Happy Friday, dear readers!
Come on… let’s get real. For at least 85% of you today is Monday because who in their right mind would come in on Friday, July 5th, right? So, you did the sane thing and took a 4 day weekend. What better way to celebrate independence day than to exercise a bit of freedom and take the day off?
Well, your humble blogger remains diligently at his post, cranking out the work product and seeing about getting those claims denied!
Often enough, your humble blogger has talked about the effect of automation. What is seldom discussed, however, is the response to automation by the current job holders. What do the candle-makers do when some guy shows up slinging light bulbs?
Well, Los Angeles is showing us just what can happen when you threaten to make someone’s job obsolete.
A couple of weeks ago, the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners voted 3 to 2 to allow Maersk, a logistic company, to introduce driverless electric cargo handlers inside its facility. The Los Angeles City Council voted to overrule the permit grant to Maersk last week, presumably under pressure from dock workers and the related union representatives.
So, of course, the City of Los Angeles offers the answer to jobs lost from automation: stagnation. The result will naturally be for other ports, ones that allow 24-hour automated processing, to be far more attractive and collect the port fees associated thereto.
But the fact remains that this is the resistance that can be expected to movements towards automation – emotional, irrational, and, ultimately, futile. The robots will carry us, kicking and screaming, into the future. Assuming we can avoid a dystopia like that presented in The Matrix, we can all look forward to a future where a four-day weekend is the norm, because while we are camping, grilling, and enjoying a more relaxed life, the robots are working 24/7.
Till Monday, dear readers!