Nobody at the Wheel

The Financial Times reports that British chancellor George Osborne will announce a commitment to put autonomous vehicles on UK roads by 2020.

To say that the implications are far reaching would be an understatement. There are 1.8 million long-haul truck drivers in the United States making approximately 72 USD billion a year. Replacing those drivers by trains of autonomous trucks would decrease transportation costs and be a humongous boost to the profit rate.

This is because transportation is unproductive work. That is, it is work that helps in the transformation of a commodity but does not directly transform it.

More importantly, those 1.8 million unemployed persons would be cast into the job market with education levels far below the 19 USD per hour wage they currently command. This will swell the reserve army and exert a downward pressure on the wages of the working poor.

When we consider the power and proliferation of reactionary talk radio, we can expect an angry mass of declasse workers looking to blame someone for their declining material positions. If we enter recession within the next few years, this boost to the profit rate might be enough to pull us out. But, it will come at the cost of what is beginning to look like a perfect political storm.