In my last entry, I wrote about labor-saving technologies and their effects on our job markets. Automation tends always to cost jobs, but for the most part they also tend to produce new jobs.

We've reached a tipping point, however. As labor-saving technologies get more and more efficient, the amount of labor one person can accomplish has begun to significantly exceed the amount of labor products that they can consume. We're about to start losing a lot of jobs, and soon.

Get Behind the Wheel

One of the biggest—though by no means the only—job-killing technology on its way? Self-driving cars.           

Truck drivers fulfill a common employment segment in the United States, especially now that automation has killed an alarming number factory jobs. In 2014, there were more than 1.6 million semi-truck drivers in America. There are another 800,000 delivery truck drivers out there. Now add to that more than a million Uber drivers, tens of thousands of taxi drivers, and some half a million bus drivers. Almost all of them are likely to lose their jobs to self-driving cars.

This doesn't even bring into account the ancillary jobs that will be lost. Automated fleets of self-driving Ubers will eliminate the need for most city residents to own their own cars, meaning there will simply be far fewer cars on the road. They'll also have fewer accidents. There will be fewer car dealers, fewer repair shops, and even fewer gas stations.

Those self-driving semis? Many small towns along American highways are heavily dependent on truckers to fuel their economy. When you no longer have truckers needing rest stops, hotels, and restaurants, you're going to see a lot of these small towns folding up and withering away. 

Self-driving cars are going to cost millions of jobs, but are we likely to stop them from rolling out?

Well, no. They'll make the elderly, the young, and the chronically sick mobile again. They'll drop traffic fatalities by at least an order of magnitude. They'll be much more profitable for shipping companies, which will be able to operate around the clock. Insurance costs will drop nation-wide. Driverless cars will be more environmentally friendly. The list of benefits just goes on and on.

So how likely are you to lose your job to a robot and other labor-saving technology, and what can we do to ameliorate its effects? I'll be talking about that next time.

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Quotable

Yes, Yard Ramp Guy—Egads:

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy."

— Margaret Thatcher

My friend Jeff (the actual “The” Yard Ramp Guy) recently sent me a video filled with new construction machines: machines that can lay brick roads, and lay train tracks automatically, and place bridge segments from above, and plant rice faster than any human.

Even though these machines are incredible labor-saving devices, there's one major concern with all of them. They'll all likely result in lost jobs.

This is nothing new, of course. A great deal of history's inventions has resulted in lost jobs. Computers killed the typesetter. Robots have killed factory manufacturing jobs. Tractors, fertilizer, and other farming equipment are, by far, the biggest job killer.

In medieval Europe, more than 90% of workers were farmers. In 1820, 72% of Americans farmed. Today, less than two percent of Americans farm. Most of the displaced workers from these industries have ended up in service industry jobs in America.

Whole World in Tech's Hands?

A few factors usually counteract these job losses.

First, population growth. As populations increase, so does the economy and demand for goods and, therefore, jobs. In fact, one of the central premises of most economic plans is that population will keep increasing, thereby growing the economy.

Second, not all inventions eliminate jobs. Some actually create more jobs. This isn't always a good thing, of course. One of the most impactful job-creating inventions in all of history was the cotton gin. It created countless jobs by making cotton growing much more profitable and feasible. Unfortunately, slaves took on almost all of those jobs making American slavery that much more profitable and heinous.

That said, other job-creating inventions aren't nearly so bad. The Internet is a great example of this. Unfortunately, that's all about to change. Upcoming labor-saving technologies are reaching a point where they'll actually start costing net jobs.

More on that next time.

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Quotable

Well, Yard Ramp Guy—Figure this:

“Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are pliable.”

— Mark Twain

In a More Perfect World…

Public restrooms are a serious challenge to keep clean. The men’s room is, unsurprisingly, a huge problem.

From my unscientific research over the years (um, using public bathrooms), a shocking number of guys simply seem to lack common courtesy or even decent aim. I’m not the bathroom police, and I’m not a puritan, but it’s really not difficult to keep things clean.

We’re faced with a number of design challenges in public restrooms besides those dealing with courtesy and aim. Here are a few of the solutions that our proud bathroom engineers have come up with:

• Toilet seats: Ever noticed that toilet seats in public restrooms are about the only ones that are U-shaped? Yeah, that's done entirely because too many men splash or don’t bother to aim, and very few clean up after themselves.
• Flies in the toilet: A lot of urinal manufacturers have started constructing their urinals with a fly etched into the back of the urinal. Guys using the urinals tend to aim straight at them. Some companies have started selling special stickers for home use as well. I've heard that they reduce spillage by 80% (but that seems like a somewhat suspicious figure, if only for the difficulty in measuring it). They’ve also employed etchings of bees and dots for the target practice.
• Paper toilet seat liners: These flimsy little things provide psychological reassurance more than any real protection. Toilet seats are designed to make a poor surface for bacteria to nest on and, well, the paper liners are a better surface for that. On top of that, your skin makes a pretty great barrier to bacteria.
• Air dryers: It turns out that air dryers aren't better than paper towels. Air dryers spray germs everywhere. If you've washed your hands well, of course, it shouldn't matter. But how many people don't wash well? (A horrifyingly large number.) On the flip side, though, those air driers are much better for the environment, so there's a tough tradeoff there.

So, yeah, there we have it. This has been your public servant reporting, and imploring you to wash your hands well.

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Quotable

Well, Yard Ramp Guy—I’ve missed our alphabet thing. Glad for the return:

“I always have a quotation for everything—it saves original thinking.”

— Dorothy L. Sayers

The Great Wall of China isn't visible from space. That's just an urban legend. The Mir diamond mine in Siberia, however, is.

Big Hole in the Ground

The Mir mine is an open pit diamond mine that's almost a mile wide and a third of a mile deep. It was the source for nearly all of the Soviet Union's diamonds. And without it, the USSR probably never would have worked.

Not only did the Mir mine provide much needed cash to the USSR, it also provided diamonds necessary for industrial purposes, and all major nations need such diamonds for their many industries. (Remember: diamonds are necessary for many large drill bits and scouring materials.)

The Mir mine opened in 1957, operating for 44 years until its closure in 2001. Developing the mine was no picnic. It occupies ground that’s frozen seven months of the year, and it turns to slush in the brief summer.

Engineers needed to build the main processing plant on solid ground 12 miles away. Steel got so cold it would shatter, and oil would freeze. Jet engines were used by the miners to thaw the permafrost in the winter.

Still: the quality and quantity of the diamonds in the mine more than warranted these ridiculous efforts.

The mine is actually so large that helicopters can't fly safely over it. Air tends to warm in the bottom of large holes (and the Mir mine certainly counts as large). That warm air rises over the hole. It's less dense than the cold air around it, so the helicopter tends to drop quickly when it enters the air.

A helicopter pilot could probably recover from that just by increasing rotor speed, but the cool air pouring into the hole to replace the rising warm air from all sides creates extremely powerful wind shear, which will slam the helicopter into the side of the mine.

The Mir was truly a diamond in the rough.