and the available work is shared, much like the tenets of the postwar system.

[juddian]

Rjan, that’s an excellent post, i agree with almost every word.

There are some out there who derived a great deal of satisfaction, and a decent wedge, by doing the sort of work others would shy away from, that’s always been the case and always will be, muck and brass have often gone hand in hand.
Those jobs build a workers camaraderie that’s solid and lasts a lifetime, there is much to be said for that, it builds strong self sufficient communities of like minded people…and that’s a good part of the reason the various govts we’ve had since the 70’s of whichever side they claim to be from (barely distinguishable since Blair) are so desperate to kill off such jobs.
Divide and rule is their motto, where all must pay homage to the state.

[switchlogic]

ezydriver:

switchlogic:
Technology is ever advancing, get used to it and enjoy it because you sure as hell won’t stop it

Bit defeatist mate…

Why?

[rjan]

Juddian:
Rjan, that’s an excellent post, i agree with almost every word.

There are some out there who derived a great deal of satisfaction, and a decent wedge, by doing the sort of work others would shy away from, that’s always been the case and always will be, muck and brass have often gone hand in hand.

Indeed, and when some miners and steelmakers wanted better for their children than the pit or the foundry, what they meant was safer conditions with better wages where their wives don’t fear the worst every day, not the trading of a living for bare survival, where you don’t risk dying quickly because the roof comes in, you risk dying slowly because your marriage falls apart under the strain of poverty and your kids grow up onto the dole, or at most into low-paid gig jobs like those at Amazon that don’t soil the hands of workers so much as it soils their dignity.

Those jobs build a workers camaraderie that’s solid and lasts a lifetime, there is much to be said for that, it builds strong self sufficient communities of like minded people…and that’s a good part of the reason the various govts we’ve had since the 70’s of whichever side they claim to be from (barely distinguishable since Blair) are so desperate to kill off such jobs.
Divide and rule is their motto, where all must pay homage to the state.

It’s obvious why those who aren’t socialists, like Blair, are desperate to attack such jobs, but it’s less obvious why those like Franglais, who I gather considers himself some sort of socialist (like I do myself), should be plying the same arguments.

Heavy industry was not miraculously abolished in the 1980s. Workers today still go down pits and into steelworks as much as ever. They just don’t do it in Britain, the bosses exploit the foreign worker instead, whilst those here who would have done it for a good wage instead sit at the margins of employment.

[franglais]

Rjan:

Juddian:
Rjan, that’s an excellent post, i agree with almost every word.

There are some out there who derived a great deal of satisfaction, and a decent wedge, by doing the sort of work others would shy away from, that’s always been the case and always will be, muck and brass have often gone hand in hand.

Indeed, and when some miners and steelmakers wanted better for their children than the pit or the foundry, what they meant was safer conditions with better wages where their wives don’t fear the worst every day, not the trading of a living for bare survival, where you don’t risk dying quickly because the roof comes in, you risk dying slowly because your marriage falls apart under the strain of poverty and your kids grow up onto the dole, or at most into low-paid gig jobs like those at Amazon that don’t soil the hands of workers so much as it soils their dignity.

Those jobs build a workers camaraderie that’s solid and lasts a lifetime, there is much to be said for that, it builds strong self sufficient communities of like minded people…and that’s a good part of the reason the various govts we’ve had since the 70’s of whichever side they claim to be from (barely distinguishable since Blair) are so desperate to kill off such jobs.
Divide and rule is their motto, where all must pay homage to the state.

It’s obvious why those who aren’t socialists, like Blair, are desperate to attack such jobs, but it’s less obvious why those like Franglais, who I gather considers himself some sort of socialist (like I do myself), should be plying the same arguments.

Heavy industry was not miraculously abolished in the 1980s. Workers today still go down pits and into steelworks as much as ever. They just don’t do it in Britain, the bosses exploit the foreign worker instead, whilst those here who would have done it for a good wage instead sit at the margins of employment.

Juddian and Rjan, you are both making good interesting points here.
I doubt Ill get my head straight enough to address them all too well, but Ill try.
I dont say my points are all correct, I dont say your points are all wrong, but I`m certainly not convinced that you are looking at this correctly.

You both are doing a good job of explaining where we are today; how we justify our own lives in transport.
I started in ropensheet with draughty old trucks, no power steering etc. Our equivalent of going down tpit or to the foundry. Things are easier now, and because of this our job no longer attracts a premium wage against some other workers. If a job becomes safer and easier it will not pay a premium. If there is no unity in adversity then there is no camaraderie. Do away with the crap and life becomes meaningless? Is that your argument? Do away with the muck and danger and youll only be thrown a small bone?
Maybe that is an description of where we are, but it doesn`t have to be so, does it?

As people we get on with lives in transport, we accept how the industry works or we get out. As we become used to the norms (assuming we stay) we justify this both to ourselves and to newer entrants.
We dont think of ourselves as mugs! No one does. And in order to live our daily lives we rationalise our choices. I cant go back to myself as a 20yr old and change my choices. I dont live my life crying over spilt milk, or bemoaning every day I work. I do get a bit of a kick out of overcoming work challenges. But if I didnt need to go to work to pay the bills would my life become empty and meaningless?

Don`t your descriptions of the work world have some echoes of colonial times?
Imperialists looking at the “noble savages”, and admiring their different cultures. Or employers looking at “salt of the earth” workers.
Neither wanting to give up their indolence or opportunity for luxury

Now here I accept that some of those whose life has been work centric for years do shrivel at retirement time. we have all seen this.
If “Old Sid” had not worked 60 or 80hrs every week, if he had not sat at a cafe table every night talking diesel with other drivers, then he would have had other interests and would have a longer life and retirement. We are again describing what the situation is, not how it could and should be.

If I/we didn`t need work because of a decent basic income what would happen? If we had a choice to take risk of death by a collapsing pit roof, or look forward to a buggered up back after years of physical graft would we take it?
Yes, the rich do risk injury in sports etc. We do rise a challenge. We do all have such choices. But those should be choices, not a necessity to take risk in order to provide a decent living for oneself and family.

Given a UBI at a level somewhere above mere survival, then we could all look at wider choices. Not look at limited choices, and fend off ambition because seeking the unobtainable will make us depressed. If we were a more equitable society then we needn`t look jealously at the over rich, we would all be happier.

As automation increases then society will need to change.

Limited companies were a way, a century ago, for the rich to invest in factories to make goods, so providing employment and redistributing wealth.
Now we have “investors” making money on the markets by rapid buying and selling of futures etc. These dont benefit society as a whole as investment once did. "Investors" today arent the wealth makers of yesterday.
Capitalism, as it is, has run its course. Rise and fall of markets, bubble after bubble, it is predictable that there will be another crash, even if we don`t know the exact date. That is no way to carry on.

With automation we could choose to ignore it, but someone else wont ignore it, so gain an advantage in the present system. That wont work.
So, if automation causes less employment, hence less disposable income, what then? If we are all on a basic low income, the system collapses as we have no discretionary purchasing power.
The system, as she is, will die.

I need another coffee. Sorry for the mixed up format of this post, maybe you`ll make something of it.

[juddian]

Franglais.

I don’t want free money from the state (others who work for a living paying me, the govt has no money of its own, only that it takes from the pockets of people who work for a living), i have always earned my pay and i always will and i’ve earned my pension when i eventually retire so will gladly accept it and woe betide any youngster who tells me old uns are a drain on their unearned entitlements and should be allowed to die off.

Yes there are people who want free money, legion of them, they just aint for me and the type of people i have raised and who i count on as my friends.
They are itching for UBI, presumably believing the Croydon money trees are still in full blossom permanently.

Yes there is automation and yes its encroaching on our industry, i just wish others within our sector weren’t so short sighted that they willingly deskill themselves for an easier ride, in practice by using hard earned skills, the skills actual lorry drivers among us can prove conclusively to our employers we are cost effective and should be kept on whatever happens, this isn’t arse crawling, it’s stubbornly doing your work with pride which does two things, it is your contribution to the profitability of your good employer and gives you job satisfaction not only in a job well done to the best of your ability but that you’ve earned your pay, and even the most stupid of employers knows the ■■■■■■■■■ of their staff whom without the job would not get done.
This may not be a common view any more but it’s the way i live my life and have no intention of changing any time soon.
Obviously the idea is to find the right employer and once installed do your best to ensure the job lasts forever.

There are still good employers out there paying proper money and offering skilled worker terms and conditions, often these jobs are specialised or unionised or both, what galls me is when some land these jobs usually having come from ‘‘logistics’’ and can’t believe how good the job is, but within weeks or months they’ve dropped back into couldn’t care a ■■■■ attitude and only have interest in milking every penny (or taking advantage of the generous sick scheme), too thick to see that unless they do their part the job will die.

I’m not in the least envious of rich people by the way, we have more than enough to live on, the results of hard work and sensible spending within reason by both of us over the years, i could have gone into a different field because i had the right education to do so, but i’m a working class bod at heart and i’ve done what i wanted to which was have a life on the lorries for better or worse.
My lovely wife is with me because she sees something in me not because i could provide a celebrity lifestyle which neither of us would want.

Yes the class system is rife, it will never change, the genuine working class have been abused by the old tories and despised by the new socialist movements, thats fine i don’t want either of them or those that have signed up, the genuine working class are still out there and despised by all of those in the governing elite.
Like or lump him this is where Trump hit home, no he was never working class but he offered the working (middle class in the USA) respect, and more importantly he offered them self respect by trying his best to give them meanigful industrial jobs by bringing manufacturing home, this hit home big time with the various ethnic groups who up till then had just been paid lip service which assumed they could not stand on their own two feet.
Nothing gives a working man (usually but not always the main breadwinner) more self respect and sense of purpose than having a decently paid job doing something useful, its good for their families too, children need people with decent ethics and morals to look up to.

Rjan was quite right, the blokes are still going down the mines in other countries, in the Congo its children who are scraping the ground for the raw materials for the great new battery crusade, how can this be right, any more than high image products selling for stupid prices to brainwashed fools stupid enough to queue for hours or days for the new version of the product bearing the must have brand…when its too often people living in slum conditions in totalitarian states making the products.
How much better it was and would be if hard manual/industrial jobs were still here, where working class people could work alongside similar minded folk, not only earning themselves a decent living but reaping the respect cameraderie and community they earned.
I wonder how many redundant miners in Yorkshire villages found shelf stacking in Kwik Save or the Coop to have quite the same rewards, monetary as well as pride in their jobs and way of life, quite likely their children and grandkids are looking forward to a shift in Amazon or the bloody Sports warehouse on a pitiful wage compared to what an industrial wage negotiated via their unions would have been.

This isn’t a right versus left wing view.
I’m right wing in some ways, i’m left wing in others, there is no hard and fast rule and no one from either side is entirely right about everything, but because i don’t read from the current hymnsheet of the day i’d be regarded as an extremist.

We aint so far apart Franglais, the problem is our views and thoughts are hijacked and exaggerated by people with agendas who get their useful idiots of all fronts to do their bidding.

The aim is to divide and rule, this has always been the ase and it always will be.
It doesn’t matter what creed or clour or nationality anyone is, most decent people just want to earn a reasonable living and raise their families in peace without the state interfering in ever aspect of their lives, telling them how evil or how persecuted they are because of what happened hundreds of years ago or telling them their basic working class way of life is killing the planet.

The working classes need to stand together again instead of being useful idiots put against one another by people who despise them and thei ways of life.

There is a vacuum in leadership and politics now, to a person the elites despise the working classes of the world, using them abusing and discarding them when no longer useful, the same classes are rife for someone to lead them once again, someone honourable and decent someone to unite instead of divide, someone who says what they mean and follows up on it, in Britain there is a vacancy for this role, a difficult role indeed because the elites and their media are out to destroy anyone who sticks their head above the parapet, that’s what cancel culture is all about.

[franglais]

Juddian:
I don’t want free money from the state (others who work for a living paying me, the govt has no money of its own, only that it takes from the pockets of people who work for a living),

No.
You are still looking at what I am saying, from where we are now.
I am not talking about some free loaders riding on the back of those working hard. I am no more for that than you.
Forget the generations of Church leaders (brothers of the rulers) pushing the honour of the work ethic and service to our betters.

I dont say I have a fully formed idea of where we should go, and I sure as heck have no plan how to transition there either! But some future point when there is *no need* to have those *working* and *paying taxes* to support the idle. I am not even talking about the difference between the "indolent" who are left to rot, nor the "deserving poor" given just enough that they dont die in front of ours eyes, and neither the “wealthy” who somehow “deserve” a life doing nowt because their great-granny slept with a toff.

Juddian:
Nothing gives a working man (usually but not always the main breadwinner) more self respect and sense of purpose than having a decently paid job doing something useful, its good for their families too, children need people with decent ethics and morals to look up to.

But arent you here saying that working men are somehow different than the elite? If automation means *no necessity* to work, why cant “the working man” gain satisfaction from the same things as those poor share holder and toffs do? Why can`t our kids enjoy, sports, painting, rebuilding cars with our own hands, gardening, etc?

I am jumping more than month or two into the future here!

Juddian:
I wonder how many redundant miners in Yorkshire villages found shelf stacking in Kwik Save or the Coop to have quite the same rewards, monetary as well as pride in their jobs and way of life,

Yes, but for those who never have been in those jobs, will they need to rationalise it all in such a way? Without a need to endure such hard work will we tell ourselves this is a sign of manhood? This macho culture will become dated. I am part if it too, but I dont think it is somehow inevitable, and certainly not desirable.
I dont want others to have to put up with nights out in a day cab Atki with no power steering. I dont think I was mug because I got a kick out of those days. But I dont need to force others to endure that today. I see that as being justified in its day.
BUT what was true then, is not going to be true tomorrow. Without need for hard work that destroys health or shortens life, we are free to make choices from a wider range. For those who want to climb down caves, etc that shouldn`t be outlawed. If some bugger up their backs by lifting weights, let that be their choice not through need to buy food.

Juddian:
We aint so far apart Franglais, the problem is our views and thoughts are hijacked and exaggerated by people with agendas who get their useful idiots of all fronts to do their bidding.

Agree there. I certainly disagree about some things, but do see many other issues from a similar standpoint.

I am not talking about a tweek to the current capitalist system. And I dont think that violent revolution is a good way to anywhere. I dont know how any of this future will pan out, but I am quite convinced that the current system is creaking heavily, and won`t stand up to the strains much longer.

[rjan]

Franglais:

Juddian:
Nothing gives a working man (usually but not always the main breadwinner) more self respect and sense of purpose than having a decently paid job doing something useful, its good for their families too, children need people with decent ethics and morals to look up to.

But arent you here saying that working men are somehow different than the elite? If automation means *no necessity* to work, why cant “the working man” gain satisfaction from the same things as those poor share holder and toffs do? Why can`t our kids enjoy, sports, painting, rebuilding cars with our own hands, gardening, etc?

I am jumping more than month or two into the future here!

The truth is this: automation won’t mean no necessity to work. There will still be machines to devise and maintain, and there will still be skills and culture (which support this technological society) which need to be reproduced.

Moreover you tacitly assume a reduced need to labour necessarily translates to more leisure or control. In fact it may as easily automate the tools of repression, or automate practices which inflict unpaid work demands on the majority.

Look for example at how computerised administration has caused a proliferation of “switching” in the context of consumer utilities, and created a variety of shoddy firms with spurious distinctions between them, because automation (i.e. computerisation) makes it cheap for them to manage the complexities of such a model, and cheap for them to engage consumers in such a charade - the very opposite of the postwar trend towards consolidation and rational management.

And even the toff who can spend all day on the golf course, usually tries to involve himself in something regarded as socially useful, whether as a gentleman amateur in the arts or sciences, politics (like Trump), or often these days in some sort of economic management role (whether as a philanthropist, corporate investor, etc.).

What the worker wants is not truly an end to work, though many may be so alienated from their existing work as to imagine they do.

What the worker wants is a measure of control over their daily activity - not usually so much control that it does not matter what they do, nor that all reserves of individual willpower are spent motivating themselves in every respect, but enough control to establish a harmony between themselves, their activity, and the other people involved. The measure of control is not just individual either - people want to live in a society where relations between people afford collective control; a society that promotes people working together.

Juddian:
I wonder how many redundant miners in Yorkshire villages found shelf stacking in Kwik Save or the Coop to have quite the same rewards, monetary as well as pride in their jobs and way of life,

Yes, but for those who never have been in those jobs, will they need to rationalise it all in such a way? Without a need to endure such hard work will we tell ourselves this is a sign of manhood? This macho culture will become dated. I am part if it too, but I dont think it is somehow inevitable, and certainly not desirable.
I dont want others to have to put up with nights out in a day cab Atki with no power steering. I dont think I was mug because I got a kick out of those days. But I dont need to force others to endure that today. I see that as being justified in its day.

I think you’re missing the point really. The point is not to make jobs artificially hard to serve “macho culture”. Nobody derives pleasure from pointless work - from work that creates no apparent useful thing or useful potential. Nobody wants to turn an unpowered steering wheel if they can turn a powered steering wheel for all the same wage.

And as I said previously for another example, mining was not abolished in the 1980s. Coal continues to remain useful. Nor were the practices of getting it revolutionised or made any safer. It was merely relocated to foreign places where workers were more amenable to exploitation.

It is in those circumstances - of necessary dirty or dangerous jobs - where the incumbents do not want their livelihoods destroyed without something better to replace it.

And where workers do resist investment or revolutionising of their jobs, even though it would make the job easier and safer, it may be because they perceive the real reason for the change as not being to promote their pleasure and health, but to enable a subsequent attack on their wages, which will then cast them down into the muck in a different and even more serious way. And thus, the measures do not promote their health and safety at all, because it attacks their economic health and safety, under the transparent pretense of reducing physical risks or prolonging their lives.

BUT what was true then, is not going to be true tomorrow. Without need for hard work that destroys health or shortens life, we are free to make choices from a wider range.

Actually that does not follow at all. Many people’s health was destroyed from lack of work in the 80s and still is. Do you really think releasing people from work and forcing them onto the dole makes them “free to make choices from a wider range”?

For those who want to climb down caves, etc that shouldn`t be outlawed. If some bugger up their backs by lifting weights, let that be their choice not through need to buy food.

Quite so, but one must be careful not to invert priorities, and save a man’s back by depriving him of the means to buy food, or to save one man’s back by breaking another’s for less wages.

[simon]

Truckerian99:
Self driving trucks my fat hairy arse. No chance in the next 50 years. Look at the so called technology they put in trucks now:

1. Lane keep assistance that cannot tell the difference between actual lines and blacked out lines for roadworks.

2. Emergency braking systems that cannot tell the difference between road signs or keep left islands and genuine obstructions or stationary/slowing traffic.

3. Emergency braking systems that engage when the vehicle in front has already turned off the road or left the carriageway on a slip road.

4. Automatic gear shifts that cannot find a gear at roundabouts and drop into neutral stranding you in no man’s land.

5. Eco-roll systems that cut in half way up an incline.

6. Gears that shift into 12th on a steep slip road at 35mph when you’re fully laden.

and the list goes on.

If manufacturers cannot get basic driving systems to work then anything else is just fairyland [zb]!! The main problem is computers cannot anticipate the future like humans. They do know the incline is coming or that the line is blacked out or the car is going to turn off before you hit it or that solid car sized object in front is a bollard/chevron/island. Believe it or not, but the thickest driver out there is still smarter than the biggest computer in the world when it comes to anticipation and future prediction. Also, none of the sensors on the front of cabs have necks, so cannot look left/right and see what is coming they just see what was in front of them a millisecond ago and that is not as fast as the speed if light travelling to your eyes and then signalling to your brain etc.

All of these technologies are in their early stages. They are getting better year on year.
I’ve been driving, as ‘my’ truck, a 64 plate Merc’ Actros from new. I’ve driven nothing but Merc’s for 14 years so cannot, at the moment, compare them to any other brand. (I’m getting a new truck for 2021, a Daf 105, so I’ll have something to compare Mercs against).
However, the company generally renews its trucks every 4 years. Each newer truck has been a slight improvement from the last one. On mine, the sensor controlled intermittent wipe is maddening. After the first wipe when you switch it on, nothing happens until water is running off the screen, then it’ll wipe several times and stop again until water is running off the screen again. Switch it to the more sensitive position and it’ll wipe at 2 mist droplets, if 3 land at once it’ll immediately switch to double speed wiping. On the newer trucks it’s much more friendly and wipes more like I would expect.
(I take our units to the main dealers workshop for various reasons, so drive all of them at some point).

The same with the brake assist whatever, mine doesn’t have it. The next newer truck and all subsequent trucks do. The first one with it was diabolical, squealing at you for a bollard in the middle of the road. On Mercs you get a big red flashing screen on the dash. So it squeals, the dash flashes RED, you [zb] yourself at the loud squeal, look down at the big flashing red dash, wondering WT[zb] is going on, and run over the bollard because you’ve been so distracted
Whichever way you turn out of our yard, to get onto the main road network you have to drive through a village. Both have bollards in the middle of the road right after a chicane which leaves you pointing straight at the bollard. I haven’t actually hit either bollard, but the first time I drove a truck with it fitted, it was a bit closer than I found comfortable. I didn’t even know the truck had it, so it was very close to [zb] myself when it squealed at me. The 70 plate is definitely much better that the 15 plate was.

Lane assist is also getting better at recognizing what are lane lines and what are painted out lane lines. In the wet and dark it can be difficult to tell the difference to human eyes expecting the problem. Rain wet painted out lines look exactly the same as rain wet painted lines, until you get a better angle of view.

Eco-roll, you’re letting the truck do too much of the decision making for you. You know it’ll go into eco-roll on this down hill, you can see there’s a climb coming. Just before you get to the climb (or when the speed drops to 90k), put your foot on the go pedal momentarily. It’ll go straight back onto cruise control. Problem solved.

Automatic gear changes, even on Mercs IS getting better, albeit exceedingly slowly.
I find that as I’m slowing down to go into a roundabout or junction, where judicious timing can let me roll in and go, if I use full exhauster brake, the gearbox will follow the speed down. When I put my foot on the go pedal, it’ll go.

You:
The main problem is computers cannot anticipate the future like humans. They do know the incline is coming or that the line is blacked out or the car is going to turn off before you hit it or that solid car sized object in front is a bollard/chevron/island. Believe it or not, but the thickest driver out there is still smarter than the biggest computer in the world when it comes to anticipation and future prediction. Also, none of the sensors on the front of cabs have necks, so cannot look left/right and see what is coming they just see what was in front of them a millisecond ago and that is not as fast as the speed if light travelling to your eyes and then signalling to your brain etc.

So use your eyes, neck, brain, anticipate and manually select the gear required and drive the thing when you need to. Motorway cruising etc, let the machine take the strain and just point it.

I can see self driving trucks coming in the not too distant future. That’s my opinion.
Lane assist and brake assist are getting better. How much technology does it take to change from a buzzer telling you to turn the wheel, to the computer turning the wheel for you? Not very much at all. I understand that the brake assist system will brake for you on cruise control in some trucks. I don’t know, personally I’ve never used it like that. I’ve only ever had a squeal and red flashing dash panel. I can’t see a trampers job done by a self driving truck any time soon, but I can also see tramping becoming a thing of the past too. But night trunking jobs? Absolutely!
There will have to be large scale infra-structure changes made.
What I think is most likely would be something likeA central marshalling point for all major towns. Similar to the big park and rides.
All that nights night trunk trucks have to be at the marshalling point by a set time.
A driver drives the lead truck, which has a master computer control in it, all other trucks in the convoy are slaved to the lead truck.
All other trucks also have a semi trained ‘driver’ behind the wheel, just in case.
The convoy sets off from the marshalling point, all trucks almost bumper to bumper, probably in lane 4 which has special slip roads coming directly into it from above or below. Lane 4 so as not to interfere with normal traffic using lanes 1 - 3 and offside slip roads.
At the designated marshalling point for change-overs, the whole convoy pulls in. Trucks are swapped in or out of the convoy, the rejigged convoy moves on.
Eventually the convoy gets to the turn around point and gets parked up. Lead drivers and the steering wheel attendant have a break then head back to their start point in a new set of trucks, dropping off and picking up trucks as they go.
I reckon that is almost do-able now, IF the infrastructure was in place.

[franglais]

Rjan:
Moreover you tacitly assume a reduced need to labour necessarily translates to more leisure or control. In fact it may as easily automate the tools of repression, or automate practices which inflict unpaid work demands on the majority.

You say I am assuming more leisure time. I am saying that if automation increases, then labour will be reduced, so leisure must increase.There could be a conscious move against further automation, but I am assuming in this scenario that this will not happen.
(It is possible to examine why that may be a good or bad assumption, but this a post not a book)

Rjan:
And even the toff who can spend all day on the golf course, usually tries to involve himself in something regarded as socially useful, whether as a gentleman amateur in the arts or sciences, politics (like Trump), or often these days in some sort of economic management role (whether as a philanthropist, corporate investor, etc.).

What the worker wants is not truly an end to work, though many may be so alienated from their existing work as to imagine they do.

What the worker wants is a measure of control over their daily activity - not usually so much control that it does not matter what they do, nor that all reserves of individual willpower are spent motivating themselves in every respect, but enough control to establish a harmony between themselves, their activity, and the other people involved. The measure of control is not just individual either - people want to live in a society where relations between people afford collective control; a society that promotes people working together.

Yep, agreed.

Franglais:
If automation means no necessity to work, why cant "the working man" gain satisfaction from the same things as those poor share holder and toffs do? Why cant our kids enjoy, sports, painting, rebuilding cars with our own hands, gardening, etc?

Many or most will want to benefit society and will gain satisfaction from that.
What I listed didn`t show that admittedly.

Rjan:
Actually that does not follow at all. Many people’s health was destroyed from lack of work in the 80s and still is. Do you really think releasing people from work and forcing them onto the dole makes them “free to make choices from a wider range”?

Rjan:
And as I said previously for another example, mining was not abolished in the 1980s. Coal continues to remain useful. Nor were the practices of getting it revolutionised or made any safer. It was merely relocated to foreign places where workers were more amenable to exploitation.

It is in those circumstances - of necessary dirty or dangerous jobs - where the incumbents do not want their livelihoods destroyed without something better to replace it.

And where workers do resist investment or revolutionising of their jobs, even though it would make the job easier and safer, it may be because they perceive the real reason for the change as not being to promote their pleasure and health, but to enable a subsequent attack on their wages, which will then cast them down into the muck in a different and even more serious way. And thus, the measures do not promote their health and safety at all, because it attacks their economic health and safety, under the transparent pretense of reducing physical risks or prolonging their lives.

The greatest destroyer of lives in the ex mining communities etc is not the lack of jobs, but the lack of funds. If there was a decent UBI then those whose unsafe and unhealthy jobs were ended would not all be twiddling their thumbs or drinking cheap booze.
I am not advocating doing away with jobs so the current workers are paid next to nowt.
I am not saying “force people onto the dole” if that remains at pathetic levels.

We are not yet there, but we need to consider now how society will function given (assuming) ever more automation.

Rjan:
people want to live in a society where relations between people afford collective control; a society that promotes people working together.

Yes. And the current system does not allow this. A few wealthy owners and controllers are not “collective control”, by a society promoting people working together.

[rjan]

Franglais:

Rjan:
Moreover you tacitly assume a reduced need to labour necessarily translates to more leisure or control. In fact it may as easily automate the tools of repression, or automate practices which inflict unpaid work demands on the majority.

You say I am assuming more leisure time. I am saying that if automation increases, then labour will be reduced, so leisure must increase.There could be a conscious move against further automation, but I am assuming in this scenario that this will not happen.
(It is possible to examine why that may be a good or bad assumption, but this a post not a book)

I always think of what Victorian philosopher John Stuart Mill said, that “a labour-saving device never saved anyone a minute’s labour”, and he went on to point out that in capitalist society, the purpose of such devices anyway was not to reduce toil but to increase profit and exploitation.

Indeed I might also think of when Prince Philip remarked on 1980s unemployment, saying “Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed.”! The problem with unemployment being that whatever dole you are given is never enough to fill your time with leisure, and if it was then the rich would quickly reduce dole, or increase bills and rents, to absorb the difference between your actual means and your ability to engage in leisure.

It’s frightening that you can assume that, in the main, automation in a class society must lead to more leisure, rather than to worse work or to unemployment (i.e. at best idle time without social usefulness or any proportionate means of leisure, and at worst starvation, homelessness, or torment by Kafkaesque state bureaucracy, applied in automatic style).

Even the logic that automation must lead to there being less demand for work overall is wrongheaded. In the hands of the rich, it is as easily capable of turbocharging the demand for labour, if not from employees in a work setting then from citizens in their “own” time. I’ve already mentioned how the utility system has gone from a postwar Integrated model to a balkanised one in which we must all constantly labour for free, “comparing prices”, “switching”, and dealing with all the other hassles.

Look at speed cameras or cab cameras, which automate the task of the policeman and the supervisor, respectively.

Moreover, if the daily wages are pennies, I’d have my car washed every hour. Why tolerate a single instance of bird ■■■■ for longer than necessary? We have even seen car washes de-automated since the 1980s, even though such external washing done by hand is about as spurious an activity as washing the roof or the brickwork of your house (and reminiscent of housewives who used to get down and scrub the steps outside their front doors).

The amount of makework in a class society is potentially unlimited, and because the devising and maintaining of machines is always expensive up-front, it will be workers who are dragged into such makework. And because it is inessential to any real purpose, and can be forgone without any real dysfunction, the wages it attracts will always be puny, and yet for the worker, the alternative to performing such makework for a pittance, will be outright starvation.

Rjan:
And even the toff who can spend all day on the golf course, usually tries to involve himself in something regarded as socially useful, whether as a gentleman amateur in the arts or sciences, politics (like Trump), or often these days in some sort of economic management role (whether as a philanthropist, corporate investor, etc.).

What the worker wants is not truly an end to work, though many may be so alienated from their existing work as to imagine they do.

What the worker wants is a measure of control over their daily activity - not usually so much control that it does not matter what they do, nor that all reserves of individual willpower are spent motivating themselves in every respect, but enough control to establish a harmony between themselves, their activity, and the other people involved. The measure of control is not just individual either - people want to live in a society where relations between people afford collective control; a society that promotes people working together.

Yep, agreed.

Yes, so we should ourselves be wary of any proposal which claims it will abolish work. If the boy Oliver complained about the quality of his Victorian gruel, would we be cheering a proposal to “reduce and abolish feeding”?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to improve the quality of food, to make eating more pleasurable? And wouldn’t a proposal to abolish feeding altogether be seen as an attack on our very survival?

Franglais:
The greatest destroyer of lives in the ex mining communities etc is not the lack of jobs, but the lack of funds. If there was a decent UBI then those whose unsafe and unhealthy jobs were ended would not all be twiddling their thumbs or drinking cheap booze.
I am not advocating doing away with jobs so the current workers are paid next to nowt.
I am not saying “force people onto the dole” if that remains at pathetic levels.

We are not yet there, but we need to consider now how society will function given (assuming) ever more automation.

The problem is you are saying “force people onto the dole”, tacitly and by default!

That is really all a UBI is - a dole. And the same political questions will apply to the setting of the UBI as to the dole.

You’re right that ex-mining communities would have been in a better state with more money. But who would provide that money? What are the ex-miners going to provide to other workers in exchange for their cash, if not coal? I’m not going to work full-time behind the wheel to allow the ex-miner to play golf, as well as paying the foreigner separately for the actual coal I’m still buying.

Moreover, if I’m a landlord or a mortgagelender providing houses to these ex-miners, why let them spend all their funds on the golf course? Why not increase the rents for tenancies and moneylending, and let the doley/full-time UBIer sit at home idle as if he were on a small dole, whilst I drive to the golf course in a chauffered Rolls Royce, paid for by how the UBI largesse has allowed rents to be increased and more income stolen from the recipient than before?

I’m intentionally putting this argument in the starkest terms.

I started this post with a mention of JS Mill who was writing in Victorian times, and the UBI too has a historical precedent: the Speenhamland system of outdoor relief. Without every manner of rent controls, no system of social security can operate effectively.

Post-war politicians understood this - when rent subsidies were introduced in the 1970s as a form of social security, rent controls were also applied (as they had been on-and-off since the start of the war), to ensure that rents did not inflate and the intended recipients were bettered instead of landlords. The wage market was also stitched up relatively tight, to ensure that employers could not capture the new subsidies by offering lower wages.

Later, rent controls were abolished, and workers ability to control wages has also been severely assaulted, even when new social security payments like Tax Credits were introduced, so in the long term there has simply been a massive shift of taxpayer wealth to landlords and employers, so almost no family with children can now survive on a wage alone, because rents have increased and wages fallen to allow landlords and employers to claim the government subsidy for themselves.

This is the big question that UBI fanatics cannot answer. If UBI requires rent and wage controls, and if large rents and poor wages are the reason why people need a UBI in the first place, then why not just control rents and wages? If your rent is small, and if any work you do is guaranteed to produce a good wage, and if having a good wage means you can tell the boss to sod off and take to bed for six months, then who needs a UBI?

The real reason the rich are interested in UBI, which is why you hear it mentioned relentlessly by liberals like those at the Guardian, is so that the rich can increase their claim upon the taxpayer. “Pay everyone enough so that they don’t have to work!”, they say. Then in six months, rents have soared once everyone has a UBI, and everyone must once again work to live or be out on the street.

Or, played out another way, with the UBI, the rich really can lay off most of the country’s workforce in a frenzy of automation (except for the owners and managers of the machines - they will still work in non-automatic roles), but their banking and property investments will not suddenly plunge to zero, confronted with a populace who must be housed, but suddenly cannot pay their mortgages or rents.

[franglais]

Rjan:
and he went on to point out that in capitalist society,

Rjan:
automation in a class society must lead to more leisure

Rjan:
in a class society

There are your first three repetitions of the same assumption.
I did say we couldnt get there tomorrow, and I didnt see how we could get there peacefully in the longer term either. But although I agree that a UBI may not work in the current system, I haven`t proposed preserving the current system.
Capitalism is not written in stone.

[rjan]

Franglais:

Rjan:
and he went on to point out that in capitalist society,

Rjan:
automation in a class society must lead to more leisure

Rjan:
in a class society

There are your first three repetitions of the same assumption.
I did say we couldnt get there tomorrow, and I didnt see how we could get there peacefully in the longer term either. But although I agree that a UBI may not work in the current system, I haven`t proposed preserving the current system.
Capitalism is not written in stone.

It may not be written in stone, but it is extant, and I’d only return to the point I made in my previous post, that some socialists seem to forget that we don’t live in a socialist society, and today’s workers want to be confident that socialists aren’t going to kill workers in the process of getting there.

Indeed the society you envisage is not even one formally envisaged by Marx, since in both “socialist” and “communist” society workers still had to work, the difference (compared to capitalist society) was that workers were in control of the means of production, and without the need to toil to support the extravagant lifestyles of an overclass, what modest work needed to be done to support ourselves would be divided fairly.

This automatic society of yours, and that advanced by UBIers in general, does not appear to involve such a prior transfer of wealth and power to workers (i.e. to those who are currently workers - by your own admission, they won’t be workers after automation has taken place).

Rather, it seems to pre-suppose that if we allow the corporations to drive automation, then the capitalist owner will simply recede from the picture for unstated reasons, and some sort of high-minded working elite will emerge who work to create and maintain the machines, but expecting nothing in return from the great masses who are now engaged exclusively in leisure. Now it’s Donald Fagan I can hear crooning satirically in my ear, “A just machine to make big decisions, programmed by fellas with compassion and vision”!

In this society, work is absolutely imperative, not just for simplistic reasons that it obviously attracts a wage, but because a worker’s labour is his power in every respect.

To again return to the mining analogy, the miner’s willingness to go down the pit, and in the process to be soiled with coal dust and to risk life and limb, and the necessity that he does it to power the whole economy, is what mildly frightens the white-collar worker at the coal board, and is what ensures the miner rests secure in life and his voice is heard on par with any other.

And that is exactly what is at stake for any other worker in a dirty job. The dirt may not be great, but that’s what showers are for at the end of the day, and it’s what ensures he has a wage and a voice, perhaps especially if he’s a man who has no other advantage in life besides his willingness to do a good job in dirty conditions, and maybe even risk his life in the process. The miner knows it, the oil worker knows it, the soldier knows it in the face of the enemy, and many others know it.

The satisfaction such workers derive is not from doing their backs in or smothering themselves in filth, it’s from knowing that such work is bloody valuable to the rest of society, and that’s reflected in their wage, their standing with other workers, with their employer, with their families, and with their neighbours. That’s what’s satisfying about such jobs for the workers who do them.

Socialists should not be promoting the abolition of any job on grounds of dirt or undesirability, unless there is already an equally powerful job for the man to go to. Not any old job, not a job with the same wage, not a dole funded by machines, but a job that means he has clout amongst other people in his daily life, because that’s what’s really important.

And that’s what the capitalists intend to destroy with automation. They don’t intend to eliminate work! Hahaha, no! They only intend to eliminate any work that gives a man clout, and replace it with work which gives him no say - no say over his terms, no say over how the work is done, no say over his wage, no say over whether he is even the man to do the work that day instead of another.

[juddian]

Rjan, you should put yourself up for election, no i’m not joking i’m quite serious, but i’m struggling to think which of the current parties would want you, the labour party is where you belong but you’d frighten the ■■■■■■■ off the current utterly pointless parliamentary party, it’s a toss up whether they or the blairite tory (spot the conservative) party wished you, as someone who see the real working class as worthy of more than just empty platitudes to disappear.

You sound like a proper old labour spokesperson and none the worse for that, good common sense with a healthy dose of realism of what the genuine working class wants, is, and why real productive meaningful work they can perform with pride is so important to them, there’s en echo of Dennis Skinner in your words.

Wish i could express my thoughts and commit them to paper as well as you, you have a gift.