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Self-Driving Trucks Won’t Kill Millions of Jobs
We’ve been oversold by people pushing their own agendas
In 2015, universal basic income advocate Scott Santens wrote a compelling piece arguing that self-driving transport trucks would kill up to 8.7 million jobs by automating the work of human drivers. The argument was picked up by a number of publications, helping to set off a narrative of fear around the future of the industry.
At the time, automation was in the news with frequent reports about the large percentage of jobs that would be lost in the coming decades due to the forward march of technology. In a very short period, millions of people would find themselves destitute. People like Santens had a ready answer: an unconditional $1,000 per month for everyone, which its supporters promised would solve a plethora of social ills.
As the looming threat of automation has faded from the headlines, it’s now clear that Santens’ argument played on the fears of ordinary people and the concerns of the moment to make a case for the policy that he makes his living promoting. We can now see that self-driving trucks are not the boogeyman they were presented to be. Not only is the technology further away than previously expected, but the number of people likely to be affected is much lower than Santens’ estimation — in the hundreds of…
