Tag: The Great Restructuring

The Great Restructuring: Of Blue Collar Transportation Jobs

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I once talked to a guy from UPS or FedEx and he talked about their drivers like they were robots. I keep thinking about that with the inevitable fusion of AI research with android development.

There is going to come a point when we stick LLMs (or whatever) into humanoid android bodies and they’re going to deliver packages to people’s door instead of human worker drones. The way it looks, this is going to happen a lot sooner than any of us might otherwise expect — like between 2030 and 2035.

And that’s just the beginning.

There are 3 million high paying transportation jobs connected to semis that could go poof! in the next 10 years as self-driving semis are rolled out safely. All of this makes me think about not just the economic consequences, but the political consequences.

Is it possible that AI and androids could totally shake up our existing Right – Left divide, just like the rise of Trump did? Is it possible that there will be a serious Neo-Luddite movement? Will there be demands for UBI and job carve outs whereby humans are the only ones who can do some jobs?

I just don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but I do know we’re going to need — or get — some answers sooner rather than later.

The Great Restructuring & Trump’s Ultimate Political Fate

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

The thing about Nixon was he was safe until he wasn’t. The economy went to shit just as Watergate was accelerating and it was the economy more than anything else that cooked his political goose in the end.

But there are a lot of differences between Nixon and Trump, to say the least. Trump is an autocratic tyrant without any honor, without any shame and getting that man out of office is going to be like pulling a huge fucking tick off a hound dog.

So, AI could prompt the Great Restructuring, the economy could take a nose dive…and nothing will happen. Trump will still run for an illegal third term, or he could even go so far as to YOLO it and ignore any election altogether. I’m still not so sure he would *cancel* an election, but he might fuck with whatever elections we have in 2026 and 2028 to the point that they’re meaningless.

The point is — we’re stuck with Trump. He’s going to destroy everything, burn everything to the ground before he will willingly leave office. And the American center-Left is so meh that they probably will let him do it, too.

But there is, of course, a small chance that if Trump really does go as far as I fear, that the country will implode into civil war or revolution. So, there you go!

The Great Restructuring

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Given some of the layoff news of late, I’m beginning to wonder if some of my “hysterical doom shit” when it comes to AI’s scrambling of the corporate work world may actually be coming true.

I have long proposed that once AI was “good enough” that if we went into a recession, it would be come a severe one because of it. All this talk about “10x” employees sounds to my ears like an ready excuse to get rid of a shit ton of employees because you can squeeze a lot more productivity out of those that you have.

Now, obviously, this leads to the idea that we need Universal Basic Income. But the only way I see such a thing happening is if we “bribe” the elites by doing away with income tax and switching over to something like a 30% VAT. That’s pretty much what happened with stimulus checks during the pandemic — poor people got their stimmies, while the rich got their PPP loans forgiven.

Or, given how fucked up the world is, nothing may bring about UBI. The idea of UBI could be seen as a lulz and we anyone who isn’t in AI just starves to death. Good times!

And I will note — with the rise of androids with LLMs (or whatever) in them, not even blue collar jobs will be safe…eventually. In fact, the whole point of LLM androids will be to get rid of plumbers or Amazon truck drivers or whatever. There just won’t be any jobs and it will all happen a lot sooner than any of us could possible imagine.

Like, between now and 2030.