Self-driving trucks will be job-killers.

[davekriss]

53. Really you all should read Karl Marx

The issue is the capitalist owns the means of production.

These "means", like horses moving the buggy, involve hordes of low-skilled labor.

The capitalist lives off the surplus he can grab from the value created by workers and managers.

The capitalist, dreaming of either greater theft (um, profit), realizes that if he replaces these hordes with technology, even more of the value stream ends up in their pockets. The capitalist no longer has to pay the "dead" labor that built the machines.

This only works if the individual capitalist is ahead of the wave. As more and more labor is replaced by machines, demand shrinks. It becomes harder and harder to sell what they produce. Returns on capital shrink until they start gobbling each other up in mergers and acquisitions until, in most vectors of the economy, there are 1, 2, or 3 companies that own the lions share of each market. When near monopolies are established, then the individual oligarch gets to charge "rents" in excess of market value because the customer has no where else to turn.

As more and more is extracted from the customer's wallet, markets shrink and quality of life deteriorates, which will result in social unrest and even revolution. (Don't think the oligarchs don't know this, that's why they've been building a high-surveillance neo-police state.)

It doesn't have to be this way. The 99 don't have to stand confused and powerless while the 1 live in luxury like kings. Gawd, even Henry Ford understood the end-game of unmitigated greed. All lose in the end. There are alternate ways to organize civil society.