Yeah, just a variation on the WalMart toilet-swirl.
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It could be $100k, still meaningless if they never get to see it.
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It’s a bitter irony that the actual road to serfdom is where we find ourselves now.
And the only way to escape this neo-feudal future is for those of us (yes, us because unless you are actually a 1%er, then you’re part of the unnecessariat, too) who are being automated out of society to recognise our shared class interests and organise against it.
Sadly, this seems unlikely, because even the activists have abandoned class solidarity these days.
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If only ways-to-give-others-the-finger were horses, then we suckers (humanity) could fly (and fewer trucks were needed)
Whew, dodged that one! I do most of my shopping at Amazon and Whole Foods so I’m not wor…fuck!!!
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[quote=“OrangeTide, post:28, topic:103180, full:true”]
indentured slaves don’t normally make a median salary of $40,620.[/quote]
I’d explain it to you, but Tennessee Ernie Ford does it best:
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Yes, and guard labour, which already accounts for 1/4 of the American workforce according to Samuel Bowles. We’re basically discussing the kind of fear-infused life that wealthy people in Brazil and South Africa “enjoy.” Wealthy Americans are in no way ready for that, and smart American HNWIs don’t want it. And so…
Here’s my obligatory self-link to the kind of nasty UBI that American Capital would prefer once it’s forced to adopt one.
Essentially rent-to-own, and we know who wins and who loses in that scenario.
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Most common job in Florida is Primary School Teacher? Florida?
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Neither do the truckers. Much of that money goes directly into rig the company leases under a probably illegal contract that allows the company to deny the entirety of those sunk wages by arbitrarily denying the trucker hours or demanding they drive unsafe shift lengths or a myriad of other capricious and petty ways they can fuck the trucker over.
If I give you a job and tell you, I’ll only give you half your wages after several years and only then if you do everything I ask no matter how unreasonable or unsafe and only then if I still feel like it, and they’ll be paid to you in the form of an industrial vehicle that will already have massively depreciated in value, you’d tell me to go fuck myself, and rightly so.
Externalizing costs to your employees and taking it out of their wages isn’t median salary. It’s a con.
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The company owns copyrighted software in the truck and as such said truck is clearly always leased no matter how much money you sink into it.
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Living in an early cyberpunk dystopia is a lot less cool that I thought it would be.
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There are some very good companies that employ truck drivers, but an awful lot of competition for those jobs. There is then a very long tail.
That’s really pathetically low for what the job entails.
The main cost of operating a truck is not the driver. The problem is that many haulage companies have executives who are not very bright. One example is trying to save money by using car satnavs whereas the typical payback on a proper truck satnav is under a year.
But I suspect that some of the people bribing the Conservatives to leave the EU are hoping that we’ll end up with the same employer-favouring laws as the US. The good bit will be when the EU will only allow in British truck drivers (and goods) if Euro-standard labour laws are enforced. The Italians propose things like that from time to time.
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One is reminded of the late stages of the Roman Empire when small farmers sold themselves into slavery because they were driven into destitution and starvation by large farms worked by slaves.
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I’m not saying that it might not require some creative application of the law.
Exactly this. Once Uber or Google or whoever wins the battle to control the autonomous self driving network, millions of truck drivers will be swiftly unemployed.
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I would have 2 replies. First, while I appreciate the sentiment, I think the sentence itself vastly underestimate how bad things could actually get in that scenario, for how large a fraction of humanity. Second, there are many layers of moving walls, and I’m still inside some but outside an increasing number.
I recommend an edit to the headline.
“Truck-driving is a modern form of indentured slavery in California, where the government forced all operators to buy brand new trucks without the faintest god damned clue of what unintended consequences might ensue. Unlike the other 49 states.”
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